Books, Book Bags, and Book Writers

After yesterday's blip, and many folks commenting on their favorite book or other favorite authors, I thought showing my favorite book bag was apropos. This bag has been mine since 1990 when I attended the "4Cs" Conference in Chicago at the Palmer House Hotel. It was a textbook publisher freebie at the convention hall. Since that conference, I've attended many others and received other bags, but this is my favorite.

I also thought these words about a book were relevant, "The book itself . . . the great and ancient invention . . . slow to hatch, as durable as a turtle, light and shapely as befits a descendant of the tree. Closed, the objet d'book resembles a board. Open, its pale wings brush the fingertips, the spore of fresh ink and pulp excites the nose, the spine lies easily in the hand. A handsome useful object begotten by the passion for truth. The apostle Paul was not the host of a talk show, or else we'd be worshiping famous people on Sunday mornings; he wrote books, a Christian thing to do. The faith of Jews and Christians rests on God's sacred word, not on magic or music, and so technology burst forward into publishing, Gutenberg and Johann Fust and Peter Schoffer making books similar to ours in the fifteenth century. Ages before the loudspeaker and the camera, came this lovely thing, this portable garden, which survives television, computers, censorship, lousy schools, and rotten authors. Along with the Constitution, the blues, and baseball, the democracy of letters is a common glory in our midst, visible in every library and bookstore. These stacks of boards contain our common life and keep it against the miserable days when meanness operates with a freehand and save it for the day when the lonesome reader opens the cover and the word is resurrected. The day can come next month or a hundred years from now, a book will wait.
~~ from the back cover of We are Still Married by Garrison Keillor

Books are treasures and so's my book bag!

Good night from Southern California,
Rosie, aka Carol



P.S. to myself: Today is National Grammar Day -- crazy, fun, weirdness.

P.P.S. to myself: Bob dog thinks Wednesdays are his day to be on blip. Got cute pics of him today, but the bag won!