It's my Fifth Blogiversary!

Hello everyone! I hope that you are all having a wonderful day for yourselves! :) Yes, today is my Fifth Blogiversary! Five Years?!?! Whoo Hoo. Party time! :)

I checked on an anniversary website and found out that the traditional gifts to celebrate five years together is to give your partner anything made of wood. The more modern gift is to give your partner silver. The fifth anniversary gemstone is sapphire, the anniversary color is turquoise, and the flower that you usually give your partner on your fourth anniversary together is the Daisy which can stand for loyal love, beauty, patience, purity, innocence, and simplicity.

There are currently more then 23,000 recognized species of Asteraceae or Compositae (commonly referred to as the aster, daisy, or sunflower family. The name Asteraceae comes from Aster, the most common genus in the family, and is derived from the Greek word for 'star'. The vernacular name "daisy", widely applied to members of this family, is derived from its Old English name meaning "day's eye". This is because the petals open at dawn and close at dusk. Asters are found everywhere in the world except Antarctica or the extreme Arctic.

I just started reading When Satan Wore a Cross: The Shocking True Story of a Killer Priest by Fred Rosen on 12 May 2014.

Fred Rosen was a former columnist for the Arts and Leisure Section of The New York Times. He now is a true crime author living in the United States. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and has suffered from Dysthemia (also known as Chronic Depression) for a number of years.

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

It's my Fourth Blogiversary!

Hello everyone! I hope that you are all having a wonderful day for yourselves! :) Yes, today is my Fourth Blogiversary! Four Years?!?! Whoo Hoo. Party time! :)

I checked on an anniversary website and found out that the traditional gifts to celebrate four years together is to give your partner fruit, flowers or books. The more modern gift is to give your partner anything having to do with electrical appliances. The fourth anniversary gemstone is either amethyst or topaz, the anniversary color is blue or green and the flower that you usually give your partner on your fourth anniversary together is the Geranium which can stand for stupidity of folly, but perhaps more positively can stand for comfort and gentility.

There are currently almost 422 recognized species of Geranium. The name Geranium is derived from the Greek word for 'crane', and is more commonly known in English as 'cranesbills' or 'storksbills'. Geraniums are found throughout the temperate regions of the world and the mountains of the tropics, but mostly in the eastern part of the Mediterranean region. The genus was successfully separated into two by Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle (1746-1800) who was a French botanist and magistrate.

Born into an upper-class affluent Parisian family, connections with the French Royal Court secured for Charles his first position as Superintendent of Parisian Waters and Forests at the age of twenty-six. In this capacity, Charles conducted various studies of native trees and shrubs, also gaining an interest in exotic flora. After taking up the superintendency, he appears to have been self-taught in botany.

In 1775, Charles was appointed as the magistrate of a court that dealt with tax offenses. Under the court's president at that time, Malesherbes, the Cour des Aides in Paris became perhaps the only French government institution to protect ordinary citizens against a corrupt state. Malesherbes himself was a keen botanist, but by 1775 had been forced out of office because he published a scheme to reform the tax system.

Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle married Thérèse-Valère Doré in 1775. They had five children in the nineteen years before Thérèse-Valère died in 1794. With his private wealth and public income, Charles was able to pursue his botanical interests as a wealthy amateur. He was a strict follower of the Linnaen system of plant classification. The most influential French botanists of the time - Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, Michel Adanson and others - advocated a more natural system of classification. Charles, however, was friends with such scholars as Georges Cuvier, Pierre Marie Auguste Broussonet and André Thouin - all noted botanists and naturalists, themselves.

Charles soon clashed with certain French botanists who espoused more modern systems of classification. When the French Revolution began in 1789, Charles continued to publish botanical papers. As a magistrate of a respected court, and holding liberal political ideas himself, Charles was at first not at risk when the French Revolution began. In fact, he was one of the few former magistrates to be appointed judge of a revolutionary tribunal. 

In October 1789, he was even appointed commander of his district's National Guard. Acting under his orders, his troops prevented the massacre of the King's bodyguard when the Parisian mob removed the King from Versailles to Paris. In 1790, despite Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, Michel Adanson and Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck voting against his induction, he was actually elected as an associate member of the Academy of Sciences. When the Reign of Terror began in late 1792, it is said that Charles was imprisoned for a time, in danger of being executed, until some of his botanist friends managed to get him released. There is no independent confirmation of this, although Charles' former patron, Malesherbes, certainly went to the guillotine on April 23, 1794 for his defense of the King before the National Convention.

About the time that the Reign of Terror ended in 1794, Charles' wife Thérèse-Valère died. His eldest son, Jacques, left home and seems to have become estranged from his father; the eldest daughter went to live with another family, while Charles and his servants cared for the three youngest children. (Rose, the youngest, was only two years old at this time although she lived to be 99 years old.) Charles himself never remarried.

Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle was ruined by the Revolution, and had to take a low-paying job at the Ministry of Justice, although he was also a member of the Commission on Agriculture and the Arts and was involved in the publication of several agricultural reports. In 1795 the Academy of Sciences was reborn as the National Institute of Sciences and Arts, and Charles was elected to full membership, which came with a decent salary. He still owned an herbarium of approximately 8,000 species as well as an extensive botanical library which he allowed young botanists to use freely.

On the evening of August 16, 1800 as he was walking home after working late at the Institute, Charles was attacked and murdered in the street by an unknown assailant. One rumor was that the assassin was his eldest son, Jacques. Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle was described by Swiss botanist, Augustin Pyramus de Candolle as being: 

"A dry man, cold in appearance but actually quite passionate, acrimonious and sarcastic in conversation, given to small intrigues, a declared enemy of de Jussieu, de Lamarck and even of the new methods, but always doing for me acts of kindness for which I was grateful."

According to his friend, Georges Cuvier:

"His works were superb, but his table frugal and his clothes simple. He spent 20,000 francs a year on botany, but went about on foot."

Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle always refused to have any portraits made.

I just started reading Just After Sunset: Stories by Stephen King on 10 May 2013. 

"The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings - words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out." - Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King (born on 21 September 1947) is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 500 million copies and have been made into several movies. He is known for novels such as Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, It, Misery and the seven-novel series The Dark Tower, which he wrote over a period of 27 years. As of 2010, Stephen King has written and published 49 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, five non-fiction books, and nine collections of short stories including Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, and Everything's Eventual. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine.

Stephen King and his wife Tabitha have three children - Naomi, Joe and Owen - and three grandchildren. Tabitha King is herself a social activist and a successful author, having written eight books. Naomi is a Unitarian Universalist Church minister in Plantation, Florida, Joe is an author and comic book writer, perhaps better known by his pen name Joe Hill. Joe Hill is the author of three novels - Heart-Shaped Box, Horns and NOS4A2 - a collection of short stories titled 20th Century Ghosts and the comic book series Locke and Key. Owen King is also a published short story author, himself.

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

It's my Third Blogiversary!

Hello everyone! I hope that you are all having a wonderful day for yourselves! :) Yes, today is my Third Blogiversary! Whoo Hoo. Party time! :)

I checked on an anniversary website and found out that the traditional gift to celebrate three years together is to give your partner anything Leather. The more modern gifts to give your partner are Crystal or Glass. The third anniversary gemstone is pearl or jade, the anniversary color is white or jade green and the flower that you usually give your partner on your third anniversary together is Fuchsia which stands for taste.

There are currently almost 110 recognized species of Fuchsia. The vast majority are native to South America, but there are a few species found further north to Central America, Mexico, New Zealand and Tahiti. The first species of Fuchsia was discovered on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (present-day Dominican Republic and Haiti) in 1703 by French Minim monk and botanist Charles Plumier (1646-1704) who named the new genus after the renowned German botanist Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566)

I just started reading The White Voyage by John Christopher on 12 May 2012.

Samuel Youd (born 16 April 1922) was a British author known professionally as Christopher Samuel Youd, although he is perhaps best known for his science fiction writings under the pseudonym John Christopher. Samuel Youd adopted the name Christopher Samuel Youd for his professional writings, leading to the widespread but mistaken belief that that was his birth name. Throughout his life he was known simply as Sam to his friends and acquaintances.

Serving in World War II in the Royal Corps of Signals from 1941 to 1946, Sam was awarded a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation, which made it possible for him to pursue a writing career, beginning with 1949's The Winter Swan which he wrote under the name Christopher Youd. He wrote science fiction short stories as John Christopher from 1951, finding his first major success as an author with his second novel, The Death of Grass published in 1956. (the book was published the following year in the United States under the title No Blade of Grass.) In 1966, still writing under the name John Christopher, he began writing science fiction for adolescents - writing The Tripods trilogy from 1967-1968, two young adult science fiction novels - The Lotus Caves in 1969 and The Guardians in 1970 - as well as the Sword of the Spirits trilogy, which he wrote from 1971-1972.

All of these young adult books were well received, particularly The Guardians - which won the annual Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 1971 - also known as the Guardian Award - conferred by The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom. The German-language translation of The Guardians, won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (German Youth Literature Prize) in 1976. Samuel Youd continued to use the pseudonym John Christopher for the majority of his writing, including all of his science fiction work.

He did occasionally write under variations of his own name, as well as under the pseudonyms Stanley Winchester, Hilary Ford, William Godfrey, William Vine, Peter Graaf, Peter Nichols, and Anthony Rye. He died in Bath, England, on 3 February 2012 of complications from bladder cancer.

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

It's my Second Blogiversary!

Hello everyone! I hope that you are all having a wonderful day for yourselves! :) Yes, today is my Second Blogiversary! I can't believe that I have been blogging for this long already! It's time for me to crank up the jukebox and party down. With my arthritic knees the way they are these days, that's a strong impossibility for me to actually dance around, but I'll just sit in my big, fluffy oversized armchair and jig my feet around instead! :) 

I checked on an anniversary website and discovered that the traditional gift to celebrate two years together is to give your partner anything Cotton. The more modern gift is to give your partner China. The second anniversary gemstone is garnet, the anniversary color is red and the flower that you usually give your partner on your second anniversary together is Cosmos which stands for modesty.

There are currently 20 to 26 species of Cosmos which are native to Mexico, Florida and the southern United States, Arizona, Central America, South America and Paraguay. The first species of Cosmos was discovered by Spanish priests who grew Cosmos in their mission gardens in Mexico. The evenly-spaced petals led the priests to christen the flowers Cosmos, which is the Greek word for 'harmony' or 'ordered universe.' 

I just started reading Resistance by Anita Shreve on 5 May 2011.

Anita Shreve (born 1946) grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts (just outside Boston) as the eldest of three daughters. Early literary influences for her were reading Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton in junior high school - a book that she says is still one of her favorites - as well as everything ever written by Eugene O'Neill that she read as a senior in high school. She began her writing career while working as a high school teacher in Reading, Massachusetts. One of her first published stories, Past the Island, Drifting won the O. Henry Prize in 1976. 

She finally decided that she couldn't really make a successful living writing short fiction, switching to journalism and traveling to Nairobi, Kenya.where she lived for three years, writing for an African magazine. Anita Shreve then moved back to the United States and began writing and editing several magazines in New York. She published her first novel in 1989, Eden Close, and since then has written 15 more books.

Anita Shreve is happily married to a man who she first met when she was 13 years old. She has two children and three stepchildren and currently lives in Longmeadow, Massachusetts.

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

It's my First Blogiversary!

Hello everyone! I hope that you are all having a wonderful day for yourselves! :) Yes, today is my First Blogiversary! I can't believe that I have been blogging for exactly one year already! Party hats and noise makers for everyone! :)

I checked on an anniversary website and discovered that the traditional gift to celebrate a first anniversary together is to give your partner Paper. The more modern gifts to give your loved one are Clocks  The first  anniversary gemstones can either be gold, pearl or peridot, the anniversary color is gold or yellow and the flowers that you usually give your partner on your first anniversary together are Orange Blossoms or Pansies.
   

The Orange Blossom stands for purity, innocence, eternal love, marriage and fruitfulness, and fertility. It is used in perfume making, has been written about as an aphrodisiac and is the state flower of Florida. Orange Blossoms are traditionally associated with good fortune and have been used in bridal bouquets and head wreaths for weddings. 

The Pansy stands for thought or remembrance and actually comes from the French word pensee. The flower is so named because it resembles a human face nodding deep in thought. Pansies have been featured strongly in literature and the visual arts: William Shakespeare mentions the pansy in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet, and poets such as William Wordsworth and and Edmund Spenser have referenced the pansy in many of their works.  

I'm currently reading Under Gemini by Rosamunde Pilcher who, early in her career, wrote under the pseudonym Jane Fraser. Rosamunde Pilcher was born Rosamunde Scott on 22 September 1924 in Lelant, Cornwall. She married Graham Hope Pilcher on December 7, 1946, and they moved to Dundee, Scotland, where she still lives today. She retired from writing in 2000, although her son, Robin Pilcher is also a successful novelist.

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight