They've Carried Off The Suet Cage Twice. They Don't Need Instructions 😃

Sometimes your song can’t start until you go some place to reflect.

Happy New Year everyone!

This assumes that I, as a girl, am not also obsessed with these themes. "Girl " movies vs "boy " movies is so ancient thought.

rachel shukert interviewed by kathryn vanarendonk for vulture

Christmas Cactus, March 5

 Hey, to you sci-fi/fantasy writers out there (and maybe some others, but this is mainly for things that can’t really be researched irl), if you want to write a character who is a driven, passionate expert on something, don’t write about them rambling indifferently about some boring, mundane part of it. Give them a deep, intense hatred of some oddly specific wow-I-did-not-even-know-that-was-a-thing-and-it-would-have-never-occurred-to-me-that-it’s-a-bad-thing thing they’ll gladly rant about.

 Write a dragon rider who really fucking hates it when a dragon is trained to bow while being reined. A space ship engineer who is pissed off when perfectly good antimatter ship has been adapted to run on neutral matter. A historian who is still not over the massive failures of a general who lost a specific battle 300 years before she was born.

 The guy currently giving us a series of lectures on the restoration of historical buildings really, really hates polymer paint. At the artisan school our stained glass teacher really hated this one specific Belgian artist - we never really figured out what did that guy even do, but he’s been dead for over 200 years and our teacher was glad that at least he’s dead.

 Experts don’t just know things you’ve never thought about. They’ve got strong opinions about it.

Penguins Pringle and Charlie make new friends during Christmas care home visit

Excuse me I too would like to register for a visit from Pringle and Charlie the Comfort Penguins. 

[ID: A photograph of three elderly women sitting down in front of a bank of windows; looking up at them from the floor are two alert and sleek-looking penguins. Two of the women are laughing while the third looks on.]

In ancient times, karasu, the crows and ravens of Japan, were not maligned as garbage-strewing pests, but revered as messengers of the gods and bringers of good fortune. In Japanese mythology, the three-legged Yatagarasu guided legendary first emperor Jinmu, and many Shintō shrines still hold obisha matsuri around the lunar New Year in which parishioners pray to an archery target  bearing the image of karasu.

The Japanese language lumps five distinct species of corvids together under the term karasu, the most common of these being the hashiboso garasu (”narrow-beaked crow”) and hashibuto garasu (”broad-beaked crow”). The migratory miyama garasu (rook), kokumaru garasu (jackdaw), and watari garasu (northern raven) are less dispersed, but can be spotted in some areas during certain times of the year.

The Clever “Karasu”: Wise Old Birds Living Side by Side with Humans

“Evil Queens don’t get regular fairies.” Regina is offered supernatural help from an unusual fairy godmother. She has realized her perfect family is right here, in Storybrooke. With a little magic and a lot of hard work, will she win Emma’s heart?

The last time Emma trusted someone she ended up abandoned, pregnant, and in prison. Regina is beginning to treat her differently, but can she trust her? Her heart wants to, but her brain still screams “Evil Queen, arch enemy of my mother.”

Set in Storybrooke, around season two, but with some locations altered and people from other seasons added. Any citations of popular culture, etc. can be found at the end of the last chapter. Original characters are strictly a product of my imagination, and bear no resemblance to actual people. I used them when needed to create depth in secondary roles.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoy.

Enjoy this fic by @linzmj!!

Trout lily (Erythronium americanum), bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis), and Dutchman’s breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) in the New England springtime woodlands.