The Complete Peanuts: 1983-1984

Yesterday I got this in the mail. My latest purchase from E. R. Hamilton, and the seventeenth volume in the series. I like getting these through ERH; they are generally about nine dollars cheaper than cover price, and I don't mind waiting until they are discounted. By the early 1980's Peanuts was past its glory years (this was the era of Flashbeagle, aerobics jokes, and Trivia), but it is still pretty amusing. The love triangle between Peppermint Patty, Marcie, and Charlie Brown; Snoopy's brother Spike and his antics among cacti and coyotes; the story-line of "The Snoring Ghost," where Peppermint Patty's snores haunt her old desk: these all raised a few chuckles for me. These squat little volumes are starting to take up a lot of space.

100,000 Hits

My Statcounter just ticked over to slightly past 100,000 hits to this blog since I started it on January 28, 2008. My thanks to all who have followed or visited it and allowed me to reach this modest personal milestone. If I have helped anyone find what they are looking for, or amused someone with image collections or my ramblings, then my amateurish efforts will have some justification past being simply one man's online commonplace book. I intend to go on in the future as I have in the past, with perhaps a little more personal composition and explication. Once more, I thank you all.

"Won't You Join The Dance?": Alice At 150

One hundred and fifty years ago today, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) first told the story of Wonderland to Alice Liddell and her sisters.

Independence Day

"They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

--Benjamin Franklin.

Today's HalfPrice Acquisitions

The C. S. Lewis Chronicles, by Colin Duriez
The History of Magic, by Eliphas Levi, translated by A. E. Waite
The Wizard: Sorcery Through The Ages, by Alan Baker

Grendel's Dam

"Beowulf even went so far as to kill Grendel's mother, but since this was before the Age of Chivalry it was considered acceptable behavior."--Richard Armour.

July

Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots, and gillyflowers.
***
In July,
Some reap rye;
In August,
If one will not the other must.
***
Those who in July are wed,
Must labor for their daily bread.
***
Knee high
By the Fourth of July.
(Rule applied to corn to see if it's a good crop.)
***
St. Swithin's* day, if thou dost rain,
For forty days it will remain;
St. Swithin's day, if thou be fair,
For forty days 'twill rain na mair.
***
If you plant turnips on the twenty-fifth of July,
You will have turnips, wet or dry.


*July 15.