Happy early birthday wishes to akaihyo and vonjunzt. May you both have excellent days and wonderful years to come!


I have some links to share.
-- It's Dystopian February at Presenting Lenore, so check out all of the great dystopian posts! (The blog is syndicated for LiveJournal as presentinlenore.)
-- From Tor.com: "Dystopias Rock" by Caragh O’Brien, author of the forthcoming young adult dystopia Birthmarked.
-- For Firefly/Serenity fans: Browncoat Field Ration Soap. Doesn't this look fabulous?


In personal news, I've had a schedule change and accepted two additional invitations to speak.
-- My presentation “‘I Take My Life in My Hand’: A Tale of Two Cherokees and the Trail of Tears” for the friends of the Rudisill Library at Lenoir-Rhyne University (in Hickory, NC) has been rescheduled for March 12.
-- On March 21, I'll be giving a talk about young adult dystopian fiction and what it can teach us at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Catawba County in Hickory, NC.
-- On May 30, I'll be lecturing at the "Liberty and Society" seminar sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC.
(A full list of my scheduled appearances to date is here at my website.)


And here are a couple of plugs for things I love.
-- I am thoroughly enjoying The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast. Each episode focuses on one of Lovecraft's stories in a thoughtful, entertaining, insightful, and often hilarious way. If you're interested in Lovecraft's fiction, don't miss this great podcast.
-- I continue to get great use from the used book trading sites BookMooch (for users worldwide) and Bookins (for users in the U.S.), and I highly recommend both.


"Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn,
Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers,
And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers;
A poet's face asleep in this grey morn.
Now in the midst of the old world forlorn
A mystic child is set in these still hours.
I keep this time, even before the flowers,
Sacred to all the young and the unborn."
- Alice Meynell, "In February"