Lisa Hendrix

On this, Towel Day, the 25th day of May, we celebrate the life and writings of Douglas Adams, whose sublime silliness has kept my family entertained on long car trips and brought us some of the most memorable—and occasionally annoying—catch phrases ever, including such treasures as:

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Ford, you’re turning into a penguin. Stop it.

If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

You should send that in to the Reader’s Digest. They’ve got a page for people like you.

There’s no point in acting surprised about it.

Apathetic bloody planet, I’ve no sympathy at all.

If you’re so clever, you tell us what colour it should be.

Funny how just when you think life can’t possibly get any worse it suddenly does.

The first nonabsolute number is the number of people for whom the table is reserved.

Stick it up your nose.

The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

Life is like a grapefruit. (It’s sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It’s got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast.)

Forty-two.

Once you know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.

And the most important advice ever given, in any book ever in the history of the Universe:

DON’T PANIC!

You may ask yourself, Why the 25 of May?

Why not?

You may also ask, Why Towel Day?

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value — you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-tohand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase which has passed into hitch hiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

~Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

 

Of course, Gunnar and the rest of my guys each carry a towel everywhere.

Today, you  should join them, in memory of Douglas Adams. Carry your towel proudly, and if anyone gives you an odd look, tell him to stick it up his nose.

Finally!

I know you’ve all been waiting patiently for me to get my act together and make these available to the general public, so here you go.

To get a signed set of the first three RTCs for the Immortal Brotherhood series, just send a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope to

Lisa Hendrix
PO Box 8092
Medford, OR 97501.

I also have bookplates that I can sign, which you can then stick in your book(s) in order to have an autographed copy, plus Immortal Champion bookmarks, so PLEASE SPECIFY EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT.

(Information on Print-It-Yourself bookmarks  can be found on the Extras Page)

The Mailroom is standing by…

A few years ago, as a friend and I were cruising yard sales, I saw a man with a group of duckling following him around, clearly imprinted on him. Over the next year or so, I saw him and his ducky friends several more times, but hadn’t seen them since.

Tunnel of Ducks by Johnny Jet, WikiCommons

This afternoon, as I drove past his house, I spotted him and a single big white duck out working on the yard together. He’d pull a weed, the duck would dive in for whatever bugs came with it. I couldn’t resist stopping.

He was very sweet about answering my nosy questions about the other ducks (mostly sold). The duck still with him was the father of all the others. When I asked him why ducks, he said they make great pets and told me his buddy never messes in the  house, and that they cuddle for two or three hours at a time, watching TV. He also says a happy duck purrs. (Who knew?)  Ducky wasn’t quite as friendly as his owner, but he happily and enthusiastically ate a Red Wiggler off my palm. He also devours slugs, snails, and all kinds of bugs, including spiders.

And speaking of spiders…as I drove away from this idyllic scene, I passed a man out walking his giant radio-controlled robotic spider.  And by giant, I mean at least a foot of venomous-looking creepiness. I can’t give you more exact measurements because…

I. Did. Not. Stop.

In fact, I may have exceeded the speed limit for a block or so.

What interesting things have you seen around your neighborhood recently?

“What are Raphael’s Madonnas but the shadow of a mother’s love,
fixed in permanent outline forever?”
~Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Happy Mother’s Day

I used to get horrendous sore throats when I was a kid, so bad that I couldn’t eat anything solid for days at a time. My mother would slip off to the store and buy pineapple sherbet so she could make me pineapple milkshakes. We didn’t have a blender, so she’d smoosh the sherbet up by hand and whip the milk in, and carry the milkshake up in a special glass on on a special tray.

What little thing did your mom do when you were a child that told you how much she loved you?

_____

“For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May.” ~ Sir Thomas Malory

Happy First Day of Summer!

Wait, you say. It’s only May 1. Summer starts June 21.

But in Northern Europe, the first day of May traditionally marked the beginning of Summer, when you could reasonably expect the weather would be good enough for farming.

And that was all the excuse a body needed to get out and party. At first light, lads and lasses would head out into the woods to “gather the May,” making garlands of flowers and returning home at sunrise to hang their treasures over the doors of their sweethearts. Assuming they actually made it back to the village, the rest of the day was spent in feasting, singing, and dancing around the May pole on the village green.

For the ladies, another advantage of being out before dawn (other than running around in the shadowy woods unsupervised with a passel of young men) was the access to May dew, which was said to make a woman beautiful. Women continued to travel to the country well into the 19th century expressly to gather dew off the grass on May Day morn.

Some random facts about May Day:

Its roots go back to the Roman festival of Floralia, celebrating Flora, a goddess of flowers and Spring (And drinking. How can you not get behind celebrations for  a goddess of drinking?)

Bealtaine, the neopagan name for the holiday, is simply the Old Irish word for May Day. The month of May was Mí Bhealtaine, from a root meaning “bright fire” — which is why elebrations included bonfires on the hilltops, a tradition which survived well into the 20th century and which still can be found in some areas today.

The Old English name for May was “Þrimilci-mōnaþ,” or Trimilki,  The Month of Three Milkings, i.e. the time that farmers began to milk their cows three times a day.

May Day became associated with labor unions after the Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions unanimously set May 1, 1886 as the date by which an eight-hour work day would become standard. On that date, an estimated 300,000-500,000 workers went on strike across the U.S. in various cities in support of this “radical” idea.

May Day’s mischief and magic play a key role in bringing not one, not two, but three couples together in Immortal Champion, including Lady Eleanor’s maid Lucy and the dashing Henry Percy of Alnwick. You’ll find a little taste of Lucy and Henry’s May Day dalliance after the jump.

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