Goines On: Birthday books

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Goines was at first bewildered by the heft of The New Yale Book of Quotations that his son gave him for his 80^th birthday, along with a paperback volume of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by Stephen Mitchell, who his son knew was Goines’ favorite.
    Upon extracting the Yale book from its thick fabric bag (which Goines assumed the publisher had clothed it in), Goines said he thought it must weigh two to three pounds. “Five,” said his son.
    Did the book of quotations really weigh that much?, Goines wondered – not a book for reading while holding. It would need to be spread open on a table or on a big pillow on his lap.
    That heavy or not, Goines knew the Yale book had to be made use of, and the day after his son and daughter left to return to their own homes, Goines resolved to share something from the book each day with them and Mrs. Goines. One tack might be to look for quotes by people with the last name of one or another of the Goineses’ ancestors. That might be fun.
    First, he concentrated on reading the introduction, which seemed to be a trove of interesting information. The first quotation he would share was discussed there, the “Serenity Prayer,” which was pronounced not to come directly from the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, as Goines had always heard.
    Goines’ thoughts bounced sideways…hadn’t he attended a lecture or sermon by Reinhold Niebuhr at Yale sixty years earlier? It was probably a sermon, because, if his memory served, Niebuhr had delivered it in Yale’s non-denominational chapel (or was it interdenominational?) – what was that chapel’s  name?…Goines thought he had listened to Niebuhr there....
    His thoughts collected themselves, and he texted the “Serenity Prayer,” credited to Winnifred Crane Wygal, “U.S. social service organization official, 1884-1972”:

Oh, God, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and insight to know the one from the other.
                   The Woman’s Press, Mar. 1933.
It is most commonly quoted as, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”...Alcoholics Anonymous, which has made extensive use of the prayer, has credited [Niebuhr] for it.

    And then Goines carried the Yale book to the kitchen scale and carefully weighed it. 1,810 grams (or 1.81 kilograms). Goines calculated that, at 2.2 lbs per kilo, that would be...He decided to just change the units setting on the scale: 3 lbs, 15.8 ozs, very nearly 4 lbs. And the book of Rilke poems, the fabric bag, and the packaging would make it 5.
    Goines interpreted this as a sort of confirmation of Wygal’s call for serenity – in this case to accept and live with Yale University Press’ decision to produce such a heavy tome. Goines vowed to make heavy use of it.

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