All Purls. No Swine.
I’m proud to come from a family that values its traditions. Sometimes, those traditions take the form of my dropping everything, getting in the car in all my sweat and filth, racing up the road to Lowes or Home Depot before it closes, and buying the $.50 item which is the only thing preventing me from completing a major home remodeling… Continue reading Turtons All The Way Down
The following is a lightly edited version of a post I wrote on the Queen's death, a year ago today: The only British monarch of my lifetime died a year ago today. She was crowned in June 1953, slightly more than a year before I was born. I was named after her, “Elizabeth,” and–for my… Continue reading “I have to be seen to be believed”–Queen Elizabeth II
August 26, 2023, is the 148th anniversary of the birth of John Buchan. Born in Perth in 1875, the son of a Free Church of Scotland minister and his wife, Buchan attended the University of Glasgow as a scholarship student, then moving on to Oxford where--according to Wikipedia (which can sometimes be trusted to get… Continue reading Celebrating John Buchan
If Florence Nightingale were still alive, she’d have been 203 years old in 2023. She was born on May 12th, 1820, just a few short months after Mad King George (of American Revolution fame) breathed his last. By the time she died, 113 years ago this week, on August 13, 1910, George V (the current… Continue reading The Lady With the–Cats?
Crimenutely. Naomi Wolf. King Charles. She’s entering the seventh decade of her life and, thirty-plus years ago, was the darling of the feminist movement, being praised fulsomely by folks like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan alike for her brilliant ideas. However, Camille Paglia never bought it. Something that intelligent women should have paid attention to,… Continue reading Naomi Wolf’s Dishonest Perspective on the Recent Coronation
I’ve mentioned once or twice that I’m an avid fan of the novels of mystery writer Louise Penny. A friend of mine introduced me to them several years ago, and at first I was hesitant, wondering how I’d get along with a Francophone Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, and his adventures in and… Continue reading The Things We Love: In Memoriam, Rupert Brooke
A little over four years ago, I wrote a post–Shadow Lands and Cyber Worlds–in which I reflected, among a few other things, on the books and stories of my childhood, and the life lessons I took from them: Through my childhood and over time, I came to find lessons and truth in these tales of… Continue reading The Death of Imagination
On this day--186 years ago--June 20, 1837, a young woman, just eighteen years old, ascended the British throne. She replaced her uncle, King William IV, and was just seventeen years removed from the death of her grandfather, King George III. (Remember him? I do--even just through history studies and because he wasn't--at least in my… Continue reading The Empress of India (and Much Else)
Yesterday was Memorial Day in these United States of America. Somewhere along the way, I heard a small blurp on a news report that May 29, 2023 was also the seventieth anniversary of Edmund Hillary’s and Sherpa Tenzing’s successful ascent of Mt. Everest. It is a time so long ago (barely sixteen months before I… Continue reading “Because it is There”
ICYMI, May 21 was "International Tea Day." I celebrate it here: Gosh. When I discovered this event, I thought–as so many of my progenitors, particularly those like Auntie Pat and my Granny, might have–How marvelous! A day celebrating the joys of tea, its restorative effects in the face of calamity, and its propensity for inducing calm… Continue reading Happy (Belated) International Tea Day!