MORE ON AUDELS CARPENTERS AND BUILDERS GUIDE

"By Hammer and Hand All Things Do Stand"

Last week we talked about John Ruskin's quotation found in this set of books. What other gems can we discover in these four+ volumes?

Authors Frank D. Graham and Thomas J. Emery put together "A Practical Illustrated Trade Assistant on Modern Construction For Carpenters-Joiners, Builders-Mechanics, and all Wood Workers."

Illustrations, diagrams, charts, graphs, and pictures enhance the how-to explanations "in practical, concise language" that include how to figure and calculate various jobs.

Publisher Theo. Audel Co. seemed to do well with this series as it was copyrighted in 1929, 1933, 1945 and reprinted in 1948.

Whether you are a professional or a DIYer, you can find good information and interesting facts between the covers of these little black books.


Volume 1: Tools - Steel - Square Saw Filing - Joinery - Furniture

Volume 2: Builders Mathematics - Drawing Plans - Specifications - Estimating

Volume 3: House and Roof Framing - Laying Out - Foundations

Volume 4: Doors - Windows -Stair Building - Mill Work - Painting


We invite you to stop by and give Audel's guides a look-through. You may learn something that will make your next project go a little smoother.

NETTIE'S LEGACY

Last week I arrived for my regular shift in the Bullis Room with a mental "to-do" list for the morning. I soon found my focus redirected by a stacks of small black books in the middle of the round table. Stamped into the cover of each one was the title, Audels Carpenters and Builder Guide. The title did not impress me as something of personal interest but the quote on the flyleaf changed my mind:

When we build, let us think that we build forever.
Let it not be for present delight nor for present use
alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will
thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone,
that a time is to come when those stones will be held
sacred because our hands have touched them, and
that men will say, as they look upon the labor and
wrought substance of them, "See! This our father
did for us."
---John Ruskin

I can picture Nettie Bullis reading this quote, tilting her head in contemplation, then slowly nodding. And I think she would nod her head again if she could be with us today to see the results of her wise stewardship, her laying "stone on stone" to build a legacy for the rest of us to enjoy.

And so today, we say: "See! This our sister did for us."

Thank you, Nettie.

THE COLD NIGHTS OF WINTER

What did Nettie Bullis do on a cold winter's evening, as darkness settled in before 5 o'clock and high banks of snow covered the landscape? Like some of us, perhaps she snuggled down in an easy chair with a good book. But what might she have chosen from the three rooms full of books in her house on Canandaigua Road?

She may have picked up 7000 Words Often Mispronounced and nodded in approval when she read that "alpaca" is pronounced al-PAK-a" rather than "al-a-PAK-a," and that one should say "FAM-i-li," not "FAM-li" and "hwich" instead of "wich." (All good reminders when William Henry P. Phyte wrote this reference book more than a hundred years ago--and for us today.)

If she was longing for summertime and a trip up north, Nettie might have looked through H. A. Lapham's collection of indelible photographs, 1000 Islands. Even today these 1891 photos of Alexander Bay, Edgewood Park House, Rose Island, Castle Rest, and Lost Channel bring visions of summer to most winter-weary minds.

And I think Nettie may have ended her evening by leafing through Charles E. Merrill Co.'s 1900 edition of Graded Literature Readers Fifth Book, those stories, poems, and phonics chart eliciting fond memories of her early school days and childhood. And with that, I think she probably went off to bed, warm on the inside, impervious to the cold on the outside.

Can you think of a better way to end a winter's day? Or any day?

THE JOYS OF READING

Renewing old friendships of heroes and heroines;

Traveling to faraway places without leaving home;

Expanding the mind to learn anew;

Studying the past and learning from our ancestors
and much more.

Give yourself the gift of time this winter,
settle down with a good book.

You won't regret it.


HAPPY HOLIDAYS
THE BULLIS ROOM COMMITTEE

A CALENDAR FOR THE NEW YEAR

You may already have a 2009 calendar hanging on your wall, and have several appointments and activities jotted down for the new year. Or perhaps you use an online calendar program to plan your busy days.

Looking through the shelves recently, I found a different kind of calendar in the General Science section of the collection. And it's as current today as it was when it was published in 1892. This calendar is in the form of a book titled Sharp Eyes: A Rambler's Calendar of Fifty-Two Weeks Among Insects, Birds, and Flowers. Illustrations by author Wm. Hamilton Gibson enhance the descriptive prose between the covers of this unique book. Open it at random and you're sure to find something inspiring and informative, no matter the page.

Sharp Eyes impressed me so much I did a web search and, yes, copies are available online. (I've sent a link to my favorite Santa, in hopes he takes the hint.) Fortunately for all of us, it's on the shelf here in the Bullis Room and you're invited to stop by on a Thursday morning to take a relaxing ramble through this beautiful seasonal calendar.

Happy Thanksgiving!

As I pondered this post, I was reminded of the attitude of thankfulness. I believe the Bullis family as a whole experienced thankfulness. In Nettie Bullis' valedictory speech when she graduated from Macedon High School in 1911 she stated, "Life, like every other blessing, derives its value from its use." She valued her life, was thankful for it, and wanted to use it well. She was a woman who looked into the future for our children and made an effort to invest in their lives by setting up a fund to provide scholarships for higher education. Many students of the Palmyra-Macedon Central School District have benefited from that. She knew what it was to be without the finances needed for education. She invested in co-workers lives sometimes with advice and sometimes with finances. We are thankful that she was a woman with foresight. And we are thankful for her life and how she used it.
Happy Thanksgiving! And may we all be willing to invest time and energy into those lives around us.

Henry Drummond

I walked to the shelf this morning and pulled off the book "Henry Drummond's addresses". My favorite essay was "The greatest thing in the world." It is a great essay where he describes love as the greatest thing in the world. He lists the 9 elements of love as patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness, good temper, guilelessness and sincerity. How different the world would be if we all practiced that kind of love.

And then I flipped to the end of the book and found another address titled "A talk on books." And this being a library and all, I proceeded to read it. He shares about authors who enabled him to see the world differently : Ruskin, Emerson, George Eliot, Channing, and F. W. Robertson. And then he writes: "One day as I was looking over my mantelshelf library, it suddenly struck me that all these authors of mine were heretics - these were dangerous books. Undesignedly I had found stimulus and help from teachers who were not credited by orthodoxy. And I have since found that much of the good to be got from books is to be gained from authors often classed as dangerous, for these provoke inquiry, and exercise one's powers."

And another quote from him: "To fall in love with a good book is one of the greatest events that can befall us."

And yet another quote: "...and I think everyone owes it as a sacred duty to his mind to start a little library of his own."

Mr. Drummond also wrote "Natural law in the spiritual world." We have copies of both of these books in the Bullis Library.

Mr. A. R. Bullis (the surveyor) owned both of these books. I wonder what he gained from them. I wonder if this is where the idea of this family library came from. Hmmm....