The Dollhouse

 

Have you ever wondered if you are looking in or looking out?

Rose Windows

The first time I saw Rose Windows was at the Showbox Market in January 2013. Their album wasn’t even out yet. That makes me cool, right?

Rocking the Pylsur

 

For many years, I opted out of rock concerts. Then I went to Airwaves in 2012, where I fell off the vegetarian wagon in the wee hours of morning at the famous Baejarins Beztu hot dog stand. The hot dog was only a momentary lapse, but the concert-going stuck. A few weeks after I got home I saw Rose Windows, Pollens, and Cave Singers at the Showbox, and passed by this late night hot dog stand without the slightest temptation.

Strictly For the Completist

Looking at my own garden, it’s hard to believe I’m supposed to be an expert. I certainly do let life get in the way of the consistency that gardens (like children) require to thrive. But I do have an M.S. in horticulture that has been growing dusty on a bookcase somewhere, and rather than let it go completely to waste, I have begun writing for a website called Dave’s Garden. I’m collecting pdfs of those articles here on the blog on a Stuff I Wrote page. If you have any interest in gardening, maybe you’d like to read some of them. I’ll try to update this page with new articles every month or so.

March on the Crooked Road

In case you missed them, these are the top 5 posts in March:

A Weekend in Bend: I’d love to think it was because I wrote so eloquently, or even because Bend is so cool. But I think it was actually because I tagged a bunch of Bend booster-types who retweeted my link. That’s okay, I’ll take it.

Can You Handel Seattle Opera’s Semele?: I didn’t love this opera as much as many others (I’m kind of a bel canto girl) and I guess this goes to show that reviews don’t have to be gushing to be helpful – or at least interesting.

I Heart the I Heart Reykjavík Blog: Well, it’s true. And if you haven’t read it, you should.

Accountability Widget: This attempt to hold myself publicly accountable for my creative writing goals was surprisingly popular. And poorly timed. I signed up for a month-long freelance writer’s workshop soon after and I’m almost definitely not going to make that deadline. Oops.

Can You Read the Signs?: A reflection on creativity and the writing process. I also mentioned (and then tagged on Twitter) a couple of successful writers who retweeted the link. I think I’m figuring something out about driving traffic to this blog.

I’m Giving Away Small Mercies: This post tied with the one above it. I gave away an advance reader copy of a book as an exercise to learn how to do more with this page. I made it work, but most of what I learned was about the limitations of a WordPress hosted blog. Readers seemed to like it though.

Top Countries:

• The United States (by a lot)
• Canada
• Great Britain

Iceland was way down at number 5. Have I been neglecting my Icelandic friends?

How did you get here?

• Google – Far and away the main referrer was Google search
• Twitter – but of course
• Facebook

Google image search fell well below these, as well as a few referring sites like No Clean Singing, but still sent as many people my way as bing and yahoo searches combined.

I actually started doing this statistics posts as an excuse to laugh at the weird search terms that led people to my site. Google has gotten so thorough at hiding search terms that it’s not very much fun anymore. Only three search terms showed up more than once:

• turandot full opera (um. no. but I did write about Turandot once)
• dancing boys showing their junk (maybe this?)
• seattle opera semele reviews (at least that one makes sense)

I could make out a couple of themes, though:

• 4 searches were related to opera
• 2 were related to Sólstafir
• 3 were about visual arts and artists

Besides the dancing boys, some search terms were interesting:

• googlevillaincom
• asgeir trausti girlfriend
• asgeir trausti boyfriend
• fjogur piano how many pianos (hint: fjogur means four in Icelandic)

Featured Followers:

As search terms become less interesting, I’m beginning to look more closely at followers.

I’ve chosen three followers more or less at random to highlight here, and I hope you’ll go check out their blogs.

• James Revels Composer offers eargasms over on AudioSexxx
• JohnCoyote | poetry, story and real life
• Charlotte Hoather sings soprano, dances ballet, and trains in martial arts, as you do.

 

Peter Cottontail

 

There were dozens of bunny rabbits hanging out around the community garden on Lopez Island when I camped there last summer. They seemed appropriate to share today.

Complementary Fritillary

A fritillary caught me by surprise, and tossed me from where I stood in my front yard on an overcast spring day to a garden in Scotland where I stood on an overcast spring day fifteen years ago. It was the first time I ever saw the curvaceous little flowers with the grid-pattern petals. That’s not quite true. I had seen them in pictures a few days earlier when I toured the Charles Rennie Mackintosh house inside the Hunterian Art Gallery.

The Architect’s Apprentice

The Architect’s Apprentice has the most beautiful cover. It’s a book cover that promises a rich and intricate story, full of mystery and love and loss in exotic and far away lands. We live in an age of lies, but author Elif Shafak delivers on the cover’s promise.