Saturday, September 08, 2007

Christmas in September

I was reading my son Santa Claus the World's Number One Toy Expert and noticed for the first time that Santa's shorts show the passage of time. First they're decorated with snowflakes, then hearts... I forget what comes next, but then there's shamrocks and then flowers. It must be so darned fun to be a children's book illustrator and dream up stuff like that.

and yet another benefit to reading children's literature

Our night-blooming jasmine, which we thought had bought it in a winter frost, is flowering again. If not for The Secret Garden, we probably would have dug it up and composted it.

more wrinkled time

Liz B brought up the question of L'engle's confused timelines. I have actually seen a timeline in some more recent editions of L'Engle, which is actually two timelines -- does anyone remember what they were called? One was Kronos, I think, the other Kairos? Anyway -- the idea was that some characters live in normally progressing time and others live in a non-standard timeline, and that explains the Zachary Grey confusion.

Yes, it was kronos and kairos - what would we do without google?