Merry Christmas and Happy New Year?

As long as we're looking at holiday photos, here's another one:

My parents put this photo in their Christmas card in 1959. That tells you something about the sense of humor that prevailed in our household and that helped to make me who and what I am.

O, Santa Baby

This year, I find that I'm excited about the holiday, even a bit fluttery. It's been years since I've been like this: all lights and sparkles and ribbons and hope. I've always loved Christmas—the traditions, the vast promise of the holy day—but there was something lost along the way. I  imagine the credit for my joyful resurgence of  anticipatory Yuletide excitement goes to Oliver, age not-quite-two. We didn't see him last Christmas, but this year everyone is coming home. 

I am deeply grateful.

(That's Oliver in a photo taken for his family's Christmas card last year.)

I'm melting!

Jenn Rice shot some photos of me while Mom, Dad and I were at the house in Brown County today. This is one of the sillier shots. I was melting at the time, possibly from the effects of sunlight. 

I don't suppose this should be used as an author shot. Unless I decide to write a vampire story.

Best of Summer

Inspired by “10 Most Fun Things to Do in Summer,” a post by Georgia Miller, young daughter of Karen Maezen Miller, on Karen’s blog, Cheerio Road, July 13, 2011. I chose to list summer bests.

• My gardens: the colors, the scents, the wind moving through. Waves of purple petunias. Orange and golden and multi-color marigolds. Impatiens. Old-fashioned pink roses. Coneflower. Cosmos. Daisies and yarrow. Velvety orange tithonia. Lilies. Zinnias.
• Morning walks in the shade on the Monon or elsewhere
• Green. All kinds of green: light, dark, greeny-yellow, piney-blue-green. All sorts of textures.
• The play of light and shadow as the light changes throughout the day
• Spotting fireflies in the gloaming
• Sitting outside in the dark around a fire with favorite people, telling stories
• Driving in the country at dusk
• Sleeping in on the morning of a rare thunderstorm. Hearing rain on the roof of the skylight (or a tent).
• A concert or theatre outdoors, with a picnic. Or  an old-fashioned melodrama.
• Festivals and fairs and lemonade
• The cool interior of a library on a hot day. Library reading programs.
• Viewing the movie “Independence Day” on the Fourth of July, every year. And a parade. And sparklers.
• Real tomatoes, especially on a BLT
• Road trips: Michigan, Iowa, South Dakota, Wyoming. To be visited: Maine, Montreal, Prince Edward Is. 

What's on your list?

Reading a map

I wanted a map for my cousin, Beth, who is planning a visit to our home. So I went online. I happened to use Google maps, but there are other free services. I spent most of the next hour wandering Indiana, not because I needed to—I had already sent Beth the maps I thought she would need—but because I like to explore.

I followed the White River east until I drew near to my hometown, then retraced the flow, heading downriver (southwest) to the Wabash and on down, visiting New Harmony, Posey County, Evansville, Henderson, KY, and places where only a few people live in tiny settlements cut off from the nearest similar burg or farm by the loops and whorls of the Wabash and Ohio rivers as they cut dividing lines between Indiana and Illinois, between Illinois and Kentucky, and between Kentucky and Indiana. The map reveals places where a section of Indiana is farther west than a section of Illinois at the same latitude, and other places where a section of Indiana is south of a neighboring section of Kentucky. Intriguing.

 Who are the people who live there? How do they make a living? What do they do for fun? What are their hopes? What are their stories?

Could I read them on the map?

(Map of southwestern Indiana from Google maps online)

Running the gamete?

Spotted today (July 6, 2011) on Fandango’s website:

In addition to the transposition of two of the letters in “Canadian,” the clip includes this blooper: “run the gamete.” I don’t believe the writer intended a reference to genetics, in which a gamete is a cell that fuses with another cell during fertilization (from the Ancient Greek word for husband, gametes, or wife, gamete): a sperm or egg cell. What was meant is “run the gamut,” an expression meaning to extend across a full range. Originally, the term was a musical reference to the notes of a scale. The lowest note in the G scale, ut, was represented by the Greek symbol gamma. That made the note gamma ut. Over time, it became gamut, and running the full range of the scale became running the gamut.