Treats for Halloween

For my favorite holiday in my favorite season, here are some favorites for Halloween...

The inimitable Vincent Price reading A Hornbook for Witches:



And one of my favorite stories for Halloween, Poor Little Saturday by Madeleine L'Engle. It's collected in A Newbery Halloween, which is a sweet, spooky treasure.

Happy Haunting!

Groundhog Days

A little mixtape for Groundhog Day, or for going around in circles waiting for spring:

October Tricks & Treats

Here's a roundup of images from my annual weird roadtrip (this year's destination was Pittsburgh), and general October spookiness. Included is a link to this year's Halloween mixtape. Happy Haunting, and many eerie returns!

(the Cathedral of Learning)

(hanging object by Thorsten Brinkmann at La Hütte Royal)

(an excellent record store find... listen here)

(the oldest funicular railway in the United States)

(crypt stained glass in Homewood Cemetery)

(Cathedral Commons Room)

(an old favorite... listen here)

(horse chestnuts or conkers)

(our favorite bat cat)

(homemade ginger wasabi chocolates)

And last, but not least, this year's Halloween mix:

Everything's gone green

Dorothea Lange, Michael Kenneally, County Clare, Ireland, 1954

My grandpa, known as Red, loved his Irish heritage (his father was a half-Irish horse trader). In their honor, here's a little mixtape for St. Patrick's Day. Wishing you love and luck.




(playlist direct link)

another Halloween mixtape

Another little mixtape for my favorite season (listen to last year's mixtape here, and the 2014 mix here)!



Happy Halloween!

A lazy, day-off summer mixtape...

Giving Thanks

Fantastic Mr Fox (2009)

Because I have two countries, I have the odd privilege of feeling very British on Independence Day and very American on Thanksgiving. I love that Thanksgiving isn't about anything you can buy, simply gratitude and time spent with those you love. Some of my most favorite Thanksgivings were spent far away from the US, cooking and baking and sharing with friends.

Here's my usual annual Thanksgiving mixtape, slightly edited. Enjoy it while you're baking, or eating, or just feeling thankful:

More Music for Halloween

Illustration from A Woggle of Witches by Adrienne Adams (1971)

A virtual mixtape of spooky music for you (listen to last year's mix here):

Marking the autumnul equinox

A poem for the first day of my favorite season... "Haunted Houses" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (read by Tom O'Bedlam):

A Mixtape for Halloween

James Wyeth "Pumpkinhead-Self Portrait" (1972)

13 + 13 = 26 songs for Halloween!

Thanksgiving Mixtape Revisited

(Illustration from the completely delightful book "The Hedgehog Feast,"
painted by Edith Holden some time between 1911 and 1920)

Last year I shared a mixtape of songs that get me in the Thanksgiving mood. This year I've edited and expanded the mix, and added a handy dandy playlist. Whether you celebrate Thanksgiving, harvest, or the joys of autumn turning into winter, I hope you enjoy it.

In Like a Lion

John Belushi explains the entrance of March (Saturday Night Live, March 1976).

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night

(watercolor illustration by Edith Blackwell Holden, 1906,
from The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady)

I've been listening to an old recording of Truman Capote reading his story, "A Christmas Memory," written in 1956. It is sweet, funny, nostalgic and sad, as the best Christmas stories are. This American Life has a slightly abridged version of the 1959 recording on their site, which you may listen to here.

Wishing you visions of sugarplums and a very merry Christmas!

A Thanksgiving Mixtape!

Thanksgiving inspires an odd mix of introspection and gluttony. Americans give thanks, cherish friends and family, and then gorge themselves with wild abandon. I abstain from a few "traditions" of the holiday (watching American football, turkey eating, rampant consumer spending) but Thanksgiving still makes me feel content and nostalgic. Plus, any holiday that revolves around cooking, eating and sharing lovely food is OK in my book.

Here is a playlist of songs about food, Thanksgiving, and giving thanks. A few of the songs about food are not actually about food (ahem!), but I threw them in anyway... (click titles to listen)

Come on-a My House - Rosemary Clooney (1951)

Over the River and Through the Woods - Danny Kaye and the Andrews Sisters (originally written as a Thanksgiving poem in 1844, this version changes the lyrics to make it a Christmas song)

I've Got Plenty To Be Thankful For - Bing Crosby, from Holiday Inn (1942)

Ojibway Square Dance (Love Song) - Georgia Wettlin-Larsen (an American Indian variation on "Turkey in the Straw")

Beans and Cornbread - Lois Jordan and the Tympany Five (1949)

Hoe-Down - from Aaron Copeland's 1942 ballet, Rodeo

Ito Eats - "Ito eats like teeth are out of style!" ...Elvis Presley, from Blue Hawaii (1961)

Count Your Blessings - Jackson Gospel Singers

Country Pie - Beck (covering Bob Dylan's 1969 original)

Gravy (For My Mashed Potatoes) - Dee Dee Sharp (1962)

Food, Glorious Food - from Oliver! (1968)

Country Style - Bing Crosby, from Welcome Stranger (1947)

Keep on Eating - Memphis Minnie (1938-9)

Parlez-Nous à Boire - roughly, "talk to us about drinking" ...The Balfa Brothers (1967)

Thanksgiving Prayer - Johnny Cash

Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep) - Bing Crosby, from White Christmas (1954)

For the Beauty of the Earth - version of the 1864 hymn by The Lower Lights (song starts properly around the 50 second mark)

This Land is Your Land - Woody Guthrie (1940)


Hope you enjoy, and have a very  happy Thanksgiving!

swept away

Nerd chic? Check. Nods to Esther Williams/Busby Berkeley style choreography? Check. Swedish all-girl choral covers of pop songs, folk ballads and a Kate Bush classic? Check.

Yep. There was never any way I wouldn't like The Sweptaways:

Blue Christmas

Hello all. Bit of a blue Christmas here. I realized I've been avoiding all the things I miss because thinking about them makes me feel like something very large and heavy is sitting on my heart. It's a bit of a backwards way to manage, I suppose. I miss my little attic and so many things it's hard to count. To all the far away people I've been missing (you know who you are) I send very much love and a promise to not be so quiet. Happy Christmas!

the end of the world as we know it

Big Bang Day has arrived. Today is the day scientists finally switched on the Large Hadron Collider at Cern. The Large Hadron Collider is not just the largest particle accelerator ever made, but its running constitutes the largest scientific experiment ever conducted. Some members of the scientific community believed that switching on the particle accelerator this morning would create mini black holes which could swell and devour the earth. As I am still sitting here typing and drinking my coffee I think we're in the clear. What may be world-changing about this experiment are the questions it could answer. Cern scientists hope to create a mini big bang and examine the resulting particles, possibly including the hypothetical Higgs boson or "God particle," which could help explain why objects acquire mass and help fill in the blanks in the Standard Model of particle physics. The scientists at Cern could get to see first-hand what happened during the creation of the universe and gain a greater understanding of how the universe works, which is tremendously exciting.


black hole!

In the very slim chance the worst does happen, here's some music for the end of the world.

strange creatures

With the combination of one of my housemates arriving home late and noisy every night this week and the workmen across the street starting too early, I've not been sleeping well. Last night I had a very disturbing dream about a group of cat-sized rodents nesting in my bedroom. They had humps like camels, tails like water rats and clawed, webbed feet. I wonder what the humps were for?


(image - Matthew Robins)

Tonight I'm going to watch Matthew Robins perform his "science fiction opera" The Death of Flyboy at the National Theatre, with shadow puppets projected on the fly-tower and live musical accompaniment. Listen to some of Matthew's music here. If you're in London you should come along.

Anything can happen, child.

I spent a snowy night a few weeks ago driving down from the mountains with my sisters and listening to Shel Silverstein poems on CD. I just found the Shel Silverstein website, which is suitably silly and has some great audio clips of Silverstein reading his poems, making noises and playing music. The excerpt from The Giving Tree accompanied by Silverstein on the harmonica is really lovely.. but then the story did always make me cry when I was little.


"There once was a tree... and she loved a little boy."

you are getting very sleepy...

I've been out again listening to nice people make very nice music. There's a video I took of some of it over here.

That's all, I think. Off to bed..