Auld Lang Syne

Well, here we are again. Another year is coming to an end, and a decade, too. All the television channels are showing retrospectives of “The Best Of…“ All the folk who try to keep the peace are on high alert. Taxi drivers are already spending the night’s tips. And people everywhere are getting together to celebrate and bring in the New Year--or perhaps already have. It is always bittersweet to see the year draw to a close. Some years more than others. This is the last day of the last year I still had a grandparent. This is the last year my original baby, Addison, will be a pre-teen. This is the end of the year my new baby, Scarlett, turned two. And so on. But, this is also the last year that Nick had work to do on his degree. And the end of a really tough decade of turmoil for many of us. So, what face to bring to the new year? There is a temptation to look back at unresolved resolutions from past years and lament what went awry, but the temptation to feel powerful in the face of possibility is stronger on this one day. We all believe that the new year will bring a new us--better than we have been, and stronger. In Ann Braybrooks’ King Of The Beasties, Tigger becomes king of the Hundred Acre Woods for just a moment--and it is a moment full of potential. A blessed new year to us all.

http://www.paperbackswap.com/King-Beasties-Winnie-Ann-Braybrooks/book/0307988201/

http://www.amazon.com/Ann-Braybrooks/e/B001ITRIC0

If You Can't Take The Heat...

I come from Southern California. I have an August birthday. I could have taken surfing for P.E. credit in high school. Baby oil is for tanning, lemon juice is for highlighting hair, and shorts are for riding your new Christmas bike. I am a sun-worshiping beach baby who declares an act of God if the temperature dips below 70 and stays home (well, wants to). My version of Hell is not toasty warm, but snowy cold instead. If I were to commit some crime that involved a judge, he or she could truly punish me by sentencing me to snow skiing or ice fishing rather than a cozy cell somewhere. I didn’t choose to be born in California, but I do make a specific point of staying. Two of my brothers, So Cal boys born and bred, now live in Manhattan. Which they love. For part of the year. The months that are filled with bone-chilling, soul-freezing cold and, worse for a West Coaster, snow, are the times they dream of places where the temperature is never measured in negative or single digits. The sound of lawn mowers and the smell of cut grass are part of a perfect day in my book. In Disney’s Pooh’s Very Hot Summer Day, the tubby little cubby is trying to find a friend to enjoy the sun with him, but is unsuccessful because none of the Hundred-Acre Wood folk have an appreciation for the heat. Those acres must be somewhere in New England.

http://www.amazon.com/Poohs-Very-Hot-Summer-Day/dp/B001MVVST8/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271814413&sr=1-4


http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/disney/