Posts tagged as:

holidays

happy holidays

December 31, 2011

are spent like this:

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fashion queen at the end of the year

December 31, 2011

She’s given up her spare costume of last winter for some New Year’s Eve decadence. Garlic scapes, darling.

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Joyeux Noël à tous

December 24, 2011

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what a difference a day makes

December 23, 2011

On the first day of winter in New Hampshire, the ferns, though flattened, were green, the moss was bright emerald green, the mountain laurel was green, and this lovely ground cover was green, green, green:

On the second day of winter, my children’s dream of a white Christmas may be coming true.

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In Memoriam

December 19, 2011

So many friends and family members have experienced the death of someone near to them in this past year, and are still in the first year of mourning. Marge Piercy’s poem “Kaddish,” an interpretation of the Kaddish spoken by Jewish mourners during the first year after the death of a close family member, also seems [...]

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Letters from Father Christmas; J. R. R. Tolkien (1920-1943; first published 1976)

December 12, 2011

Another holiday favorite in this house are the extraordinary letters and drawings Father Christmas sent the Tolkien children between 1920 and 1943. Take a moment to remember the world created by Tolkien in The Hobbit and the Ring Trilogy, remember the maps, drawings and paintings with which he illustrated them, and then imagine being the [...]

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Reading aloud in Advent time

December 10, 2011

I’ve been silent for weeks here, finishing NaNoWriMo (52K, baby!) and then, guess what, having so much fun on the current novel that it’s all I want to work on in those wee dark morning moments I secrete away for my creative delight. And by the way, I wasn’t having much fun for the first [...]

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Pish, Posh, Said Hieronymous Bosch; Nancy Willard & The Dillons, 1992

October 31, 2011

It’s time to start thinking about holiday gifts (if you’re not one of those people who did it all in July). For the children on your list, you can never go wrong with books. Most kids don’t have enough, and those few who do, who are tripping over piles of them in their bedroom—well, hopefully [...]

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Happy kids

January 25, 2011

It doesn’t take much, just a few sprinkles on the birthday cupcakes.

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Ring Out, Wild Bells

January 1, 2011

If the word “Christ” bothers you, feel free to make an appropriate substitution. “Ring the fuller minstrel in”—I love that so much. I can’t help but feel Tennyson is a literary antecedent of Leonard Cohen. May we all be purer conduits for our art and work, whatever it may be, in the year that dawns [...]

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