Tag Archives: Wendy Welch

FIRE! FIRE!

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 Jack’s guest blog post today recounts the great fire of 2014 –

Well, that was quite an experience!

We were down in Johnson City on Monday doing radio shows and meetings and then headed home to avoid the forecast snow, arriving back in mid afternoon. Shortly afterwards I looked out the window and couldn’t see the other side of the street. Thinking it was fine snow I moved to a better position and saw clouds of dense smoke pouring out of a building only a couple of hundred yards from the bookstore. It was a NAPA auto parts store full of paint, oils, tires and other scary stuff and as I watched dumbstruck flames began to appear through the smoke. Within a short time the firefighters and police had all the surrounding streets closed and fire engines and high-lift ladders came screaming in – locals as well as from all the surrounding towns. They worked until 11 pm and then left it to burn itself out.

Next morning I walked across and saw a small fire still burning inside. Hhhmmm, I thought – that doesn’t look good! Within half an hour the whole place was blazing worse than ever and all the firefighters were back with their machines. We took a walk up to look in the evening and despite the enormous quantities of water we’d seen poured on the building for two days, there were still a number of healthy fires burning inside. Finally this morning it looks as if it has really has burned out!

Through the whole thing I was torn between disbelief that this was actually happening, the danger of the  whole place exploding in all directions, and fascination at the scale of it – a great column of smoke, enormous flames, the apparent ineffectiveness of the enormous quantities of water being poured down on it (and how quickly we could evacuate our dogs and cats).

Now that it really does seem to be over, my final thought is for two groups of people – the owners and workers in the business that has gone, and the brave men and women who battled to keep it from spreading to the adjacent buildings (including our bookstore).

Finally, pictures –

and gets worse

and gets worse

It starts

It starts

and even worse

and even worse

Then yesterday morning

Then yesterday morning

Half an hour later

Half an hour later

Last night

Last night

Meanwhile Owen is ready to go!

Meanwhile Owen is ready to go!

 

 

 

The Monday Book: UNLOAD YOUR OWN DONKEY

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donkeyPrimrose Arnander and Ashkhain Skipwith have put together three books of proverbs from Arab countries. The first one I ever encountered was Unload Your Own Donkey, which is the untranslatable Arabic equivalent for “mind your own business.” I have said that donkey thing to people in my small Appalachian town a couple of times, and it doesn’t translate. Which may have worked in my favor.

That’s the fun thing about this book–one of, anyway: that the proverbs are written in Arabic and English, and that they translate word-for-word without making much word-for-word sense for the most part in English, and yet you can see the folk wisdom behind the words–Arabic or English.

Take, for instance, a phrase originating in an Arabic proverb that has more or less entered the American mainstream, “the camel’s nose under the tent,” which is pretty much the same as “the tip of the iceberg.” It’s a cute way of saying something is creeping up on us that will get bigger before it goes away.

One of my other favorites, “The fly has acquired a shop and it is closing early” is another of my favorites. If you think about it for a minute, you can see our American equivalent: “you’re in over your head.” Then there’s “his son is on his shoulder, and he is looking for him” (as plain as the nose on your face).

And my other favorite, “Someone scalded by soup will blow on yogurt” (once bitten, twice shy). I was swapping proverbs with a British friend of Arabic background, and she laughed at this one and told me her family used to say, “Someone bitten by a snake will run from a coiled rope.”

“Bankrupt merchants search old books” (flogging a dead horse). “If things didn’t break, there would be no potters” (every cloud has a silver lining). “Advise the ignorant and become his enemy” (pearls and swine) and “like honey on top of cream” (gilding the lily) are some other fun ones.

The pictures in this book are sweet and fun to go along with the proverbs, and it’s a great dip-in book–not a story, but a diversion. I haul Unload Your Own Donkey out when I need a laugh. I also have its sister volume, Apricots Tomorrow (tomorrow will be a better day). Admit it, you have the theme song from Annie running through your head right now, don’t you?

And just for laughs, the third title in this series is The Son of a Duck is a Floater. (Have fun figuring it out.)