Seven million moments down to one
I fell asleep on the floor in front of a roaring fire and when I woke the fire had gone out and I felt like something out of a poem by Yeats.
We celebrated my mother's actual birthday with waffles and more books and me running my niece around the park and part of the reservoir in our two or three inches of heavy snow, after which we came home and built the fire in question. Actually we had to build it twice: the first time the wood was unexpectedly damp, the living room filled with mildew-smelling smoke and we threw the windows open and I taught my niece how to spell kindling while retrieving a new armload of it and dryer wood. The second time it blazed up beautifully, my father threw in a handful of salts so that it burned green and blue and violet, my niece desperately wanted to roast marshmallows over it, we thought maybe not with a garnish of copper sulfate. I hugged her goodnight when she came and woke me and drifted back to sleep. She had captioned the blankets "CAT'S BED" spelled out in Jenga blocks on the floor with an angular wooden-stick heart underneath. My mother really seems to be enjoying Christianna Brand.
When I sent![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selkie the news of the discovery of Endurance, she sent me back color photos from the Shackleton expedition. It has been a good week for, if nothing else, shipwrecks.
P.S. My father has just sent me an article about the history of superheroes and the Scarlet Pimpernel, with which I do not disagree. "Orczy wasn't the only woman who contributed to the birth of superheroes. Nor was the Scarlet Pimpernel the only pre-superhero hero with a double life, cape and calling card . . . But the elusive Pimpernel predates them all."
We celebrated my mother's actual birthday with waffles and more books and me running my niece around the park and part of the reservoir in our two or three inches of heavy snow, after which we came home and built the fire in question. Actually we had to build it twice: the first time the wood was unexpectedly damp, the living room filled with mildew-smelling smoke and we threw the windows open and I taught my niece how to spell kindling while retrieving a new armload of it and dryer wood. The second time it blazed up beautifully, my father threw in a handful of salts so that it burned green and blue and violet, my niece desperately wanted to roast marshmallows over it, we thought maybe not with a garnish of copper sulfate. I hugged her goodnight when she came and woke me and drifted back to sleep. She had captioned the blankets "CAT'S BED" spelled out in Jenga blocks on the floor with an angular wooden-stick heart underneath. My mother really seems to be enjoying Christianna Brand.
When I sent
selkie the news of the discovery of Endurance, she sent me back color photos from the Shackleton expedition. It has been a good week for, if nothing else, shipwrecks.
P.S. My father has just sent me an article about the history of superheroes and the Scarlet Pimpernel, with which I do not disagree. "Orczy wasn't the only woman who contributed to the birth of superheroes. Nor was the Scarlet Pimpernel the only pre-superhero hero with a double life, cape and calling card . . . But the elusive Pimpernel predates them all."
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*hugs*
Nine
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We were not expecting the snow day!
*hugs*
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(Happy birthday to your mom, and happy Ernest Shackleton Loves Me day to all of us!)
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Agreed, and now I'm curious if anyone has ever re-crossed the streams. (Where do you locate Superman in this tree? I disagree slightly with either her formulation or the article's, but I was really struck by the observation quoted from Valerie Frankel that the relationship of Marguerite with Sir Percy and the Scarlet Pimpernel directly prefigures Lois Lane with Clark Kent and Superman.)
(Happy birthday to your mom, and happy Ernest Shackleton Loves Me day to all of us!)
Hee. Thank you!
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(I think Superman doesn't have a ton of Pimpernel in his DNA but I think it's spot on about the illusory love triangle -- actually, now I'm thinking about it, while Superman himself doesn't derive from Percy, you could make a much stronger argument for Lois being a literary descendant of the Cleverest Woman in Europe.)
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(a) That's wonderful.
(b) If I am interpreting that thread correctly, it looks as though the streams cross at the figure of the Harlequin, which actually feels perfectly reasonable.
(c) Bruce Wayne totally would accept a bet from a friend that he couldn't earn his own living for a month. I just don't know if he could get away with doing it at Wayne Enterprises, which would be hilarious.
(d) Jumping tracks to the second part of this comment, I just now after twenty-five years realized that the totality of the disguise of Death Bredon is a pair of glasses and a slightly different hairstyle, oh my God.
(I think Superman doesn't have a ton of Pimpernel in his DNA
He does to me in the nature of his alter ego. I agree that the ways in which the character has evolved in pop culture are not all that Pimpernel-like except for the identity porn.
but I think it's spot on about the illusory love triangle -- actually, now I'm thinking about it, while Superman himself doesn't derive from Percy, you could make a much stronger argument for Lois being a literary descendant of the Cleverest Woman in Europe.)
You should make this argument!
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You're welcome!
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I assume it's the cold: it's not anoxic deep water like the Black Sea. The sea life is beautiful.
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It's true! (Now I'm thinking the Franklin expedition should maybe have been a little less grimdark with their ship names.)
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perfect comment
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You're welcome!
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Falling asleep and waking up with the fire out really is Yeats-like. Too early for a girl with apple blossoms in her hair, though.
Where does your dad get salts for different colored flames? (I assume plain-old NaCl wasn't all he was using)
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"The New Captain of the Endurance Shipwreck Is an Anemone."
(I love this entire article.)
Falling asleep and waking up with the fire out really is Yeats-like. Too early for a girl with apple blossoms in her hair, though.
We don't even have any crocus in the yard yet.
Where does your dad get salts for different colored flames? (I assume plain-old NaCl wasn't all he was using)
He has a shaker full of copper sulfate and ammonium chloride for most fires. Some of the colors this time, however, came from a pre-prepared packet that my brother picked up and I have no idea where he did. [edit] Canada.
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(And three cheers for Canada, supplying salts for dramatic hearthfire flames)