Long-listed for [the coveted] Nancy Awards

In this year when I could not find a creative project to propel me, and felt the lack all year. I tried to fill the hole with books. Fortunately, there were some great reads crossing my desk. These are ones that have stayed with me long after the last page. Thank heaven for these books, fiction and non. In this dark year I am so grateful for sagas and modulated voices and atmosphere, for science and reason and introspection, for fresh viewpoints and researched history, for ambiguity, poetry, and scenic vistas, for close observation, moral dilemmas, context and humor, and especially for breathing room. The world is so much bigger and more beautiful than the shouting and harassing, the propaganda, the rats and the overalls.

  

    

      

    

  

Not a New Year's Day parade float after all

• What in the heigh-ho is going on down at the swimming pool? 
• Why is there a replica nuclear power plant in my backyard? 
• Is this some kid's science fair project? 
• Couldn't the kid just grow mold on bread? 
• When was the Three Mile Island accident? TMI was almost forty years ago! 
• When did TMI change from "Three Mile Island" to "too much information?"

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/7-things-simpsons-got-wrong-about-nuclear

TMI

TMI is an abbreviation that stands for too much information. The term TMI is usually used when someone is sharing too many intimate details, though sometimes TMI is used to describe when someone is sharing too many boring details. The origin of the abbreviation is murky, it is probably linked to the advent of online communities and the use of abbreviations such as LOL (laugh out loud), BRB (be right back) and AFK (away from keyboard). TMI is one of the few abbreviations that migrated from the computer screen into spoken language and is now an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. 

*The cooling towers turn out to be stacked ceramic planters wrapped in industrial-strength Saran wrap.

© 2013-2018 Nancy L. Ruder