A.M. Offenwanger's Blog, page 38
February 3, 2017
Comfort Tunes
I had the flu last week. After an exceptionally busy weekend, bam, it knocked me out. Nothing dramatic – no more than a cold with benefits – but it just really dragged me down. In old books (Agatha Christie, say), they sometimes talk of people going into a depression “after a bout of influenza”; that’s not something you hear about often today, the concept that an illness can do more to you than give you a few coughs and sniffles.
So, point being, I was better by the beginning of this week, bu...
February 1, 2017
Wordless Wednesday: Winter Morning Shadows
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Filed under: Wordless Wednesday Tagged: walk in the woods, winter, winter sunrise, Wordless Wednesday
January 25, 2017
Wordless Wednesday: Untitled
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Filed under: poetry, Wordless Wednesday Tagged: magnetic poetry, poetry, winter, Wordless Wednesday
January 23, 2017
Taking Risks
Our local NaNoWriMo group is engaged on a new venture: we decided to take things a step further and form a Critique Group. A week ago we had our first meeting, and we decided that every month, everyone would submit few pages of their work, and we’d all read it and give each other feedback. Sounds great, right?
Now, in the week since, two of our group members have put up posts on their blogs, saying basically the same thing, namely how scary it is to stick out your neck and hand over your work...
January 18, 2017
January 16, 2017
Keeping Food for Winter
A reblog from William Savage, whose blog I discovered recently.
This post is quite fascinating. I’ve never eaten purslane, just pulled it out of my garden as a weed; it’s supposed to be quite good. Pickled asparagus, however, you can even buy in the grocery store here. Storing lettuce in sand for winter – never heard of that, but again, sometimes you can get “gourmet” lettuces here – little butterhead ones – with the roots still attached, which I guess is the same principle.
As for the word “...
January 11, 2017
Wordless Wednesday: Making Tracks
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Filed under: Wordless Wednesday Tagged: powder snow, snow, snowy day, tracks, walk in the woods, winter, Wordless Wednesday
January 9, 2017
The Editor Eats Humble Pie, or: It’s Okay To Change Your Mind
I’d been meaning for quite some time to write an “Editor Pontificates” post on a couple of phrases that are bugging me when people use them incorrectly. They’re the kind of thing that make me want to pull out my big rubber stamp and slap on a fat, juicy WRONG! But then, I had to change my mind on both of those matters. Well, okay, maybe didn’t have to, but I did anyway.
The phrases in question are “from whence” and “begging the question”.
“Begging the question” is actually a specific term tha...
January 5, 2017
On Princesses and the Unreality of Realism
For this year’s New Year’s Eve movie marathon, we watched Star Wars, the original three movies (on VHS, no less. Yup, we still have a VCR). I’m not a huge Star Wars aficionado, so I haven’t got these films memorised, verbally or visually; when I watch them, they’re always quite new-ish to me. And what struck me this time through is how utterly pristine Princess Leia’s appearance is.
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I mean, the first time Luke Skywalker sees this woman, she’s just been through torture (so we’re told – not sh...
