Glögg, with a dieresis over the "o," and unpronounceable until imbibed, is a Swedish mulled wine drink that has been served in my family since the dawn of Creation.

I am told that "Glögg" means "glow" and comes from the traditional way of heating it by plunging a glowing poker from the fire into it.

Like Reality, Glögg is constructed, and like Reality, mutable from one iteration to the next.

The origins of the recipe are lost in the fog of Swedish woods, but this is how it goes today: [read more]

It's been a while since I added to this series, primarily because the election drew my fire for some time. But now things are back to normal it's time to pick up where we left off.

In the previous post, I called attention to an emerging spirituality in the United States—a spirituality that is appropriate to a democracy, as opposed to a dictatorship, or kingdom.

As you may recall, I had made the point that formal religion, as we know it in the West, at least, had its roots in the need of kings to create a common world-view for their subjects—both to tie their kingdom together, culturally, and to separate it from other kingdoms. [read more]

The first entry to the 2008 mull-off:

Lamb's Wool

10 baking apples, cored (the more tart, the better)
1 12 pack of strong ale (your preference, but I like Newcastle) 4tbs brown sugar ½ ts cinnamon ½ ts ground ginger ½ ts nutmeg
2 cinnamon sticks
1 tbs whole cloves
Several bowls of assorted nuts (in shells) [read more]

THE POLICEMAN APPROACHED her again.

"They're about to start, Ma'am. You should step a little farther back."

She nodded, absently, remembering why she had returned to the house in the first place.

The cookies.

She had baked them for Mary's class, and then, true to her tradition of mishaps, had left them this morning on the kitchen table.

"Ma'am? You have to move. The roof could collapse when they start to pull."

She had a vision, then, of the cookies, left uncovered on the kitchen table—the ceiling caving in, plaster dust and dirt from the attic cascading over the cookies, sticking to the chocolate chips...

She strode toward the house.

"Ma'am! You can't go in there!"

"I'll just be a minute. I have to get something."

The policeman had been caught by surprise. She made it to the door before he could move, but no one else saw her. [read more]

"LIFE," BEVERLY THOUGHT, "gets more bizarre every day."

She stood by her car in the driveway, staring at her house, and wondering how she came to be so unbelievably unlucky.

Now that she actually thought about it, it wasn't just the last few days—getting run over by a semi, losing her boss's keys, knocking a glass of water all over the keynote speaker at the conference.

No. It had been going on her entire life . The time she found her lottery ticket two hours—two hours!—after the deadline. The time she was the only person at the party who ate the shrimp. The time her brother got the measles just before her prom.

And this.

The odd thing, the thing that broke the pattern now she thought of it, wasn't that everything, always, went wrong. That was the ground, not the figure.

The odd thing was that she had survived all of those mishaps. [read more]

IT'S THAT TIME of year again.

This is the first call for The Annual Mull-Off.

If any of you have a favorite hot holiday beverage, alcoholic or not, please share your recipe, by clicking on submissions, either here or in the sidebar, and then choosing "submissions" as the category.

I'll post the recipes over the holiday season.

The past years' submissions have admittedly lacked in quantity, while excelling in quality. I'm hoping for both this season. Please take a moment and share yours.

And meanwhile, I'll begin posting some oldies, over the next couple of weeks.

JEREMY TURNED TO Bones.

"Was that an... an execution?"

Bones laughed.

"That would be a bit of overkill, wouldn't it? Sorry—bad joke. But you can't really kill somebody once they're here."

"Then what?"

"He was being sent back. To Earth."

"Is that going to happen to me, as well?"

"Afraid so."

"Then I survived the fall?"

"Survived? Oh, no. No-no-no-no-no... No. You were—ahhhh—they had to... Oh Arghhh!"

"Are you okay?"

"Sorry. Nasty image. I mean, really, really... Sorry. What was I saying?"

"That I didn't survive..."

"Oh. Yes—That is, No. No, you didn't survive. You aren't going back—not to the same body."

"Are we talking reincarnation?"

"Yep. I told you—Plato had it right."

"So who am I going back as?" [read more]

"PLATO WAS ESSENTIALLY RIGHT about everything."

The words startled Jeremy out of his reverie, and he became conscious of the amiable young man, walking alongside him.

"Plato?"

"Yes. Odd thing, that. He didn't really have all that much to go on. You have to think it was mostly blind luck."

The fellow flashed him a brief and merry smile, then frowned at nothing in particular, lost in some thought of his own.

Jeremy thought his companion looked a bit peculiar, but couldn't determine whether it was the tennis shoes and enormous scarf or the alien something in his eyes that produced the impression.

The young man's attention suddenly snapped back to Jeremy, and he wrinkled his eyebrows.

"You are Jeremy? Jeremy Smythe?"

"Yes. I am. And you are...?"

"It doesn't matter. Call me "Bones" if you like." He beamed a sunny smile. "You haven't realized, yet. Have you?"

"Realized?" [read more]