Journal of a Sabbatical

February 9, 2001

felled by fatigue, bewitched by books, and mesmerized by meowsters

Today's Reading: The Island of Penguins by Cherry Kearton, Winter: from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H.G.O. Blake, In Audubon's Labrador by Charles Wendell Townsend

I woke up this morning. Two hours later I woke up again. This time I got further than two steps away from the bed. I walked around all day as if treading in quicksand. I have no idea why.

Despite being felled by fatigue, I managed an excursion to beg the person of Domino for some books for the FurBall silent auction. He suggested I look around and pick something that he would then approve or disapprove for donation. I browsed around for awhile and picked a first edition of Gladys Taber's Conversations with Amber, figuring some sort of cat book would be appropriate.

That didn't seem like quite enough or quite right or something. Domino tried to help by repeatedly jumping on top of a coffee table book of Bill Clinton photos. How many photos of Bill Clinton can one stand to look at? Would you want a book of Clinton portraits on your coffee table? Domino is letting me down here. It's possible that this particular shelf is just Domino's current favorite place to demand petting and she's not trying to donate the Clinton book at all.

In the children's section I found a wonderful book about an injured Canada goose who goes to Hollywood. I decided I had to have that for Nancy, who loves geese. It's chock full of wonderful line drawings of geese and other birds and people and vehicles and Los Angeles... She'll love it.

Back upstairs I asked mister person of Domino what kind of cookbook the elite of Newburyport would be likely to bid on. He specializes in cookbooks, many of which are very old and amazing. He once showed me a 16th century Italian cookbook. I didn't know people wrote down their recipes that long ago. Anyway, he was busy with a paying customer so I hung around bewildered among the cookbooks. When the customer left, he fetched a French cookbook from the back room that will be just perfect for the auction. It's a culinary tour of the French provinces, with lots of regional recipes and lots of pictures. That should bring in the bids.

I had noticed that the stock of bird books and local history books had not been being replenished lately but somehow it had escaped me that this was not a good sign. I somehow missed the postcard announcing he's closing the shop to concentrate on his catalog sales of cookbooks and sporting books. Suddenly I spotted the stack of postcards listing the discounts for the shop closing sale. Aiyee! I went into shock briefly, then gamely asked was he really putting himself out to pasture (that's what the postcard said). And of course, my immediate thought was what about Domino? She can't live at home with him because she's FIP positive (or was it FIV? these feline diseases all have similar initials) and he has other cats. He reassured me that Domino is going to live in Marblehead at Much Ado, which recently moved into much larger quarters so she'll have even more room to roam among the books there.

I wasn't as lucky with getting Fowle's to donate something. They let me put the donation form on their bulletin board for their customers though, so maybe somebody will come in for a cup of coffee and become inspired to donate some fabulous item for the auction. I bought a half pound of French roast and headed over to the cat shelter to look up the January and February adoption statistics for the real newsletter.

Miss Newburyport opened one eye to look at me when I petted her and raised her head about a nanometer but that was it. She wasn't being interactive today.

I got my numbers and headed over to Vertu Gallery to preview the paintings for tomorrow night's silent auction (obviously a different silent auction from the FurBall one). One of the MRFRS volunteers was there framing miniature reproductions of the various auction paintings. A lot of the paintings are of cats, including one called Sleepy Cats that I really like. Not that I have a wall to hang it on. I have stacks of stuff to hang on walls and not enough wall space - sort of like my bookcase problem.

I checked out the painting my brother had already bid on and introduced myself to the gallery owner as Don's sister, which is weird because we never call him Don but everybody in Salisbury does. Maybe we all have special Salisbury monikers... after all Newburyport is the center of the universe but everybody knows it's really just a suburb of Salisbury ... uh, that would make Salisbury the center of the universe...

I got all sentimental about a painting of the back window of Olde Port Book Shop with the lettering "Fine Old Books" on the glass, the flag hanging down and the shelves of books within. I told Gallery Owner that she should call Person of Domino and get him to bid on the painting. This was the first news she had that he was closing. He actually had bought a pile of prints of that very painting for promotional stuff awhile back so he might actually want the original.

Despite my felling fatigue, which was still very much with me, I had an overwhelming urge to visit David Bookstore and stock up for the upcoming absence of Olde Port Book Shop from my life. So back in Andover I dropped in on David Bookstore, who unlike Gallery Owner did know that Person of Domino was closing up the shop. We talked about books and cats and I browsed and ended up with a pile of books I of course can't really afford but it's sort of like buying white bread and batteries before a snow storm. New additions to my stash: In Audubon's Labrador by Charles Wendell Townsend, two books about the Merrimack River from various Lowell scholars, and an autographed Salt Rivers of the Massachusetts Coast by Henry Howe. I do have some willpower. I passed on an edition of the complete poems of Whittier.