Category Archives: Commentary

What’s New for the 20th of December: Winter Holiday food and drink, a dreydl tale, Debussy’s ‘War Carol’, Kage Baker and Christmas, an egg nog recipe, a Solstice story, an offbeat Christmas film, Steeleye Span & Pratchett, Christmas Revels, music by Loreena McKennitt and much more!

It was Christmas and Kinlocochbervie had a festive atmosphere about it. Decorations and fir trees decked out with tinsel stood in windows, lighting the dull afternoon with flashes of cheerful Technicolor brilliance, and the door to the Compass was adorned … Continue reading

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Josepha Sherman’s Winter Queen Speech

What is Winter? A time to fear? A time for darkness and death? No. Winter is merely part of the endless cycle of sleep and awakening, dying and rebirth. The trees know it: they don’t die each year. They merely … Continue reading

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Summer Queen S. J. Tucker on Books and Reading

What was the first book that you remember reading? My middle name is Jane. My mother gave it to me in honor of my great aunt Jane, whom I remember from my childhood as the beautiful redheaded relative from Louisiana … Continue reading

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Our Summer Queen, S.J. Tucker, An Interview

The shelves and windowsills were crowded with ravens; the hedgehogs took the first row of seats; even a few of the local fae could be seen peeking shyly around corners now and again. The Jacks and the Annies were in … Continue reading

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Our Summer Queen, S.J. Tucker, on Food and Drink

We remember the summer afternoon that SJ Tucker played for us on the Greensward. It was a perfect summer day — warm but not too warm, sunny with a gentle breeze. And SJ with just a guitar providing some of … Continue reading

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Our Summer Queen, S.J. Tucker: The Summer I Know

I grew up in the Mississippi River Delta in southeast Arkansas, where the state lines blur near the tops of Louisiana and Mississippi, and life still moves at a very calm pace for most folks. I spent half my summers … Continue reading

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Christopher Priest’s The Islanders

First thing to note is that this is not a novel. It’s more like notes that travelers put together on exotic (to them, not people who live there) locales they visited. Think of it as akin to something the publishers … Continue reading

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A Kinrowan Estate story: Contradances (A Letter to Svetlana)

Dear friend, You asked me why we call our dances here contradances and not English country dance or something akin to it. Well, a bit of history first. English Country Dance is a form of social folk dance which originated … Continue reading

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