An amalgam ... an afternnon at B & N

Idris, Eeyong Goh, Qur'an, Hadith, Little Nemo in Slumberland. and Hoo-vah Pah-ee-vah (phonetic spelling). I'll explain and list the previous terms. They represent an afternoon's interactions during my noon to 7 p.m. shift at Barnes & Noble on Wednesday, Nov. 12th, 2008 in the Augusta Mall.

1. Idris, 3rd generation Lebanese, sat at a table reading a microscopically-lettered small book. I had to engage him and ask him about its size and how he read the type (he was young and did have narrow glasses on). It was the Qur'an and had English on the left and Arabic on the right. To the right of this text was a larger book with, naturally, larger text. This he called the Hadith. He said that the Hadith was the more detailed book about the holy book of the Qur'an and it was written in classical Arabic, a style that is not used today. He went on to show me some of the lettering of Arabic and how each figure was a sound. (They have about as many as our alphabet, 28 in the Wikipedia link above.)
   
   
2. Tattoo shop owner, Eeyong Goh, who called the store, when she spelled her first name I commented that it was like the poet, e. e. cummings, and she concurred. She wanted me to hold a tattoo book, located on the bargain table, for her, which I did. Oh, and she is Chinese.
   
   
3. A marvelously engaging, middle aged African-American, is an avid drawer of cartoon characters, and I had mentioned a large book in Reese Library that had a comic strip that ran in the first decade of the 20th century by the artist, Winsor McCay, entitled "Little Nemo in Slumberland." It really is an amazing strip with incredible dialogue. It's truly a masterpiece of the medium and Mccay is consider one of the greatest and earliest in the field.
   
   
4. And finally, bet you're glad about that, the phonetic words - "Hoo-vah pah-ee-vah", which are a greeting in Finland. I have been badgering our young and vibrant community manager at B & N, Maggie, for several months, to repeat the greeting in Finnish (she stayed with a family in Finland during her college years as well as France -- any thoughts of studying overseas?). Well, I finally think that I've nailed it down.
   

I enjoy writing these missives to you and my hope is that you find them entertaining and perhaps educational, too.

Keep up the hard work, I'm incredibly proud of you and often boast to acquaintances that my daughter is an honors student at UGA.

In loving and perpetual humankindness,
dad