Ode to Summer.

A Summer Day (Lucy Maud Montgomery)

The dawn laughs out on orient hills
And dances with the diamond rills;
The ambrosial wind but faintly stirs
The silken, beaded gossamers;
In the wide valleys, lone and fair,
Lyrics are piped from limpid air,
And, far above, the pine trees free
Voice ancient lore of sky and sea.
Come, let us fill our hearts straightway
With hope and courage of the day.

Noon, hiving sweets of sun and flower,
Has fallen on dreams in wayside bower,
Where bees hold honeyed fellowship
With the ripe blossom of her lip;
All silent are her poppied vales
And all her long Arcadian dales,
Where idleness is gathered up
A magic draught in summer’s cup.
Come, let us give ourselves to dreams
By lisping margins of her streams.

Adown the golden sunset way
The evening comes in wimple gray;
By burnished shore and silver lake
Cool winds of ministration wake;
O’er occidental meadows far
There shines the light of moon and star,
And sweet, low-tinkling music rings
About the lips of haunted springs.
In quietude of earth and air
‘Tis meet we yield our souls to prayer.

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I am a Word Nerd … yay!

According to the Net, a Word Nerd is:

• Someone who enjoys learning new words.
• Someone who, when confronted by an unfamiliar word while reading, looks up the definition.
• Someone who may keep a list of favorite words.
• Someone who is fascinated by the nuances of language, especially the history of words and the shades of difference in meaning between similar words.

This is SO me!  (Although I would have denied it fiercely in High School – extremely uncool …) I love words like perambulator, finnimbrun and Mungo. It makes my fingers itch for the dictionary and makes me wish that I came up with those first.

I am green with envy at J.K. Rowling’s ability to make up new words and use them so seamlessly in her books.

Quidditch, muggle, Voldemort. Whomping willow and legilimancy. Knuts, quaffle and squib.

Doesn’t that sound like a poem, or a song?

According to Jim Burrows, the first documented use of the word Nerd is in the 1950 Dr. Seuss story, If I Ran the Zoo¹, in which a boy named Gerald McGrew made a large number of delightfully extravagant claims as to what he would do, if he were in charge at the zoo.

There are also gamer nerds, techie nerds, internet nerds and comic book nerds. There is even a page dedicated to ‘How to be a Nerd’, although I disagree with the dress code stipulated – polo shirts are just not my thing …

Viva the Age of the Nerd!

The joys of having Writer’s Block.

One of the joys of having Writer’s Block (work with me people, I’m trying to be positive here) is that you can surf the internet for hours without feeling guilty about ‘wasting time’. After all, I am looking for inspiration. Right?

There are of course those people who never suffer from this malaise and continue to write anything from 1000 to 5000 words per day. I want to state for the record that they are either lying or from Mars.

In my attempt to see the lighter side of this catastrophic interesting situation, I found some jokes on the Net and am copying it shamelessly sharing it on my blog, since I don’t have an original thought in my brain at this time. (Not that I am bitter or anything … seriously, I’m not … ok, I am … STOP STARING!)

A writer died and was given the option of going to heaven or hell.

She decided to check out each place first. As the writer descended into the fiery pits, she saw row upon row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they were repeatedly whipped with thorny lashes.

“Oh my,” said the writer. “Let me see heaven now.”

A few moments later, as she ascended into heaven, she saw rows of writers, chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they, too, were whipped with thorny lashes.

“Wait a minute,” said the writer. “This is just as bad as hell!”

“Oh no, it’s not,” replied an unseen voice. “Here, your work gets published.”

There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed his desire to become a great writer.

When asked to define great, he said, “I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger!”

He now works for Microsoft writing error messages.

A screenwriter comes home to a burned down house. His sobbing and slightly-singed wife is standing outside. “What happened, honey?” the man asks.

“Oh, John, it was terrible,” she weeps. “I was cooking, the phone rang. It was your agent. Because I was on the phone, I didn’t notice the stove was on fire. It went up in second. Everything is gone. I nearly didn’t make it out of the house. Poor Fluffy is–”

“Wait, wait. Back up a minute,” The man says. “My agent called?”