Things writers love

A clean desk, some fun pens, a coffee (tea, mulled wine, or Hot Toddy) mug, a retro lamp, and a BIG FAT THICK STACK OF CLEAN FOOLSCAP! Do you remember foolscap? Do they still make foolscap? Maybe. I don't know, but if they do, it's called something else. Because the word "fool" (when used as a noun) is probably some kind of micro-aggressive, unsafe-space, hate speech.

This is cool, and I did not know it. I always thought perhaps foolscap got its name because it made the best dunce caps.

It's about zippers

But it could just as easily have been an emancipatory cry of Victorian women who were sick of riding bikes and horses (to say nothing of playing Battledore and Shuttlecock!) while wearing long heavy dresses. Except that they didn't say "swell" in Victorian times, unless they were talking about bruises and such. 

But don't you just love vintage ads? I do. I thought this was so funny. Not least because zippers were called (by this company at least) "talon fasteners". Napoleon Dynamite would approve. 

Technically swimwear, but at least they were onto something...

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Retro Cookie Charm

Yes, by golly, it's the vintage Tupperware cookie cutters! Did you have these as a child? (In other words, did your mom or grandmother?) Our mom did, and my sisters and I grew up baking with them. So much fun (but I never understood the pig. Why a pig? What holiday has a pig for an emblem? I found only National Pig Day, but that's a bit of a stretch, especially since the holiday only seems to date from 1972! Something to do with Ireland was the best I could come up with, but there is clearly no shamrock associated with the Tupperware piggy.)

Many twenty years ago or so, I was at a garage sale, and I found two of them: the Santa and the gingerbread boy. I was so excited, I bought them right away. But the entire set eluded me (eBay, of course, was not invented back then) Then last year (Christmas 2015), I received this set from the Beazly household. As I vaguely recall, I squealed in a most unladylike fashion when I opened the box and saw them all there. 

It's not a raging wildfire.

Not physically, anyway. Metaphorically, maybe...

It's a Saskatchewan sunset. 

As some of you know (since at least half of DOH readers are related to me by blood or marriage), my mom died two month ago today, on the feast of All Souls', Nov. 2, 2016. (I'm still processing, so that is partly why blogging has been weird and sporadic.)  

The next day, November 3, my husband and three youngest daughters travelled home to the farm where I grew up, to be with my dad and to prepare for Mom's funeral. As we drove along, I was awed by a spectacular, blazing sunset. Photos cannot do it justice, especially when you are taking snaps through a car window, using a smartphone camera, and travelling 100 kph. 

The view changed moment to moment, not only as the sun sank beneath the horizon, but as the pink wispy clouds seemed to drift (or be drawn?) higher and higher toward heaven and the darkening sky. Little snapshots such as these cannot adequately convey the sensation of looking up at the immensity and grandeur of the sky, and how relatively small I felt by comparison.

The wispy clouds reminded me of doves or angels in flight.

As I contemplated the sunset, the words of the poem "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr came to mind. Which seemed kind of appropriate on numerous levels. The poet was a young WWII pilot (he died at age 19). Mom was buried on Remembrance Day, Nov. 11, the day we honour our war dead.

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of --Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew --
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

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