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glaucondid I tell you about my grandma's bookshelf?
so my gramma (dad's mom...the one who mailed me the bag of beans) died early this year and I flew out to NJ for her funeral. (the funeral was actually in upstate NY but she had been living near my aunt in NJ and we used that as a base of operations.) so after the funeral, we drove back to NJ and aunt elaine asked my sister and me if we wanted to go through gramma's house and pick out anything we wanted to take before the estate sale. I really wanted this 11-translations-in-1 edition of the Bible that she used to have. it's 11 different translations (including, if I recall correctly, the Greek and Hebrew) printed *interlineally*. so I looked long and hard for it and it turned out to be missing...presumably because my father had beaten me to it by a few days. but I did get her 1972 (?) edition of the OED, and her 12-tape collection of early Alfred Hitchcock movies, and her Riverside Shakespeare, and a few other good items.
that's not the story though. the story is this: when I was looking through her books, I looked over at her bottom shelf and saw a book called _A History of Islam_. it looked, from the spine, to be a Time-Life type of book, probably heavy on the pictures, definitely nothing fancy. nevertheless, Islam was very much in the forefront of the zeitgeist at the moment and it caught my interest. then the book next to it also caught my interest. it was called _Afghans_. "wow," I thought, "gramma must have seen all this coming. at the very least, she must have been better informed on world affairs than most people have been over the last few months."
the spine of the _Afghans_ book didn't give any clear indication of the general quality-level of the book itself; it could have been anything from a scholarly text to another Time-Life type of thing. so I pulled it off the shelf to examine it further.
it was about blankets.
so my gramma (dad's mom...the one who mailed me the bag of beans) died early this year and I flew out to NJ for her funeral. (the funeral was actually in upstate NY but she had been living near my aunt in NJ and we used that as a base of operations.) so after the funeral, we drove back to NJ and aunt elaine asked my sister and me if we wanted to go through gramma's house and pick out anything we wanted to take before the estate sale. I really wanted this 11-translations-in-1 edition of the Bible that she used to have. it's 11 different translations (including, if I recall correctly, the Greek and Hebrew) printed *interlineally*. so I looked long and hard for it and it turned out to be missing...presumably because my father had beaten me to it by a few days. but I did get her 1972 (?) edition of the OED, and her 12-tape collection of early Alfred Hitchcock movies, and her Riverside Shakespeare, and a few other good items.
that's not the story though. the story is this: when I was looking through her books, I looked over at her bottom shelf and saw a book called _A History of Islam_. it looked, from the spine, to be a Time-Life type of book, probably heavy on the pictures, definitely nothing fancy. nevertheless, Islam was very much in the forefront of the zeitgeist at the moment and it caught my interest. then the book next to it also caught my interest. it was called _Afghans_. "wow," I thought, "gramma must have seen all this coming. at the very least, she must have been better informed on world affairs than most people have been over the last few months."
the spine of the _Afghans_ book didn't give any clear indication of the general quality-level of the book itself; it could have been anything from a scholarly text to another Time-Life type of thing. so I pulled it off the shelf to examine it further.
it was about blankets.
