When you're outside, pick up and examine a few of these wildly lurid fall leaves. They may remind you, as they do me and Sergei, of how much we humans take for granted as we act in but re-act little to or with our surroundings.
Sergei grew up along the eastern seaboard and expects this leafy show
in the fall (he expects an even more showy show but is content with what we get here since it is accompanied by rain and not feet-deep drifts of snow.) I grew up in warmer winter zones and, during Alameda's
fall, I collect dozens of these leaves - exclaiming over each miraculous palette -
then lay each, gently, to dry between the pages of old phone books (here's one good use for
outdated phone books before being deposited in recycling bins).Sergei demonstrated what I think of as a variation on sculpture's lost wax method: arrange dried leaves in a creative pattern over one sheet of wax paper - wax side up - then, when the leaf pattern is perfect (remember to use the stems and veins to enhance the layout and design) - lay another sheet of waxed paper - wax side down this time - over the leaves and iron. As the hot wax melts it seeps into the leaves to hold and seal them and it also adhere together the two sheets of paper.
With the combination of wax paper and leaves is cool, use a pin or tape to hang the leaf-embedded translucent paper over a bright window: nature's gift of stained glass-like beauty for the short season. Lovely!
Alas, I digress.
Joyfully kicking leaves along Caroline Street we turned right onto Taylor Avenue and stopped in front of the hedge at 1024 and Alameda's Little Free Library.
This sturdy, two-shelf, wooden structure houses free books with Little Free Library movement's principle being, Take a book, return a book.
The idea comes from friends of the Give it Forward Team (GIFT).
There are many such little libraries across the nation; the charter number of Alameda's version is 2115. Find out more at Little Free Library and find others in the East Bay - [my embedded links].
While Sergei and I regularly visit the Alameda Free Library - the collection is, of course, far wider - one of the joys of the Little Library is its philosophy, a small portion of which is:
If this were just about providing free books on a shelf, the whole idea might disappear after a few months. There is something about the Little Library itself that people seem to know carries a lot more meaning. Maybe they know that this isn't just a matter of advertising or distributing products. The unique, personal touch seems to matter, as does the understanding that real people are sharing their favorite books. Leaving notes or bookmarks, having one-of-a-kind artwork on the Library or constantly re-stocking it with different and interesting books can make all the difference.Indeed, we've found, read, returned, and added a number of books.
Last visit I found another in the series, "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" by Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith. The agency's founder is a Motswana woman, Mma Precious Ramotswe whose office is located in Gaborone, capital of Botswana. The shortish novels highlight the moral compass of two intelligent African women with generous hearts, the older of whom appreciates the younger woman's (contextual) work ethic and ambition and encourages her also to trust her instincts about people. (If you're interested, I returned it already.)
This visit Sergei brought home, "The Road", the 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy recently made into a film. I haven't seen the film and may not since, in my opinion, excellent books made into films seldom communicate the subtlety inherent in the written word. This is a sparsely written, intense, bitter-sweet story that, despite the grueling setting, offers a message of hope, love, and generosity that, let's face it, is to be found among humans despite our penchant for the opposite.
This picture shows current titles in the Little Free Library:
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