Sunday, December 16, 2012

Winter Solstice Advent Countdown, week 3 and final.

"I want you to understand one thing," Drew said. "If you take away nothing else from this trip, you should remember this."

"I'm listening," I said.

"It's true that the white men were gunning for the Indians.  They didn't understand us, they saw us as a threat, and they wanted nothing more than to eradicate us.  And so maybe if it hadn't been Wounded Knee, it would have been something else.  But it was this.  It was  Wounded Knee."  We had reached the edge of the parking lot by then.  He turned to me, his eyes riveted to mine. "And in point of fact, none of it would have happened if we hadn't believed in a prophet who told us Indians that better days were coming."

The comparison couldn't have been clearer if he'd hit me over the head with a tomahawk.

-- From Tapped

Here at La Casa Cantwell, it's starting to look a lot like Yule is actually coming.  I spent all day baking, so the house smells terrific.  (Five kinds of cookies, if you must know, plus peppermint bark and spiced nuts.)  The tree is up and decorated, and there are even a few presents under it with my name on them.
I can't help feeling sad, though, for the families in Connecticut whose kids won't be unwrapping presents this year, or ever again.  My heart goes out to all those who've lost someone in this tragedy.

Anyway, a lot is happening this week, in both Naomi's world and mine.  Please take a gander at the "Tour Dates" tab, which has been updated with my stops this coming week in connection with the Orangeberry Virtual Book Expo.  In addition, I've got three very special stops planned.  On Thursday, Allison Bruning's virtual cruise ship visits Naomi's apartment.  Then on Friday, the Indie Exchange has the Pipe Woman Chronicles as part of our Christmas Advent feature, *and* last but by no means least, the Cabin Goddess is letting me do another Fourth-Wall Friday, which I'm very excited about because it's a great feature and a lot of fun to do.

These last three events are important because you can get more entries in this week's contest if you comment at any one of those places.  The prizes this week are a $25 Amazon gift certificate and a key chain that says, "I survived the end of the world, December 21, 2012."  The picture below is about life-size -- the keychain is two inches in diameter -- but the real thing is a little more colorful.

One more piece of business before I go back to making cookies:  Congrats to Charles Ray, who won last week's contest!  Charles, I've sent you an e-mail; if you don't see it, please check your spam folder.  

Good luck, everybody,  Happy Yule, and see you on the other side of 12/21/12.

The Rules (sorry, gotta have 'em):

  1. Friends and family may definitely enter.
  2. Winners from my previous contest may win again.  However, winners from previous weeks in *this* contest may not win *this* contest again.
  3. If there is no winner one week, the prize(s) will be added to the following week's contest.  I am getting this stuff out of my house, one way or the other.
  4. As always, the judge's decisions are arbitrary, capricious, and final.

 ***
 These moments of anticipatory blogginess are brought to you, as a public service, by .

2 comments:

Amy said...

Whelp, I guess I'll post my comment here... Of the characters I've met (which isn't a lot, since I'm only like 70 nook pages into Seized), I think I'd have to say my favourite is Naomi. This isn't a cop-out, I swear. She just seems like she's pretty sarcastic, and similar to me, so I connect with her pretty well. :)

Lynne Cantwell said...

Thanks, Amy-chan! :)