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..I must have been around ten when I broke away from the children's quarters and wandered up and down the aisles, back and forth, in and out, left and right. There were books all over the place. If I wanted to read them all, and I did, I had to get started...
Gloria MacKay illuminates the wonder and delight of books and libraries.
Gloria MacKay offers a seriously enjoyable article for this non-serious day.
Gloria MacKay tells of one of the great joys of Sunday morning – sorting out the many sections of a newspaper which comes stuffed in a blue plastic bag like a bed roll, then settling down for a long, delicious read.
Gloria MacKay tells of National Groundhog Day, a fun-filled American tradition, and of that ageless and infallible weather predictor, Punxsutawney Phil.
Makes you long to be there for the festivities next week!
...The healthiest party game of the season might be to simply hang around the snack table, keep our hands in our pockets, and guess who is going to pick what.
Snack Food Psychology...
As the party season progresses Gloria MacKay muses on the findings of Chicago-based researcher Dr Alan Hirsch who says "The munchies you choose tells a lot about who you are."
Gloria MacKay copes well with the dark season of the year. "I can survive for weeks in a closet of gray and come out blooming like a Christmas cactus...''
But there are many who are both literally and acronymically sad in winter - victims of Seasonal Affective Disorder.
"These people just cannot function well when they wake up in the dark, commute both ways in the dark, dine in the dark, make love in the dark and fight in the dark. Without light, their bodies want to curl up like bears until a ray of early morning sun jump-starts their brains.''
...Clay was no better. As the rest of the class turned out rabbits and tea cups and flat little faces with the features all nicely in place, I never progressed past snakes. So, it was a ho-hum afternoon for me when Miss Jackson, my fourth grade teacher, began a new art project...
Art was not Gloria MacKay's favourite subject, yet she eventually found a form of artistic expression that brought her much pleasure.
For more of Gloria's generous words please click on Pins And Needles in the menu on this page.
Continue reading "Over And Under And Over And Under And..." »
...Numbers are different; there is not a synonym or figure of speech in the bunch. You not only can count them, you can count on them. Whether sprawled across a check, stuck on a birthday cake, flat up against the side of a house or hiding in an equation, numbers always mean the same thing...
Gloria MacKay loves words more than numbers, yet, when the need requires - the need being filling in a tax form - she is able to look numbers in the eye.
"Nice is an insipid, namby-pamby, non-descriptive adjective.'' declares Gloria MacKay. "In some circles nice functions as a compliment but in my personal thesaurus the word describes someone who is as deep as a pie plate and as complex as glucose...''
And it would be altogether inadequate to say that Gloria writes a nice column. An entertaining column, yes. An unmissable column, yes, yes. A brilliant column, yes, yes, yes!
To enjoy more of Gloria's writing please click on Pins And Needles in the menu on this page.
...I sense a subtle bond among those of us who inhale a life time of briny northwest air: as though this has given us an attitude outsiders just don’t understand...
Gloria MacKay is provincial and proud of it, delighted to be living in the USA's Pacific North West. Her enticing words will make you wish that you too had been born a Puget Sounder.
...When the New Oxford American Dictionary announced its top ten words of 2006 I approached the results not with baited breath, or bated breath, but with interest...
In this exhilirating encounter with the English language Gloria MacKay gets to grips with some new words - or, to be terminologically precise, new words and phrases.
For more of Gloria's entertaining columns please click on Pins And Needles in the menu on this page.
Take care of the edges, and the centre will take care of itself. Those words were aimed at gardeners, but Gloria MacKay is convinced that dealing with the edges is the best way to care for just about anything.
For more of Gloria's delightful words please click on Pins and Needles in the menu on his page.
"Current research points to a regimen of daily drinking as one step in our journey to maintain good health,'' says Gloria MacKay. "I have no problem finding time to floss and exercise is at least a sometimes thing. But this drinking! Increasing my alcoholic consumption is the toughest behavior change I have ever attempted...''
Gloria is a lady who has fun with words, and fun with life. For more of her exuberant columns please click on Pins and Needles in the menu on this page.
...Somehow, doesn’t rising seem morally superior to falling? At times we feel as though we can rise forever, but we only fall until we hit the ground? Maybe that’s it. Rising has no limits--upward and onward--while falling is a rock sliding, knee skinning, stock dropping, cake failing sort of a word...
By way of baking bread and recalling poems learned in Miss Portmann's fourth grade classroom, Gloria MacKay expresses her joy in words - and the use of words. That joy results in a reading treat for Open Writing visitors.
To see more of Gloria's columns please Click on Pins and Needles in the menu on this page.
...A woman, thin-lipped and wild-eyed with chin embedded on upturned palms, kneels before her creation. "Help," she groans. "I can't do this." She unbends and waves an arm flecked with aerosol gold. "Help," she wails. "I can't figure this out. For God's sake, will someone please tell me... how far apart are an angel's eyes?"
Seventeen glue guns cool and seventeen women freeze. One whispers, "I was wondering about that myself."...
Ah, Christmas! A time to make angels.
But Gloria MacKay takes us beyond the making of traditional images to the true centre of Christmas - the wondrous, innocent creativity of children who know how far apart things should be.
...Roasting Pan and I are really quite close. He knows I start planning for this special meal days ahead. I like time on Thanksgiving Day to contemplate all four of my sons: their man talk and boy talk and parent talk and son talk, and note the few gray hairs, the certain weariness and the special compassion that fatherhood and unclehood brings...
On this Thanksgiving Day Gloria MacKay writes about family, and turkey, and pumpkin with whipping cream and/or ice cream (vanilla, chocolate and/or butter pecan) - and all the warmth and wonderful magic that make the celbration extra-special.
To read more of Gloria's splendid columns please click on Pins and Needles in the menu on this page.
Gloria MacKay read about an indepenent old maid whose favourite pastime was "Spending my tips''.
That set her musing on some of the "tips'' she has accumulated through life.
"Spending our tips, like spending anything else, is as much a matter of style as supply. From the start, some children pocket their allowance and spend it as fast as it takes to get to the store. Others can't wait to drop their coins in their bank, and there they stay. A jiggle, a peak and a clink is enough of a tip for them....''
And the best tip for Open Writing readers is, after enjoying this column, to sample more of Gloria's satisfying words by clicking on Pins and Needles in the menu on this page.
"Sacrificing women abound like smelt in the river or ants in the sand. And once their usefulness is over they tumble into limbo like unmatched socks from the dryer, or lemmings hell bent for the sea.''
But the compulsion to put others first is not always a virtue, says Gloria MacKay. Receiving can be as spiritual as giving, and women deserve their share of the pie.
Gloria broadcasts on a radio station in Everett, Washington State, USA.
http://www.kser.org/ To read more of her vigorous words please click on Pins And Needles in the menu on this page.
Waxed paper and Ziploc bags. Everyday items, unworthy of more than a passing thought. That is until Gloria MacKay comes along to wrap them up in an entertaining package of words.
Gloria's words are broadcast by http://www.kser.org/
...In those days, slow was slower than it is today. No one could, or would, so they said, run a mile in less than four minutes. Cars moved slowly enough that even a child could read Burma Shave signs on the side of the road, and on a hot day when I opened my grandmother’s cooler to finger the ice, the drips were a long time coming...
Gloria MacKay remembers her childhood days, when parents advocated the virtues of slowness.
Gloria regularly broadcast on an Everett, Washington State, USA radio station http://www.kser.org/ To read more of her columns please click on Pins and Needles in the menu on this page. For maximum, and guaranteed, pleasure they should be read slowly.
...Poet Carl Sandburg described slang as "a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.''
On the other hand, G. K. Chesterton, writer and literary critic said, "All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.''
Gloria MacKay ventures into the dense lexicological thickets to explore the ever-changing meanings of certain slang words - emerging into the light with a smile on her face.
Gloria broadcasts for a radio station in Everett, Washington State, USA, http://www.kser.org/
There's no scarcity of words, says Gloria MacKay. "New words peck at us and old ones morph so drastically it's as though we've never heard them before. ‘Peeps’ for instance, is a slangy new noun for 'friends' as in "Open Writing' readers and writers are my kind of peeps.''
Gloria, who possesses the great gift of being able to arrange words in such a way as to make you want to read more and more of them, broadcasts regularly from a radio station in Everett, Washington State, USA http://www.kser.org/
"I diversified to tuna and noodle casserole, meat loaf, pea soup and corn chowder, then proceeded to a tomato aspic that quivered with authority, and eventually tackled a turkey. Despite tears and tantrums I learned how to cook...''
Here's a welcome to Gloria MacKay, a sparkling writer who will be regularly contributing columns to Open Writing.
Gloria regularly broadcasts on station KSER-FM 90.7 from Everett in Washington State, USA. She has written a number of books: Throwing Sticks and Skipping Stones, The Cuckoo Can Clean Her Own Clock, Spring Goes Out Like A Lamb. These can be bought on the Net. For details visit http://dlsijpress.com/mackay/
