2015 in Review: Touch of the Year: Mary Shelley's Soft Sides

This year, I loved: soothing peppermint, velvet pants, a geothermal Icelandic water slide, my first hot yoga class, and always holding hands.

The was also the warmth and steam of the Blue Lagoon Geothermal Spa in Iceland and the heft of the Hugo Award at the World Science Fiction Convention (which was held nearby in Spokane!). At a party in the lovely Davenport Hotel, gracious Hugo winner James Bacon let me hold Journey Planet's rocket — scandalous. Swoon!

However, the touch of the year is much closer to home and goes to: MARY SHELLEY'S SOFT SIDES. On November 1, we adopted a thin soft cat from our local shelter. I expect she'll make many more appearances in the Sensorium.

Ann Hamilton's "On Touch," is also worth remembering here:

"Each extension of a hand or paw is toward contact....When we touch we go from being observers to being included; things seen become things felt. In silence or in speech, reading and being read to are other forms of touch. The words of poets and writers stir us."

What is this? My Year in Review.

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Shel Graves' Sensorium

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