August 11, 2005

A Very, Very Large Room

Fa-So-La-La

Well, we are visiting my grandparents, and today Sugar Cookie (our grandmother) gave us the job of organizing the book shelves. My grandfather (otherwise known as Dadaw) has quite the eclectic book collection, to go with his quite eclectic life-- he is a preacher, a farmer, a welder, a builder, a former piano tuner and pre-med student, a husband, a father and grandfather, and many other things. The Shieldmaiden and I had quite a time examining his books. Here are a few gems we found--

-- Fundamentals of Petroleum (I love saying this! It sounds so academic, to be about....petroleum.)

--The Naked Capitalist

--Escape the Coming Tribulation!

--The Complete Book of Composting (this one is at least four inches thick-- didn't know there was so much involved in composting!)

--A Psycho-History of Zionism

--Experimental Preaching (What are we, guinea pigs? Lab rats?)

--Prepare Now For a Metric Future!

--The Place of Satan in the Economy of Creation

--The Bible and the Bermuda Triangle (ahahahahaha.....this one makes me laugh every time!)

This is just a very small sample of the books we sorted and shelved today-- I wish I could show y'all the rest. It's a vivid picture of an amazing man. Queenie always says that we need to have our 'feet planted in a large room,' meaning that our range of interest should be wide, and our horizons vast. Dadaw's 'room' is one of the largest I have ever seen. I pray that I will always be as thirsty for knowledge as he is.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The Queen appends:
Given the titles Fa-So-La-La chose for examples, I should probably also add, for the sake of our gentle readers who only own books they like and/or agree with, that my father cannot be defined by the viewpoints and opinions that occupy his bookshelves.

Like all original thinkers, he can be quite the contrarian, and as such he derives immense intellectual stimulation from reading books that oppose his own point of view.

::end of caveat::

3 comments:

TheHeadGirl said...

And my Grandmother is Granny Tea...isn't it funny how grandmothers have something to do with yummy things to eat/drink? ;-)

-The Complete Book of Composting (this one is at least four inches thick-- didn't know there was so much involved in composting!)
It's a complete composting book: you tear out one page a week and add it to your compost pile. Along with the normal veggies you'll have an educated and fertile compost pile in the space of a year.

Lynn Bruce said...

It was amazing growing up in the house with that man and all his books. No matter what I had to write a paper on for school, he could to go the shelf and grab something interesting to liven things up. And no matter what you brought up at the dinner table, he knew something about it.

All through college, I kept hoping I could someday come home for a weekend and bring up something he didn't know anything about. Never happened...

Blogger profile name said...

Your daddy told me at church tonight about this post. He told me where to look (what month) to find it! I told him we were keeping in touch through the blogs.