Monday, April 15, 2013

The Book Sale

Sunday we went to the Friends of the Library Book Sale.  It is to be one of their last.  The city is building a new library and there won't be room for storing all the used books people donate.  From the book sales "Friends of the Library" donate approximately $1500 a month to the library.  Its pretty impressive for our community.

I bought some old Life magazines one was a week after I was born.  My sister-in-law found one for 1954 the year my husband was born.

I bought a copy of "Montana, Too: A book of Montana History in Story Poems" by Bonnie Buckley Maldonado.  I bought it to use as a mentor text.  Tonight I discovered its an autographed copy.

This poem spoke to me on so many levels.

The Great Aunt

Aunt Mary is regal
as a sailing ship,
white hair swept back
with ivory combs,
back straight, the sound
of England in her speech.

She tells of carrying
fragile china teacups
in a basket on her sea voyage
to Canada to marry Tom Tennant.

Her ranch house is refined
with stained glass and oak.
In defiance of howling blizzards,
she crochets bright blossoms.

She despairs of daughters
flying across prairie hills
on horseback, not yet subdued
by polio or a woman's place.

She lets a great niece
wear her India pearls
and wind the grandfather's clock
that displays the moon's phases.

Sent to keep a great-aunt company,
a young girl reads Jane Eyre,
and doesn't mind emptying
a painted-china chamber pot.



4 comments:

  1. I love finding treasures at library book sales! You really found a sweet one! Love that poem.

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  2. Library sales are the best. Ours is next week, I can hardly wait. What a treasure you found. That poem has so many stories hidden in it.

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  3. Sounds like a lovely book find, Ruth. I'm sorry your library can't keep up the sales. Seems like a lot of money to give up. The poem is lovely-reminds me of a great grandmother I knew until I was about 10. I bet the Life magazines were very interesting.

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  4. When our library expanded a few years ago, they built a bigger room for the Friends of the Library. We are now having our Friends' bookstore open every day at least some hours! I love volunteering there!

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