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Thanx to firecat

As you may know, a Peeps Store opened recently. Peepy and I were very excited about it and had even received our own super special VIP invitation to the Grand Opening . . .


Peepy really, really, really wanted to go. Especially since the store was a tribute to her.

But I've been busy writing a book and couldn't make last week's opening . . .

(That's my office. I'm in there, somewhere.)

Then yesterday Peeps decided that she just had to go visit the store, even if it meant leaving me behind. And so she took her first solo trip back east, flying first class, of course . . .


It was freezing in the Washington, DC area where the store was . . .


Still, Peepy was determined to get the the Peeps place no matter what. But first she stopped for a snack . . .

(The food was better than the spelling.)

At last! Peeps made it to the Peeps Place . . .


Of course, when she left the store, the peeparazzi were waiting for her . . .


She graciously stopped and posed for pictures . . .


Happy Holidays to You from Me and my Peep!!!!


Oh! Wait! One more thing . . .



CLICK HERE for an interview I did with Once Upon a Romance. There's all sorts of juicy stuff in it, including my popular recipe for chicken-flavored brownies.

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For today's visit on 31 Blogs you might not know I want to point you to Shen's Books. Shen's publishes beautiful books and has a blog/website full of multicultural book related info.

Recently, publisher Renee Ting started a new feature called the Multicultural Minute - short 1 minute videos connected to the multicultural kidlit world.

A couple of my favorites are Multicultural Minute on Food and The Multicultural Minute on Biracial Picture Books

As I've said before (and more than once), one of my all-time favorite stories of all time is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I adore it for its redemption story, for its humor, for its curmudgeon of a main character, its moral and social consciousness, its messages and, on a different level, for quite a number of its lines.

Yesterday, as it turns out, was the anniversary of the first publication of A Christmas Carol, which first appeared in print on December 19, 1843. I only just learned from The Writer's Almanac that Dickens wrote the story beginning in late October of 1843 - that's right, less than two full months from start of writing to completion of publication. His prior novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, had been a commercial failure, and Dickens apparently believed he might be able to cash in with a heartwarming holiday tale. Now, I can't be certain how much money it earned him in his lifetime, but it's certainly sold bazillions of copies over the centuries.

Tonight, a few of my favorite lines from A Christmas Carol and from some of the movie versions of it, too.

The story opens with one of the best opening lines ever:

"Marley was dead, to begin with."

Dickens gets a bit too wordy with his explanation about precisely how dead Marley really and truly was, but parts of it - such as the "dead as a doornail" bit - are quite funny. This is usually edited a bit in performances, and one of the funniest versions of the opening is probably found in A Muppet Christmas Carol, wherein the Great Gonzo delivers the lines and explains to Rizzo the Rat why it's important.

"If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "Every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart."

Ahahaha! How can you not love Scrooge for his curmudgeonly attitude? And who among us hasn't had a moment or two of a similar thought somewhere along the lines during the holidays - say, when waiting in a line, or in a hurry somewhere? I have a sneaking suspicion that one of the reasons people love the story is that even though none of us want to confess to having anything in common with the miserly, nasty, cold-hearted Scrooge, we all recognize a bit of ourselves in the old man nevertheless. He may not represent the best part of human nature, but much of his character represents aspects of human nature that resonates with the less-good parts in ourselves. And if old Scrooge, who is so much worse than us, can find redemption, then so must we all be able to. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?" Scrooge trembled more and more. "Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it since. It is a ponderous chain!"

I have a sincere fondness for quite a few of the lines that belong to Marley's ghost, in no small part because I once played the role of Marley in a high school version of the play. And perhaps one of my most favorite bits is this response to Scrooge's attempt at a compliment, when he calls Marley a good man of business:

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business."

I love the Muppets' version of the story, called, fittingly enough, A Muppet Christmas Carol, which uses the two old guys as "Marley and Marley". I love how they comment on what is, essentially, Dickens's own dialogue:

Jacob Marley: Why do you doubt your senses?

Ebenezer Scrooge: Because a little thing can affect them. A slight disorder of the stomach can make them cheat. You may be a bit of undigested beef, a blob of mustard, a crumb of cheese. Yes. There's more gravy than of grave about you.

Robert Marley: More gravy than of grave?

Jacob Marley: What a terrible pun. Where'd you get those jokes?

Robert Marley: Leave comedy to the bears, Ebenezer.</b>

I can't tell you why it is I so love these next lines, but I do:

"Who, and what are you?" Scrooge demanded. "I am the Ghost of Christmas Past." "Long Past?" inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarfish stature. "No. Your past."

I guess because it's the introduction to the first of the visiting spirits?

From the movie Scrooged starring Bill Murray, this bit from Frank Cross's past really cracks me up every time. The lines are said by his father, played by his real-life brother, Brian Doyle-Murray:

"All day long I listen to people give me excuses why they can't work. My legs hurt. My back aches. I'm only four. The sooner he learns life isn't handed to him on a silver platter, the better."

Among the socially conscious lines in the story that I like are quite a few of the exchanges involving the Ghost of Christmas Present, who explains that some of the men of the cloth and other leaders are acting on their own (and are possibly mistaken):

"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."

This particular spirit also parrots Scrooge's own words back to him when Scrooge shows concern over Tiny Tim's fate (the lines about decreasing the surplus population), and he also has the great explanation of the dangers of poverty and ignorance, which I've quoted before, but which bear repeating:

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.

"They are Man’s," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!"

And I do love Scrooge's declaration, even if it's a bit moralistic:

"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!"

Sing it, Ebenezer, sing it loud!

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

Now that we've been reminded that Phil knows as much about children as Elly does, it isn't much of a stretch to assume that Christmas week will be spent reminding him that there's a woman with a kid that needs a mayyyyuuunnn to complete her so he should listen to his older sister for once in his life and settle down.

I've been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender (also known these days as "The Other Avatar"), and enjoying it, for all that it's messages lie rather close to the surface -- there's enough done well with this series that I can mostly forgive the things that aren't (as always, in writing, it's what you do right, not what you manage not to do wrong). But today, I came to a bit that got me thinking about a very common trope in fiction that doesn't always work for me.

( Thoughts on fictional guilt and responsibility )

Which once was called "Things to Come," but I fear that's too literary a reference for the current editorship. This is an actual headline for something called Dark Slayer by Christine Feehan. I am not making this up:
"She's been alone for over a century. He has a deathwish. . . together they will find hope."

[or fight crime?] It's not supposed to be funny. . .but it looks like it could be a hoot. I'm not willing to buy it just for a possible laugh.

And here's a review credited to Library Journal which would certainly convince me to buy the book--NOT:
For Catalyst, by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough: "a first-rate sf adventure with strong male and female protagonists and a life-affirming theme." Urp.

It's about cats in space, "a captivating tale of the Barque Cats."

But it's definitely snowing out there--I don't hear any howling winds, not yet at least.
Once again, thrilled to be inside, warm and dry, and planning to stay that way till the snow stops, the roads are plowed, and the walks are shoveled.
Hope nobody is in transit.

Tickled pink to be included in Paul Cornell's The 12 Blogs of Christmas (#6: "So What Are You Doing This Christmas?") -
my answer squeezed in between Lois Bujold's & Charles Stross' (dear autopope), a nice place to be!

What we will actually be doing on Dec. 24th is unpacking bags from our current trip: We're on Sanibel Island with my family, unwinding & communing & enjoying the fact that it is not icy and blustery (though I do miss the way the City shuts down under severe weather, and everything gets magical). We barely made it - not because of the snow, but the NYC traffic! We actually did miss our flight out on Thurs. night - first time that's ever happened, though Delia is always convinced it will - imagine, if you will, a white-knuckle taxi ride every time! But when we still hadn't gotten across the TriBoro 40 minutes before takeoff, I phoned NWA & admitted defeat, and they booked us (yes, with appropriate penalties, but not too heartstopping) on a flight the next morning. So we went to this great little place I know ("Hotel Chateau Riverside"), and made popcorn and watched Harry Potter & the Amazingly Dim Adults, and set the alarm.

I hate having to pay the Stupidity Tax (- Who knew we should have left 2 hrs to get to LaGuardia at rush hour before Xmas?), but sometimes you just gotta. At least you get infrastructure & services.

Happy holidays to all, esp those who are enjoying the storm!

So, as part of my day job, and part of the tenure-track position I'm in, I have to submit a portfolio every couple of years to get rehired for another couple of years. One of the things they asked when I got my first packet back was that I include ALL of the written student evaluations (I'd assumed they couldn't possibly want ALL of them, so selected a few at random). At the time I shrugged and said, oh well. I'll just copy them all and stick them in.

But no. Apparently this is not all that they want. What they want is the original copies in the Master portfolio and then in the subsequent 6 smaller folders that you must also submit, they want TYPEWRITTEN TRANSCRIBED copies of all of the evaluations. And not just all from the past year. They want them all SINCE YOU STARTED WORKING THERE.

Now, in the normal course of events, a professor's classes at this college would consist of maybe 15 students each. But I don't teach normal classes. I teach math classes, and have taught the Gen Ed courses for the most part, which means my average class size is around 25. And generally these students don't just put down "great class" or "class sucked" as an evaluation. I somehow end up getting paragraphs for my evaluations. I generally view this as a good thing though, because it shows the students cared enough to say something about my class. And I like getting feedback. But . . .

So now I have to go back and transcribe all of my previous evaluations for the past 4 semesters. That's about 14 classes. 25 evaluations per class. Paragraphs of words. You do the math (I'm on break).

But I want to be hired for another 2 years, so today I broke out the evals and the word processor and began. I got through one semester (4 classes). It took me nearly 2 hours. My back hurts and I really wish that students would learn how to correctly spell "recammend" and "quizes" and "perfessor." (We have to transcribe them verbatim, errors and all.) So I'm putting the evals away for another day now and getting myself some chocolate, damn it!

MyRightWingDad is an archive of right-wing e-mails--the propaganda, racist jokes, and other ugliness which gets circulated among the people who think that "death panels" are an actual part of the proposed health care revamp. I read it regularly just to see what's being said sub rosa among the American wingnutia.

The comments are worth skimming, even though they're usually just "Snopes debunked this one in 2002" or "Nice to see there's no racism in America any more." But this collection of "Jesus was really a..." jokes had some good ones I hadn't seen previously:

Anonymous said...

There were 3 good arguments that Jesus was black:

1. He called everyone brother


2. He liked Gospel


3. He didn't get a fair trial

[. . . ]
But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was a Californian:

1. He never cut His hair


2. He walked around barefoot all the time


3. He started a new religion

[. . .]
But the most compelling argument of all - 3 proofs that Jesus was a WOMAN:

1. He fed a crowd at a moment's notice when there was virtually no food


2. He kept trying to get a message across to a bunch of men who just didn't get it


3. And even when He was dead to the world, He had to get up because there was still work to do....

It is 7:30 p.m. where I live. The weather people on the news have assured me that the storm is just now seriously starting to intensify, and that we will score an additional 1-3" per hour over the next 3-4 hours. That will be on top of what was, as of 6 p.m., 14" of snow here where I live.

This, friends, is what is known as a major snow event 'round these parts. (And what is probably just a normal winter's day for the folks in, say, Maine.)

Anyone who needs a dose of creature love check out that link ( where a one-legged dove cares for baby animals, such as wounded rabbits). [Thanks to Dave Trowbridge for the link]

There is more about Noah and fellow rescue animals here.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RobinMckinleysBlog/~3/KB2A_kgeDew/

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?p=3110

A continuing epic adventure of socks and spindles and fanciness

Part two point five (point another five): THE SPINDLING (demonstration)

Alternate title: In which my numbering system collapses.

If you missed or forgot the previous posts in this series, here are links for The Yarning, The Spindling part one, and The Spindling part two.

4a. The first length of yarn you’ll spin is called a leader. On wheels, this is what you’d use to thread the whole thing and get your real yarn onto the bobbin for the first time. They’re usually a thick cotton string that you use over and over, leaving on the bobbin when you’re not using it. They’re not part of your yarn.

On spindles, leaders are a little different. You CAN use them as your yarn. At least the way I do it (by looping the end of the fiber over the hook and spinning immediately).

Keep the spindle going clockwise. Meanwhile, remember how you tugged the fiber so you could see through it? That’s called drafting. You’ll draft until you get a thickness of yarn you like, and then you’ll let twist into it. The first thing you end up with is something like this.

It’s yarn! Yay!

4b. Here comes another tricky part. It’s another personal preference thing, so you get to experiment with a bunch of ways to find out what works best for you. This is what works best for me.

Some spindles have notches carved into the whorl. Most of mine do not. This isn’t a big deal, except that at some point, your spindle gets full enough that when you start spinning again, the yarn slips around the rim of the whorl and makes a huge mess. The notch would keep the yarn in place. In absence of a notch, this is what I find works best.

I slip the loop of fiber down to the bottom of the hook, then pull the leader down over the whorl.

Wrap the leader around the shaft (clockwise! always in whatever direction you spin) a couple of times, pull it tight, and you’ve got a notch made out of yarn.

Now, when you bring your yarn over the whorl again (has to go back over the hook), you can secure it behind the yarn notch.

This way, the yarn won’t slip around the whorl while you spin. I like to make my notch in the back (6 o’clock) of the hook, because that’s comfortable for me. Other people like theirs in the 3 o’clock or 9 o’clock positions.

5. Now that you’ve got your leader spun, the leader turned into a magic notch, and a whole lot of fiber shouting, “Spin me spin me!” at you, you get to do the rest.

Remember that big rope-snake-thing of fiber we were looking at earlier? When I spin, it tends to dangle in my way and get caught around the spindle. I like to wrap that around my arm.

In quality, prepared wool like this, it WANTS to draft evenly. Spinners talk about fiber that spins itself, and what they mean is how nicely it drafts. The fibers slide against each other smoothly, the twist catches the yarn before the spindle falls to the floor, and the wool feels GOOD in your fingers. It’s soft. (I mean, you can use rough wool if you want. I’m sure there’s a reason for it. But I suggest only using the stuff you want to rub all over yourself. Unless you’re allergic to wool.)

Every time you get a length of yarn your arm can’t hold up, pick up the spindle and wind the yarn onto the shaft. Catch it around the hook, and get the spindle spinning again.

There are a couple methods for this. Some people like to roll the shaft against their thigh. That REALLY gets spindles moving. I’ve tried that, and it ends with spindles flung across the room. I prefer a more sedate way, by taking the bottom of the shaft between my fingers and snapping. That makes the spindle go plenty fast for me, and it doesn’t go so fast that my drafting can’t keep up. The twist has to have somewhere to go, after all.

My first attempts were pretty lumpy. I didn’t understand how the wool worked or wanted to be drawn apart. I just knew every time I tried to draft, the spindle stopped and started going around the wrong way. (When this isn’t a sign of drafting too slowly, this is a sign of spinning too thick for the weight of the spindle. Thin yarn needs more twist. Thick yarn needs less. It can only take so much! So when it’s full of twist, it backspins to let some of it out.)

An easy way to learn how to draft and keep the spindle going is called park and draft. You get to sit down! Give the spindle a sharp twist and let it work up twist. Then stop it, hold it between your knees, and draft out your fiber to the thickness you want. You can see the twist travel up your new yarn! Then spin the spindle again. You can continue in this manner until you’re comfortable enough to try doing both at once: keeping the spindle going and drafting at the same time.

Wind on.

As you get better and more familiar with your tools, you’ll start spinning more evenly and making yarn you’d actually like to show off. Lots of people can see this change in their very first skein of yarn. (I couldn’t. Heh. I had to wait until my second.)

6. Pretty soon you have a nice spindle full of yarn.

This spindle isn’t actually that full, but at some point it does get too heavy for the yarn you want to spin. (Remember, heavier spindles spin thicker yarn. If you want thin yarn, the spindle has to be light. General rule is the spindle can carry its weight, so a 1oz spindle can hold about 1oz yarn before you should do something about it.) What to do then?

7. Remember the TP roll I told you about?

When it’s all on your makeshift bobbin, you can start over until you have all the singles finished.

8. From there, chances are you’ll want to ply your yarn. Take your two or three TP bobbins and stick them in a shoebox with a hole for the ends to come out of, or on an upright paper towel holder where they can spin (my preferred method).

I usually use a heavier spindle for plying, but you can use the one you spun the singles on if you want.

Tie the ends of the singles together and catch them on the hook. Then spin the spindle COUNTER-CLOCKWISE. Always ply in the opposite direction you spun the singles, otherwise you’ll just add more twist to the singles and end up with something about as soft as razor-wire.

This does let out a little of the twist you worked so hard to put in, but not nearly enough to worry about. It makes things softer, too.

And presto. You have yarn.

The coolest thing I've been given this year is a custom-made artisan clock, which I've decided is what you'd get if you made Roly Poly Olie into a Kachina Doll. We hung it outside the doorway to the toy room. ;)

SNOW SNOW SNOW.

In middle grade fiction, especially when it comes to mysteries and adventure stories, the villains tend to be all encompassing, primordially evil, and without regret.

And yet, everyone talks about developing round characters, especially with these elusive, hard-to-define bad guys. Some of this might be achieved by doing the following:

1. Give them a character trait that's interesting, noteworthy, and non bad-guyish. Maybe the bad guy is partial to cuddly animals. Maybe he treats his mother nice. Maybe she has a soft spot for Sesame Street.

2. Give them a reason for being so bad. This could be a childhood experience that had a lasting, traumatizing effect leading to their badness.

3. Love them as you love your heroes. Flaws are human, the bad guy needs to be embraced for them as much as the superheroic, I'm-so-unbelievably-good good guys.

I'll add something else here, the one that's relevant to me now as I'm working on the this-sucks-unbelievably-how-can-I-fix-it chapter.

4. Make the bad guy someone with charm and appeal, with some kind of quality you secretly admire - a quality you might outwardly loathe but inwardly be attracted to, the one that could make you weak in the knees though-you'd-never-admit-it.

Because even if bad guys are the ones that we hate, they're also the ones we deep down love, who get to do the things we might never dare to do ourselves.

So bad guys: daring, charm, ad cuddly animals.

"It's not the bill progressives hoped for. But it's the bill that can pass, now."

--Paul Krugman, 19 Dec 2009

This is the whole of politics. The rest is commentary.

This is one snowstorm where the weatherfolks got things right - we've already got more than 6 inches on the ground, it hasn't stopped snowing all day, and the storm is only now starting to intensify, so it looks as if we'll see a foot or so by the time things are done.

I am positively gleeful, because I have a genuine fondness for snow at this time of year - it's the March storms (which are far more common) that I resent. My glee is based on childhood memories of the occasional white Christmas and of massive snow accumulations, depending on where I lived - this one year when I lived in Clarinda, Iowa, we got at least 3 FEET of snow in one storm. It was epic and awesome and all things good, at least in memory. In reality, I believe it led to a good case of frostnip, or whatever the proper term for severely-cold-but-not-actually-frostbite is, on fingers and toes. But my brother and I did dig tunnels into the mounds in our backyard, and I believe we tried to construct a snow fort/igloo sort of thing, without knowing that there's a proper way to go about it.

My glee at the continuing snow and the heavy accumulation is probably enhanced by the knowledge that I don't have to shovel this time - hubby's been out with the snowblower. It is diminished a wee bit by my concern for angeladegroot and her family, who are flying today (or are supposed to be, at any rate); I'd feel better if I knew they were okay.