My January newspaper column

Happy New Year to everyone. Since this is now published we know that the world didn't end so lets make 2013 a great year. I have made one major change for the new year. I no longer have a land line for telephone at the store. I have upgraded my cell phone to a “smart” phone that I can access the Internet with my laptop anywhere. When they call it a smart phone they weren't kidding. I probably won't figure out everything but have found some pretty amazing features on it. So this phone will be shared personal and business. Hopefully when people call the other number they won't think I have closed down. I have been trying to notify everyone as I can. The other advantage is that I will now be able to swipe credit cards with the phone so my customers won't have to run up the street to the ATM machine.

Gathering Blue

by Lois Lowry

After reading the first of this series and reporting on it last month I was anxious to start on book two. As I said before these books were written I believe with the young adult in mind but I found them to be very good reading. In this one a young girl with a talent for weaving colored threads is taken to the Council of Guardians when she becomes an orphan. She is also crippled in one leg and feared that she would be taken to the “field” where no one returned. There is also a young boy that was orphaned who lives there and he has a talent to carve pictures in wood. Their talents are pushed by the Council to repair the wooden staff and robe of the “Singer”.

Annually there is a gathering where the Singer sings the history to the people, using the staff carvings and pictures on the robe to guide him. But when these youngsters begin to learn how they became orphans and what their life will be like they make a choice that could change their history. The title of course has to do with a color that she needs and in finding it she discovers a wonderful thing.

There is one more book to this series that I will read soon.

Outlander

by Diana Gabaldon

I never thought I would be one of those folks who keep books and actually read them again. But have you ever finished a book and felt a sort of loss? Its like you just left a good friend and wish you could keep them with you. I read this Outlander series several years ago. There are seven books so far, with the promise of another to come. When I collected the series I promised myself that I would re-read them one day. Well I didn't do it last winter so this time I actually got started and I am so glad I did. Gabaldon is one of my favorite authors. She makes you feel like you were there! The story line is about Claire Randall who is a nurse in the war in early 1940's and takes a vacation to Scotland with her husband. She takes a walk and goes thru these stones and ends up back in 1745 in the wilds of Scotland. She is taken captive by a Scottish clan who think she is an English spy. Of course the English think she is a spy for the Scotts. Later she is rather forced to marry one of the clansmen to give her protection and to give him protection in another way. His name is Jamie Fraser. So the story follows their narrow escapes from a Captain Randall who happens to be a very distant relative of her husband from 1944. Are you confused? Oh, I forgot to mention that she finds her true love in Jamie and he in her. It is a great story and as I said you feel like you came back to an old friend.

As I finish this column today on Thursday after Christmas and get it ready to send to the paper I must report that my store hours may be irregular again due to health issues with a family member. I will be closed till after New Years for sure and maybe beyond. Feel free to call to be sure I am open or send me a text is good too. Don't give up on me.

This was my newspaper column that I turned in just after Christmas, if you follow my other blog that is linked here you will see the "rest of the story" as Paul Harvey used to say.  Happy New Year!

(I deleted the phone number for this blog.)