Poem for Annie's Curls

How strange these strands of silk, buckeye chestnut, mustang brown, not long enough to wrap your hand around, and each by itself insubstantial as dragonfly's flight to breast the wind, to guard against fire or ice, to add one dot to wisdom or peace or justice in the world-- yet each to its own, a coiling spring of joy. This single tendril a bolt of chromium steel with might to bind a strong father's heart for life. Written in dearest blood, his wish that his tiny Rapunzel will never know a tower, witch curse, careless climbing prince, that a loving dragon-father can keep her safe no matter how fierce the fanged shears of the world.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO ALL, DEAR ONES!

THE WICKED MARQUIS LIKED HIS CUPCAKES MOLTEN

I just learned from the delightful blog PaperandSalt that the Marquis de Sade, on top of everything else, was a chocolate fiend. He once threw a chocolate party so wild that he was put in prison. I'm surprised that he had the energy. After all, it's not as though he didn't have anything else going on. A true French aristocrat, he hardly allowed solitary confinement to slow him down. The rambunctious Marquis regally demanded of his long-suffering wife (who remained free, since she hadn't been invited to the party) that she bring him a better grade of chocolate "than the infamous rubbish you sent me last time." He also schooled her in the perfect cake, saying, "It ought to have the same taste as when you bite into a bar of chocolate. I wish it to be of a chocolate so dense that it is black, like the devil's arse is blackened by smoke."


Don't you suspect that, in the Marquis's childhood, little Donatien Alphonse was never satisfied with just ONE marshmallow in his cocoa??