J's Pages

And the award for book with the longest title goes to... um, this book. I don't know if it's really a book, or if it should be considered a periodical. But it's a heckuva lot thicker than some books I've read, so I'll call it as such. Anyway, this is an odd acquisition. There's an older gentleman who belongs to my church--a great guy--whose been housebound for a number of years now after getting hit by a van. Now, if you don't know how churches work, what happens with shut-in members is that they get regular visits from the pastor who sees how they are doing and gives them communion and all that. (Of course, when churches really work, lots of people go visit the shut-in members. But that's another day's musings.) Anyway, a few weeks back, at the announcement time after the service, Pastor mentions that he had visited Cliff that week and that ol' Cliff gave him this book, with the intent to lend it to whomever in the congregation wants to read it. He also mentioned that it was "all about Cliff's family." Well, I like books and I like history and Cliff is the only nursing home resident I ever met who could look mischievous. (I probably haven't met enough nursing home residents.) So I figured that a book about Cliff's family was worth borrowing. Well, the part about Cliff's family was a bit exaggerated. There's one article about his cousin and one about his grandfather. A number of other articles also mention the two gentlemen, both of whom played a large role in the Chinese-American community here in Seattle. But Cliff's family is hardly the focus of the book. Instead it has a large variety of articles relating to the history of local Chinese-Americans. In addition to the aforementioned biographies, there are articles on boy scouting, the industrialization of salmon canneries, Chinese-American contributions to Chinese aviation, and Chinese medical recipies from frontier Seattle, just to name a few. A wonderful potpourri for a word junkie like myself. Nothing I could recommend to a normal person, mind you. Well, maybe as good waiting room material. 

There's no LibraryThing link!

Labels: WaitingRoomMaterial

// posted by John @ 9:39 PM