Here’s a little something to get you in the mood for Shakespeare’s birthday tomorrow: a skit based on Midsummer Night’s Dream. How cute is Ringo’s roar?!
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friday feast: black cake from the woman in white
“Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.” ~ Emily Dickinson
Only authenticated daggeureotype, circa 1846-47,
taken at Mt. Holyhoke Seminary.
Most of the time, when I think of Emily Dickinson, I imagine her in a white dress, sitting at the little writing table in her upstairs bedroom at the Homestead in Amherst, pouring her heart out in a letter, or fearlessly penning another one of her flaming, pithy gems.
Dickinson Homestead, Amherst, MA (Emily’s bedroom = 2 windows, upper left). photo by Water Rat
Somehow it never occurred to me before that she probably also wrote a fair amount of poems in the kitchen or pantry, scribbling stray thoughts down on scraps of paper or in the margins of newspapers. Surely while she was gathering, adding, or mixing ingredients, inhaling aromas fruity, pungent, spicy, or sweet –she was also mentally combining fleeting images and impressions according to her prevailing mood. Writers, after all, are usually bound by 24-hour recipes.
Handwritten manuscript of “Wild Nights.”
While Emily celebrated the domestic realm as Amherst’s most well-known recluse and eccentric, she did not hesitate to defy certain traditional expectations to meet her own ends, especially with regard to writing. In The Cambridge Introduction to Emily Dickinson (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Wendy Martin states, “Unable to have an office or workplace of her own, Dickinson created one out of the kitchen hearth, the verdant garden, and the small writing table in her upstairs bedroom.”
crazy for cupcakes
“Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.” ~ Buttercup Bake Shop
If you think you’ve been seeing cupcakes everywhere, you’re definitely not imagining things. Ever since Carrie and Miranda ate those famous Magnolia Bakery cupcakes on “Sex and the City” back in 2000, everyone has gone cupcake crazy.
photo by yummyinthetummyblog.
Actually, Magnolia Bakery cupcakes had been oh-so-cool as far back as 1996, when co-owners Jennifer Appel and Allysa Torey began to specialize in cupcakes after they made a batch from leftover cake batter and noticed how quickly they were snatched up. “Sex and the City” then turned the Greenwich Village bakery into a tourist shrine, and cupcake specialty shops have been sprouting up across the country ever since.
Magnolia Bakery delectables (yummyinthetummy).
Today’s gourmet cupcake is a far crumb from the ones we ate in childhood. They’ve gone deliciously upscale, made of the finest, freshest ingredients, like Valrhona chocolate, Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla, and European sweet cream. Flavors like lava fudge, ginger lemon, passion fruit poppy seed, and chai latte beg for your attention alongside the traditional vanilla and chocolate. Some are filled with luscious, flavored creams, others adorned with coconut or colorful sprinkles. What do you say to a chocolate liquer cupcake filled with raspberry Chambord cream, topped with white chocolate meringue frosting?
thankful thursday
photo by Julia Silge
Today I’d like to share a few of the many wonderful comments I received for the Bloggers Library Loving Challenge last week. I really enjoyed reading your personal reasons for loving the library, and am happy to report that because of your support, yesterday I was able to send off a check for $114 to my local library!
My special library was the one in the elementary school where I was a teacher for many years. We had an outstanding librarian who taught me so much about children’s literature. I spent many hours in the library looking for resources and for recommendations of books to use in my classroom–which was literature-based.
Later, I became the librarian in charge of this wonderful "room of books" in the center of my school. It was the perfect job for me! It was like I had died and gone to heaven. I loved sharing books with children of many different ages and working with teachers to help them bring all genres of literature to their students. And I loved doing book selections and adding wonderful new literary resources to the library collection.
Up with school libraries and school librarians!!! (Elaine)
I love libraries. I have always loved libraries. I will always love libraries. (Barbara B.)
I am on a first-name basis with people in the children’s department at our library, and take my grandchildren every opportunity I get, so I share your love of libraries, too. (Judy)
Libraries should never be allowed to go by the wayside!! My early remembrances in Calif. were the summer reading program where we collected paper leaves to cover the paper tree in the children’s section, reading Snip, Snap & Snur and the books about the Norwegian trolls, then graduating to juvenile mysteries by Mary Stewart & Phyllis A. Whitney and finding out that they also wrote adult mysteries. A magical place! (Anonymous)
Magazines, mysteries, the latest CDs…
Newspapers, internet and DVDs.
Storytimes, crafts, magicians and mimes,
Super fun games, and lots of good times.
Term papers, homework…they’re not really hard
when you use your hometown library card.
Well, you get what I mean…absolutely the best "bang for your buck" these days. (Anonymous)
I loved my first library — the one with wheels that came and parked at the end of my street. That started me on a lifelong love affair with the smell — dry, sweet, subtle — of old books. Lovely. (Tanita)
We visited the library every week as a child and I proudly presented my dogeared card to take out the maximum number allowed. Now, libraries provide lifeblood to my work and serenity in the chaos of frenetic lifestyles. Libraries on line make it easier to reach vast quantities of sources across the world. (Anonymous)
Libraries = a second home. No matter where my family moved, I always found my way to the library no matter what state or what country. My 7th grade "career" project was about becoming a librarian. (Bookmoot)
Thanks again, everyone!
april is icumen in
"Let them eat cake." ~ Marie Antoinette
Hello, brand new month!
We like to say, "April showers bring May flowers," but we won’t have to wait until May to enjoy a blossoming of beautiful words. That’s because the kidlit blogosphere is going to celebrate National Poetry Month in a big way, with a virtual bouquet of fabulous poems, interviews, reviews, and other special events:
Jama's Alphabet Soup 