Framed-Art Tour, Exhibit 12

We return, here, to our series I’ve long neglected. Nothing since last October—no mention of what’s on the walls. You’d think I’m always looking out windows, taking in the sights, spying on bears and snakes and things, but no. Walls are opportunities. 

This little job is easy to miss, hanging as it does between two shelves of our rickety bookcase upstairs. Plus the room it’s in doesn’t get slept in a lot. Mostly nobody’s even up there. If they are, the person has to be wanting a book, looking for a book; otherwise they won’t hit on my sign. And, in the event they’re having an insomnia attack, they may suddenly realize that the volume they’re reaching for, reputed to be a page-turner, will just get them all the more fired up. Conversely, should they actually take it, they might forget about returning it until some faraway day when my husband and I are both dead, in which case somebody else would be living in our house. The new people would’ve disposed of our junker furniture and books and would have no interest in this one they didn’t get to pitch. The person would be too embarrassed to actually contact a relative of the deceased and admit to what might get interpreted as theft. Or the person’s sheer grief might prevent them from intentionally meeting up, because then they’d find themself reminiscing about the departed. They’d be reopening the floodgates.

You can see the problem. But I’m hopeful. Sometime somebody might help him/herself.

 

 

 

 

And here’s a deal. We, in fact, possess two—2, plural—copies of Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days (see below). The person can keep this extra one forever.

Lois is who put me onto the book. She was down in Durham NC, at a hospital, with husband Bill who was having a procedure. All the commotion around her in the waiting room, yet this volume of essays she’d brought along had her mesmerized. “Read it, if you haven’t,” she ordered. I snagged a library copy and right away, I too was snared. Wanting to foist upon others such a treasure trove, I purchased our pair of paperbacks. 

The writing is exquisite. What an amazing pink whopper of a collection.

P.S. Yes, this upstairs bookshelf, too, is bolted to the wall. My husband wasn’t taking any chances.