(Leafbox, from previous Friday Favorite Chris Appelhans)
November comes
And November goes,
With the last red berries
And the first white snows.
With night coming early,
And dawn coming late,
And ice in the bucket
And frost by the gate.
The fires burn
And the kettles sing,
And earth sinks to rest
Until next spring.
~ Clyde Watson
‘Tis the night – the night
Of the grave’s delight,
And the warlocks are at their play;
Ye think that without
The wild winds shout,
But no, it is they – it is they.
~Arthur Cleveland Coxe
Fables is an amazing comic book series that has been going on for a number of years. The basic premise is that all the fairy tale characters in all the lands of the earth are real. Years ago many of these characters were forced to flee from their lands when a mysterious entity known as “the Adversary” and his goblin horde invaded the homelands of various fables. Those who escaped fled through various magical gateways into our world. They occupy a portion of New York City and, for those non-human fables, a farm in New York. Both are enchanted so that humans don’t recognize them as anything but normal people. They have lived among us for a long time and they are marshalling their forces in hopes of eventually taking back their homelands.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress…for as long as I have known who Robert Heinlein is, which probably dates back to my teens, I have loved the title of this book. I would rank it at or very near the top of my favorite book titles. It is a sauve title that rolls off the tongue and at the same time has something of a pulp feel to it.
It is rapidly approaching All Hallow’s Eve and I have a good share of gothic reading yet to do, not to mention the other books that I am currently engrossed in (see ‘Currently Reading’ in sidebar)…so why am I talking about science fiction?
(artwork by former Friday Favorite, Ashley Wood)
Contrary to how I feel today, I have indeed risen from this grave illness. The comedy of this entire tragedy is that all I really had was an average cold with a couple of days of low-grade fever that would intermittently visit itself upon me. For some strange reason this poor excuse for an illness has just ravaged my body. I have gotten more sleep over the past 2 weeks than I ever get but I am still just worn out. I wake up exhausted and this wet blanket feeling of tiredness stays with me throughout the day. I am just so lethargic.
But I am back. It is October and I’ll be darned if I’m going to miss my enjoyment of this month. Thanks to some investigation by James I am up and running again and am ready to dig out of the doldrums and breathe life into this old corpse.