I am thankful
This is my last post until Monday. I might do comments/tweets etc but no actual posts--unless something fabulous or terrible or excessively intriguing happens. Meanwhile I'll be being thankful (big 'T' for US citizens and ex-pats, little 't' for the rest of us).I am thankful for my life. I am thankful for Kelley. I am thankful for the swarming flock of hot needle birds (I think they're a kind of tit, but their calls are high and sharp and hot) that flicked into the vine maples and hung upside down, chattering, while I exercised this morning. I am thankful for the colour of the leaves outside my window which are like claret and mango and redcurrant sorbet. I am thankful

Essays? Like them or not?
Zadie Smith talks about the essay in the Guardian:For Samuel Johnson in 1755 it is: "A loose sally of the mind; an irregular undigested piece; not a regularly and orderly composition." And if this looks to us like one of Johnson's lexical eccentricities, we're chastened to find Joseph Addison, of all people, in agreement ("The wildness of these compositions that go by the name of essays") and behind them both three centuries of vaguely negative connotation. Beginning in the 1500s an essay is: the action or process of trying or testing; a sample, an example; a reh

miracle MS cure--uh-huh
From: CebiiNicola, have you seen this? CCSVI= Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency, the condition Dr. Zamboni is researching.The CTV W5 report: "The Liberation Treatment: A whole new approach to MS" can be seen here: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20091120/W5_liberati

by the Salish Sea
from Wikimedia CommonsIt's official. Kelley and I now live by the Salish Sea. We still live by Puget Sound, of course--it's just now acknowledged to be part of an ecologically coherent system that ignores the Canadian bo

two more links--my sweetie is awesome!
Kelley gives some writing advice at io9.com. "Your awesome novel is firing on all thrusters... except one. A major character, who's important to the story, isn't clicking. She's dull, or he doesn't play well with others. We asked some great authors what to do about this quandary." Kelley explains how to fix it.Over at Sterling Editing, the weekly round-up of links for writers, including how to write a fabulous book proposal, why you need an evil word-slashing $&9^%@# editor, and more...