Happy Holidays!

Just a quickie to say that all is well here!

We dipped down to -18*C this week but, like a seagull soaring down towards the ocean and then tilting back up again at the last moment, the temperature has already risen back up to around the zero mark.

Not that we really care, as we're heading down to the south coast for Christmas!

I've packed loads of T-shirts in case it gets too warm ... and maybe one or two presents as well. You know, just in case Santa Claus gets confused about where we are....

Hoping that Santa finds you safe and sound,

Merry Christmas!

Robynxxxx

East toward Dawn

So many months have passed since I last picked up anything more exciting than the latest issue of 'Woman and Home' or a cookbook, that I was beginning to feel a bit word desperate.

Looking through my bookcase, I just couldn't bear the idea of picking up books that I'd left behind to read later: The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, for example. Such books just seemed too heavy and too congested with ideas for my life at the moment.

Then I saw, sitting quietly and calmly beside the others, Nan Watkins' 'East Toward Dawn'. Nan used to work at Western Carolina University's Hunter Library and was a friend to many an international traveler. Whilst I was working at WCU, she published this gorgeous travelogue which not only explains her solo journey around the world at the age of 60 but also explains her relationship with life (and hence our relationship with life).

I'm now making my way through its gentle pages, and so am traveling with her through Ireland, Germany, Nepal and now India as she visits the various International students who stayed with her when they were in the US. As she travels she muses on her life as a child, as a women, as a wife-mother, and then as an older single woman. Such an approach allows the reader to tap into these differennt layers and to draw the messages needed at the time of reading. It's a delicious process, especially as she doesn't so much question her life as she does examine it as one does a stone found on a beach or, indeed, a flower found on an Irish hillside.

Read:

"Turning my head, I saw a yellow wildflower bobbing in the wind. It made me think of Joseph Campbell, who once held up a daisy and, with a broad smile, asked, 'Meaning? People want life to have meaning? Does this flower ask, 'What is the meaning of my life?' No! It just blooms. It just is!' And that's the way I see my life. Just being; no questions asked."

So, however you're seeing your life at the moment, I hope you're just not asking too many questions but more just 'bobbing in the wind.'

;-)

hugs,

Robyn

ps/want to buy a copy? Try http://www.amazon.com/East-Toward-Dawn-Journey-Adventura/dp/1580050646/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260860750&sr=8-1 or http://www.amazon.co.uk/East-Toward-Dawn-Journey-Adventura/dp/1580050646/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260862372&sr=8-2 (with the UK site you have to wait a bit longer but I would say that this is a book that is not only worth the wait but is about the wait!).

pps/If anyone is in contact with Nan today, can you please say a heart warming hey from me...

St Martin and his friends...

December is a crowded month in Alsace. There are lots of folks to meet and greet. I'll keep it short here... but you'd better take notes as it gets kinda confusing.

So, the first guy is Saint Nicolas. That starts well: Jack's afraid of him. So afraid that he refused to go up and collect the biscuit St Nicolas wanted to give him during our local Christmas market. Yesterday, randomnly at the table, he said 'I'm Saint Nicolas and you, Maman,you afraid.' Hmm, recognising I had work to do, I told him, No,Saint Nicolas is the good man. Père Fouettard was the bad man.

Who? The incarnation of the bad Father Christmas. His history is troubled as he's reputed to be an incarnation of the devil...but all you really need to know is that you don't ever want to be 'the bad kid' when he's around. Translate Père Fouettard and you get 'the whipping father'. Need I say more? Jack definitely din't think so. He got it!





Thankfully, bringing light to such dark tales, Saint Lucy (sainte lucie) also floats about these parts. As Wikipedia nicely tells us: As her brief day brings the longest night of the year by the old reckoning, John Donne's poem, "A Nocturnal upon St. Lucie's Day, being the shortest day", begins with: "'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's," and expresses, in a mourning piece, the withdrawal of the world-spirit into sterility and darkness, where "The world's whole sap is sunk." This timing, and her name meaning light, is a factor in the particular devotion to St. Lucy in Scandinavian countries, where young girls dress as the saint in honor of the feast."

Jack doesn't care about all that for he's scared of her, too!

Then, of course, there's Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. We know they exist because they had a little stand at the back of the Christmas maket and were accompanied by a petting market to attract the kids. I tried to explain who they were but, as I haven't yet got onto God and as they were accompanied by lamas, it all got a bit complicated.

Joseph

Complicated, yes because, if you're following the plot, we also celebrate Saint Martin and so have only just tucked away our lanterns!

And Santa Claus... and the reindeer.. and all that?

Well, hopefully we'll get onto them before them before they start flying across the midnight sky, before Santa comes down our chimney, and long before the presents appear magically under the Christmas tree.

For, heck now, we wouldn't want Jack to be afraid of him too now... would we?

love n hugs n Christmas stories,

Robynxxxx

Lumberyard

Go on, treat yourself.

It's almost Christmas afterall.

What am I talking about?

Well, an old university friend of mine, Jen, and her brother have founded a literary magazine, 'The Lumberyard,' and I think you'd like a copy!

It's published in the US but with Paypal you'll feel like it's been published just down the road.

Why not give it a try today? http://www.lumberyardmagazine.com/

(Get this issue and you'll find a poem by Jamie, of Cornerboys fame, inside its delicate covers).

happy reading!

Robynxxxx

ps/with Wood for a last name, its probably not surprising this brother and sister pair founded a lumberyard!

Are we mad?

Yep, it's possible that I and my friends are a little crazy as we're opting to do what our Mums hated best: washing nappies!

Okay, so I'm only using one a day and so I'm hardly saving the planet but, hey, at least it's a start and many of my friends are doing much, much better than me.

Interested? Check out: http://www.bumgenius.com/index.php

love n hugs n nappy rash cream,

Robyn xxxx