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Continue reading →: A Restless Nite (titles are hard)Last night was a perfect storm of caffeine, pain, and anticipation to keep me awake. My brain wouldn’t shut off. Each little thing made it impossible to sleep. It felt like I was living inside an old cartoon, and I totally get why those characters were cranky.
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Continue reading →: From Nice to Silly and Back AgainEver wonder how a word can completely change its meaning over time? I ran into one in The Discoverie of Witchcraft — the word “nise” or “nice”. I went down a rabbit hole in the OED, and here’s what I discovered…
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Continue reading →: Just for funI’m thinking of making a short story from some old text dialog. Maybe you might want to give it a try too? Look and see. Don’t worry, it’s public domain.
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Continue reading →: When the OED Betrays You (Just a Little)What do you do when the OED doesn’t recognize your word even though it literally quotes it? A quick dive into spelling variants, lemmas, and the fluid nature of English and language in general.
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Continue reading →: Putting Spiders Out: Why I Do ItI know some people squish spiders without a second thought, but I can’t do it. I was raised to believe they bring messages, and that belief stuck with me. This is why I still put them out, even if they sometimes give me the heebie-jeebies.
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Continue reading →: Of Queans and QueensWhile reading The Discoverie of Witchcraft, I realized the word quean isn’t the same as queen. And that sent me down a rabbit hole of words that meant something entirely different back in the 1500s. Here’s a brief look at what I found while reading through this interesting old text.
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Continue reading →: Reading the Past Through Digital EyesWhile reading The Discoverie of Witchcraft, I stumbled into a three-page paragraph that made my grammar checker cry. This post dives into how centuries-old writing collides with modern reading tools, and what that says about how we read and write today. Not better/worse. Just different.
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Continue reading →: When Is a Yard Not a Yard?Reading Early Modern English normally isn’t too hard, but sometimes a word will trip me up. A word like… yard.
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Continue reading →: The Witch, the Vicar, and the Barking DogWhile reading The Discoverie of Witchcraft I stumbled on a story about a barking dog, a vicar’s son, and a woman accused of witchcraft. It’s absurd, tragic, and weirdly familiar. Some things never change.
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Continue reading →: Wait, Krypton is Real?To my surprise, krypton isn’t a comic book invention at all but a real element floating around in our atmosphere. Who knew? Not me.
Hello,
I’m Willow
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Come on in and make yourself at home. My place is small, but I try to keep it tidy. Ignore the dust in the corners and the dog hair under the furniture. Just push those clothes aside…
Want a drink? I’ve got… uh… water. But it’s sparkling water. ^_^
