ginger beer and dust jackets

September 2, 2001

Today's Reading:
Birds of Siberia by Henry Seebohm, A Summer Ride Through Western Tibet by Jane Duncan

This Year's Reading:
2001 Book List

Note to the people at Much Ado: We really love the ginger beer. It's perfect for sipping while reading Jane Duncan.

Given the all American urge to drive a lot in celebration of major holidays, it made perfect sense to me when Nancy said let's go to Much Ado to visit Domino and buy that Jonathan Edwards book we browsed at last time. So what if we're in Providence and Much Ado is in Marblehead... So after breakfast we drove to Marblehead where we visited Much Ado Books, I petted Domino now known as Dust Jacket, and I bought a lot of books.

Maybe not everybody would drive to Marblehead to visit a cat. OK so maybe not everybody has dear friends who are cats. But I'm a little odd that way. And Domino, I mean Dust Jacket, loves it. Seriously. I sat in the window baking in the sun stroking DJ's neck as she purred up a storm. Then she spoke several cat syllables (anybody who thinks cats only say meow doesn't know a cat from a cow) and jumped into my lap. She then draped herself across my chest and rested her paws on my left shoulder and made that "pet me" chirping sound. We sat there in deepest communion for who knows how long until Nancy came looking for me.

Nancy had found some 19th century Lawrence almanac and was reading a list of deaths and causes thereof. In 1892 there were an amazing number of suicides and a truly alarming number of drownings in the Spicket River. Although this book fits in with the Merrimack Valley theme of my collection, I didn't feel a powerful urge to own it. Maybe if the drownings had been in the Merrimack...

The Jonathan Edwards book we'd been talking about since the last visit and wishing we had bought was still there so I decided to spring for it. Then somehow my internal curbs on book buying dissolved. The people at Much Ado are afraid that Domino/Dust Jacket puts a spell on people that causes them to forget to buy books. She definitely has the opposite effect on me. Dust Jacket's psychic powers combined with having just got paid set off a chain reaction of used book buying of epic proportions. There were two, count them two, foreigners-in-Tibet tomes for the foreigners-in-Tibet theme (A Summer Ride Through Western Tibet by Jane E. Duncan and The Unveiling of Lhasa by Edmund Candler), a Ferenc Deák memoir for the Hungarian theme, and a biography of Kublai Khan that doesn't fit with the themes (unless he staged a hitherto unknown invasion of the Merrimack Valley or was secretly also Puritan theologian) but has great maps.

The Much Ado folks generously discounted this stack o' books and gave us a four pack of their Shakesbeer private label ginger beer ("and the ginger shall be hot") and of course asked how on earth I got interested in the Hungarian nationalists.

I gave them the abbreviated version of the "I met these two Hungarian dendrologists in Japan in 1997 and it changed my life" story and allowed as to how if they had a Kossuth memoir I'd buy it. They promised to keep an eye out for Kossuth stuff on their next buying trip to the UK. I promised them I'd mention the ginger beer on the my web site.

So Nancy and I spent the rest of the evening reading A Summer Ride Through Western Tibet by Jane E. Duncan and savoring the ginger beer, which is indeed hot.

For your hyperactive, hypertextual pleasure, below is just about every previous reference to Domino in this journal. In case the name doesn't ring a bell...

February 11, 1999 - more bald eagles	May 31, 1999 - the weekend
July 12, 1999 - no ruff, helicopter	October 7, 1999 - book binge
December 15, 1999 - still warm	December 22, 1999 - pickles is not a drink
January 11, 2000 - big buddy	January 17, 2000 - the dryer man cometh
April 21, 2000 - raining skies	April 25, 2000 - tomorrow and tomorrow ...
May 24. 2000 - clumping litter in the rain	May 31, 2000 - a horse, of course
June 21, 2000 - @#$%!!!!!	July 12, 2000 - life goes on
July 16, 2000 - an island garden - not	July 26, 2000 - deptford pink
November 22, 2000 -- what am i doing in this handbasket?	November 23, 2000 - at least i'm enjoyin' the ride
December 1, 2000 - big white bird	December 22, 2000 - oldies marketplace
February 9, 2001 - felled by fatigue, bewitched by books, and mesmerized by meowsters	March 2, 2001 - half price
June 6, 2001 - orange kittens	June 9, 2001 - quaint new england