I will master the query process and find an agent.
I will quit procrastinating in the form of research, outlines, synopses, taking classes, reading how-to books, talking about writing, and actually write something.
I will refuse to get discouraged, because I know Konrath wrote nine novels, received nearly five hundred rejections, and wrote over one million words before he sold a thing–and I’m a lot more talented than him.
John McCain, still searching for the perfect running mate, tells his top aides in a conference call that he wants ”someone who is capable of filling my shoes.” Unfortunately, he is speaking into the wrong end of his cellular phone, and his aides think he said ”someone who is capable of killing a moose.” Shortly thereafter McCain stuns the world, and possibly himself, by selecting Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a no-nonsense hockey mom with roughly 114 children named after random nouns such as “Hamper.”
John McCain, still searching for the perfect running mate, tells his top aides in a conference call that he wants ”someone who is capable of filling my shoes.” Unfortunately, he is speaking into the wrong end of his cellular phone, and his aides think he said ”someone who is capable of killing a moose.” Shortly thereafter McCain stuns the world, and possibly himself, by selecting Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a no-nonsense hockey mom with roughly 114 children named after random nouns such as “Hamper.”
I’ve always liked the looks of young-growth giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum). See the tree to the right of the specimen-sized giant sequoia tree in the foreground? It looks like perfect Christmas tree. Toss on the lights and ornaments.
May your Christmas be nearly perfect. Don’t forget to bake the Swedish Coffee Braid. Forget eggnog. Nothing says the holidays like cardamom and coffee.
My dad built this bookcase before I can remember. It’s in many of the photos where I’m less than a year old, making it more or less sixty. He fastened the pieces together with finish nails.
The bookcase is now half as tall as it used to be. I inherited the bottom half and my brother has the top. It never had many books on it, unless you count the scrapbooks of our family vacations. Mom made one of those each year.
Pop in his twenties
Mary and I had the bookcase in storage for a while after selling the Vancouver, WA condo we’d bought to be close to Pop but give Mary a place to continue her mortgage business. With Pop gone and the mortgage business imploding with the rest of the financial sector, we didn’t need the condo anymore and were able to sell it. The bookcase and other stuff went into storage.
The more-or-less instant collecting of stuff forces one to consider “do we really need this?” The bookcase is no expensive heirloom, judging from the knots in the wood, Pop fashioned it from inexpensive shop-grade pine. The answer was yes. It’s simply priceless.
As we looked for where to put the folks’ bookcase, we found our current bookshelves groaning under the weight of books. In some cases, we’d stacked books on top of books and had the rows double-parked. We took semi-immediate action.
We closed the door. Can’t be too careful.
We then had the brilliant idea to cull books out. Perhaps we could make a little money from Powell’s Books. But what is the right way to decide which books to keep and which to part with?
An essay by Laura Miller titled, “The Well-Tended Bookshelf” on nytimes.com caught my eye. She too had noticed that her collection had “metastasized” and soon she might be overwhelmed by paper.
She says there are two schools of thought about book collections. They are either, 1) “a self-portrait, a reflection of the owner’s intellect, imagination, taste and accomplishments” or 2) “less as a testimony to the past than as a repository for the future; it’s where you put the books you intend to read.”
In they end, using a method of each of us picking the sell/donate books off the shelf and then the other having veto over the other’s selection, we found that it’s a combination of the two systems.
I checked my blog this morning. WTF? All my posts since my upgrade to version 2.7 of Word Press have evaporated!?! Call out the hounds. Get Colombo. To the Batmobile, Alfred.
This Swedish Coffee Braid was a Christmas tradition in my family. Mom would make many batches, store them in the freezer — drying the hell out of the bread, necessitating coffee to simply return moisture to your mouth — and then pass loaves out to neighbors as presents.
My mom learned this recipe from my grandfather’s sister, Jenny.
Four of Bengt Mortenson’s children, including Jenny and Bernard Gottfrid (my grandfather), emigrated from Sweden before the First World War. According to my father, Bernard Gottfrid was born in Laholm near the southwest coast of Sweden, north of Malmo.
My grandparents
Mom translated Aunt Jenny’s instructions of a “handful of this and a pinch of that” into cups and teaspoons.
She gave the recipe to my cousin Joan (author of the children’s book, Elim: The Determined Athlete) during a visit to Alaska in 1973. If she hadn’t, the secret would be lost to the ages (or the internet). Mom painted up tons of china and was well known in porcelain painting circles. So, along with the recipe, Mom gave Joan a china painted mortar and pestle — decorated with forget-me-nots, Alaska’s state flower — for grinding the cardamom seeds. My dad’s brother PG (which stood for Pretty Groggy, a moniker a teacher pinned on him and stuck) called cardamom seeds “mouse poops.” Joan says pre-ground cardamom seed works fine and she uses two teaspoons because, “all of us love the smell of cardamom baking and the stronger taste is fine by us.”
Nowadays, we use an electric bread maker to prepare the dough instead of kneading it. [Ain’t bread makers great?] When the bread is hot, it’s the tastiest thing on earth. You can put butter on it, though mom would consider such a thing to be sacrilegious.
Scald milk and cool to lukewarm (105-115F). Dissolve yeast in warm water (1/2 cup 105-115F). Beat sugar and butter together, add eggs, pour in warm milk, and combine. Add dissolved yeast and cardamom seed. Add enough flour to make a soft dough. Knead until smooth and elastic on a well-floured board (about 200 times).
Let dough rise in a warm place about two hours. Form dough into ropes and braid them loosely. (3, 6 or 9 ropes whichever size braid you want). Do not stretch. Begin braiding at centers.
Place braids on greased cookie sheets and let rise for about an hour.
Brush with egg yolk mixed with a little water and sprinkle with nuts and sugar. [I do not remember nuts or sugar being on any that I ate and I ate a lot of it.]
Bake at 350F for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown.
Mt Home State Forest, So. Sierra Nevada
Nullius in Verba 