And Jane Returns As Well

Jane looks fairly disgusted here. She knows how I have been neglecting Austensorium. But, you see the humor hinting out from the corners of her mouth? She's seen enough of human nature to know what sorry, fickle folks most of us are -- even in our great, professed loves. Henry Crawford and I have more in common than I would ever care to admit.

Well, I have finally updated my Jane blog -- two new posts covering three previously undiscussed Austen-ish books. If you are one of the few and the proud who still comes here to lurk and you like Miss Austen, please do check out that blog and let me know what you think.

And, as to the brevity of this post after almost two years of silence on the subject, well, you must know what I have to say: You deserve a longer blog post than this; but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve. God bless you!

The Sparrow Squawks -- er, Tweets -- er, Cheeps -- Again!

While I was not paying attention last fall, Go Daddy automatically renewed my other website The Singing Sparrow. Rather than fuss and complain and cancel the account, I decided to update it. Here is my hope: That it will become a gathering place for bibliophiles. So, Sparrow will be all books all the time (and by "all the time," I mean whenever I get around to updating it).

I'll still post book stuff here -- especially in my sidebar, Off the Shelf. Have you been that far down on the page? Right now I have posted a loving tribute to my three favorite magazines. Sparrow will be longer reviews -- including an entire section devoted to my passion for children's literature -- and I am hoping to partner with Amazon to sell the books I love there. The proceeds will benefit Sadie's school.

Trivialities will live on as my personal blog, wherein I will also muse occasionally on current events, philosophy, religion, and -- when I am feeling either very irritated or very brave -- politics.

So, for the remaining and very few readers who still stop by, please do check out Sparrow. I hope you will enjoy what you find there. God bless you!

The Coolest Store I've Never Been In

Many Saturday mornings of the year we trek out to the Phinney Ridge neighborhood of Seattle to take Sadie to her acting class through Taproot Theatre. During the 1 1/2 hour class, Jason and I divert ourselves by walking around this charming and quirky enclave. Sometimes we have the best coffee in a town renown for great coffee and a slice of Basque cake at Fresh Flours. Sometimes we ingest absurdly large morning repast at Rooster's Breakfast Club. Sometimes we walk to the Woodland Park Zoo and see if we can catch a Burmese Vine Snake in the act of swallowing a goldfish more than twice its girth. Sometimes we merely wander about aimlessly -- amusing ourselves by counting the number of Subarus with Obama/Biden stickers on them (seriously, do Subarus come from the factory with Dem candidate stickers already attached?). This would be a great drinking game, but we're bound to be on the road again shortly, and public drunkenness is still a crime, even in Phinney Ridge.

But, the most intriguing store of all we have yet to shop. It is The Daily Planet Antiques; and despite what reads to be generous hours of operation on the sign posted in the door, we have yet to catch it actually open for business. It has become a quest to surprise the vendor in his lair some lazy Saturday morning; but that crafty devil continues to elude us. So, all I have are these pictures taken longingly through the window:

On your next visit to Seattle, be sure to plan an afternoon in Phinney Ridge. See the zoo, grab a cup of liquid nirvana, have an omlette, and, if you happen to penetrate the forbidden gates of The Daily Planet, then I tip my cap to you, stalwart adventurer.