GOODBYE TO 2013! & why not promote literature and defend free expression?

Happy New Year!! And just to get things started right I thought I'd share a few thoughts... so 2013 is finally leaving and I for one am happy to see it go. Goodbye to the worst year I can ever remember. There are a few challenges ahead because 2013 brought the loss of a colleague at work from domestic violence, a frozen shoulder which I am still recovering from (6 weeks of Physical Therapy and making some progress but a ways to go), migraines that intensified to a ridiculous level, some difficult challenges for my

daughter which I've described here and some frustrations at work which are not ending but I hope I will either adjust to, the changes ahead will make things better or... maybe I'll find a new job? At any rate, there are still things to deal with but it was a pretty bleak year.  

But the sun is setting on all that (get it, the picture is of the setting sun?- haha) Sorry.

 Since the shoulder is on the recovering end, I know that I am on the upside of that and the migraines seem to be improving with my new device which I've also told you about here. My older daughter is having a baby in January so there are some good things coming and I am just crossing my fingers “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well."  Hope springs eternal as they say.

I'm just full of cliches today.  

So let's have a glass of champagne and hope for a better year together!

 From the Library Journal tumblr site: "Librarians at Oakland’s main library have collected the scraps of paper ephemera left behind in returned books, shoved into nooks in the library shelves or secretly slipped to librarians."

Finally as an FYI... 

 Support PEN American Center

Any amount you donate to PEN by December 31 will enter you in a drawing to receive two full-access tickets to PEN's Tenth Annual World Voices Festival, April 28-May 4, 2014.

PEN American Center is a global community of writers working to promote literature and to defend free expression.Check them out at www.Pen.org
Contributions provide unrestricted operating support, helping make possible a broad range of advocacy and literary programming. No amount is too small. 

Merry Christmas!

I hope you're having a lovely day where ever you are!

literary conspriracy theory countdown

I won't say I'm a proponent of all of the theories I will post in the days running up to Halloween but this first one has always been a mystery and a bit horrifying considering who the victim was...

So, let’s just look at the facts shall we?

On October 3, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was wandering the streets of Baltimore delirious, he was later described as being "in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance", according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker. Rushed by carriage to the Washington Medical College, he died alone that hospital on Sunday, October 7, 1849, at 5:00 in the morning.  Odd enough that Poe was in Baltimore (he was headed for Philadelphia) but the author of the macabre was never coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire condition or... why he was wearing clothes that were not his own? According to witnesses, Poe is said to have repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death although it was not clear to whom he was referring.  Newspapers at the time reported the author's death as "congestion of the brain" or "cerebral inflammation", common euphemisms for deaths from disreputable causes such as alcoholism. Though Poe was known to drink to excess he was not a hopeless alcoholic[1], it is unlikely that his drinking him brought him to a strange city in strange clothes where he would die for unknown reasons. 

I have always thought, since I wrote a paper on Poe in high school, that there was foul play but since all medical records, including his death certificate, have been lost since that time and Poe’s death remains shrouded in mystery.

image: ChicagoPublicLibrary.tumblr.com

What do you think?  

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[1] http://www.eapoe.org/geninfo/poealchl.htm

I feel crippled

I’ve misplaced the chord to hook my camera up to my computer and can’t download any pictures- plus we haven’t done much hiking due to an ongoing health issue (long story). And I have so many pretty pictures of Autumns past that I've never touched up (my camera really isn’t capable of capturing the glories of a fall day without a little help) that I thought I might do a bit of that now.

This is a picture of a Cooper’s Hawk that was hunting small birds in an area I was walking one day a few years back. I was shocked to be as close as I was as it was a heavily populated area and there were quite a few people just a few feet away, but it seems that he was on the immature side and hadn’t learned the finer points of discretion.  

What I should have done is make a video of his behavior because the Cooper’s Hawk is really quite amazing to watch. But we’ll just enjoy his pose for today.