Best of 2011: Sights of the Year

• Beautiful fruits and vegetables arrived each week from Klesick Family Farm (see also: Tastes of the Year) and provided the most beautiful salad of purple kale, yellow bell pepper, red grape tomatoes, pale green cucumber, and brown sesame seeds.

• Shopping in a local market, I found a dragonfruit-green with pinked spikes.

• At Cafe Flora, a cornmeal waffle (see also: Tastes of the Year) was gorgeously plated with an orange nasturtium atop a spread of glistening apricot confiture.

• My fearful rescue shelties Storm and Trooper looked funny hiding under a chair and then beautiful sitting upon it with me as they grew more confident.

• Leonora Carrington died in May of this year. I enjoyed her surrealist art and also re-read The Hearing Trumpet and her short story "The Debutante".

• At the farmer's market, I enjoyed "Kraken" and "Colossus" fiber art by Briana Knight.

• I loved the cover of Margaret Atwood's In Other Worlds, "Queen Happy" by alexandfelix.com.

• This video made me decide to Adopt-A-Turkey from Farm Sanctuary this year and then on Thanksgiving Day I loved watching the live-streaming turkeys on the farm.

• Tor.com put together a collection of art, Picturing Winter, A Solstice Celebration

Comments

Thoughts on "Depression Hates a Moving Target": What I Mean by Relatable

Relatable — I used this word in my reviews of Depression Hates a Moving Target by Nita Sweeney on Goodreads and Amazon . It's a nice word, but overused of late. So, it feels lazy. What do I mean? I connected with this book. It made me reflect more on my own first marathon experience. It made me want to put on my running shoes and head out the door again. In fact, I did. Now, typically, my mental health doesn't hinder my ability to do the stuff I want to do and my body flies under the radar. Still, I also felt goofy stepping out in my running gear a lot of the time. I didn't see myself as a "runner" or an athlete. And, I had no idea if I could run 13 miles let alone 26.2 when I started. More to the point, could I stay moving for the 4+ hours straight it would take to complete the marathon? To do the training mileage, I knew I'd have to run through streets and trails on my own and that made me nervous, too. Waves of grief wash us to strange shores. Whe...

What is Solarpunk? Good question, great answers from our community

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Springy story review: "State Change" by Ken Liu

Why it springs to mind: You'll never look at an ice cube the same way again. Where read: In the 2014 Hugo award-winning Lightspeed Magazine , August. Length: 5,194 words Summary: A woman has an ice cube for a soul. Memorable: How the story invites us to think about the shape of our soul, how it (or our perception of it) influences us and how it changes. What ordinary every day object would your soul be? A silver spoon, a beech stick? A great party conversation starter, this. Quote: “All life is an experiment." Notable: The protagonist Rina is an avid reader (always a good choice). Pairs well with: T.S. Elliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay Origin: The story was written in 24 hours based on a writing prompt. (See Author Spotlight: Ken Liu ) About the author: Ken Liu’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings , the first in a fantasy series The Dandelion Dynasty, is due out from Saga Press ( a new Simon & Schuster imprint ) in 2015.

Shel Graves' Sensorium

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