NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS

I just discovered this stuff. OMG is it ever good.

But this is a bit much

Even if the bottle has pretty little designs on it.

Experimental Farm, Ottawa.

Ottawa literary broadcasting icon, and award-winning high school librarian.

Jane Crosier was host of the excellent Literary Landscape radio show on CKCU 93.1 FM for 12 years. She worked tirelessly to promote local authors, and to foster a love of literature in her listeners and students. I never met Jane, however, I experienced her generosity. She was among the very first people to provide support and encouragement to me when I first launched my radio program The Biblio File.

This from her son Matthew Crosier, CKCU Station Manager:

 Jane Ann Crosier (Rioux) died March 2 2009 age 61 after a heartbreaking battle with cancer. Beloved wife to Peter, loving mother to Matthew (Valerie) and Benjamin. Devoted grandmother to: Catherine, Alexander and Tessa. Daughter to Ray and Dora Rioux. Sister to: Raymond, Francis, Carol and Nancy. Lovingly remembered by the Crosier and Rioux families.
Born and raised in Port Hope, a graduate of York University Winters College. She worked for the OCDSB for more than 30 years at Glen Ogilvie, Gloucester High, Colonel By and Sir Wilfrid Laurier. An inveterate gift giver and unrepentant doer of good deeds. Jane loved gardening, her felines, skating on the canal and preparing wonderful family events. "getting out and doing something". The service will take place at Saturday March 7 @ 1:30pm, in the Library of Gloucester High School, 2060 Ogilvie Road, Gloucester, Ontario, K1J 7N8
The reception will follow starting @ 3:30pm. The reception will take place in Kanata. For details call (613) 552-1832 or e-mail familycrosier@gmail.com

This from the citation for a CKCU volunteer award she received in 2001:

 "The Literary Landscape" aired every Thursday from 6:30pm-7:00pm. Each week Jane interviewed authors, poets and people connected with the literary world. Literature was a life long passion for Jane. As a young person she would spend her hard earned money on dog-eared paperbacks at the local Flea Market. Later she would further that interest by specializing in Literature while attending University. She passed on her love of books to her two sons and to thousands of young people who have frequented the high school libraries where she has worked for [thirty] years. Jane put countless hours into the CKCU fund raising drives, regularly ‘cooking up delicious treats for her fellow volunteers on the early morning Saturday phone shifts. And through it all she was also a pretty good mother to a couple of wayward souls.’

R.I.P. Jane.

"Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness." Helen Keller

One of the biggest in history. What are the odds? As a friendly old gentleman informed me earlier this morning: you stand as good a chance of winning without buying a ticket, as you do buying one.

Blue Tit In Winter, Gianpiero Ferrari

At the salt mines of Salzburg, they throw a leafless wintry bough into one of the abandoned workings. Two or three months later they pull it out covered with a shining deposit of crystals. The smallest twig, no bigger than a tom-tit’s claw, is studded with a galaxy of scintillating diamonds. The original branch is no longer recognizable. 

This brilliant crystallization metaphor is what Stendhal  used to describe the mental process of falling in love; of drawing from everything that happens, new proofs of the perfection of the loved one: no sooner do you think of a virtue than you detect it in your beloved….but your attention is still liable to wander after a time because one gets tired of anything uniform, even perfect happiness.

This, says Henri, is what happens next to fix the attention:

Doubt creeps in. First a dozen or so glances, or some other sequence of actions, raise and confirm the lover’s hopes. Then, as he recovers from the initial shock, he grows accustomed to his good fortune, or acts on a theory drawn from the common multitude of easily won women. He asks for more positive proofs of affection and tries to press his suit further. The second crystallization, which deposits diamond layers of prove that ’she loves me’.

Every few minutes throughout the night which follows the birth of doubt, the lover has a moment of dreadful misgiving, and then reassures himself, ’she loves me’; and crystallization begins to reveal new charms. Then once again the haggard eye of doubt pierces him and he stops transfixed. He forgets to draw breath and mutters, ‘But does she love me?’ Torn between doubt and delight, the poor lover convinces himself that she could give him such pleasure as he could find nowhere else on earth. It is the pre-eminence of this truth, and the road to it, with a fearsome precipice on one hand and a views of perfect happiness on the other, which set the second crystallization so far above the first. The lover’s mind vacillates between three ideas: She is perfect. She loves me. How can I get the strongest possible proofs of her love.?

Since love casts doubt upon what seemed proven before, the woman who was so certain, before intimacy, that her lover was entirely above vulgar promiscuity, no sooner remembers that she has nothing left to refuse him than she trembles lest he has merely been adding another conquest to his list. Only at this point does second crystallization begin, and much more strongly, since it is now accompanied by fear.

Winter is almost over; we’ve even seen deer wandering around.

Marty Prokop

Hard to resist the siren call of a Cold Stone Ice Cream retail outlet, especially after an intense several hours of frantic factory outlet shopping, and when the  person dishing the goods is so welcoming and jovial.

Yes. I’ll take one of your Chocolate Devotion creations…the large…

Can’t be that big. We’ll share.

Yummy. This looks so good, I’m gonna put a picture of it, and you, up on

My blog. You okay with that?

Ten minutes later: both feeling ill. In the car on the way to Chicago Shakespeare. I place the remaining 1/4 tub of ice cream on the passenger side floor. Three hours later: still feeling sick. Tub has tipped over…melted and soiled the rug. Permanently. No more of this. Ever again.

They’ve changed

the lid tops

to make them look like

oranges.

This condensed from the New York Times:

Features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.

Cute cues: extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they can’t lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings must be wired to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.

The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar that it deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.

Full article here