Tag Archives: books

Oh, my dears. It’s been a long week. And it is Friday night. The sky is dark, the moon is traveling past the stars, and much of the world is readying for bed. Curl up and listen to the tales I weave, until your eyes grow heavy and you slip into slumber, ready for the Dream Maker.

The Arikara people (also called the Ree peoples) lived in North and South Dakota long before they were called North and South Dakota. Strong agriculturalists, they traded with both the white settlers to the East and their fellow Native Americans to the West. While originally a peaceful people, the Arikara were often caught in the bloody differences between the European and White peoples and the Native peoples of the United States. Staying peaceful is sometimes a bloody business, my dears.

The tribe met with the Lewis and Clark expedition when they came through their lands. They were fascinated with their journals and the expedition crew’s habit of filling them with notes and pictures. While the Arikara had no written language, they were adept at picking up the languages of their neighbors – white and otherwise.

When several Arikara men joined General Custer’s cavalry crew, legend has it that they kept their own versions of expedition journals, chronicling their travels and their experiences. The Arikara called these in un raniin awi, literallly “written pictures”; since they had no written language they used photos in their pain-stakingly crafted journals. In the aftermath of The Battle of Little Bighorn, one of these journals was found. Nothing is known of the original owner, but it is clear that the Arikaras’ affinity for meeting peoples of all colors and creeds helped fuel a robust in un raniin awi.

Sleep tight, my pets. Dream deep.

Oh, my dears. It’s been a long week. And it is Friday night. The sky is dark, the moon is traveling past the stars, and much of the world is readying for bed. Curl up and listen to the tales I weave, until your eyes grow heavy and you slip into slumber, ready for the Dream Maker.

Deep in the stacks of maps on the third floor of the British Library lived Decklen. Old, composed, and rather polite, Decklen grew up among the books and manuscripts, from a teensy little pup to the venerable and aged creature he is today. Fed and cared for by librarians (who love a well-behaved furry thing who adores knowledge as much as they do), Decklen grew in size and in education. His appetite for books and information surpassed his appetite for toast and jam early.

If one had managed to stay in the library overnight, one might witness this fellow loping past the stacks, re-shelving books, pulling new ones, taking big deep and satisfied sighs when he found a book he particularly wanted.

And so Decklen grew and aged in the British Library. He slept behind shelves and danced in moonlight on the terraces. He ate up as much knowledge as he could, and he learned how to brew a perfect cup of tea. Unfortunately, with health regulations being what they are these days, the librarians were forced to ask Decklen to leave. They knew that he would find a new home, surrounded by new pages. With a noggin filled with Chaucer and science and even some rather significant philatelic facts, this monster would, at the very least, be delightful conversation.

Perhaps you should peruse a bookstore or a library soon. Perhaps you should keep some toast in your pocket, and maybe a tea bag or two. Look through the stacks of books – the really dusty ones with books gleaming with words and not fancy covers. That’s usually where Decklen can be found.

Sleep tight, my pets. Dream deep.

I’m not quite in the mood to discuss my 36 hours locked in the solarium yet. But suffice it to say, today’s project involving the collecting of all extra keys and reading Victorian Architecture: Two Pattern Books by A.J. Bicknell and W.T. Comstock was born of necessity.

Reading and studying are rather difficult when Bubo is having a Friday Fright Night for herself. Today’s cinematic feast is The Wasp Woman, Roger Corman’s 1959 film about a cosmetics company’s devious ingredient and the wreckage that ensues.

Here it is, should you be in the mood for some good old-fashioned horror:

Special thanks to Drelbcom’s YouTube Channel.

After a delightful dinner courtesy of Cousin Silas, I settled into my arm chair with my electronic copy of Morgue for Whores by the delightfully nefarious Roy Edroso. My feet propped comfortably on a fuzzy lumpkin, a whiskey hugging its ice, and my evening quietly lay ahead of me. (The dragons took tonight’s clear skies to play a game of their own invention; part boggle, part frisbee, and all flying. I have no idea how it could possibly be organized.)

In walks – calm and collected, if you like – an eyeless long-limbed Blue Foonsjab. I’m assuming it was a Blue Foonsjab, I’ve only read about them and there are no photographs of the creatures. Shedding whisps of blue fur, it galomphed straight from the garden to the kitchen. It opened the ice box, pulled the borscht out of the fridge, and filled a canteen that it pulled from the depths of its furriness.

Then, as though this was an every day happenstance, it galomphed straight back to the garden with not a word nor peep. Not even a drop of borscht on the kitchen floor (thankfully) though its canteen was full of the delicious soup.

Now how am I supposed to read after that?