Something about the winter holidays makes me think of drafty castles, ancient mysteries, and lost treasures. Does that make me weird?

In any case, I recently came across this article about a real story of, well, drafty castles, ancient mysteries and lost treasures, that I couldn’t pass up posting. For anyone else who likes secret passages, well, Happy Holidays!

I’m sitting here on my couch, with my beautiful wife next to me, and my beautiful daughter cooing and smiling to her heart’s content, watching Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t be happier. I’m also pretty sure I’ll remember this moment forever. God Bless America.

I meant to do this last year, and forgot. And now, with that most exciting of holidays around the corner, I’m reminded of it, and (of course) can no longer find it online. Apparently, National Geographic Adventure only keeps the last 6-ish issues in its public online archive. Sigh.

In any case, last December, Sebastian Junger (author of The Perfect Storm) wrote a piece in NGA called Running Away. At least, I THINK that’s the piece, since I can’t find it any more to check. In said piece, he discussed the human desire to run away to solitude, and I promise you, it is an exceptionally powerful piece. I highly recommend it.

But, for us horror buffs, he also mentioned, towards the end, a Native American werewolf myth associated with distance runners. See, the Native Americans had a long tradition of long-distance running, because that was the only way to get around in most of the US before Europeans brought domesticated horses with them. And there was something in this article about the toughest of the long-distance runners being perceived as almost of a threat to their community, because they turned too far towards solitude and nature. Effectively, they became a werewolf. Or something like that. I’m sure I’m getting it completely wrong. In any case, if you can find a copy, it is worth a read. And, if you DO find a copy, send a copy of THAT to me!

We recently got a new camera to take better pictures of Avery. Lest I lose track of it in the future, I wanted to link here to an article in a recent Outside magazine about various photography tricks used by the pros to take cool-looking pictures. If you’re a photo-geek, then it’s a pretty neat read.

And, since I know my core audience doesn’t care at all about photo tricks, but only wants to see pictures of my daughter, here are a few more, taken with various friends and relatives (and yes, that picture with Ryan was the single best picture of all those taken while he was holding Avery!):

Here are more pix!

I’m sure everyone is horribly disappointed, too. Don’t worry, I’ll be posting more pictures of my beautiful baby right after this. But, in honor of it being October, and therefore nearly Halloween, my favorite holiday of the year, I thought I’d post this link:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/videoitem.html?id=4

It links to a short animated video. The text is of a poem called “Mulberry Fields,” and is read by the author, Lucille Clifton. The animation is by a college student somewhere, and is wonderfully spooky. The poem itself is almost certainly NOT intended to be spooky, but instead about the legacy of slavery and racism in some part of the US. That said, with the aforementioned spooky animation in the background, it’s easy to forget that it isn’t about ghosts and ghouls and elder evils…