This is my nephew, Alex. He is fabulous beyond words! Yesterday, he spent the afternoon sneaking around and stealing pictures of people, like a little paparazzi-in-training... So this was his pose when I told him I was taking HIS picture...

Besides Alex (and Benjamin, my other insanely cute nephew!), here are some other good things to appreciate, for Christmas or for always!

* when smiles linger * Oprah, UTNE and The Sun * public libraries * the way Emmylou Harris' voice leans into a note * The Altarnatives * cookies * singing with kids * itunes * innocence * penpals and the U.S. postal service * ice skating * 11:11 * making soup * dog smooches * new friends * travel * big and little sisters * direct flights * old friends * sweet reunions * cousins * Christmas stollen * Kentucky horse farms * snow * LED lights * Maura and Abby *

Water, is taught by thirst.

Land--by the Oceans passed.

Transport--by throe-

Peace--by it's battles told-

Love, by Memorial Mold-

Birds, by snow.

-Emily Dickinson

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She spelled it "it's," and I wonder if it was one of those ambiguous grammar things, back in the day when spellings weren't so standard? I love the last line. Wish I was in the snow in the daylight, though (not a chance to see too many birds in the dark...).

An ice floe is "a large flat body of ice less then five miles across," or, "any relatively flat piece of ice 20 m or more across." So I suppose these are floelings :). The picture below is frozen shoreline. Extremely slippery, and different, visually, than anything I've ever seen before!

"The country itself… it’s grand. It’s so damned grand… It’s like trying to paint Niagra Falls or a brilliant sunset or the Grand Canyon or some other visual aspect of nature which can only be described by people who have lived in it, have soaked it up, have been in that environment long enough to assimilate and understand it… It is very hard to look at something with your mouth open and at the same time try to think in technical terms: how do you control this image, how do you present it? How do you compose it so that it is the most effective?"
-Karl Fortess, WPA artist who visited the Alaska Territory in 1937