celebration time

It's Peter S. Beagle's birthday today. Hi, Peter S. Beagle! Today's plans have shifted to include listening to The Last Unicorn soundtrack. I'd go on a reading marathon of the books I own by him, if I didn't have so much to get done before work.

And talking about this reminds me of how much I LOVE his writing. If I ever get to the point where I can write half as well as him, I can die happy.

ETA: The Last Unicorn is over 40 years old!

today is full of beautiful things

Because online archives/libraries ARE THE SHIT.

New York State Historic Newspapers is an online, free collection of newspapers from all around New York that you can browse through or search. So I looked up "fox sisters" (as in Kate and Margaret Fox, of 19th century Spiritualist movement fame) and have already hit gold. I don't know how anything else I can find is going to top this:

"The Fox sisters are outdone by a Polk county (Ga.) girl of 14. She can place her hand on a chair and it will walk around the room. She places her hand upon the table and and it moves as she wishes. She placed her hand upon a chair in which a man sat, and the chair--man and all--moved at her touch."

I will admit that part of my hilarity was to originally misreading the excerpt as "She can place her head on a chair and it will walk around the room."

In case something goes screwy with the link, this is found in The Ogdensburg advance and St. Lawrence weekly Democrat, (Ogdensburg, N.Y.), January 03, 1884, Page 3, Image 3