Welcome back to the blog, campers! And how about this spiffy new interface, eh? It took two days of arcane code-poking (with much help from Sal) but I think we are now operational with real, actual blogging software. This is good news. It means I will no longer wade through heaps and mounds of html every time I want to make an update. I have put the 90′s behind me and caught up with the naughts now that they’re all over. At this rate I’ll get the hang of Facebook sometime around 2020.
Chloe and I continue to hold forth at the lake cottage, as we have all summer. I’ve told her a dozen times that she ought to be my familiar so I could be a hedge witch. We live in a cottage, after all, and I’ve already got Magrat Garlick hair going on. Chloe’s look is even better: all sleek black dog who can disappear in even the brightest moonlight. But she always calls my bluff and says Sure, I’ll go get some wolfsbane or whatever, just open the door and let me run. Tempting, but her enthusiasm bodes badly for the kitties and duckies who also roam the lake’s dark shore.
So I’m sure those kitties & duckies will be glad to know that Chloe and I won’t be here much longer. Later this month I leave for New England and a writing residency at the Vermont Studio Center. That’s right, I will watch the leaves change in the Green Mountains! Mountains of Many Colors, more like. But the really great part is that two of my friends will be there too. One day last January we drank ceremonial beverages together before mailing our submission packets all at the same moment, and the magic worked. We all got in for the same block of time. So we will be larking it up in the north country for four whole weeks and trying to get some writing done. Just to be on the safe side we’re going to bring our wine with us. Wouldn’t want to get caught in the boondocks without ceremonial beverages, and who knows what they drink up there. Probably cider. That would not do at all.
What makes a cottage a cottage instead of a house?
Yay, you’re back!!
A cottage is small and scruffy and attractive to spiders and you love it anyway. Even if you’re Sophie (who has a pronounced anti-spider prejudice).
Hi Erin! For a second I almost thought that smiley face was really you smiling, but then I haven’t had any tea yet. Here, see if this looks like me…
What makes a cottage different from a cabin? Is a cabin always in the woods? Not on a lake? But there could be a cottage in the woods, I think. Are cottages painted and cabins woody? Either is better than a house.
Well Thoreau most definitely did not live in a cottage, even though his cabin was on the water (and in the woods). Maybe there’s some yin-yang action going on here. If it’s witchy, it is a cottage and not a cabin, and if it’s warlocky, it’s a cabin not a cottage. Not that I am suggesting witchy vs warlocky requires any particular gender.
Then again maybe it’s the paint.
I think huts deserve more respect.
What about shacks?
In cottages, wonderful things happen. In cabins, fish are gutted and antlers mounted on walls.
Quonset huts are among mankind’s more notable architectural achievements. Flying buttresses are also nice, but seldom seen on cottages.
Is this what you had in mind, Chalcedony?
http://swamplot.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/605-columbia-quonset-int.jpg
Sue, you always get it right.