I've been writing a paper on congregational polity and growth/identity initiatives by the UUA. As usual I've spent way,way too much time researching and now have difficulty summarizing it on paper.
I'm a googler at heart and once I start down a trail I have a hard time say whoa - wrong direction. This was made worse when I discovered 'Abebooks' online - So now my bookshelves contain such thrillers as the 1993 "Church and Denominational Growth" by Roozen and Hadaway; 1990 Holding Fast/Pressing On: Religion in America in the 1980's' and 2000 Metaphors in Mind: Transformation through Symbolic Modelling'.
I'm a week behind and it is time to pull it together. It is physically painful. My 60 year old eyes don't proof like they use to. I search for distractions. Actually I don't have to search - it is natural. Which is what this post is. I just discovered the childhood roots of by google obsession. I grew up in a house with few books. But of the two or three we had, my very favorite was a 1946 hard-bound book by George Stipson: A Book About a Thousand Things,. written in a question-answer format. I loved that book. I read it constantly, over and over again. All I would have to do is open a page find learn the most amazing things. Page 312-313 answers the following questions: What is the Bronx? How is Leigh Hunt's first name pronounced? What countries comprise the Near East? How do birds locate earthworms in the ground? and Why do wild geese fly in a V-shaped formation?
I'm now the proud owner of this very worn, somewhat musty book. No one else in my family was interested when my parents were clearing things out. But I love it still.
What more could an eight-year old girl in Boise, Idaho, want to know?
Nancy
ps. Book About a Thousand Things is available for only $1.00 at Abe's
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