Friday, December 8, 2023: Newsletter Recommendations

Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.

Daily Diary, Day 1193:

I decided the theme for today is those newsletters I enjoy simply because they spark my curiosity and I know I will always learn something.

The first recommendation is a newsletter called Everything is Amazing by Mike Sowdon.  His About Page says the newsletter’s purpose is “to explore the practical skill of curiosity.” The particular post I am linking to is from his season one series called “Why Coffee Smells So Good & Tastes So Bad.” This seemed very appropriate after my Favorite Thing #7 post about my love of tea and my confession that I never became a fan of coffee. I was delighted to discover in this piece by Sowdon that I wasn’t alone in this reaction!

Do go read this piece and then in the comments please tell me if you are a “love the smell, hate the taste” person like me.

The second recommendation I am making is another post by George Dillard, who I have recommended before for his Looking Through the Past newsletter. This particular post I am recommending is entitled, “The Brief But Spectacular Era of Balloon Mania.”

My interest in hot-air balloons started when my husband and I lived in Albuquerque New Mexico in the early 1980s. We didn’t know it, but the open field at the end of our street was the place people launched balloons during a city-wide festival. You can imagine our surprise when, early one morning (we were still in bed), we were awakened by this odd sound, looked out our window, and saw a hot air balloon, soon followed by others, just drifting down the street, whooshing away so they could get some height! It felt as if we had suddenly discovered a dragon flying outside our window.

Coincidentally, I recently listened to two audiobooks that I had read previously, both with hot air balloon trips in them. The first was Georgette Heyer’s romance, Frederica, and the second was the Dick Francis, book, Whip Hand. I never actually flew in a hot-air balloon, but these books both made me feel as if I had.

So, have fun reading these posts, and I would love to hear if you ever flew in a hot-air balloon, and if so, was it fun?

Photo by Kyle Hinkson on Unsplash

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