Cassette Player stack: Various—New England Christmastide; Odetta—Christmas Spirituals; Emmy Lou Harris—Light of the Stable; Lisa Neustat and Jean Redpath—Shout for Joy. CDs: Wes Weddell (compiler) (www.wesweddell.com ) Saturn Songs XIV; Wes Weddell Band—Nobody’s Flag; John Denver and the Muppets—A Christmas Together; The Effi Netzer Singers—A Festival of Jewish Song; Amanda Winterhalter http://amandawinterhalter.com—Olea; John Waters (compiler)—A John Waters Christmas; Bob Dylan—Christmas in the Heart.
Book Just Finished: Tana French—The Trespasser. The one before that: Harlan Coben—Fool Me Once (Y’all can see where my head’s been.) Getting Back to: Sayantani Dasgupta—Fire Girl, and Esther Barnett Goffinet—Ripples of a Lie (backstory and aftermath of class-based injustice in Centralia, WA, 1919) On Deck: Play House—The Architecture of Daniel Evan White, and David C. Korten—Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Future Bedtime: Jules Fieffer—By the Side of the Road.
Memoir Writers! There is a simple contest running for obtaining an agent, but it ends Saturday, December 31, 2016. It is run by Chuck Sambuchino, and the agent is Jennifer Wills. All the information is available at http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/28th-free-dear-lucky-agent-contest-memoir. And, as long as you have the manuscript and access to a least one form of social media at your command, you can enter in a very short time.
The Gingerbread House. Over a number of years the family’s vision has changed, and friends—especially poet Rosalie Moffett (June in Eden, 2016, just out, www.rosaliemoffett.com ) have embraced a completely different esthetic.
Left: The cookbook vision; Right Top: The 2016 family and friends edition front; Right bottom: 2016 aerial rear. Includes two outhouses, one still, two bears, three pigs, one mutant amphibian, the Easter Bunny, and no partridge in a pear tree.
Happy New Year, Jim
Jim Weddell 