Sage Impressions

As 2023 was the year of our beginnings, so 2024 will be the year of our growth! We have added some fixtures and are continually expanding our collection to reflect customer interests and requests. We also have new and different gift items added almost weekly, and we continue to search out unique and hand-crafted items you'll love. The most significant growth area this year, though, is the event offerings. Be sure to check out our calendar and watch social media as we add events that you may want to attend.

We will, of course, continue with Wine Wednesdays, usually the 2nd & 4th Wednesdays, though they may vary due to holidays and other event scheduling. Attendees are encouraged to bring wine or another offering, to share with the group.

In addition, we have book discussions, workshops, and author and artist events planned for this year. If you’ve been wanting to join a book club or need new members for your existing club, be sure you attend our Book Club Social on Jan. 30th. This event is designed to foster neighborhood book club connections, in addition to the book discussion events we will host. Check out our SWARA Appreciation Day in February.

And yes, we do have gifts and cards for Valentines Day! See you soon!

Winter Blues Need a Good Book Remedy

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve had enough of winter and being captive indoors. Despite my impatience (and pleas) for milder weather, the cosmos seems to just do whatever it chooses. More cold. More wind and rain.

You’ve probably watched and re-watched a lot of movies and T.V. series, but have you remembered how great it is to journey slowly and intricately through a great story? I’ve had to remind myself that this is absolutely the time of year that we don’t have to be outside working on the yards or whatever. Right now is the perfect time to cuddle under a lap blanket with a warm drink and go on a journey elsewhere.

In a book, you find characters you’ll never meet and also familiar characters who do surprising things. You find places you know well, and strange worlds you could have never imagined. You find adventure or travel or escape in a good book. You find people, places, and perspectives that can change your outlook or your view of the world.

And for those of us who love well-written words, we often find exceptional ones:

~ All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

“Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.”

“So many windows are dark. It’s as if the city has become a library of books in an unknown language, the houses great shelves of illegible volumnes, the lamps all extinguished.”

~ The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

“Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives!”

“All water is connected and only land and people are discontinuous. And his land is a place where he can no longer stay.”

~ Holly by Stephen King

“Holly knows this is how addicts think and behave: they rearrange the furniture of their lives to make room for their bad habits.”

“She smiles. She dies. A world of words dies with her.”

~ Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

“Because love, at its root, is hope. Hope for tomorrow. Hope for what could be. Hope that the someone you’ve entrusted your everything to will cradle and protect it. And hope? That shit is harder to kill than a dragon.”

“The first year is when some of us lose our lives. The second year is when the rest of us lose our humanity.”

~ The Color Purple by Alice Walker

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

~ Moby Dick by Herman Melville

“Call me Ishmael.”

“I am madness maddened! That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself!”