The Merriest Christmas to You and Yours!

A gift from G. K. Chesterton for Christmas:

A Child of the Snows
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)

There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.

Never we know but in sleet and in snow,
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth
And the heart of the earth a star.

And at night we win to the ancient inn
Where the child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.

Christmas at the Koenigs

Conversation while hanging the Christmas tree lights:

Me: Daniel, get the shepherd from the Nativity set away from Kilala!

My son Daniel: Hey, cat, you're herding him! If you take him away from his flock, he'll have a sheepless night!

Richard (Dad): He'll be sheep-deprived.

My son Michael: He's a mutton for punishment.

It took a while to recover from the fit of giggles.

Book Nook Directories

Paula Coleman has a useful site for book lovers called "Book Nook Directories." There you'll find listings for booksellers throughout the Carolinas and Georgia, both web-only and brick-and-mortar.

A Cold Coming We Had of It

The Journey of the Magi

T. S. Eliot

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

A Lovely Prospect

My fellow Mary Louis Academy alumna, Brenda Becker, photographed Prospect Park in the course of a year and created this beautiful calendar for 2009:


I lived in Queens, New York, from the time I was born until I was 26. I regret now that I never visited that park. It is an oversight I plan to rectify on my next trip back. I'm grateful to Brenda for showing me what I missed.

Death Makes the Holiday

The funniest entry in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series is Hogfather, where Death takes over for the Discworld version of Santa Claus when he goes missing. Death is sort of like Spock: he tries to get humans, and comes close, but always misses the subtleties. Here he's wishing his granddaughter (!), Susan (!!!), a "Happy Hogswatch":

Getting into the Spirit of Things with Potter Puppet Pals

It's nearly Christmas! For your jollification, we proudly present the creator of Potter Puppet Pals and his Christmas video (WARNING: Some innuendo involved):

Happy Thanksgiving!

Some pretty pictures for your enjoyment. We're counting our considerable blessings here at Old Lighthouse Books, and we wish you all the best for the rest of this year and the next!

The Way of the Book

There's a new book metasearch site on the Web: ViaLibri, Resources for Bibliophiles.

You have the option of searching all bookselling sites, or just the ones you check off, and away you go. One of the nicer features is the ability to weed out unwanted listings. You know what I mean -- you're looking for an original copy of, say, John Leland's Divine Authority of the Old and New Testament Asserted, and a search brings up a slew of print-on-demand listings. Well, now you can find what you're really looking for without having to puzzle out the correct combination of keywords. Neato!

New Auction on eBay

It's finally here! My new auctions are listed on eBay and ready for bidding. Unfortunately for some, the Old Theology Quarterly #25 has sold already through "Buy It Now." The Millennial Dawn envelope and the Golden Age magazines are still in play, though.

I've included some postcards from Oberammergau, vintage 1922. One is signed by one of the actors. There's a mix of black and white and color cards, all in very good condition.

Where There's Smoke ...

You've won that book you've been searching for on eBay. You shiver in anticipation when the package finally arrives. Ripping it open, you can see the book is everything you hoped it would be, except ... What's that smell?

You employ the sniff test, and discover that the poor volume has been subjected to the smoke of a thousand cigarettes. Every molecule of paper has bound with one of Chesterfield's™.

What to do? You don't want to return the book, but you can't abide handling something that smells like an ashtray.

There are different solutions to this problem, but one of the easiest and least expensive involves the following materials:

• A large box of baking soda
• A "refrigerator box" of same
• Two rectangular plastic storage containers into which the book(s) will fit without touching the sides, one smaller than the other
• A lid to fit the larger box -- one that will provide an airtight seal.
• Time

1. Open the large box of baking soda, and spread some in the bottom of the larger container; about a 1/2 inch to an inch (2.5 to 4 cm) deep will do.

2. Place the smaller container on top of the baking soda.

3. Place the book(s) inside the smaller container.

4. If there is room, you may place a refrigerator box of baking soda in with the books (these boxes have a peel-away piece of cardboard that reveals a thin fabric; it allows the baking soda to absorb odors without spilling into the box).

5. Place the lid on the larger box and seal tightly.

6. Wait 4 to 6 weeks; check the odor of the book(s) periodically and replace the baking soda as needed.

This method's chief advantage is its cost-effectiveness. While it may not remove all the offensive odors, it will certainly mitigate them. Airing the book on your own smoke-free shelves after this treatment will also help.

L-Space and Its Subsets

Terry Pratchett has done the hard calculations and given us his theory of "L-Space", that phenomenon known to all frequenters of libraries and used bookstores:

Even big collections of ordinary books distort space and time, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned second-hand bookshop, one of those that has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves that end in little doors that are surely too small for a full sized human to enter.

Read more over at Lspace.org.

A Mysterious Passion

Louis M. Boxer reflects on the beauty of book collecting:

The passion for collecting books, like good taste, is something you are either
born with and/or fortuitously cultivate with great loving tenderness. It must be
nourished with time, or it will atrophy and wither away, which one would
consider a serious crime just about anywhere! Collecting my mystery books for
the sole expectation of making an exponential return on your investments is
extremely risky and speculative. More importantly, it unabashedly eviscerates
and brutalizes the beauty of collecting mystery books. Collecting books is
something that should be pursued for one's pleasure and personal satisfaction
above all else. It doesn't require a lot of money but merely an interest to
read, to learn and to share in others' lives. Ultimately you find yourself
becoming more preoccupied with the pursuit and the pursuit and the acquisition of the printed word at the expense of food, sleep or even sex! If this describes you, then you have taken the first step to admitting that you are a bona fide bibliophile. You cannot escape your fate nor can you buy, steal, or fake this passion.

Read more at http://www.charlesbenoit.com/CollectingMysteryBooks.htm.

Hat tip to Charles Benoit for the link.

Mystery, Romance, Exotic Adventure

Charles Benoit is an award-winning mystery writer whose books give you a rollicking good ride through foreign climes while his protagonists pursue both love and a MacGuffin. I loved his first novel, Relative Danger, and was hooked.

I quickly snapped up his next two: Out of Order and Noble Lies.

His sense of humor and well-drawn characters drive the plots well through various improbable scenarios. There are insights into the cultures of the various locales featured in the books which are obviously the fruit of his own experiences.

He seems like an interesting fellow in his non-authorial life: He hosts a jazz radio program (swing music -- I knew I liked the man!), likes martinis (the real kind, none of this fruity drink with "-tini stuck at the end" stuff), and is as well-traveled as his hapless heroes.

So if you like your books as light and dry as one of Benoit's martinis, give them a try.

New York, New York

The day the planes hit, I was trying to tune into a radio interview with Patrick Madrid. One of the stations had interrupted programming with a news bulletin; all I had to hear was "the president looked grave" to know that something bad had happened.

My younger kids were watching "Barney" or something. I shooed them out of the room and turned to a news channel to the sight of smoke coming out of both of the towers. They were breaking in with news about the Pentagon, and something about a plane crash in Pennsylvania. I switched back to kiddie shows and ran upstairs to my computer ...

I began emailing friends back in New York. I was born and raised in Queens, and I still have many friends and family who live and work there. One friend said he could see the smoke when he was crossing one of the bridges to his workplace. Shortly after that I got a message: "They're gone."

What do you mean "GONE"?

I tuned in to a visual report to see empty, smoking air where the towers had been. Unfathomable. I started crying, nearly screaming.

As the news reports came in, jumbled and confused, I was proud of my city. I saw New Yorkers mobilizing, getting ready to deal with the wounded that would flood the hospitals.

They didn't come.

In the days that followed, the people of this country stepped up and stepped in to bind the wounds. The firefighters collected fistfuls of $20 bills in boots on street corners here in Raleigh and in Durham to send to New York. Workers poured in from across the United States to help with search efforts. More food, clothing, and money than could be used were donated. The generosity of the American people can be nearly overwhelming.

But pain continued weeks after the attacks, with churches conducting funeral after funeral after funeral, day after day after day.

Remember, and say a prayer.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.