Book Books Books

I always intend to get things done and then see my books.

I have a lot of books and not a lot of time to read until summer vacation. Well, let me amend that, I have lots of days off due to my job and do spend many hours a day reading when I can, but I just want to read everything piled up on my table now. Here is the eclectic list of titles waiting for me : The Business of Bliss, The Christmas Train, Mercy, When You Believe, The Idiot Girls' Action Adventure Club, Black Notice, Seven Years in Tibet, My Life in France and Aprons.

The book called Aprons was a gift to me from an amazing experience this past MLK in service day. I used half the day to volunteer at the Old Gregg School, a very old building that once was a school and is now a community center. The library needed help weeding and organizing so a great group of Mt. Nittany-ers were there for hours. We could take any books we wanted to read or keep. KEEP!! OMG!! it was like being a kid in a candy store! I held back and only took 3 books which I will enjoy and then return but the book all about aprons was just too good to be true.

"Aprons Icons of the American Home" is part picture book and part history book. It tells us why and where aprons are worn and who wears them. Yes, moms and grandmas and chefs but also carpenters and iron workers and bartenders and fishmongers and cobblers. The list goes on and on. It is filled with apron wisdom, too. i.e. Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves an apron--Genesis 3:7. or "Grant Wood's famous 1930 painting, American Gothic, shows a farm couple, the wife wearing an apron. This may be the first rendering of rickrack trimming in fine art.". How many of us remember rickrack??

The glossary had this definition--Grandma apron---a full apron made of lightweight cotton, often with a small print, edged in bias tape, that covers the wearer's front, sides and back and ties in back, with holes for arms and beck. commonly a work apron, not for entertaining." Ok, it fits. Our apron is all of those things with 2 exceptions. First is no small print (at least this apron), plaid being so much more extrodiany and orange so much more vibrant!! Second, I do believe it has been amazingly entertaining. That first night it was modeled and photographed in a small in in upstate NY had us laughing hard and trying to outdo each others' poses. The trip to Churchill Downs was epic as was the time enhancing Joe Paterno's statue and it's visit to Coney Island. People who never want to be photographed are willing to wear it (Stefan, Joan, Shane), and babies can get in on the act. It gets around and dips its ties in oceans.

It could write a book of it's adventures.

" An apron is simply a loin cloth with ruffles.", Gloria Nixon-John. Yes indeed, it has been used for entertaining. Now, back to my book.