As you may remember from last month, my writing group, Stonehenge, has started a group blog. I have a new post up there today, about how writing can affect reading, and how reading from the wrong mind can sometimes cause trouble… I hope you drop by to take a look!
Category: Ruminations
Saturday Snapshot: Daffodil Season
I get ridiculously happy each year when the daffodils are in bloom. They aren’t blooming around my neighborhood yet (though I’ve got my eye on some green spikes) but they are back in Safeway’s floral section. I buy daffodils every week for as long as they’re available, and enjoy them immensely.
Daffodils apparently can symbolize all sorts of different things, but my favorite is as a symbol of renewal and rebirth. And they’re supposed to be good luck! For me, they also remind me of my first, life-changing trip to England. Next time I go back, I plan to go in spring…because it’s off-season for the tourists, and the weather will be decent…and the daffodils will be in bloom!
I don’t have any good pictures of this year’s daffodils yet…but here are a couple riots of daffodils from past years.
Visit At Home with Books for more Saturday Snapshots!
Saturday Snapshot: Presidential Statues
With the Inauguration this past week, I thought it would be fun to focus a Saturday Snapshot on past presidents, using photos from my trip to Washington D.C. I didn’t get pictures of any living presidents, but there were lots of good statues!
The Lincoln Memorial was the one I most wanted to see, maybe because it shows up the most often in books and movies–and I have this thing about visiting places I’ve read about. It’s a beautiful monument and, as the inscription says, it feels very much like a temple, despite its essentially secular nature.
Jefferson is another one with a temple, that beautiful round marble space, and with such a hushed, reverent…well, temple feel. I’ve been meaning to read a biography of Jefferson ever since I visited…eventually I’ll get on that.
There’s an outdoor monument for Roosevelt. I love that he’s shone with his “little dog, Fala.” Thanks to YouTube, you can see a wonderfully funny speech Roosevelt gave about Fala.
And speaking of funny, I am probably far too amused by this Roman-style, shirtless George Washington in the Smithsonian. I just have this general impression that in life, no one saw Washington shirtless, except for Martha–maybe! 😀
Visit At Home with Books for more Saturday Snapshots!
What Are You Reading…in January?
It’s been a few weeks since I posted for the What Are You Reading meme from Book Journey, so now seems like a good time for a new installment.
I’ve been making all sorts of headway with my science fiction reading. I’ve managed to dip into just about every type of sci fi I was planning: Pern, Star Wars, Star Trek and two Burroughs books. I also finally finished Reflections by Diana Wynne Jones, a wonderful collection of essays about storytelling.
On audio, I’m about halfway through Walden by Henry David Thoreau. It’s a funny thing–sometimes he seems to just drop brilliant gems every two sentences. Other times he loses me for five minutes at a time. But overall I’m enjoying listening.
It turns out to be a good thing after all that I decided to join the L. M. Montgomery reading challenge…after three weeks of sci fi, my excitement was flagging. So I was all set to jump into Pat of Silver Bush, which is a completely different world. I’m midway through now, and may or may not (but probably will) go straight on to Mistress Pat.
After that, I expect to have renewed eagerness for sci fi, so it’ll be back to Star Wars for Darksaber, the next volume of the Callista Trilogy. And then…more Star Trek or else Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card.
Still lots of good books in the stack!
Saturday Snapshot: Gargoyles
Last week was fun, so I thought I’d come back this week with more knick-knack stories. First, a picture that’s definitely not a knick-knack…
These are two of Quasimodo’s gargoyles, up in the Towers of Notre Dame. I climbed a LOT of steps last September to get a close-up view, and I think it’s entirely the fault of Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame that I wanted to do it. And it was worth every step!
After I came down all those steps, I bought a gargoyle. If you’re ever at Notre Dame, halfway up the towers there’s a gift shop, where they helpfully tell you that they’re the only one operating in the church. They don’t tell you that you can buy gargoyles at half the price from vendors along the Seine, which is what I did. So I brought home my Notre Dame Gargoyle and installed him on one corner of my tallest bookcase.
And then I started to regret that I hadn’t bought two, because it felt a bit lopsided without one on each corner. So it all worked out remarkably conveniently when I unwrapped a lumpy package at a White Elephant gift exchange on New Year’s Eve…
I could honestly tell my friends that, oddly enough, I had been wanting a small gargoyle figurine! So now I have my Thinker Gargoyle to sit at the opposite corner of the bookcase and bring balance to this particular corner of the universe. 🙂
Have a lovely Saturday! Visit At Home with Books for more Saturday Snapshots.
Tales of the Marvelous 