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Armchair, and other, Travelers ...

12/22/2019

Patrick Jake O'Rourke, (P. J. O’Rourke), an American political satirist, journalist, and correspondent famously said, “The one thing that's terrible about traveling for fun is writing about it.”

There was a time when the only affordable way to travel was through the writings of those who actually traveled, including Jules Verne, who spent endless hours at the local library researching the globe.

Eventually, Mr. Verne was able to actually travel, but as recently as a few hundred years ago, the average person rarely ventured far from their homes. Travel was often dangerous, very expensive, and limited by transport availability.

Though this can still be true, for some, today it is less likely to be an issue. This is just a little post so that I can wish all who will be traveling this holiday season ...

Safe Travels and a very Merry Christmas!!!

Image: ilikepaints.blogspot.com

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Striving for endurance ... or not ...

12/13/2019

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“At Christmas play and make good cheer, for Christmas comes but once a year.” Thomas Tusser

Born c.1524, Thomas Tusser was an English poet who wrote during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1. Educated at Eton and King’s College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge he served at the British court until he left to become a farmer.

Tusser wrote a long, continuous poem titled, Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie to as many of Good Huswifery (1573), which served as an informational poem, a calendar, and a how-to book, written in rhyming couplets.

He penned many verses which have become common idioms, such as “A fool and his money are soon parted” and “Sweet April showers do spring May flowers” from which we get April showers bring may flowers.

Oh that my poems might leave such a mark and endure as long as his. It helps to have published my work, so that’s out in the world, but I’m writing during an era in which poetry is not valued as it once was.

Even so, I can’t help but hope, while I write my verses, that they will live on in some meaningful way; that they might touch, console, and delight others as they have done for me. Well, as some say, “Fingers crossed.”

Image: outlandishobservations.blogspot.com

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Oh, for a fluffy white Christmas ...

12/5/2019

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Matthew Gray Gubler, an American actor, filmmaker, fashion model, painter, and author, said, “I love the holidays - any holiday - but Christmas has always been sort of special because I grew up reading Charles Dickens.”

Indeed, Charles Dickens is ideally cited as the inspiration for our propensity toward snowy Christmases. Born in Portsmouth England in 1812, Charles Dickens lived during the latter portion of what François E. Matthes called The Little Ice Age.

This was a time of prolonged cold, dry seasons, so cold that the Thames River in London froze solid, and is said to have lasted from about 1300 to about 1850. There are myriad theories about what caused it.

Dickens was born into an unusually cold world. Then, when he was four years old, Mount Tambora, on Sumbawa island in Indonesia, erupted. It is the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history.

Soon, the Northern Hemisphere was plunged into The Year Without a Summer. Average global temperatures dropped, it snowed during the wrong seasons, and particles ejected from Mount Tambora reflected sunlight away from the Earth.

Charles Dickens experienced several white Christmases during one of the coldest decades in England (1810-1819). From my readings I’ve come to realize that many of the hardships depicted in his novels are rather autobiographical, and especially those snowy Winters.

As Christmas Day quickly approaches, I wish you a very Happy Holiday Season, and some snow on Christmas day.

Image: cartoonpicks.blogspot.com

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Armchair, and other, Travelers ...

Striving for endurance ... or not ...

Oh, for a fluffy white Christmas ...

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