books

Son GM Sieling tagged me. That means I’m supposed to answer these highly personal questions.

1. Total number of books you own?

Probably less than 1000
2. What was the last book you bought?

The Backyard Beekeeper by Kim Flottum. Kim is one of my editors and has edited Bee Culture magazine for almost 20 years. With this book, a beginning beekeeper could almost buy, handle and manage bees without assistance. It’s an excellent reference.

3. What was the last book you read? One of my Dad’s old textbooks: A history of Christianity, published around 1950. Interesting but too many passive verbs and awkward sentences

4. List five books that are particularly meaningful to you (in no particular order).

1. The Superannuate, by William Ryder, an itinerant Methodist preacher who died of ALS before anyone knew what it was in about 1848. It has a lot of flowery ponderous prose but the narrative sections describe a life of adventure, humor and suffering. He attended the meeting of a preacher posing as the Great Lorenzo Dow, then later heard the real Dow (see book #5).

2. Fifty Years among the Bees, Dr. C.C. Miller, a writer of the late 1800’s and an early columnist in Bee Culture Magazine.

3. The ABC of Bee Culture, another early bee book, still full of useful information. Here among other stuff, you can learn the truth about the man behind the Hoffman Frame, the frame beekeepers love to complain about.

4. Folk Music by Peter Sieling, my first sort of real book of three I wrote for a series on American Folklore. Please don’t take it out of the Library and read it. They gave me the chapter titles and I just filled in the spaces between the titles. The series consultant didn’t feel I took the subject seriously and called me a wise cracker.

5. History of a Cosmopolite by Lorenzo Dow. I believe Rev. Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, the father of modern beekeeping, was named after the author. Hundreds of parents named their babies Lorenzo in the early 1800’s because of him. Today he is virtually unknown. If you want to know how to get a girl to marry you, you’ll have to find a copy and see how Lorenzo managed it.
5. Tag five people, any five people who read.

Tag yourself. I don’t know anyone to tag.

Has Gary told any of his friends some of his many childhood nicknames? I almost used one today, then thought he might not care for that and I still sometimes need him to fix my computer.