A Preoccupied Weekly Link Round-Up

 

You never know what's going to kick your muse in the seat of the pants. This time it was HGTV. 

Last year, I didn't put up one single Christmas decoration, which is much different from years past. I had a good excuse: I was right in the middle of my fight with cellulitis and had to spend as much time as possible with my leg elevated. But after Halloween this year, I began getting itchy, wanting to get the decorations out of the shed, and doing a bit of decorating.

Denis and I got the containers out of the shed and brought them into the house. I went through them and managed to purge quite a few things that I never intend to use again, and then began the slow process of deciding what I wanted to do.

I wanted "Christmas Lite." I just don't have the desire to go all out as I have before with thirteen trees and much, much more. I slowly began to put ideas together, and then I made the mistake of deciding to watch "Holiday Crafters Gone Wild" on HGTV. Talk about inspiration! I'm still not done-- especially since my ideas keep morphing-- but I will be sharing photos in the near future. It's still amusing me how one program got all my brain synapses firing!

On that note, I'd better get out to the corral before I start with the lights and garlands and snowmen. Head 'em up! Moooove 'em out!

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• The inspiring quest to revive the Hawaiian language.
• C.J. Box on Big Sky, big twists, and bringing a new Western thriller to Montana.
• Why odd couples and opposites make for great crime fiction.
• Here's what it looks like inside the handmade sketchbooks of a well-traveled artist.
• Customers step up to keep a famed Paris bookshop alive. French authors are also offering to pay bookshops' COVID lockdown fines.
  
• The Chicago Public Library says eliminating fines has paid off.
• The CW will adapt and sexify Jane Austen's novels. (And here I thought Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in a wet shirt was sexy enough...)
• The tortuous literary puzzle Cain's Jawbone has been solved for the first time since 1934.
• 35% of the world is reading more during the pandemic. Thanks, pandemic?
  

 

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• Why a newly approved plan to build a tunnel beneath Stonehenge is so controversial. Here's what National Geographic had to say. (Reminds me of the proposal to rip up and pave over a stunningly beautiful canyon in Utah in order to have drivers get to their destinations seven minutes faster.)
• A dig in Spain yielded rare crystal artifacts, weapons that are thousands of years old. 
• A mushroom picker found a 3,300-year-old Bronze Age sword. (No fair! I only find mushrooms!)
• Did Michelangelo carve a graffiti portrait into this Florentine facade?
• Archaeologists are just beginning to unearth the mummies and secrets of Saqqara.
• Marie Antoinette's shoe to go on the block. 
• There is a painstaking race against time to uncover a Viking ship's secrets.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, avid collectors find joy in their prized possessions.
• A man found $43,000 in a couch he bought from a store. (Hmmm... we need to buy two recliners...)
  

 

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄

• The new science of our ancient bond with dogs.
• Gravity-defying photos of determined dogs catching Frisbees in mid-air.
• Fifty photos that show the beauty of animals around the world.
• Watch a woman in a kangaroo suit teaches a joey to jump.
• A mesmerizing time-lapse showing a Monarch butterfly emerging from a cocoon.
• New A.I. offers facial recognition for grizzly bears.
• A rare pink manta ray was spotted near Australia's Lady Elliot Island.
• Diego, the 100-year-old tortoise who fathered 900 babies, returns to the wild.
• Painting eyes on cow butts could save cattle and lion lives.

 

►Fascinating Folk◄

• Marion Pritchard, the Dutch rescuer who "lied, stole, and even killed" to save the lives of 150 Jewish children during World War II.
• The courageous tale of Jane Johnson, who risked her freedom for those who helped her escape slavery.
• Mary Golda Ross, the first Native American aerospace engineer and space race pioneer.
• Sara Josephine Baker, the doctor and public health pioneer who saved the lives of 90,000 children.
• Stacey Abrams, Georgia's political heroine... and romance author.
• The rare authority of Alex Trebek. 
• Sir David Attenborough: Nature shows that prosperity doesn't mean endless expansion.
  

 

►The Happy Wanderer◄

• Boyce Thompson Arboretum here in Arizona makes room for thousands of fragile desert specimens.
• The classics of Miami noir.
• The crime novels of Mexico City.
• Eyam Plague Village Museum in Eyam, England. (Have you read Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders?)
• Tristan da Cunha, a tiny Atlantic island, just protected a giant, pristine stretch of the ocean.

 

►Crafty Gems◄

• This Japanese food artist drapes comfy egg blankets over sleeping animals made of rice.
• This baker makes hyper-realistic cakes that will make you do a double take.
• This artist transforms found stones into animals you can hold in the palm of your hand.

 

►I ♥ Lists◄

• Eleven facts about Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.
• Cookbooks that breathe fresh life into kitchen duty.
• Thirteen gripping archaeological mysteries.
• Ten books about Lebanon.
• Seven classic New York City novels.
• Eighteen cozy reading nooks to burrow into this fall.
• Ten untranslatable words that perfectly describe how you're feeling in 2020.
• Seven literary translators you need to know.

 

That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure.

 

Stay Safe. Stay healthy. And don't forget to curl up with a good book!