Stormy weather, friendly cats and local books

Arainy, windy day today, and more to come, according to various phones and newspapers. As long as I stay in and warm, it’s fine. I don’t move as fast as I used to, so the less wet weather or hot sun, the better!

Besides, like most of you, I value all the rain this state and others can get. I don’t think my cats like it all that well, even though they know they can stay in the house and sleep on all the chairs and beds and tables — depending on whether a human wants to use these spaces! Well, cats will be cats, as any human servant knows!

And speaking of cats, I was delighted to read the story about all the cats in the local bookstore, Tom’s Used Books, on School Street. There have been several books out there about cats in local bookstores and libraries, even. Books and cats seem to go together, somehow.

I was also very glad to see Tom’s store mentioned. Do you know how lucky our town is to even have a bookstore where we can browse about to find old friends in authors and delight in some new books, too?

I don’t get downtown much any more — no doctor’s offices down there! — but I do plan to get to Tom’s and the library as soon as the weather clears. I have found some real treasures at Tom’s to take home as mine, and others in the Friends of the Library bookstore, and I can always borrow some great reads from the library itself.

On rainy days, what better companion than a book? You can go all over the world and meet new people (some with great pets) and renew old acquaintances. What’s best is that you can use your own imagination to picture what people and locales look like. Unlike television, you don’t have to accept somebody else’s idea of appearances and places.

••• A couple of personal notes: best wishes to Durlynn Anema on the new book in the offing, even as I will miss her columns, and praises to William Van Amber Fields for his excellent poem in the Jan. 7 paper. I always want to read anything he writes, and the same goes for Steve Hansen And now we can add Wade Heath to the local list. I hope we all provide some surcease from the national and international turmoil that has been going on for so long. It is sad that Christmas, meant to be a hopeful and heartfelt time, has had to fight so hard to have its message heard at all, even in the human heart.

This from John Muir, quoted in a book called “Wild Within”: “Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.” Nature is something steadfast that we can always cling to in hard times, I think. She is far stronger than man-kind, and not under his rule, although he has done his best to ruin her with axes, cement, species extinction, chemicals, oil and coal extraction, and human habitation over the centuries. Thank God people seem to be more aware of these actions and paying more heed to the results.

••• Sorry, didn’t mean to preach a sermon, but it was either a sermon or a diatribe in another direction at this point, so thought a sermon was a better way to begin a new year.

I mentioned a book called, “Wild Within”; it’s a new book by Melissa Hart about rescuing and rehabilitating owls and other raptors, and how their work with an orphaned baby owl inspired her and her husband to adopt a baby. Most of the book is about their work at the Cascades Raptor Center in Eugene, Ore., and the stories of what is done to help these birds is fascinating. There are raptor centers all over the country; the California Raptor Center is in Davis.

One of my best Christmas gifts was “A Lowcountry Heart; Reflections on a Writing Life, ”the final and posthumous word from Pat Conroy, a collection of his own journal notes, speeches, and musings. I liked it best of all because what I read was from Pat himself, and not Pat through the characters and actions of one of his books. This is one I plan to keep.

And one to end with: On Religion: “Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?. . . He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked. . .”— Kahlil Gibran