Scotch, Thoreau, and Perl

[I am writing this on my laptop on Tuesday night, but I will not be able to post it until tomorrow (Wednesday).]

Sunday through Wednesday of this week I am in Palo Alto on business.  Today, on my way back to the offices from a recommended lunch spot, I passed a used book store.  Or rather, I attempted to pass a used store, as I have never succeeded in actually walking past one.

I have a few collecting interests in books, among them nineteenth century editions of Concord transcendalists’ texts, books on scotch whisky, and editions of The Oxford Book of Carols.  So I navigated to my standard haunts.  Bell’s Books did not have any Oxford Carols.  It did have a copy of Scotch Made Easy by Wilson, a book I did not know existed; I picked this up (and, as it turns out, overpaid for it.)  One of the employees retrieved a stack of older Emerson and Thoreau texts, with a ladder, from high on a shelf, and I looked through them at the counter.  I found a Riverside Press edition of Emerson’s Essays: Second Series; I remembered that I had a Riverside edition of the First Series, but could not remember which printing (i.e., whether they matched or not.)  I asked them to set the Emerson aside and I would call back after I checked my online book collection.

So this story now finds me standing at the counter with the Perl Cookbook that I brought in, Scotch Made Easy, and a book of Emerson essays.

“This is a varied selection,” said the clerk as he picked up the scotch book to ring up.  “Scotch, Thoreau [sic], and Perl.  I’m not going to try to figure out the connection.”

I laughed as the oddity struck me.  “Well,” I said, “I have a website about scotch whisky written in Perl.  And of course there is the pleasure of pouring a fine dram while reading Thoreau.”

“And you said you had your book collection online, which is at least a vague connection,” he concluded.

Connections galore.  Perhaps I am not so odd after all.