On Saturday, I had a book signing at D.R. Struck Landscape Nursery, and what a delight it was. There is a wonderful gift shop at the nursery, and Robin, one of the owners, has terrific taste. Thus the shop is filled with all sorts of lovely things that are not available anywhere else in the area.

Tucked between three decorated Christmas trees, I felt as though I were in the middle of Christmas, a great place to be. The air smelled of mulled cider and eggnog. People came in—some especially to see me—and I sold a good number of books. I am finding I quite enjoy going out and about, talking to people and selling books. Many thanks to Robin for inviting me to sign books at her shop.

I am so gratified with the initial sales of the books and the early responses. After Christmas, I will be working to get broader exposure. In the meantime, it’s been a very jolly time at the little house in the big woods.

Last Saturday, while I was selling books at the Winthrop Craft Fair, there was a party going on at the Charles M. Bailey Public Library in honor of its 100th birthday.

I was sorry to miss the party, but I sent Clif with our trusty wee wonder of a camera, and he got some very good shots. Normally, I don’t post this many pictures, but Bailey Library will only turn 100 once, so I’m going to make an exception with this post.

There was a cake, of course, with a picture of our beautiful library,

a wall of birthday cards,

and speeches by various friends and supporters.

Mary Jane Auns, Chair of the Bailey Library Trustees

Shenna Bellows, our State Senator

Sarah Fuller, Chair of the Winthrop Town Council

Paul Cottrell, Treasurer of the Library Trustees

Richard Fortin, Library Director

Shane Malcolm Billings, Adult Services Librarian

Phil Locashio, the Architect for the New Addition

Many people came to celebrate the library’s birthday.

The festivities ended with a bell concert.

A very happy birthday, Bailey Library, and thank you, Charles M. Bailey, for giving the the town this magnificent gift.

Joy, joy, happy, happy! The books have arrived, just in time for the Winthrop Craft Fair tomorrow—December 3—-at the grade school in town. Hours: 9:00 to 2:00. Stop by and see us if you are out and about in Winthrop.

All right. My YA fantasy novel, Maya and the Book of Everything, is available directly from Amazon. And if you are an Amazon Prime member, then shipping is free. That’s what we Mainers call a wicked good deal.

Here is the link: https://www.amazon.com/Maya-Book-Everything-Great-Library/dp/0997845309

Because of the name of my book, when you do a search for it on Amazon, it is right next to Isabel Allende’s Maya’s Notebook. Now, how cool is that to be next to one of the giants of literature?

Very cool, indeed!

Today is my birthday, and I am fifty-nine years old. The sky is blue, the sun is shining, and it is warm, but not too warm. A lovely, lovely day.

Tonight, we’ll be meeting our eldest daughter and a friend for dinner in Brunswick.  On Saturday,  our youngest daughter will be coming for a week-long visit. And in a couple of months, my YA fantasy, Maya and the Book of Everything, will be published.

What a great way to start my fifty-ninth year sixtieth year!. (Thanks, Lyn LaRochelle, for the correction.)

Because my youngest daughter will be here for a visit, I’ll be taking a break from blogging. (And from editing. Praise be!)

A very happy September to all. I’ll be back at the end of the  month.

Summer, with its hot days, has finally come to Maine. Since we live in the woods, warm weather isn’t much of a problem for us. We don’t even need air conditioning. A ceiling fan in the hall cools the whole house.

We do have to plan on when to go for bike rides, though—the heat of the afternoon can be a bit much. Yesterday, Clif and I went late morning, and with the temperature in the mid-80s, we both decided we should have gone earlier. Still, one of the things about bike riding is that there is always air moving around you as you pedal, which is great in hot weather but not so good in cold weather. (Oh, I have had some cold rides.)

Clif and I have made good progress with our biking, going to the end of Memorial Drive, about an eight-mile round trip. Our next accomplishment will be to head up Beaver Dam Road, with its long, long incline that could be dubbed Misery Hill. In past seasons, we have found that going up Misery Hill on a regular basis makes us strong enough to go up most any hill in the area. This is a good thing as central Maine is not exactly flat and has plenty of challenges for bike riders.

“When do you think we’ll be ready to go up Misery Hill?” I asked Clif.

“Sometime in July,” he replied.

As the saying goes, time will tell, but I, too, am optimistic that we’ll be strong enough to tackle Misery Hill sometime in July. Then, it will be on to Route 17, giving us about a fifteen-mile round trip ride.

When we got back to our car at Norcross Point, there were lots of people enjoying the water and the shade on this hot day, and I snapped a few photos.  It seems to me that the pictures I took could have come from any time—now, when I was young, and even further back.

Somehow, during these jittery times, this gives me comfort.

Yesterday was a sunny day with a clear blue sky.  Before going to a meeting at the library, I stopped to take pictures at the lovely old sliver of a cemetery in the middle of Winthrop.

As to be expected, there were tree spirits in the cemetery, and I caught a picture of one.

Then I turned my attention to four very old gravestones.

I decided to focus on one of the smaller ones, which I expected would mark a child’s grave. In part, I was right, but the stone, in fact, marked the graves of two children, both with the name Susannah.

The first Susannah died in 1771—when we were still a part of Britain—and she was five years old. The second Susannah died in 1784—we were then the United States of America—and she was twelve years old. If my math is correct, the second Susannah was born a year after the first Susannah died.

To modern parents, it is a very strange notion to use the name of a dead child for the next sibling of the same sex. Somehow, it seems morbid if not downright creepy. However, it is my understanding that this was fairly common practice in America in the 1700s when the child mortality rate was appallingly high.  Names, often ones that had been in the family, were reused if a child died.

Different sensibilities for different times, and that little gravestone marks the story of one family’s grief in losing not one but two Susannahs.  I understand that parents  in the 1700s were not unaccustomed to losing young children. Nevertheless, it is my belief that these parents grieved, too, even if a child’s death was all too common. To mourn is human, whatever the century.

Indeed, in the mid-1800s, a time when children still died at an alarming rate, Louis Pasteur would write in a letter that another one of his dear children had died of typhus. Three of Pasteur’s five children would die from this illness, which influenced his decision to study infectious diseases.

With all these morbid remembrances of lives ended too soon, you would think the Winthrop cemetery would be a grim place. But somehow, it isn’t. Like so many New England cemeteries, it is peaceful and serene, a place of beauty, even.

I especially love how snippets of stories, the human story, are told through the gravestones and remind us of how things were both different and the same back through the centuries.

Yesterday was our thirty-ninth wedding anniversary, and the bright, beautiful day was filled with simple pleasures.

First, we went to Railroad Square Cinema for Cinema Explorations, a winter film series.  As Cinema Explorations begins at 10 a.m., delicious bagels, provided by Bagel Mainea, are available. Clif and I can never resist.

We always get to Railroad Square early so that there is time to chat. Clif is on the left, and our friend Joel is on the right.

The movie Dukhtar, which means daughter in English, was showing, and it is the last of the film series.  This excellent Pakistani film is about a mother and her young daughter who flee from the latter’s arranged marriage. Dukhtar is by turns tender, harrowing, sad, and triumphant, a movie very much worth seeing.

(Eye in the Sky, a movie with Helen Mirren and the late, great Alan Rickman, will be coming soon, and Clif and I are looking forward to seeing it.)

What to do after the the movie? Why, go across the parking lot to Grand Central Cafe for pizza with friends and a discussion about Dukhtar.

Because the day was so fine and the dog had been left alone for a fair amount of time, we decided that after pizza, a walk in the woods was in order.

I was taken by the juxtaposition of pussy willows next to frayed cattails.

In the woods, the snow is completely gone.

The horned tree stands guard over the trail.

Two of my favorite guys.

Clif and I ended the day with Trader Joe’s Mandarin Orange Chicken, egg rolls from our local Chinese restaurant, and white rice we cooked ourselves. We both had a rum and coke to go with this meal.

Happy anniversary to us!