Happy New Year!

Dream Big This New Year-you may just find yourself in print!
Anon,

Nancy

Happy Holidays!

The Day The Music Died

On December 8th, 1980, Howard Cosell interrupted the play-by-play of Monday Night Football to announce that John Lennon had been gunned down outside his apartment building in New York City. I was asleep when the news hit, so I didn’t find out until the next morning-December 9th.

In 1980, I was a junior in high school. The teachers in my school district went on strike from mid-November through December which meant that I stayed home from school. I didn’t miss going to school everyday, but I did miss seeing my friends and since this was a crucial time in the swim season, I was losing valuable training time. To make up for it, myself and some of my teammates got up at the crack of dawn to swim at the local Y.

On the morning on December 9th, I swung by to pick up my friend Kelly. Her family lived in the same subdivision as my family. Most houses already had up their holiday lights so the streets looked festive that cold snowy morning. As Kelly got in the car, the DJ announced that John Lennon had been murdered. We looked at each other-- in shock and then we both looked up at her house and realized that the huge pine tree in her front yard was nothing more than a stump. Apparently In the middle of the night, someone had cut it down. We looked at each other and broke out laughing.

For me, that tree and John Lennon are forever linked. It's sad though--two beautiful things cut down in their prime, the same night.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYhaZ2pV0CQ&feature=player_detailpage


 
Happy Christmas

May we all give peace a chance this holiday season...

Anon,

Nancy

Harry Potter has come to the blogosphere...

Nathan Bransford has declared the week: Harry Potter Week. Check it out here.

Having What it Takes

One writer suggests that the two qualities a writer needs are determination and denial. You can read more about it here. Happy NANOWRIMO!

the picture is from this awesome site.

Halloween Approaches

Bailey here, I've commandeered the blog again like I did last year at this time.. I just want to remind everyone to be especially kind to the hyper-pigmented cats out there. As I have said before, we are not the devil's minions and we don't bring bad luck just by crossing some human's path. Frankly, for some of you bookstore people out there, this is a concept I can get behind, but I digress. Halloween tends to make normal humans act strange this time of year--you dress weird and you go around begging for candy. What's up with that? Anyway, please be kind to us cats--especially us hyper-pigmented ones.

-Bailey out.

A Week of Banned Books and Bullying

I had intended to write a post about the recent tragedy at Rutgers University but there have been some great posts from people who have done a much better job of articulating the issue and the necessary response than I could ever do, so I'm going to link to them instead. If you haven't seen the Ellen DeGeneres video, please watch it. It's quite powerful. In the news this week.