A Jar Full of Thankful Weekly Link Round-Up

Things are pleasantly quiet here at Casa Kittling. I've been rounding up decorations and going through all the bins to weed through things I no longer want to use before I pack all the keepers away. I'm about to finish one of my needlepoint projects for Holiday Season 2021, and when that happens, I'll start another one. I'm also about to finish my first afghan of 2021, and I'm torn between starting yet another or beginning a new knitting project for the house that has a complicated pattern. We shall see when the time comes.

I've shown you the shelves above my desk in the past, but this week I want to point out that empty Mason jar. Well, before I do that, I'll tell you about that lidded china box immediately to its left, the one with "Springfield, Ill." in gold lettering on the side. I found that in an antique shop in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Since I grew up less than fifty miles from Springfield, I just had to have it. I use it to keep stamps in, but its original purpose was as a hair receiver. When Victorian women cleaned their hair brushes, they saved the hair to make bracelets and other things. Go figure.

Anyway, that Mason jar is my Thankfulness Jar, or you could call it a Gratitude Jar. I know friends who keep gratitude journals in which they keep daily records of things they are thankful for. I'm too lazy for that kind of commitment, so once a week, I write the thing I'm most thankful for and put it in that jar. At the beginning of the new year, I empty the jar and read what I've written on all the slips.

In 2020, I had many things to be thankful for, but the three I thought I'd mention were rather indicative of the year we've all just experienced. At the beginning of the year, Rear Admiral Cellulitis launched an amphibious assault on my right leg, thus causing me to be thankful for my improving health. Another thing that cropped up a lot in my thankfulness jar was all the clearing, condensing, and reorganizing that was done here in the house. The third thing was mention of every time I left the house. I left the house a total of twenty-three times in 2020. (Good gravy, just typing that brought on an attack of cabin fever!) All but nine were for medical reasons, and only five excursions occurred after April.

Yes, those three things-- Health, Staying at Home, and Leaving the House-- from my Jar Full of Thankful are very much attuned to 2020, and as I fill the jar back up in 2021, here's hoping for a much-improved year for us all!

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• On the trail of Hollywood's stolen Oscars.
• Germany acquires a 400-year-old "friendship book" filled with signatures of kings and emperors.
• How our national obsession with crime stories is distorting the judicial system.
• The homme fatal: reimagining a noir archetype.
• They made a movie out of it: the decline of nonfiction in the IP era.
• 2020 ushered thousands of once-copyrighted works into the public domain.
• The edible history of confetti.
• Peter Pan's dark side emerges with the release of the original manuscript.
• Why we love looking for hidden symbols-- in thrillers and in real life.
• A 4,000-year-old guide to the ancient Egyptian underworld may be the oldest illustrated "book."
  

 

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• A medieval effigy was found hidden beneath an English church's pipe organ.
• A piece of the Great Pyramid found in Scotland may unlock a major mystery.
• Archaeologists unearthed a well-preserved ancient "snack bar" in Pompeii ruins.
• Researchers unearthed a ritual bath dated to Jesus's time near the Garden of Gethsemane.
• Ancient Mediterranean people ate bananas and turmeric from Asia 3,700 years ago.
• Ivory from a 16th-century shipwreck yields clues to the decline of African elephants.
• A man found $43,000 in a couch he bought from a store.
• Buried in sand for a millennium: Africa's Roman ghost city.
• An art detective tracked down Oscar Wilde's stolen friendship ring.

 

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄

• The Nicobar pigeon, the closest living relative to the Dodo bird, dazzles with vibrant iridescent plumage.
• Awww! A sea otter broke into the Monterey Bay Aquarium to escape a winter storm and give birth to her pup.
• Watch trained rats play a competitive game of basketball.
• Wombats and Tasmanian devils glow under ultraviolet light.
• Alligators are now the largest species known to regrow severed limbs.
• Wonderfully calming slow motion footage of birds eating from a photographer's outstretched hand.
• A previously unknown population of blue whales has been heard in the Indian Ocean. Yes!
• The Kenyan Maasai who once hunted lions are now their saviors.

 

►Crafty Gems◄

• Lisa Lloyd's hand-cut paper sculptures capture the vibrant energy of birds, bees, and beyond.
• Kristina McGowan created adorable "Frog and Toad" knitting patterns inspired by the beloved children's books.
• Victoria Rose Richards' 3D landscape embroidery captures colorful aerial views of rural England.
• Beach sculptures made from artfully arranged stones.
  

 

►The Happy Wanderer◄

• The oft used Australian colloquialism "beyond the black stump" is said to have originated in Coolah, Australia. (Beyond the black stump is Aussie for the middle of nowhere.)
• How Juneau, Alaska, is becoming an epicenter for Indigenous art.
• The Park Tunnel in England: an engineering error ensured this cavernous 350-foot-long subterranean thoroughfare was never used as intended.
• The crime stories of New Zealand. 
• It's hard (yet wonderful) to believe that The Poisoned Pen Bookstore is over thirty years old.
  

 

►Fascinating Folk◄

• Bessie Stringfield: the Motorcycle Queen of Miami.
• Ammonite is historical fan fiction about the world's first great fossil hunter, Mary Anning.

 

►I ♥ Lists◄

• CrimeReads' Best of 2020 lists: psychological thrillers, international crime novels, historical fiction, Gothic fiction, debut novels, traditional mysteries, noir fiction, and crime novels.
• Ten scientific discoveries from 2020 that may lead to new inventions.
• Nine perplexing locked room mysteries for the sleuth at heart.
• NPR's Book Concierge lists the best books of 2020.
• The Mystery Writers of America's list of the Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time.
• Ten dark stories of kids in peril.
• The best psychological thrillers of the decade, ranked.

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!