To be called a crone isn’t a compliment. Etymologically, the word derives from one meaning insult, which, in turn, derives from another word implying annoying woman or, literally, carrion. It shouldn’t be surprising, given the patriarchy and all, that old women in fairy tales and myths are lumped into one inglorious category: suspicious fringe dwellers (further sub-divided into […]
Pardon my grogginess (and possible rambling), but I just finished a bender, no, a binge. Two actually. In recent weeks, I plowed through Marisa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles, then Chanda Hahn’s Unfortunate Fairy Tales, with more fever than I expected to muster for fairy tales. I’m not much of a fairy tale person since reading them […]
Forests are known by many names: rainforest, woodland, wood, jungle, bush, backwood, park, with each term conjuring its own meaningful subtext. Woodland, to the fanciful mind, might imply the existence of a realm of unseen beings who sleep sheltered within the center of a daisy or owe their existence to the lifeblood of an oak […]
Speaking of trust— Yes, we were talking about trust just last month (It’s about Control). I’ve noticed a weird trust trend. Romance, fantasy, and sci-fi novels share a level of trust that I find impossible to believe. It’s not that the protagonist trusts the villain, although that happens fairly regularly. In Chanda Hahn’s Reign (book […]
I live in Saskatchewan and enjoy hiking in the prairies while musing that bison, deer, and cattle (and any other grass munching creatures) live directly on top of what they love most: their food. I try to imagine how it might feel to constantly be surrounded by what I love to eat. For me, I’d […]
Last night I dreamed that a long-awaited companion arrived to take me to the other side of the world where we would live in comfort, without fear or want, for the rest of our lives. Unfortunately, we were running late to meet the train, and just as the doors were about to close I realized […]
I have found myself dwelling on the color blue and the way our planet’s elemental hue, the most symphonic of the colors, recurs throughout our literature as something larger than a mere chromatic phenomenon…1 The color blue is the chimera of the visible light spectrum. It is everywhere and nowhere. The most popular color. Yet […]
“When an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate.” —Carl Gustav Jung Once upon a time there lived, on […]
My love of fairy tales includes those to which I might, as a feminist, be ashamed to admit—Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Snow White. Simpering damsels? Victims rescued by a prince? I don’t think so. Their wildness, wisdom and strength cannot be denied. It is sometimes called the ‘woman who lives at the end of time,’ […]
In his TEDSalon NY2013 talk, “The Unheard Story of David and Goliath,” Malcolm Gladwell posits that the long-held belief that the Biblical tale is a “metaphor for improbable victories” is false. Any reader able to place the story in its proper context will see that when the Philistines put forth their champion, the giant Goliath, […]
