The Body Marks the Soul
BETWEEN THE COVERS COMPILED BY J. L. HERRERA BETWEEN THE COVERS To the Memory of TONY BAULD With Special Thanks to Madge Portwin, Rose Brown, Brenda Dudkowiak, Cheryl Perriman, Marie Cameron, Hobart Toastmasters Club, Ken Clarke, Patrick Herrera, Margaret Clarke INTRODUCTION Another Writer’s Calendar type book? Just one more? It is a bit like being tempted by chocolate cake or asparagus puffs. We-e-ll, just one more. Just a wee bit. Just a taste. And so here it is. I justified it to myself using much the same argument I use when there’s a little bit of something nice left on a plate. It doesn’t seem worth putting away. Also I had a few little bits and pieces, ideas, things I thought I would like to follow up, still sitting around. Of course this is a specious argument. Give me a few months and I will have collected piles of new things to add to my leftovers. And although I sometimes feel I am wasting time, all those wonderful things I could be doing and am not, I am increasingly inclined to think that, like family history, ‘writers’ calendars’ constantly press out the boundaries of my life and knowledge and imagination. I won’t claim that they make me a better person, there is absolutely no evidence for that, but they make me a more ‘satisfied’ person and in a curious way I think that is valuable. The world is full of dissatisfied people, I don’t mean dissatisfied with the political and social status of a suffering world, but dissatisfied with what they’ve got, they want a bigger share, something different, someone else’s life (all those programs asking people who they would like to be) … but just give me a good book and enough light to read by and I ‘wudn’t call the quane me cousin’.
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