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Merry Christmas, everybody!  Today many of you will be celebrating Christmas Day with close family and friends.  We always travel to Alberta for the holidays so I have actually never spent Christmas Day in my home city of Winnipeg since our move here a decade ago.  I’ve often wondered what it would be like to spend Christmas in Winnipeg.  Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of having lunch with long time Winnipeg poet Sarah Klassen who told me about a special Christmas poem about Winnipeg often recited by children in local schools.  The poem is “Winnipeg at Christmas” by Rose Fyleman.   Written in 1927, the poem was inspired by a visit Fyleman made to Winnipeg around Christmas to give a speech at the Women’s Club.  After the talk, the president of the club and Rose walked to the Manitoba Legislative grounds to have a look at the statue of Queen Victoria there.  The sight of the monarch must surely have inspired these lines from the poem:

Everywhere you go;
Snow upon the housetops, snow along the street,
And Queen Victoria in her chair
Has snow upon her snowy hair
And snow upon her feet.

This year at my daughter’s school’s Winter Concert, one classroom recited the poem and then made poses in vintage era clothing of scenes from the poem.  The presentation was a delightful interpretation of a classic still performed by Winnipeg children to this day.

Is there a local classic that is part of your Christmas celebration in your city or town?  Do share it with us at PaperTigers.

Today’s Poetry Friday host is at Book Aunt.

Something fitting for this weeks theme. It's from Maho no Kasa, a translated version of Rose Fyleman's story "The Magic Umbrella", published by Fukuinkan Shoten in Tokyo 1999 and reprinted 2007.

Are any of your books loooking for a new home? Here's a novel idea. Pun intended. It's awkward it never occurred to me before: bring your books to homeless shelters. Head on over
to the ABC news site for an eye-opening piece on book clubs forming in these shelters. In my book, food, clothing, and shelter provide the traditional necessities, but let's not forget that other basic need: to read, to connect, to share, to see ourselves in stories and to feel less alone.

From the article:
"At a time when book-reading is declining and is especially low among poorer people according to a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll, the book club at 2100 Lakeside seems ill-fated. But, while 1 in 4 people polled admitted to having read no books in 2006, homeless men here are reading two a month."


I know I am preaching to the choir when I say there "is no frigate like a book." (Why argue with Emily Dickinson?)

There is no frigate like a book (1263)
by Emily Dickinson

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears a Human soul.

Many moons ago, I found refuge in the pages of a book. That was X thousand books ago as well. (Numbers schmumbers.) One of the first books I ever read to myself-- and then to my parents-- was AND TO THINK THAT I SAW IT ON MULBERRY STREET. The man who launched 10,000 children's book editors pleas for "No Dr. Seuss imitators" celebrates his birthday today, March 2nd. Happy Birthday, Theodor Seuss Geisel. I'll always love you. Not green eggs. Not ham. (The food. LOVED the book.) When I realized I Could Read it Myself, hello, I found nirvana and I never, ever looked back. Not sure what would have become of me but I suspect none of it would have been good.

I guess you could say what I found on Mulberry Street was... me.


Dr. Seuss, still looking good at 104

P.S. Seuss's Mulberry Street was in Springfield, Massachusetts, Geisel's birthplace. Not the infamous Mulberry Street in Little Italy more familiar to residents of the New York area. In a 6 Degrees from Kevin Bacon way, it pleases me to know I touched Seuss DNA somewhere, sometime in the course of the six years I lived in Springfield, Mass. His love was in the air. Everywhere. And now that I look back on those years, I sort of miss Springfield, too. Oh the things I could think about, all those things that happened in my life in Springfield. But that's another story.



"Nothing," I said, growing red as a beet,
"But a plain horse and wagon on Mulberry Street..."



As the Good Book says, according to Dr. Seuss:
“Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.”

(In truth: today was okay. Too busy for a Saturday. A little too much pressure and angst. But tomorrow is another one and another chance to make it better. You know, as in Hey Jude... "Then you can start to make it better..." I'm here, I'm not. I know. I'm lost in the bowels of parenting and real life and calendars and checkbooks. Wake me up when the bat mitzvah's over.)

Don't ask. It's all right, Ma. Just accept. Yes. That's Bob Dylan. Must See Hava Negila. ;>

By Kirsty OUP-UK

This week I’m delighted to be able to bring you another post from Colin Larkin, editor of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Popular Music. In his last post for the OUP blog, Colin told us what he thought of Christmas records. This time around he explains why he really believes video killed the radio star. Do you agree with him? Let us know in the comments box below!

Ah the 60s. Catch a last lingering whiff of patchouli while the musical decade which changed the world slowly fades and the protagonists, movers and shakers retire or die.
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Lost in the hubbub about the new words and disappearing hyphens in the latest edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is a more subtle type of editorial revision. The Shorter, as a dictionary built on historical principles, provides information about the age of words and their main senses. The date range of earliest known use is noted in each entry by E (early), M (mid), or L (late) plus a century number: thus “M18″ means a word was first recorded in the mid-18th century. This style of dating is admittedly approximate, but giving the exact year of a word’s first recorded use would lend a false sense of precision. We very rarely can determine the first “baptismal” usage of a word with any confidence. But even with dates given by rough century divisions, the editors of the Shorter have been able to revise the dating of nearly 4,500 words and senses based on discoveries of earlier recorded uses, known as “antedatings” in the dictionary world. Much of this new antedating information is derived from the ongoing work done for the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Since I dabble in what my colleague Erin McKean recently called “the competitive sport of antedating,” I thought I’d share a discovery of mine that made it into the new edition of the Shorter.

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