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Today’s BlogDay 2006, in which bloggers are to introduce 5 new (to them) blogs to others who read their blogs. In no particular order, these are some of my new, favorite blogs:

• Lesbian Dad: Powerful writings by one child’s “Baba”, which is someone who’s neither a mother nor a father, but is a parent nonetheless.
• Dogma: Pet columnist Gina Spadafori keeps me updated on the goings-on of the world in which humans and animals interact.
• bekka: I envy her ability to craft, read, write, cook, photograph, and enjoy being a librarian so much!
• FourFour: Reality television has met its snarky, critiquing foe. I read mostly for the Project Runway recaps.
• Shelteriffic: A blog from some of the staff of the dear, departed Budget Living magazine.

Tag: blogday2006

I don’t regularly watch most news programs, preferring instead to read the BBC online and listen to NPR in the mornings and afternoons.  But I saw that Keith Olbermann gave quite a pronouncement yesterday on Donald Rumsfeld’s speech in which he invoked fascism as some sort of defense for this country’s actions in recent years, and I was so impressed that I wanted to share it with you.

Read the transcript or watch the video.

Olbermann signs off with Edward R. Murrow’s words, which are so true today:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear - one, of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of un-reason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men; Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were - for the moment - unpopular.”

Amen to that.

I realized a couple of days ago that I never posted about the honeymoon we took in Nova Scotia last month! Crazy! This post is pretty much everything - Sunday is before the cut and the rest of the week is after it. Sorry Bloglines readers - you’ll get the whole thing!

Sunday July 23

After leaving Clarks Cove Farm, Amy, Nan, and I went to say goodbye to our families. Headed to Portland to catch the CAT ferry at 2:30. Spent a long time in line (we got there latish) and were some of the last cars on the boat. Parked and found a place to sit in the CAT - unfortunately nearly the casino. Due to Hurricane Beryl, the waters were r-o-u-g-h and both of us got pretty ill. Lucky Amy had to take care of me, since not only was I trying not to throw up, but also got a wicked migraine. Thank goodness for Imitrex, which deals with both nausea and headaches. Spent most of the trip curled up in a little ball on the floor of the boat. Every time I got up to go to the bathroom or wander around I ended up sicker.

The boat landed an hour and a half late, and we still had a 3.5 hour drive ahead of us. It was pretty foggy, which made things challenging. I drove the first 90 miles and Amy took over for the final 90. Once we got off 103, we made a few wrongish turns, but finally got to the Riversong B&B in Seabright, NS around 2:15 a.m. Beth, the owner, got up and greeted us (seriously!) and we made arrangements for a 9 a.m. breakfast rather than the typical 8:15 a.m. one.

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I’ve been on many of the world’s metro systems. How about you?

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One of the things that makes a place “home” for me is a good local bookstore. When I lived in Philadelphia, I frequented the campus bookstore, a local Borders, and several smaller places in West Philadelphia. Never did find that one that just felt right to me, though…

So now that I’m in the Boston area, I’ve been wondering where to go that’s not too far (i.e. all the way into Boston/Cambridge). There is a Booksmith in Wellesley that I tried and tried to love, but alas, the inventory just isn’t up to snuff. The campus bookstore carries books for courses almost exclusively. And I suppose I could go to the local large mall area to find a B&N or Borders. But frankly, I’m just not that interested in heading to the mall area on a regular basis.

Imagine my delight, then, to find the most AMAZING bookstore in Newton Highlands, near a place where I go every week anyway. It’s called the New England Mobile Book Fair. And when I walked in, my jaw dropped and I knew I was home.

For the curious, here’s the deal. Books are arranged in a completely out-of-the-box way. Division number 1: full-price vs. remainders. Within full-price, division number 2: hard-cover vs. paperback. Within those, division number 3: adult vs. children. Within those, division number 4: publishers vs. subject areas. Within the publisher areas, division number 5: title arrangement vs. author groupings. It’s completely illogical to me, yet it works! They don’t have an inventory control system per se, but use Books in Print to determine if something is in print. Then you walk to the publisher area first, and subject area second, because a book could be in either place. The serendipity is stunning. And what I like about the shelving in each area is that it’s by title rather than by author. So no, I can’t see (most) authors’ full works, but I can do more random browsing, as I’ve got no way to really tell what I’m looking for. They are a very Long-Tail business. An inventory control system would help them immensely, but their quirkiness makes up for it.

Coolness: They had almost the entire set of offerings from Seal Press.
Coolness: More AMC books than you can shake a stick at.
Coolness: 20% off paperbacks and 30% off hardbacks every day.

I highly recommend this place.