Christmas Eve. Brekkie via Global Village:

Peruvian blueberries and Equador bananas with my Life cereal.

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Dec. 23: ‘Bo’ of “Dukes of Hazzard” fame writes

that Biden and his son should be publicly hanged.

The annual Christmas spirit and message is tragically missing States-side as (T.E.D.) the Trumpian Evil Delusion continues to spread and metastasize.

Peace and sanity at Christmas, anyone?

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A History of Metaphor: Absolutely Brilliant!

BBC’s “In Our Time” podcast-discussion called Metaphor” hosted by Melvyn Bragg.

The ultimate presentation on what metaphor is, how it works and has been used, with examples from many famous writers and works from 2500 BC to today. Includes Homer, Shakespeare, Donne, Dickens, T.S.Eliot and Woolf.

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Yes, of course, Smith and LaGrange lied

and continue to lie to Albertans throughout this fall and winter about the state of flu and Covid viruses in the province. If you put out no stats, you can’t be taken to task, right?

This habitually duplicitous pair deliberately specialize in withholding vital, necessary info while Albertan adults and kids take the fall. They only want to accept gifts and donations from the general populace. Corrupt, through and through.

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No, it’s not your imagination.

Turtles are much softer and, therefore, more easily edible than they originally were.

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Daughter’s Bun Celebrates the Solstice

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Woodstock, Skye, and Rudolph

Daughter’s Xmas card of her pet rabbit.

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Thinking about the Sublime

(one of my foundational early encounters with the sublime through literature)
“Sublime” means elevated, inspiring awe, lofty, grand, exalted, transcendent, wondrous, marvellous.
My interest in the sublime began with Shakespeare’s Macbeth in grade 11 and Hamlet in grade 12. Also in grade 12, I studied Keats’ Odes and Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” which opened up large, lofty, transcendent views of humans and Nature, which led directly to university English studies, a career teaching high-school English, and a life-long interest in drama and poetry.
Later, I expanded my studies in the Arts to include classical and jazz music, both of which contain sublime audial experiences such as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Stan Getz and Kenny Barron’s People Time CDs. I also found the sublime in the visual arts such as Michelangelo’s “David” and the Gustave Dore engravings for Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
*Typically “the sublime” refers either to the very beautiful (most common version) or the terrifying/that which inspires elevated fear.
Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, and da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” would be examples the beautiful sublime. Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, Picasso’s “Guernica”, and Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho shower scene music would be examples of the terror version of the sublime. (It’s worth noting that there are also  beautiful sublime feature films as well as sublime terror films.)
Looking back at what I have enjoyed and learned from, it would be the sublime works of art which have influenced my life and sensibility most of all. (As well as sublime natural settings, sublime experiences, and sublime moments from interpersonal relationships.)
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Another Glorious Annual Tree Thanks to Our Talented Daughter

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How to Brighten a Room at Christmas

Buy a poinsettia. They will often last into the spring BTW if you want to keep the plant.

We put ours in the dinette so it greets us at breakfast, lunch, and supper–two of those sittings being darkish during December-January. Hard to be ‘down’ at mealtime!

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