Cat's Cradle Blog

"The Mediterranean Gardener" by Hugo Latymer (1990, 1st edition) offers ideas for bringing a southern European feel to your garden or terrace.

I confess.  I’m a bookseller whose hands are often dirty.  Yes, I’m a gardener.  Therefore, my bookstore has an abundance of books and periodicals related to gardens, plants, and nature.

To me, gardening is a creative act that connects us with the rhythms of the seasons and the natural world. It reminds us that we are creators as well as created.

There is little to compare with a freshly picked tomato warm from the sun.  Unless perhaps an old-fashioned rose, heavy with fragrance.  Or herbs to heal and to season our food.  Or a well established water garden where koi swim dreamily among the plants.

Vegetables, flowers, herbs, water gardens – it matters not. The act of making things grow and tending them is what counts.

Come and search Cat’s Cradle Books to cultivate your own soul garden.

Garden Creek, North Carolina. Copyright 2012, K. S. Carter, all rights reserved.

Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.

Great Blue Heron, North Carolina, May 2012. Copyright, Kathy Carter, all rights reserved.

The book of living nature
is unlike other books in this respect:
One can read it over and over,
and always find new meanings.
It is a book that goes to press every night,
and comes forth fresh every morning.

- John Burroughs (1837-1921)

Il Principe (The Prince) by Niccolò Machiavelli. "La Nuova Italia" Editrice, 1941.

Born on May 3, 1469, Machiavelli remains, if not a household word, then one of the most recognizable names of the Italian Renaissance.  ”Machiavellian” has earned a permanent place in the English language.  The Prince, one of his most important treatises, continues to be standard reading in university classrooms and a roadmap for political behavior in our time.  Whether he meant The Prince as satire or as a serious tribute to the Medici and other power brokers of the 15th and 16th centuries, his work has left a mark on our culture that continues to this, the 543rd anniversary of his birth in Florence, Italy.

The Florentine Renaissance, within which Machiavelli lived (1469-1527), was a study in paradox and contrast.  Florence rose from the bleak ashes of the Black Death (as depicted in Boccaccio’s Decameron), during which 70% of the city’s population either died or went elsewhere, to become a booming center of textiles (first wool, then silk) and finance (the banking enterprises of families like the Medici).  It was a city where money talked and power rested in the hands of the Medici family during most of the period.

The money that ruled Florence, rather than addressing the needs of the impoverished, went to displays of status.  The Medici, the Pitti, and the other wealthy and powerful families outdid one another with investment in private and public artworks.   Michelangelo’s “David,” now housed in the Accademia, was once a sculpture on public view in the Piazza della Signoria; a replica stands there now. Architects such as Brunelleschi thrived, and thus resulted a city of extraordinary beauty.  Botticelli, Da Vinci, Donatello, Fra Angelico, and many others found patrons in wealthy families, in the Florentine government, and in the Church itself.   Without the rise of families like the Medici, it’s doubtful whether Florentine art would have thrived as it did.

The art of the Renaissance, on the surface, provides a striking contrast to Machiavelli’s emphasis on “doing what is necessary” to build and keep power.  Nevertheless, his writing and the great art of the period shared many things.  They rested on a foundation of rational humanism.  They evoked the past, especially the past of classical Greece and Rome.  They also had a deep interest in contemporary subjects:  Machiavelli’s analysis of politics, Da Vinci’s portraiture, the Brancacci chapel’s frescoes with the faces of Florentines who lived during the time artist was working.

The Italian Renaissance was a time of contrast and conflict.  Bloody political upheaval marked the period.  Popes sired illegitimate children and kept mistresses in the Vatican.  Families warred with each other over who controlled cities.  Yet the Renaissance in Florence and other Italian cities was also a time of immeasurable beauty, of artistic innovation, and of enormous creativity.

Machiavelli’s work must certainly be counted among some of the most significant of this fascinating time.

Ci vediamo, mei amici!

Kathy Carter
Cat’s Cradle Books

Collector's edition in full leather, 24 karat gilt, printed from the original first edition plates. Click on image to see the Cat's Cradle Books list on Southern Literature.

Today is Southern novelist Harper Lee’s 86th birthday.  Born in Monroeville, Alabama, on April 28, 1926, Miss Lee is a bit of an anomaly.  She published one novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, which was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Honor.  It remains arguably one of the most influential works of modern Southern literature.  Published by J. B. Lippincott in 1961, the novel became an immediate sensation and success.  It was followed in 1962 by a film adaptation starring Gregory Peck (Atticus Finch) and introducing Robert Duvall (“Boo” Radley).   Together, the novel and the film remain part of the larger American cultural landscape.

I remember reading Mockingbird at about the age of 10.  Like Scout Finch, the tomboy through whom the story is told, I could not remember learning to read any more than I could remember learning to breathe.  In terms of the words, the book was an easy read for me.   But as a child in Pennsylvania far removed from the time, place, and culture within which the novel was set, I was oblivious to much of its meaning and certainly of its significance.   Like many, I suppose, I returned to Mockingbird many times in my life.  Layers of my own experiences lent new meaning to Miss Lee’s work.  It was truly a new novel each time I picked it up and sank into its pages to join Jem, Scout, and Dill on a journey toward grappling with the harsh realities of racism, injustice, and poverty – a journey toward growing up.

Southern literature has flourished in the half-century (and more) since the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird.  The landscape of Southern writing offers incredibly diverse and interesting work.  Perhaps it comes from a regional fondness for the story told well, with embellishments and exaggerations, at pig pickin’s, at family gatherings, at almost every opportunity.  I don’t know about all that (as Southerners here say when they think this is probably wrong but are a little too polite to say so).

One thing is clear:  Southern literature is a genre worth exploring, and Southern-born authors are often well worth reading.  Harper Lee, Truman Capote, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Lee Smith, Kaye Gibbons, Reynolds Price…the names go on and on.

But Harper Lee will always be at the top of my list.

For books and periodicals on Southern literature or by Southern authors, visit our Southern Literature list.

With all good wishes,

Kathy Carter
Cat’s Cradle Books

A year ago the Kodak company ceased production of Kodachrome, that rich medium used in 35mm slide photography as well as in the creation of countless films.  The last 36-exposure roll went to Steve McCurry, whose haunting photograph of a green-eyed Afghan girl (1984) became a symbol of earlier conflict in Afghanistan.   What a task this final odyssey must have been, making decisions about what to include and how to compose and set the shot! 

In one way, the demise of Kodachrome is just a step along the path of photographic history.  The medium is young compared with the other visual arts, such as painting and sculpture.  The transformations photography has undergone are nothing short of amazing. 

19th century French reference volume for photography

I wonder if early photographers saw the shifts from dauguerrotype to tintype to silver emulsion as nostalgically as this one.  I think rather not.  The early technology of photograph led to greater convenience and better results, generally.  The advent of smaller and smaller hand-held film cameras, especially in the twentieth century, democratized the medium and brought snapshot photography into the hands of Middle America.  Camera portability transformed journalism as well.  Instant Polaroids spoke to instant gratification, which some might say was one of the markers of the post-WWII era.  And the advent of color photography – including the recently departed Kodachrome – took the medium to new realms of possibilities. 

Digital photography, of course, was the next technological step.   Film photographers could be Luddites in the early years of digital development, but most have embraced the technology now.  Instead of film, we use a digital card holding hundreds of images.  Instead of a darkroom, there’s PhotoShop.  Instead of prints, we view images on a screen.  We delete the ones we don’t want (and there are many of those; not having to pay for processing leads us to shoot with great abandon).  The rest we save for printing…or for viewing in a digital picture frame.  The end result is a picture.  The process getting there is transformed forever.

I still have my Olympus OM-1 35mm SLR.  It takes great pictures.  But getting them developed is more and more problematic, especially if I want to shoot in black and white.  The OM-1 went with me to the Outer Banks one summer for some beach photography that I still think is some of my best.  It traveled with me to Britain, France, Italy, and Greece, and rewarded me with rich Kodachrome slides, some of which still send me back in place and time.  My daughter’s baby pictures were taken on the OM-1.  So, too, were the photographs I shot during my short but interesting career in print journalism: peanut farmers worried about drought, outsider artists and their work, historical sites, new businesses hopeful for success, concerts, and even a C-130 that landed at a small airstrip where I was living and working. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art bulletin featuring the work of Alfred Stieglitz

There is a whole history in the heft of the camera in my hand, and in the way the macro lens feels as I balance it.  When I use it, I feel a connection to generations of photographers who have gone before me using different equipment and technologies. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I own digital equipment, and I love using it.  The Nikon D-5000 DSLR is a joy, and its new macro lens an absolute dream.   The palm-sized Fuji Finepix has amazing features for a tiny point-and-shoot.  

And yet, I wonder whether leaving the medium of emulsion film behind is not also leaving something creative behind that is different.  Maybe not better than digital, but different.  When I’m behind the lens, especially the lens of my old 35mm, I feel connected to generations of photographers who have gone before me.  I’m humbled by their superior talent and technical expertise.  But I keep on shooting and capturing anyway.

Savor the work of photographers through time and space in our photography catalog. 

Until next time….

Kathy Carter

Cat’s Cradle Books

The New York Times Book Review (August 1, 2010) yesterday published “Turning Right,” a review of two new books.  It captured my attention with its focus on the Jewish intellectual journal Commentary and its long-time editor, Norman Podhoretz.   I find the monthly Commentary and its cohort, Partisan Review, to be fascinating, especially issues from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.  Whenever possible, I add them to inventory. 

See our current list of Commentary here, and Partisan Review there.

Commentary, Partisan Review, and others of their genre represented the voice of American intellectuals who understood they were outside the mainstream.  Their role was to offer critcism of the culture within which they lived.  Intellectual forces collaborated and sometimes collided in their pages. 

Commentary, published by the American Jewish Committee, provided a platform for Isaac Bashevis Singer as well as James Baldwin and many prominent and lesser known writers (a young homemaker-writer named Ethel Rosenberg published a short piece there in the 1940s). Its debates addressed the formation and sustenance of the new Israeli state as well as the issues of race in America. 

Jean-Paul Sartre, Hannah Arendt, and many other influential postwar philosophers and critics graced the pages of Partisan Review with their extraordinary work. 

Both periodicals struggled with the constraints of the McCarthy era, when “outside the mainstream” often meant “outside the safe zone.”   Some principals, like Norman Podhoretz, shifted their political leanings from left to right over a long career in changing times.  Ideas have always evolved in response to events (and vice versa sometimes).

To enter the pages of either of these publications is to enter the world of what used to be called the “New York Intellectual.”  Well crafted, well argued essays and opinion columns were the order of the day.  

Other intellectual journals of the last half of the 20th century included the New Left Review (a latecomer in the 1960s, published in Britain) and the Kenyon Review (for literary folk).   There were many others, of course.

Taken together, they remind us that intellectual life in the United States – the anti-intellectualism that often marks our public discourse to the contrary – was flourishing even under the constraints of the Red Scare and the angst of the Vietnam era.

See a full list of our periodicals in stock, with new titles being added daily to our inventory.

Kathy Carter at Cat’s Cradle Books

I’m pleased to announce the release of a very special book by High Point, NC, native Glenn R. Chavis.  

In honor of the occasion, Cat’s Cradle Books has published its first print catalog, our current list of books related to African American life, history, literature, art, culture, and folklore.   For a copy of this catalog, contact us at info@catscradlebks.net.  

Glenn has written a compilation of information about the African American community of High Point, North Carolina from the incorporation of the town in 1859 to the sit-in era launched in 1960.  Glenn, born and raised in the black community during a time of segregation, has spent years researching the community’s history in government documents, city directories, newspapers, school records, and hundreds of other pieces of the past.  

His book contains 41 photographs of life in High Point’s black community, most of them never before published.  Our Roots, Our Branches, Our Fruit is a groundbreaking book; earlier focus on local history in this small New South city has been almost exclusively on the white community and on business and industrial leaders in particular.  

I was deeply honored to serve as editor of Glenn’s book.  The layout and design of the interior are also my work.   My editor’s preface, I hope, does the author justice.  Bob Brown, a High Point native and former White House adviser, contributed a foreword.  The High Point Historical Society is the publisher of record, and several local donors funded the cost of publication.  

Signed copies are available from the High Point Museum, which is presently the only outlet for this important book.  Future volumes in Glenn’s series are planned.  They include an upcoming sourcebook of information about segregated black schools in High Point, a study of black churches, and potentially several historical sourcebooks of land deeds held by High Point’s African Americans.   Glenn is also a storyteller, and many hope that he will eventually publish an anthology or two of  his well-researched personal essays and vignettes about High Point’s black history as well. 

Kathy Carter, Cat’s Cradle Books

We plan to offer our growing inventory of vintage and antique postcards from Italy, the United States, and other places here in our bookstore website, as we can add them.
Our post card inventory includes many Italian postcards (cartoline italiane) as well as scenes from the United States and other countries.

For Italian postcards, we especially like the period from about 1900 to the 1960s.

Historically, it was a very dynamic period. Parts of northern Italy changed hands from Austria to Italy during World War I, and this is reflected in the postcards from the period 1900-1920. In 1922, Mussolini rose to power, place names in postcard photographs changed (there are Piazze B. Mussolini, for example, in the 1920s and 1930s that are renamed after WWII), and even cancellation marks changed (the year 1925, for example, was noted as the year 25 III, the third year of the Mussolini era).

Our favorite Italian postcards are the real photograph cards (vera fotografia), which are incredibly sharp in their detail.

Here are two examples.

Above is a color-tinted real photograph postcard by Ediz. Griffini Maria, a scene of Laigueglia on the Italian Riviera. Below is a postcard (cartolina) from another of our favorite studios, Foto Ghedina (Cortina, Italy).

As we are able to do so, we will add our postcards to our Cat’s Cradle Books website for your shopping convenience.