Jip's Bookshelf

Jip and I got back yesterday from visiting her village. While we were there her mom asked me to go through some of Jip’s old books. Anything we didn’t want to keep she planned to give away to the local high school.

What a wonderful reminder of who Jip used to be! I found lots of stuff about Buddhism on those shelves, but also Growing Up Catholic; The Tao of Pooh; Rumi, Poet and Mystic; Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind; The Power of Myth; A Christmas Carol; and even Waterbuffalo Theology.

Then came the anthropologist section—Cry the Beloved Country, Roots, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gandhi: An Autobiography, Cathedrals and Abbeys of France, and Peoples of the Golden Triangle. I recognized the rebel nurse in titles like Blood and Guts and Our Bodies Our Selves, which sat next to The Manual of Gynecologic and Obstetric Emergencies. And of course the conservationist shelf—Rachel Carson, lots of writings by and about American Indians, and The Complete Birder.

My throat caught when I came across A Sand County Almanac. That book was very important to me in my 20s. Everything looked different to me after reading it. I remember preparing to lie down in front of bulldozers to prevent any further destruction of the American wilderness.

I had wondered what happened to my copy. Probably I brought it with me when I first came to Thailand, then passed it along to Jip, thinking it would speak to her too. Re-reading it now, I confess to feeling a little discouraged, wondering if our species is going to make it. But I do smile thinking of how a book inspired by a Wisconsin farm came to be part of a fascinating Thai-English library in a southern Thai village.