Even the bushes have on their coats
Continue reading →
Grab Your Coat! It’s One Below Zero!!
Even the bushes have on their coats
Continue reading
Category Archives: Holiday
Chestnuts for the New Year
Welcome 2014
spiky shells store treats
far up a bare chestnut tree
kept for the new year
I hope your new year has many saved treats, stored against the long winter.
I also hope you find just what you need, when you first realize you need it. Joyous New Year!
Copyright 2013 Brenda Davis Harsham
Making Spirits Bright
I hope you are all warm, safe and surrounded by love and magic this holiday season! May all the snow that falls be light, fluffy and shining like diamonds. May your dreams shine like the stars, and your dearest wishes come true. Joy to the World!! Merry Christmas!!
Warmly, Brenda
Happy Solstice everyone!
Here is a delightful post from a new friend, Flannelberry. Hope you are enjoying the first longer day. 🙂 Warmly, Brenda
The Solstice Faerie has been, the treasure has been hunted. There is a fire in the stove and tea on top. I can see the first blush of false dawn (at 8:01 am) through the window. Stunning.
Today is the Shortest Day!!
Susan Cooper is a truly great children’s literature writer. She wrote many magical books, including the fantastic five book series, the Dark is Rising. She also has out a new book, Ghost Hawk, set in New England! Woo-hoo! We’ve bought a copy for one of my kids for Christmas (mum’s the word) and I can’t wait to read it myself!!
Here is an excerpt from her book: The Magic Maker, a Portrait of Jack Langstaff, Creator of the Revels, followed by a video of her reading the same poem:
The Shortest Day
by Susan Cooper
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
Continue reading
Midwinter Song
Wanted: A Partridge
The Partridge has flown away from our pear tree!
Happy Thanksgiving
May your company be cheerful, your food delish, the games played delightful and your cares laid aside. This is my wish. Thanks to Morgan, who shared this homage to Snoopy and Woodstock. Happy Thanksgiving and Thanks to the earth that sustains and supports us, and to all custodians of the earth, without whom we would all be lost.
Happy Thanksgivukkah Haībun
Turkey with Yarmulke
The leaves have fallen, and New England has weathered its first winter storm, with howling winds and temperatures 20 below freezing. We are all preparing to celebrate the gateway to winter, thankful for shelter, food and good company. This year our Thanksgiving feast will have an added spice, a warming blanket of older meaning.
Whatever you celebrate this November 28, Jews across the United States will be celebrating Thanksgivukkah with culinary imagination and joyful lighting of candles to celebrate the festival of lights.
festival of lights
pumpkin bisque, apple latkes
rarely converging
Some rabbinical sources have calculated the next convergence of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah will not be for 70,000 years!! Even our trees may not survive that long. But, according to the New York Times, “the last time the two holidays overlapped was in 1918, when Jews lit one menorah candle on Thanksgiving night, and it won’t happen again until Nov. 27, 2070.” Others chime in with other dates!
Mathematicians disagree with both the religious sources and the New York Times, and they assert this particular convergence has never happened before (except maybe once in 1888 before they made Thanksgiving the 4th Thursday of November) and may never happen again, and that’s because Hanukkah is a day earlier than the New York Times article provides, given that the first day will be celebrated the night before Thanksgiving. That means Hanukkah starts before Thanksgiving! Whew!
once in a lifetime
celebrate the convergence
remember the past
This fairy tale writer doesn’t know who to believe, the rabbis, the New York Times or the mathematicians. Whether you believe it will happen again in 57 years or maybe never, why not light some candles, roast some turkey with challah stuffing, fry up some potato pancakes, and celebrate a rarer occurrence than a comet sighting or a lunar eclipse.
I may not live long enough to see the next round of Yarmulke-wearing Turkeys (especially if it never happens again), but if I do, what a fairy tale that would be. We should all be so lucky!
Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Turkey Day, Happy Hanukkah and Happy Thanksgivukkah! Each year after this, as the leaves flame up and fall, crisped and brown, I will remember this special gateway to winter, the first Thanksgiving of my blogging days.
A few recipe ideas for a creative Thanksgiving and Hanukkah feast:
Turkey with Pomegranate and Walnuts
Pumpkin and Saffron Soup
Cheddar cheese mashed potatoes
Apple Latkes
cooking for hours
table groans with fall delights
eaten in minutes
Warmly, Brenda
Note: a haībun is prose followed by a poem, often a haiku. Sometimes haiku or other poems are also used as transitions between paragraphs. Usually I write from a prompt, and I always enjoy that, but this week I wanted to celebrate outside the prompt. I may go back and write another haībun for the prompt, if I can squeeze out the time.
Salute to the Veterans Haiku
idealistic
serving their country with pride
believing in us
Whether your words are many or few,
say hello to the ones nearest you.
Copyright 2013 Brenda Davis Harsham
Note: Photographs are of my parents,
before they married, long before I was born,
when they both served their country.
(I love you!!)
Tricks or Treats?!
Happy Halloween, and to all my fabulous fellow fairy tale lovers, here are some treats (I’ll leave the tricks to the fae tonight):
Thanks to the blogs I visit, who have filled tonight’s cauldron with treats of many kinds. Some of my favorites, I got again and again! I love when that happens! 🙂
Thanks to Dear Kitty or Petrel41 for the Reader Appreciation Award!! Love her lore, wide-ranging from animals to current events to women’s issues. Hope you get a chance to visit her. 🙂
Thanks to lifebeinggirly for the Versatile Blogger Award. She is adorable, and I love that she is flying the girly flag high. We all need to love who we are, because we are pretty darn terrific!! Painttheworldwithwords then chimed in with another Versatile Blogger Award. Amreen is a poet, a designer and a talented blogger with a penchant for beauty. Here is a lovely poem by him:
The soul of my poems
define the tune of my life
singing my presence.
~~~
Amreen Shaikh
Thanks to In My Hands for the Dragon’s Loyalty Award! If you can’t get enough of black and white cat pictures and Chekhov, then you must check her out. Cats and great literature. Who can resist that? Then Bullying Prevention came in with another nomination for the Dragon’s Loyalty Award! He is doing god’s work, trying to make the world a better place for all. I’m delighted to see posts from both, they are always food for thought and very moving.
And a new and different icon for the Versatile Blogger Award from Chronicles of a Public Transit User. Oddly enough, we both almost died when we were four. We also both love Halloween. Kudos for a great award posting, too, worth a visit!!
I can’t tell you all how important all of you have become to me. I love to hear your comments, to see your likes, and to read your posts. I’m still here, spinning my stories, pairing photographs and verse, and trying to express my inner voice. Something crucial has changed, though. I feel more connected and less alone than I ever have in my life.
Together, through our words, I believe we can change the world forever. Make it a place where it’s okay to be yourself. I don’t have to look like Angelina Jolie (hey, I wouldn’t turn it down…) to write a good story. We don’t all have to be writing the same things. Viva la difference!! I cherish all of you, and I hope you all have fruitful, productive and glorious Novembers. Special hugs to those of you starting Nanowrimo, you go!!
I nominate these special trick or treaters to share my loot, please reach a hand in the cauldron and take any treats you like (or none if you don’t have a sweet tooth):
aCuriousGal
Tails from Paris
antilandcaper
Persecution of Mildred Dunlap
Dully Pepper
And some Halloween pictures to thank my readers and fairy tale lovers everywhere:
Copyright 2013 Brenda Davis Harsham
For Caregivers on Halloween: Grandmother Tree
Young maples trees blossom with hectic autumn color
Where they shelter under the high arching limbs
Of the deep-rooted grandmother tree.
Lovely, steady grandmother tree, slow to change,
Thick bark insulates and shields her from the cold,
Only showing golden and claret touches high up.
One by one, her bright leaves sigh and let go,
Lightly drifting down to caress her young for a moment.
Finally on the earth, their leaves mingle and embrace.
This Halloween, be like the grandmother tree.
Gather the rain, slow the wind, your roots entwined.
Let your children bloom and thrive, safe in your care.
Copyright 2013 Brenda Davis Harsham
Friendly Fairy Tales 