Spring has come and gone, and there have been some hard times recently, but it’s not too late to share a few photos from my favorite fantasy and science fiction convention. The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts met as usual in Orlando during spring break, and it was a delight. The theme […]
I mentioned a recent vulpine obsession; as a result, my readers may have to endure a few fox-themed posts. We’ll begin with Leos Janáček’s masterpiece, The Cunning Little Vixen. As an opera, The Cunning Little Vixen is extremely difficult to stage. (So I’m told. I’ve never actually produced an opera.) The New York Times, for […]
Despite being busy designing and building a new home–not to mention packing up 5,000 lbs of books (and this is after The Great Purge)–I did manage to read a few things in 2018. There are more YA (young adult) and MG (middle grade) novels on my bookshelf than usual, because I’ve been sending subscription book […]
I’ve already promised (or threatened) to create separate posts for recent adventure and wildlife photos, since I’m still catching up from the Great Blog Silence of 2018, so let’s just decide right now that our Year in Review will exclude anything having to do with climbing mountains. 2018 was a year of endings and new […]
I spent my birthday hiking in the mountains outside Santa Fe, and the weather gods were absolutely there for me, serving up the kind of fluffy wet snow I’d been dreaming of all year. When we first contemplated moving to New Mexico, I felt that I could be on board as long as I had […]
The Christmas holiday found me in Minnesota with my family, where everything was blissful and perfect, apart from the blizzard, the bitter cold, and the neighbor’s house catching on fire. The skies were lined with silver, the low temperatures producing some of the most striking sun dogs I’ve ever seen. On Boxing Day, we experienced […]
When we bought land in New Mexico, we knew we had about a year to build our house–which meant we had about a year to experience as much of Colorado as we could. On our list: the fourteener. Colorado boasts nearly 60 mountains that reach 14,000 feet or more. We chose Mt. Evans, originally named […]
Do people still use the expression “salt mines” to describe tedious work? I’m always on the hunt for interesting idioms, and spending time with The General (age 90+) has enabled me to discover some choice archaic phrases, like “brown study,” a melancholy reverie. But we’re not talking about brown today; we’re talking about pink. My […]