Bookish Mary

The dog days of summer are still lingering as we turn the corner from August into September.  Soon leaves will be falling from the trees, the days will get shorter and frost will be seen on the tops of puddles in the early morning rush. Geese will be gathering in flocks, riding the waves until one of the leaders tells them it's time to fly south.  And all the while I will be preparing my books for the fall and winter season.   COOKING BOOKS  In order to keep things fresh with my book making, I tried out a different technique for decorating the pages of a book.  I started cooking books.  Yes indeed, these books have been cooked for a long period of time over a high heat.  The most interesting thing about it is, I never know what I will find once the cooking is done.  I use all sorts of flora to create the designs, combined with clothing dye and a cotton rag based paper.  It's all in the mix and once cooled down, and dried, there a...

It was a hot day and the fellows were having a slow break on the construction site.   The Dog Days of summer have been relentless this year, spreading the heat over months rather than weeks.  One evening on my way home from the theatre I noticed how the heat permeated the air.   The evening air was filled with the smell of a spent, hot summer day: the sweetness of doughnuts impregnated with dusty streets, sweating grass and limp leaves.  It made one move with a heated slowness, feet gently dragging on gummy, melting asphalt.  Even the birds were too tired to sing and the humidity hung heavy on the skin like the tendrils of an unrequited love.  There was not a whiff of a breeze and the sun relentlessly hung onto the cloudless sky, spreading its heat across the horizon.  Above, music wafting through an open window had a heaviness that dragged one’s spirit into the frothy gutter.  It reached in and pulled on the bones leaving a wearine...