Love those libraries!

It's Spring Break, so we have a few lazy days here, and this morning my youngest daughter and I made a trek to our local library. I love the library, though I haven't spent much time there lately. And I love this book/dominoes world-record video, made by the Seattle Public Library. Thanks to sister-in-law Sarah for sharing this one. I also like the ukulele music -- there's a bit of that happening here as my second daughter is teaching herself these days... Enjoy!

Simple Suggestion #137... Learn more about Voluntary Simplicity

When it comes to explaining Voluntary Simplicity to people, I often find myself tongue-tied just because there's so much to say! You would think that the idea of living simply would be easy to explain, but as it touches every corner of our lives, it takes some doing. It probably shouldn't really need explaining except we're so used to living in a complicated world that half the time we need someone to point out how ridiculously complex everything has become -- to our detriment!

So today's suggestion is one that can open up whole new worlds in us -- spaces where we realize that everything in our lives can be worked so that we live more lightly on the planet and help the earth and ourselves to become happier and healthier in the process. And there are many ways to learn more -- in our libraries and online.

Mark Burch, my Voluntary Simplicity expert/friend in Winnipeg, recently published some of his work through a website called The Simplicity Collective in Australia. It's a pretty neat website, and the material there is free, and paperless! If you'd rather have writings on simplicity in "hardcopy" without running the risk of cluttering shelves, libraries and interlibrary loans are a good way to go. Or if you're looking to own a reference copy of a good book like the one pictured above, Abebooks is a wonderful, online, secondhand bookstore.

In looking at The Simplicity Collective's Website, I realize that there's so much more I could be doing with Simple Moodlings as far as directing people to great Simplicity resources, but life is full enough without my spending more hours at the computer. So I'll add the Simplicity Collective to my sidebar, too, and call it good, as I have plenty of good garden resources that still need to be harvested and preserved over the next few weeks. Now, off to the beet patch...

Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.

Simple Suggestion #77... Donate all books you will never read again

There are people who love to be surrounded by books, but as I live in a good sized city, when I want that, I can always go to a library. Even if I didn't have library access, I don't think I would hold onto the novels and textbooks I'll never look at again. They're not something that I want to keep around, simply because I don't like to dust more than I like to read. I also think that a book that's not my cup of tea might be something someone else will appreciate, so why not pass it on?

This morning I'll be at the Society of St. Vincent de Paul clothing room, where we have six shelves of books for adults and children. I've had some wonderful conversations with book savvy clients, and am always delighted to see people of all ages absorbed in something they find in that corner. Without donations from people willing to part with their books, that wouldn't happen.

There are plenty of libraries and used book stores, Reuse fairs and charities that accept used books. Today might be a good day to reassess our bookshelves and share the wealth!

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.

Simple Suggestion #11 of 100...Use a library card

My family relies on our library a lot. Rarely does a week go by that someone isn't making a trip to pick up a book on hold or return a video, cd or novel. For a while, my eldest daughter was an employee there. Most of my reading material is picked off the "Staff Recommendation" shelf when I'm waiting for Julia to gather her weekly fix of Archie comics.

I also find the library very helpful when it comes to putting together book displays for my Voluntary Simplicity presentations. At the most recent one two weeks ago, I set up two small tables full of library books and referred to a few of them as I spoke. When the workshop ended, one of the participants came to me afterwards, saying, "I'm a librarian, and I'm just so happy that you're plugging libraries in your talks. You made my day!"

What's not to plug? A library is one of humanity's great inventions. Having a library card is like having a next-to-free pass to seeing the seven trillion wonders of the world. Books, magazines, newspapers, videos, audio files, cds, and now ebooks are available through large borrowing systems that will only get larger as we get deeper into this digital age. I wonder, how many lifetimes would I need just to get through the material in the nearest library branch?

Best of all, I have access to it, but I don't have to store it, keep track of it, or worry about it once I'm done with it. I know a lot of people who feel that it's important to have libraries of their very own on the shelves in their dwellings, but I'm afraid I can't see that as being very wise or practical. Yes, there are a few books that are handy to keep as reference, but why hold onto books you'll only ever read once? For a while, I thought about keeping books for my kids to read, but what are the chances they'll want to read the same things? They live a life much different from mine, but if they ever do decide that they want to read Mom's favourites, I've got a list to share. Even if it's such a great book that you don't want to part with it, you can always revisit it at the library if necessary.

Another wonderful thing about libraries is running into friends and neighbours there. It doesn't happen as often as I like, but when it does, I usually come away with a few books I've never heard of that other people recommend. Libraries are win-win situations all around. When's the last time you visited yours?

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.

Simple pleasures... and bedtime stories

Youngest child is home with a cold this week, and I'm grateful for the perks of being a mostly-stay-home-mom with a very flexible part-time boss. I worked yesterday morning while my mom stayed with Jay. After Grandma went home and we had lunch, we went to the bookshelf and sorted through old favourite children's books, and Jay spent the afternoon in bed surrounded with book characters they grew up with -- woolly wombats and happy hippopotami, Skippyjon Jones and Diary of a Worm, Sesame Street monsters and fairy tale princesses (not of the Disney variety). When they got tired of reading to themself, we read a couple of chapters of The Borrowers together, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were lounging in bed at the moment reading on by themself.

I have always loved to read to children. When I was teaching, the last 20 minutes of every school day were Miss P.'s reading time, and my students would relax, doodle at their desks, or sit rapt as we shared stories by E. B. White or Ursula K. Le Guin or Farley Mowat. We traversed African savannahs, American prairies, and the Land of Oz. When I left teaching to start my own family, I looked forward to reading to my own little ones, and have fond memories even of the books we knew backwards and forwards -- those repetitive, participatory stories like the Berenstains' "Big Brown Bear, Blue Bull, Beautiful Baboon, blowing bubbles, bicycling backwards..." and Sandra Boynton's hilarious little board book that had us all shouting, "But NOT the hippopotamus!" until we reached, "but NOT the armadillo!" at the end. And Hop on Pop... and Goodnight Moon... and how many chunks of stories can you still recite?

For years we lugged large bags of books back and forth from the local library, and discovered many favourites that sometimes still make their way back to us if my kids happen to spot them as they walk through the children's section. This week, in keeping with Valentine's Day, it's Slugs in Love by Susan Pearson, illustrated by Kevin O' Malley, in which Marylou, a very shy slug, keeps leaving little slime-trail love letters for Herbie, her chosen slug, but Herbie keeps getting conflicting reports about which of the garden slugs is Marylou. "I think she's the brownish one." "I think she's the pinkish one." It tells you something when even an avid gardener like me has a soft spot for these funny little slugs, but the humour of Herbie's ball cap (worn between his eyes), and Marylou's eye-ribbons and love poems completely won me over (though I still can't stand having slugs in my lettuce, and cover the patch with eggshells to keep them out).

Unfortunately, the bedtime story ritual has almost run its course with Jay only 18 months away from Junior High School (I try not to think about how fast they're growing up). These days, the only time I get to read with them is when they're not feeling great and it's a comfort to lean their head against Mom's shoulder and listen. Our other two kids are into thick young adult novels that it would take anyone half a day to read aloud, and they're such speed readers, they'd never be patient enough to listen since they could finish the book themselves in less than half the time. My husband and I read The Da Vinci Code together the spring that I had vertigo. I wasn't good for doing much else, so I read a couple of chapters every night until one Saturday afternoon when I sat in a lawnchair and read to him while he was painting our garage doors. Seems to me we ended up finishing the book at 1 a.m., and I was rather hoarse. It was fun, but not likely to be repeated.

I wonder, with all the changes coming via the e-book publishing industry, what will happen to future bedtime story rituals? Will children's libraries continue to exist? Will the powers that be come up with a larger Kindle (or whatever brand name you know) for the big glossy illustrations that little kids and parents love? How will they replace the chewable board book? Will we have to shop garage sales for the satisfaction of turning a page to find Waldo in a different situation?

Whatever happens, I hope to have more opportunities to share beloved stories with little ones, and that our children will be able to do the same. The bedtime story is a sacred thing, a sign that big people care about little people and want to share the best things with them, along with a cuddle. I'm so grateful to have had that opportunity for almost half my life.

Jay's up. Maybe we'll go read a few more chapters of The Borrowers together.

Simple pleasures... and books

I'm back to reading Dr. Robin R. Meyers' book, Morning Sun on a White Piano: Simple Pleasures and the Sacramental Life (Doubleday 1998, ISBN 0-385-48954-4). His third chapter begins:

Children's books are now edible. This is a fairly recent development, and a very sensible one. With cardboard pages and rounded edges, these board books (or chunky books, as they're called) can be gnawed on and slobbered over in lieu of actually being read. It occurs to me that this is not only a good idea for babies, but the perfect analogy for the importance of reading in life--long after the impulse to cut teeth has faded. Because no matter what our age, we ought never to stop eating books, for books are the feast of the imagination (p.27).

I've had a long love affair with books, and for the past eight years, I've kept a list of the ones I have read. Each year I go through my list to name my own "book of the year," usually a book that has moved me or stretched me in unexpected directions, or has stuck in my brain for one reason or another. Here are the last eight "books of the year," just in case you're looking for something to read during these long, dark winter nights:

2002 Rush Home Road, a fabulous story by Lori Lansens, an amazing Canadian writer. The final scene of the book is my favourite picture of heaven, ever.

2003 84 Charing Cross Road, by Helen Hanff. A book about book lovers writing letters. It didn't disappoint!

2004 Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. Some of her beautiful images and ideas stay with me yet. Had I kept my book list in 2000, I suspect her The Poisonwood Bible would have been my book that year.

2005 Stepping Lightly: Simplicity for People and the Planet by Mark A. Burch. Most of my reading consists of library books, but this one I own by necessity, as I return to it again and again.

2006 The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. It was recently made into a movie that somehow, I can't bring myself to watch. Hollywood has ways of messing up a really good book (except for The Lord of the Rings, but that's another story for another day.)

2007 Morning Sun on a White Piano: Simple Pleasures and the Sacramental Life. Have I sung Dr. Robin Meyers' praises enough yet?

2008 Clementine by Sara Pennypacker. A favourite among my favourites, and a children's book to boot. If you're looking for the perfect Christmas present for an eight year old girl, or the mom of an eight year old girl, this is it. It will be the subject of a future moodling, I suspect.

2009 The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. An unexpectedly moving story, recommended to me by my eldest daughter.

I won't supply publishers or ISBNs for any of these, as I'm sure they can be found through libraries or the internet, and I only keep track of authors and titles on my book list. Last week, while my youngest had the flu, we read The Enormous Egg (by Oliver Butterworth) together, and I relived my childhood a little. There are so many books that I would love to share with my girls, but for memory loss -- why didn't I start my book list when I was younger? For example, today the name Mrs. Medlock came unbidden into my head, and I couldn't place it. Of course, she is the head housekeeper at Misselthwaite Manor in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, another magical book. And Julia discovered The Hundred Dresses (a fantastic little story about bullying written by Eleanor Estes in 1944) without my recommendation. I'm racking my brain for a book about a little Jewish girl that I absolutely loved, but that's the extent of my clues on that one. If you have any recollections in that regard, please let me know.

I've always preferred reading to TV and movies, especially when violence is part of the story. I never understood why that was until I read Robin Meyers' explanation further on in his chapter on books:

... by far the most important thing that books provide us is the best means for developing the most vital human faculty: the imagination. Words can describe, but it takes a reader to conjure up images, to shape them, and, if necessary, to censor them. Our children are committing too many physical crimes these days because too many visual crimes have been committed against them. Graphic images of violence are being hung in the gallery of their minds without first being checked at the door. The people who bring us "special effects" have a moral responsibility not to "burn" such things into psychic places that were meant to stay green.

Unlike the visual arts, books leave us humanely in charge of that process by which images move from type to flesh. Sadly, our society mocks this process with the pejorative phrase, "It's only your imagination." But what else can save us, if not this silent essential transportation of the soul? Most human cruelty would be eliminated if people had the capacity to imagine. As a prerequisite to empathy, imagination makes kindness possible by allowing us to inhabit the skins we weren't born in. Lack of imagination, on the other hand, makes the inflicting of pain, in all its forms, possible...." (pp. 31-32)

So here's my own little tribute to the compassion that comes from the imagination awakened by books, borrowing a lot of words from one of my favourites. Here's to many feasts of the imagination, including the one my husband is having at the moment as he plows through the second half of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

And while I'm at it, I'll put in a plug for local libraries rather than buying books. Books are like great scenery or live music -- they're meant to be shared, not hoarded.

Favourite book of 2010? The jury is still out, but I suspect my favourite will be A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life by Donald Miller. A quirky, funny, challenging little book that makes me want to be a better person. Then again, I'm reading Robin R. Meyers' latest work, and it may steal first place... but that's another moodling for another day.