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"I should ask someone or check in an almanac, because sometimes I'm sure it was the longest night of the year. What's more, sometimes I could swear that it didn't end the way nights always end, swallowed up all of a sudden or chewed over by a slow dawn. The night I'm talking about - cat night, nine-lives night in twenty-league boots - vanished or ebbed in odd moments, and as it was going, part of it (and therefore all of it) was coming or lingering, like in some game of mirrors. The nicest kind of hydra: 6:30 A.M. transforming itself into 3:15 for five minutes, a phenomenon that might strike some as annoying but that for others was a blessing, a genuine reprieve and a rewinding."

The Spirit of Science Fiction, Roberto Bolaño

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Drawing Animals. Written and illustrated by Maurice Wilson. Published in 1964.

Internet Archive

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Various species of bats covered in dew during hibernation

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The lyrics "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know" hit differently in the age of climate change

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Jef Bourgeau (American, b.1950)

"First Snow," 2023

watercolor

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Anton Lomaev Moby Dick illustrations

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Some of my favorite birds!

American Woodcock, Gambel's Quail, Nightjar (really any member of the Caprimulgidae family)

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favourite christmas story 🌿

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Into The Light, David Marriott

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Le Lit (The Bed), Au lit: le baiser (In Bed: The Kiss) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

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Paintings made by Gustaf Fjæstad (1868–1948)

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Nine ghosts of Christmas

1. The Ghost of Christmas Past was a mysterious, white-robed figure with a candle-flame atop its head, who came to practitioners of festive humbuggery to show them seasonal scenes from their own history.

2. The Ghost of Christmas Present is a great jolly green-robed spirit who shows you the current celebrations of others in you local area.

3. The Ghost of Christmas Future will be somewhat reminiscent of Death in a black cowl. It will show the miserly their own unattended gravestones, prompting the sort of soul-searching that (we pride ourselves at Ghost Services Intertemporal) leads to a happy ending.

4. The Ghost of Christmas Pluperfect will have been lurking around the Ghost of Christmas Past’s trail, attempting to blow out the candle and generally acting like a sherried uncle. It is not usually part of the standard ghost contract, but might have been brought out if it was a particularly difficult case.

5. We knew that the Ghost of Christmas Posterior would turn up at some point in the whole ghost sequence, because she always does. We also knew she would turn up with her big white sheet on and attempt to poltergeist up the Christmas cake, because she does not take ghosting very seriously. Consequently, we agreed that we would carefully direct her away from the main action so she didn’t bother the client too much.

6. Still wondering about whether to use our services? We have set up a world-class followup program. The Ghost of Christmas Perfect Present has chosen over twenty-thousand gifts so far for our past clients, and all have been exquisitely appropriate.

7. And believe us, by the time you take up our services the Ghost of Christmas Future Perfect Progressive will have been making them even better via the implementation of our global diversity program, allowing for humbuggery to be quenched even in Christmas traditions not specific to Victorian England, in other seasonal festivals, a more sensitive treatment of injollity and so forth.

8. So if I were you I would absolutely hire us. Then you would have no need to worry about a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Simple Conditional, who does our followup surveys on unsuccessful pitches, and you wouldn’t need to worry about her giant eyes and her claws and her tendency to set things on fire.

9. Extra to clients in Southern Africa: tomorrow we will be debuting our Ghost of Christmas Crastinal service. Please stick aound for future announcements!

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I wish jumping spiders were domesticated and you could walk them around on a leash

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The New York Times (Nov. 21, 1966)

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In the autumn of 1883, a paper in the nation's capital reported that "an Iowa woman has spent 7 years embroidering the solar system on a quilt" — to teach astronomy in an era when women could not attend college. Her story.

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acorn woodpeckerrrr (presumably leucistic??)

NOW YOU CAN SEARCH SPECIFICALLY FOR FREAKS

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Kawase Hasui, Late Autumn in Ichikawa, 1930 Color woodblock print Sheet: 15 1/4 × 10 7/16 in. (38.7 × 26.5 cm) Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute