Category: lifestyle
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The ancient (and racy) origins of holiday feasting
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I begin to sing about Poseidon, the great god,mover of the earth and fruitless seagod of the deep who is also lord of Helicon and wide Aegae.A two-fold office the gods allotted you,O Shaker of the Earth, to be a tamer of horsesand a saviour of ships!Hail, Poseidon, Holder of…
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Happy Halloween!
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October needs to be longer than 31 days, IMHO, so we could enjoy more of it. After all the build-up of the season, I hope you have a marvelously eerie evening.
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Tea and a Mystery – the Lord Peter Wimsey series
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I’ve always loved stylish mysteries, the ones with piles of atmosphere. British mysteries from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, set in the 1920s and 30s, or just about anything in a foreign setting – armchair travel with a thrill. Agatha Christie’s more exotic stories have been a long-standing favourite.…
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On hiatus this week
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I’m on hiatus this week while my laptop is being repaired. There will be a special post next week about the importance of plants in our world and the increasing phenomenon of ‘plant blindness’, where people ignore the ‘green dimension’ (a term I’m adopting from an ecological writer whose work…
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What is biophilia and why is it trending
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My hubby and I don’t have a lot of natural green in our house, largely because I can’t grow anything. People who give me plants do so at their own risk, so to speak – I usually warn them that their gift probably won’t survive. I do have one plant…
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Let there be wonder
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On my television as I write this post, intrepid Sinbad is battling a skeleton raised by the evil sorcerer Sokurah, inside a castle that’s a delightful amalgam of medieval walls, Arabic arches and bottomless stone caverns. There’s a massive green dragon, which, fortunately for Sinbad and the princess he’s to…
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Our Own Hero’s Journey
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Someone asked me once who my heroes were, and the person who immediately came to mind was a customer at the pharmacy where I worked. She had Crohn’s disease, which can be a miserable experience on a daily basis, but whenever she came in she was unfailingly pleasant and nice.…
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Ode to Eggnog
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Imagine a chill December night, frost riming the grassy slopes leading down to the Hudson River in New York State. A young man with dark hair and haunted eyes removes his cadet jacket and slings it over the back of a colonial-era chair beside a small wooden table. He lights…
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Indulge in a Christmas Tea
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“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”– Henry James Afternoon tea is one of those lovely pauses in a busy day – small wonder it’s become extraordinarily popular in our crazed modern world. And what better time to…
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Holiday magic?
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So the Victorian Christmas wasn’t always so perfect, with all the social ills of the period, but in Dickens’ view, Christmas was what you made of it. And I think he understood the celebration far better than a lot of people do today. What makes a perfect Christmas, or other…