Foxgloves just started blooming in the side yard. Took the picture this morning, before the heat had a chance to wilt the blooms.
Host of Flower of the Day is Cee Neuner.
Tag: Sundays
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There are so many challenges to explore!
Travel with Intent hosts the One Word Sunday Challenge. The current theme is TOUCH.
Self’s gallery:
- Elevator attendant, Manuel Benavides Library, University of Santo Tomas, Manila
- Jollibee attendant, Manila – Self asked the driver to stop by Jollibee on her way home from the airport. First stop! It was in the pre-dawn hours. Manila is a city that never sleeps.
- Self, Andrew, and nephew Chris Blackett in the very long ago, at an amusement park in California
- Self with an umbrella in Tokyo, also in the very long ago
Stay safe, dear log readers. Stay safe.
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The title story:
They had dug coal together as young men and then lost touch over the years. Now it looked like they’d be meeting again, this time as lawman and felon, Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder.
Boyd did six years in a federal penitentiary for refusing to pay his income tax, came out and found religion. He received his ordination by mail order in South Carolina and formed a sect he called Christian Aggression. The next thing he did, Boyd formed the East Kentucky Militia with a cadre of neo-Nazi skinheads, a bunch of boys wearing Doc Martens and swastika tattoos. They were all natural-born racists and haters of authority, but still had to be taught what Boyd called “the laws of White Supremacy as laid down by the Lord,” which he took from Christian identity doctrines. Next thing, he trained these boys in the use of explosives and automatic weapons. He told them they were now members of Crowder’s Commandos, sworn to take up the fight for freedom against the coming Mongrel World Order and the government’s illegal tax laws.
That’s some opening. Probably one of the best short story openings ever.
So Boyd Crowder was a neo-Nazi skinhead? Somehow, this little fact escaped self’s mind when she was watching the show. Or perhaps they downplayed it for the adaptation, to make Boyd more likeable.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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. . . when people from south of the Border drove to Tucson to work and then returned home to live, a time when the U.S. Mexico line was a wire lying on the ground and we crossed the border like birds.
— Kathryn Ferguson
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The theme for the week is YELLOW.
Self was cleaning out son’s room when she came upon a box of legos. Was fascinated by the little people and their yellow heads. 
The box contains all of son’s Matchbox car collection. There’s a yellow car at the very top. 
My Life of the Party Rose has two colors of blooms: pink and yellow Stay tuned, dear blog reader. Stay tuned.
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This is the 2nd of four science fiction books self has with her at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig.
And she ended up working on her historical fiction here (and one horror story).
#lifeyouknow #crazylikethat
She skimmed through The Stone Sky and was operating at serious disadvantage since she was reading the end of a trilogy and didn’t know what a Syl Anagist was or anything. But she was able to piece it together.
Plus, it was a mother-daughter angst story, which self will admit is not her favorite.
When she began Jade City she was quite disheartened to be reading about so many different characters. But the crusty old grandfather intrigued her. And now she’s met Shae, the prodigal daughter.
INTERESTING.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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Reading soooo slowly. But this book needs to be savored.
p. 27:
He wasn’t a bad man, although he made me leave school, and the headmaster was very upset about it, but I was needed to cook for the harvesters because Mother wasn’t up to it, and I also looked after the twins.
In this novel, labor is front and center. Whether that labor is writing, or housecleaning, or making things with one’s hands.
All the translations self has read so far this year have been excellent:
- Moshi Moshi, by Banana Yoshimoto (transl. from the Japanese)
- The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson (transl. from the Norwegian)
- Manderley Forever, by Tatiana de Rosnay (transl. from the French)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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On the Feast of St. Lazarus, Ferdinand Magellan spotted the coast of Samar in an archipelago which had not been named by Europeans.
Because it was the feast of the saint who Jesus brought back to life, Lazarus the brother of Martha and Mary, Magellan named the island in honor of the saint. He had “discovered” the Philippines (The name was given to the archipelago 50 years later, during the reign of Philip II, Hapsburg monarch of Spain)
When Magellan made landfall, it was barely 30 years after the fall of Granada, the last outpost of the Nasrid Empire. In 1492, Boabdil, last Muslim King of Granada, surrendered to the Catholic forces of Ferdinand and Isabella. When Granada capitulated, it had become a swollen knot of refugees from all over the Iberian peninsula.
The island in the Visayan Sea where self’s father was born is called Negros (That name was given to the island by the Spanish because islanders were dark-skinned). She doesn’t think Magellan or any of the explorers who followed actually set foot on the island. But there is a Barangay Granada, which is part of a cluster of land self inherited from her Dear Departed Dad.
She gleans all this fascinating information from a book which Dearest Mum gave to her a few years ago: La Casa de Dios (The House of God) by Father René B. Javellana, SJ.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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The issue to be guest-edited by Kathryn Babyan, Associate Professor of Iranian History and Culture at the University of Michigan, “seeks to present a collective of voices and reflections born in the shadow of revolution. We especially encourage translations from Persian, Kurdish, Armenian, and Azeri languages spoken in Iran.”
Here’s the link to the journal’s submissions page. Work will be accepted through 30 June 2018.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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Then Hermes called the spirits of the suitors
out of the house. He held the golden wand
with which he casts a spell to close men’s eyes
or open those of sleepers when he wants.
He led the spirits and they followed, squeaking
like bats in secret crannies of a cave,
who cling together, and when one becomes
detached and falls down from the rock, the rest
flutter and squeak — just so the spirits squeaked,
and hurried after Hermes, lord of healing.
Agamemnon’s spirit meets the spirits of the suitors in Hades and cries out in astonishment:
What happened to you all?
Why have you all come down here to the land
of darkness? You are all so young and strong;
you must have been the best boys in your town.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 