What do you think about on the darkest evening of the year?

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

From “Spellbound” by Emily Brontë

Exactly the right poem for an early snowstorm, record cold, and super moon when you still have to go work.

Harder than I thought! Do poetry collections and plays count? Plus several of my favorite books were by authors who haven’t written 5 or more.

Charles Dickens
Jane Austen
Agatha Christie
Madeleine L’Engle
Lois Lowry
Laurie Halse Andersen
Maud Hart Lovelace
Philippa Gregory
Carolyn Meyer
Tahir Shah

First snow, and very early!

A Flame

God, give us a long winter,
and quiet music, and patient mouths,
and a little pride— before
our age ends.
Give us astonishment
and a flame, high, bright.

-Adam Zagajewski

Communities need used-book shops.

As the trends in our world are increasingly standardized and entrenched by "predictive" technologies that stifle innovation and reduce human actions into economic categories...

We need a full range of possibilities for readers and communities to explore and share.

The comfort of late night candlelight, a warm blanket and a screen door to let in the strangely warm breeze from the woods

I’m a huge Hemingway fan. I’ve read everything Faulkner, Joyce, Ellison, Twain, and Brontë have ever written. I even own the complete library Dickens collection, all 28 volumes. And do you know which books have taught me the most about life? Calvin and Hobbes.

I was moving the small decaying wood pile to a new spot so critters can use it for winter… but it’s already claimed

Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them. -
Assata Shakur

Pic of the day

#photography

First time I’ve ever been impressed by a chandelier.

Once in awhile Baba Yaga (the neighbors’ escaped, rewilded chicken) stops by in the early morning for a snack.

A poem to welcome September-

September’s Baccalaureate
A combination is
Of Crickets- Crows - and Retrospects/
And a dissembling Breeze

That hints without assuming-
An innuendo sear
That makes the Heart put up its Fun/
And turn Philosopher.

-Emily Dickinson, #1271

What skeleton could this be? (In the Midwest)

I am never tired of watching sunsets.

It’s easy to ease suffering, just a little.

First night of my secondhand lanterns and solar tea lights.

It’s hard to make heaven sound good, but this is close.