Communications Blog
Eileen Hodgetts

Thought for today: “No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.” ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I’ve just returned from our family vacation. Did you miss me last week? No, I didn’t think so. Oh well! Anyway, we vacationed in the islands ... no, not those Islands (the ones with palm trees and tropical breezes). Our islands were a little more, well ... shall we say “industrial”. We were among the islands in the western basin of Lake Erie . Actually it is a beautiful area, and we go every year and enjoy almost every aspect of the area except for the giant statue of Oliver Hazzard Perry at Put in Bay which is a reminder of his victory over the British Fleet on Lake Erie. We didn’t learn about that at school in England ! We concentrated on Lord Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar which we, of course, won. And how did any of those navies get those great big ships onto the Lakes in the first place? Looking out at the placid lake, and the smudge on the horizon which is the Canadian shore, you have to wonder why human beings are so inclined to fight each other. There really is room for all of us.

We were 11 people, including 4 small(ish) boys. Between us we had every electronic gizmo known to man, laptops, psps, I pads, I phones, Blackberries, mp3 players, electronic books. You name it, we had it, but I noticed that when we all went to the beach, we weren’t dragging any of those things with us. All that any of us had for entertainment were some old paperback books… not that you can get much reading done when a two year old is “testing his buoyancy” in the waters of Lake Erie. But it got me thinking about books. The touch, the feel, the smell, the pleasure of a book; and the portability of a book. None of those electronic thingamajigs would have worked after they been buried in the sand, or dropped in the lake, but the book just soldiers on, doing what a book does…taking you out of the everyday and into the extraordinary.

So with my mind on books, I returned to the office and was interested to see Clarissa Clair busying herself with rearranging the books in the Christ Church library. Yes, folks, we have a library. It’s at the foot of the stairs as you come down to the Fellowship Hall. Through the hard work of a series of volunteers we have shelves of neatly arranged and cataloged books; mostly bibles, commentaries, and devotionals, but also some “how-to” books and some fiction. We check the books to make sure they are appropriate for all of our members. Borrowing is on the honor system. Sign the book out, read it, return it and sign it back in. We accept donations. If a book turns out to be inappropriate for some reason, we’ll sell it at the Half Price Book Store and put the money into CCGF funds. I would encourage everyone to come down and take a look and see what we have.

Just one more thought for the day, and then I’m out of here. “ Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.” ~Groucho Marx