In case I didn't write it out big enough, THANK YOU, to everyone who received my email--even if not directly from me--and rummaged through their homes, libraries (Brent International School--thank you thank you), publishing houses (let's hear it for Mr. G!) and even bought brand new books. I was so overwhelmed with your kind responses and selfless action in participating in the book drive.

I originally sent my email to 10 friends, who in turn forwarded it to their friends and...well, I now have a better understanding of the word viral. Everyone wrote back saying, "Where can I drop off my box of donations?" Did you say box? I remember my email said something like 1 book each person. This was one of the times where I sure was glad that 1x1 didn't equal 1.

I also had the chance to visit two of the partner communities of QK in Bacolod.

AT HINIGARAN
The first community we drove to was Barangay Tugis in Hinigaran. Sugar haciendas surround this barangay, and before you hit the dirt road leading to it, you can almost see Guimaras across the bay. QK's partner in Barangay Tugis is a small group of learners--all child laborers--who meet in a makeshift straw and bamboo kubo school.

The kubo, or hut, is big enough only to hold a teacher's desk and the bookshelf with some of your book donations. Class itself, is held beneath the protective shade of tree. I wasn't able to ask where they hold classes during the rainy season.

These learners, many young men and women 16 years of age (the oldest being 22), have stopped formal education to work in the sugar fields to help their parents place food on the table. As a result, they are academically only in the 4th-5th grade level. On the day of my visit, they were reviewing long-hand multiplication. Their 3 teachers are the fortunate few in the community who have been able to finish college and have chosen to stay to teach the QK learners.

When I asked them what kinds of books they like to read, everyone replied books with lots of pictures. Right then, I had to squeeze back my tears at the shame I felt at placing a foolish premium on personal sophistication. That story, alas, is for another blog :)

Trying quickly to recover from the chastisement of my consciousness, I approached the students' parents to chat about the QK program. One middle-aged father, lean and leathery from working in the sugar fields, began to talk about how the program has helped his family. He broke down and cried as he expressed his thanks that people should care about them--they who are nobodies. Needless to say, that was enough to make my own tear ducts overflow. I had to feign composure and look away when my lower lip started to pulsate involuntarily. Another mother chimed in to say that her boy had to stop school because they couldn't afford the P25.00 (around US .55 cents) required for him to get from house to public school everyday. Through QK's intervention, they have a fighting chance at a future outside of the haciendas.

As I turned to go, the learners were all in the vegetable garden rolling up their pants and sleeves. The kalabaw they had been waiting for had arrived signaling the start of science class. In lieu of a shiny laboratory, vegetable gardening was the way the teacher taught science to the kids. I was also told that it served a double purpose: providing cassava root which the students can eat and bring home.

Back in the car, my QK guide, Jing, read some of the letters the Barangay Tugis learners wrote in reflection some months back. One girl, Anne Marie, wrote that she wanted to finish school and find work so that her siblings didn't have to work in the sugar fields like herself. And just like a perfectly timed cinematic moment, as we were leaving the barangay a huge truck was entering--chock full of youngsters, mothers, fathers, and even grandmothers recruited to work the fields that day.

AT MURCIA

Next stop for the day was another small community of learners in Murcia, a town quite near Bacolod City. QK tells me this area has been declared child-labor free. The task now at hand is to get kids back in school.

This community had a little more resources, and the QK learners here were able to have classes in the community's preschool building--all concrete this time. I had arrived just before classes started, and the first sight that greets me are your book donations neatly shelved.

This is John Paul. He's 14 years old and academically in 5th grade. He wants to be a teacher someday, and hopes to teach right in Murcia.

The parents of the learners were also there. I had quickly scanned the room to make a headcount of learners and parents. The teacher asked the learners to introduce themselves for the benefit of the day's observers--me and my friend Gisela. I was most pleasantly surprised to discover that one of the people I pegged as a parent, was in fact a learner himself.

Mang Gregorio at 38 years old is the oldest member of his class. He, too, is a sugar farmer. He was supposed to take his high school equivalency test last year, but he missed it because he was working in the fields. He had enrolled again with the class to keep him eligible to take the test this year. That day, he was sitting quietly clutching a book--one of your donations. I assume in a normal setting, Mang Gregorio sitting in a class with 14 and 16 year olds would garner him much teasing. But there was no judgement here. He was simply a classmate; a fellow-learner. Mang Gregorio wouldn't meet my eye, but how much I wanted him to see that he had earned my deepest respect.

It's been a couple of months since I made the trip. To date, 5 batches of books have been sent to QK, totaling to 246 books. QK still needs books and I hope you don't tire of giving and forwarding that email to your friends. Today, the need has increased to used computers. Should you have any that you wish to give, you know how to reach me.

Again, thank you so much for your generosity. I hope you see how much your help means to so many people.

Oh, wow.  I cannot believe it is only 17 hours until NaNo begins.  I have been waiting for this moment for most of a month.

It's crazy the feeling of butterflies in my stomach.  I'm as ready as I'll ever be, I guess.

My outline covers all the necessary scenes & chapters.  It could be more detailed, but it's got enough there for me to (oh, I hope) remember where I'm going & stay on track.

My desktop background has been changed to a NaNo reminder.  My desk calendar has been updated with both the necessary daily word counts (first, by doing the standard 1,667 words per day, and second, by doing my theoretical 5,000 words per day on each of my 10 days off during the month).

I've never been more ready, and yet never felt less ready!  Bring on the crazy writing crunch!

Well, another year, another birthday. This year, despite being off the bike, I received a good haul of bicycle related presents and things.

There was a copy of Cycling Plus, a copy of Rouleur (which I now have a subscription to thanks to one of the founding members of the highway Cycling Group, my step-mum Helen), Graham Fife's the Beautiful Machine and to top it all off, Laura sent me a bike mag from Japan called Funride, not for my birthday specifically, but it arrived at the right time. Fantastic. Reviews of the mags and books will go up shortly.

The paradox is not really Jonah's. It is more in God's ways as depicted by the anonymous poet, but for a title that would have been a bit uppity.

These old texts are real voyagers, have been everywhere, seen everything, and this one now sounds fragmented, the way a traveller sounds when he has repeated his story one too many times.

[For somebody like me who does not speak Italian, the Italian text sounds even more extraordinary, especially when Jonah starts swearing at "l'Eterno Dio"]:

6 Allora l'Eterno Dio preparò una pianta che crebbe al di sopra di Giona per fare ombra al suo capo e liberarlo del suo male; e Giona provò una grandissima gioia per quella pianta.

7 Allo spuntar dell'alba del giorno seguente DIO preparò un verme che colpí la pianta, e questa si seccò.

"The LORD made a vine grow up to shade Jonah's head and protect him from the sun. Jonah was very happy to have the vine, but early the next morning the LORD sent a worm to chew on the vine, and the vine dried up."

(the worm that "chewed"! the translator was a poet, too.)
.

.

When proofreading an index, allow an hour per page. I am now on T.

Marnie and Lola are both German Spitzen. When Lola came into our lives we decided it would be good to know a little more about her breed. Amongst the countless general dog books that we acquired, we also bought Juliette Cunliffe's German Spitz volume to give us the lowdown on spitzen themselves. Sadly, it just isn't very good!

The book is badly written and very generic: in many paragraphs you could replace the word "spitz" for "labrador" or "poodle" and still retain the sense of the author's platitude. The photos aren't great either. There is a very dated look and feel to the book and it was certainly no more useful -- actually, probably much less so -- than combining a general dog welfare and training book with the few facts and figures about spitzen themselves that you'd find in a dog encyclopedia. On the plus side, the first chapter of Juliette's book, on the history of the breed, was interesting. I'll write something about that on the site soon.

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE- JEFFERSON STARSHIP- Great Society 

http://www.takemetoacircustent.net/media/JeffersonAirplaneTakeMeToACircusTentAircast41AGOODSHEPHERD2006.mp3  

Welcome to Wednesday morning: Feeling good? 

We got a cool one from the Rock Tent Vault. 

It is the Jefferson Starship from not too long ago. 

February 18, 06  playing one from very long ago! 

Good Shepherd and you get a female/male vocal.  Great energy with some fun!  Enjoy it. 

Penn's Peak,

Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania 

I look forward to hearing         you later on.   

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE- JEFFERSON STARSHIP- Great Society    

Please remember at any moment on an Aircast it can be a rare memory from the Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, KBC, Wooden Ships, Marty Balin, Paul Kantner to name several.  Maybe another picture previously unseen from the Rock Tent Vault sees daylight from Herb Greene or Don Aters.  

Have a great Wednesday morning,

cf

Author: Julia Quinn

Genre: Historical Romance

Julia Quinn's novels are "un-put-downable", as always, to coin a phrase.

I've always adored her novels, especially those about the Bridgerton family. This novel however, is a non-Bridgerton one, yet it made me feel the same. Laugh and cry.

At ten, Miranda Cheever is tall, awkward and gangly. And also, she fell in love.

With her best friend's brother.

And eight years later, she encounters him again, this time, he, an embittered widower, and she, a young debutante-to-be. Somehow, in a twist of fate, he marries her, and they are caught in this problem.

Lord Turner, the hero of the story, cannot say "I love you" to Miranda, even though he does.

I don't want to cut this short, but I'll deprive you of the joy you'll get in reading the story. One thing's for sure:

You don't know what you've got until it's being taken from you. Well, almost.

So the first month of of my new Book reading Regime has been completed. Here's the results:

Incoming (4):

Henri De Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, Ignatius, (1950).

A C Grayling, Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness, Oberon, (2007).

Jonathan D Moore, English Hypothetical Universalism: John Preston and the Softening of Reformed Theology, Eerdmans, (2007).

Bill Readings, Introducing Lyotard: Art and Politics, Routledge, (1991).

Outgoing (5):

Clive Marsh, Christianity in a Post-Atheist Age, SCM, (2002).

John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces, Penguin, (2006).

Ben Quash & Michael Ward (Eds.), Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why it Matters What Christians Believe, SPCK, (2007).

Chantal Mouffe, On Politics, Routledge, (2005).

David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea: Where was God in the Tsunami? Eerdmans, (2005).

So the net reduction is ...

1 book.

It's not the greatest of starts but at least no money is going to the work of the Evil One.

I like to work on the Imaginary Saints late at night, after everyone is in bed. Most nights, Henry wants extra stories or Sweetie is busy watching David Tua matches on the laptop, or I fall asleep while brushing my teeth at 8PM. So my big book project has been going pretty slowly.

There is definately progress being made, however. For instance, I have six out of eight signatures all ready for printing. I have solved the A4 vs. 8.5x11 problem (did you know that those two papers are not, in fact, the same size? of course you did. I don't know how I made it to my late twenties without realizing that, shall we blame the American educational system?) and I even produced a functional mock-up of my text block, where all the pages are right-side-up, properly registered, and in order. I am almost - almost! ready to start printing.

There are so many little optional things to decide at this point. For instance, do I want a clean edge on my text block, or is a slightly uneven one more charming? In order to learn the process of cleaning a text block, among other valuable skills, I turned to AW Lewis, author of Dover's "Basic Bookbinding".

My edition is copyrighted 1957, and it has seen hard use over the years. Previous owners have underlined certain paragraphs, dripped glue on the illustrations, and thumbed the corners into oblivion. I think this is because AW Lewis, bless his crafty little heart, was a very pendantic, yet simple, writer. He lectures exactly like your most boring college professor, the one who read from notes in a reedy voice and hardly ever got the visual aides in the right order, but who discussed the most basic concepts.

Also, he had very clear ideas on taste. From the foreword:

Deliberate omission has been made of any reference to cover decoration since it is felt that the addition of patterns to the covers of utilitarian books of this kind is inapproriate.

Ha ha. He would flunk my utilitarian books for sure. 

Mr. Lewis is of the school that believes that things-worth-doing-are-worth-doing-right, whereas I am more of a read-six-different-books-on-the-subject-and-draw-your-own-conclusions kind of person, so reading the book (and yes, I read the whole thing, right down to the chapter on rebinding) was a constant tug between my ideas on Art and his on Craft. He talks a lot about correct proceedure and approriate tools and how you really shouldn't bother attempting a case-bound hardcover without a standing press. He's right, of course; the right tools make anything easier. But where does this leave the earnest student of bookmaking who is exiled to a foreign country, fifty years in the future, where no one has ever heard of a cuttlefish bone folder?

Mr. Lewis is not an improvisor:

The following list of items suggests the basic items necessary to start bookbinding. Improvisation is possible in some cases but inevitably it can only be second best and the traditional tools are to be preferred.

 Oh, AW, if only I had my own workshop full of freshly sharpened ploughs and antique yet perfectly true presses! Until then, I will have to improvise.

So, a couple nights ago, I built my own lying press, complete with cutting mat, straight-edge, kitchen cutting board, C-clamps, and a freshly sharpened utility knife. I was so proud I even took a picture. Behold the magnificent:

And then I spent the whole evening learning how to cut crisp, clean, glorious edges; edges that were perfectly square and radiantly straight. (the trick, in case you're interested, is going lightly and slowly and being very careful that the knife is straight on each cut - easy breezy.)

But then, faced with a pile of razor-sharp practice blocks, one is forced to ask oneself: Is a straight edge really that attractive on a handmade book? Is an edge with a slightly fuzzy quality that bad? Is it okay to have a straight edge and a fuzzy top and bottom? What do I really want here? What will be the most beautiful solution?

AW Lewis does not have the answer, but he does have a recipe for paste that I can try while I am deciding.