Lavender Blue Days and Library Books

I love books. My uncle has the biggest personal library I have ever seen, and he helps me add to my own burgeoning collection now and then. We went book shopping at the Caliban outlet (up a few storefronts on Craig from the real Caliban) and when I left I had three bags full. Later that day I showed a friend what I had purchased and I suddenly realized with horror mounting, as I pulled each book out, I have a problem. Those books painted a vivid and disturbing picture of the person who picked them and took them all home. What was in there? Well...

1. Women Who Kill by Ann Jones
2. The Journals of Sylvia Plath (got home and discovered I already had a copy)

3. An Outline of Abnormal Psychology (published in 1921)

4. Cranial Surgery (published 1926)
5. The Metamorphosis - Kafka

6. A Children's Garden of Verses by Stevenson

Among others. Oy.

The cranial surgery one is pretty funny, just because of how little they really knew at the time. I watch enough Discover Health Channel to notice the advances we've made.

But I'm happiest about getting the Robert Louis Stevenson book. I picked it up because I thought the illustrations were pretty and it was old, and the uncle was paying. When I brought it home it stayed in the kitchen for a few days. After about three days my mom came to me and asked me where that book came from? Was it mine? Did it come in the mail? It turns out she had a copy just like that one when she was a kid. Her sister has it now and I think she has missed it because she's been carrying it around ever since.

I can understand that. My own favorite childhood book had eluded me for years till we found each other again. As a child, my mother would take me to the local library. The library was a beautiful building that looked like a castle from the outside and had trees and pigeons and friendly hobos all around it. I felt it was a magic place. During one trip to the library I saw a small old book, and on the spine it had very colorful handwritten letters: BEYOND THE PAW PAW TREES BY PALMER BROWN. I picked it up and after glancing at the cover I knew I had to check it out. I was probably 7 then and I fell in love with that book.

The story was perfect - a little girl whos father is gone - he makes his living chasing rainbows - takes a trip to see her aunt, who lives on a mirage. She leaves on a day when the sky happens to be lavender blue. This is no coincidence; special things always happen on lavender blue days. She brings her cat, meets a fat lady on a train, and gets a camel, a parrot, and some weird little pink fuzzy animal called a toby on the way. Oh, and she finds her dad, too. They find the rainbow and the gold at the end. It's adorable. The illustrations are ornate and whimsical. There's nothing about that book I do not love. I would estimate that I checked that book out at least 20 times in between the ages of 7 and 10. When I was 11, tragedy struck. They had taken it out of circulation.

For years I tried to track it down. Ebay, Amazon, book sales, antique stores. A couple of times I did see it, but it was a cruel joke. Today that book is worth around $250.00, which I certainly could not afford. I just couldn't forget about that book! I could not let it go, because I loved it so intensely. The books I read when I was a kid have influenced me immensely, and that includes Beyond the Paw Paw Trees...and Medea.

Anyway, cut to me at 19, waiting for my friend at a coffee shop. It's a lovely spring day and I sat outside smoking and drinking my coffee. All of the sudden I look up and notice - the sky is lavender blue. It is a lavender blue day! That reminded me of the book, so when my friend showed up I told her about it. She smiled after I finished and told me to stay there, she'd be back in a minute. About five minutes later she came back and put something on the table in front of me. My book! It was a copy of Beyond the Paw Paw Trees: The Story of Anna Lavinia. I could have cried. She'd purchased it at a library sale the day before at the paltry sum of fifty cents.

Not only was is the book, oh no - it was the book. It was the very same copy I read as a kid, stamped with the library branch name and all the markings. So it found its way back to me eventually, on a beautiful lavender blue day.

First Flux!

Ooo, my very first real blog! It feels like I took the training wheels off now that I've left LJ behind and I'm riding on my own, all the way to Blogspotville. Very exciting!

But where to start? Where to begin? I must set my standards high for my first post! Eh, realistically I know I'll write about anything that pops into my head and then fail to spell check before posting this. So what? That's me...uncensored and grammatically incorrect. Well, I do my best to spell things right. I know I have some grammatical shortcomings, like:

1. My overzealous use of my friend the comma.

2. Is it Blank Person and I or Blank Person and Me?

3. Do I care?

4. I often forget about semicolons. Instead of using them when appropriate I leave them lonely and untouched on my keyboard. I should give my semicolon more love. And not just to make winky faces like this - ;)

Wink!

So I, like many others, have my issues with using the English language, its devices and constructions. Oh, but I am a pretty damn near decent little speller. I find I am very analytical about sounds - the sounds of words, more specifically. I have always paid more attention than necessary to how a word feels in my mouth. Is it a crisp word? Soggy? (Yes, there are soggy words and they gross me out) What is my soft palate doing? What's my tongue doing? Ooo, I like that - keep doing that. Good job, mouth.

I'm putting my oral awareness (shut up, don't make fun) to good use each Friday, auditing a dialects class with one of my favorite professors, Sheila. Sheila is one of the kindest people I know, a great teacher and a damn funny person...oh, and lucky me, she's my advisor. In my college career I have taken a total of five classes with Sheila which she advised me to take. I maintain that she either really likes me or does not wish me on the rest of the world. WINK semicolon! ;) Today we worked on French. When it's done correctly that is a HOT dialect in which to speak. Again, my analytical and IPA skills served me well in quickly gaining a basic grasp of the sounds. Ah, but there is so much more to learn about it! I want to learn it all. All of the possible things I can learn about dialects and more specifically, all the ways to impart this knowledge to students. That's a big part of why I am taking this class; I'd love to get my masters in speech pedagogy some day and teach. I'm a lucky girl because Sheila is the perfect person to observe in this capacity. She's smart, witty, quick to adapt and explains things in a variety of ways so that all of her students find something that resonates for them. That woman rocks and I'm so glad I have the opportunity to continue learning from her.

So I was thinking, what can I throw in here to liven things up a bit? One answer came to mind: trivia. More specifically, catholic trivia. While I am not at ALL a religious person, I was raised Catholic and have a surprising knowledge of silly little Catholic things. So without further ado, a (hopefully) weekly feature on my blog...dum da da da!!!!

CATHOLIC CORNER!!!

(Woot!)


My favorite patron saint, Saint Dymphna, is the patron saint of the mentally ill, epileptics, runaways and happy families. Her feast day is May 15th, but I'm sure you all knew that. I mean, they put out the decorations so early now...

Dymphna was from Ireland and I think her dad tried to sleep with her or something equally weird - I'm a little fuzzy on the details. Anyway, she ran away to Belgium where she lived in a church until her crazed father tracked her down and decapitated her. Sad face.

There's no history to back this up, and she is practically identical to another saint, St. Dahmat.

Oh, and she was a princess. Pretty pretty princess D, your dad wanted to get naughty, you said no-no and went to chocolate-town. (That means Belgium) Oh well, you lost your head in the end.

Hm. That sounded like something Anne Brannen might say. She's another professor I admire, and someday I shall share some of her wisdom. But I don't want to overdo this thang on the first day.

So from me to anyone, and definitely to Saint Dymphna, enjoy the day and take a minute to feel some words when you talk!


Over and out.





Moist. Moist is a soggy word. Yuck.