It might seem odd to include a Christmas item in this Monday’s Link Roundup, but be sure to check out 25 years of Christmas. It’s a touching home movie compilation of one family and the changes over a quarter of a century. For the bibliophile in your life, have a look at Top 10 Gifts for the Bibliophile. You’ll find some very whimsical gift ideas.
- Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. “It has become something of a literary cliché to bash the thesaurus, or at the very least, to warn fellow writers that it is a book best left alone. Some admonitions might be blunt, others wistful, as with Billy Collins musing on his rarely opened thesaurus. But beyond the romantic anthropomorphizing of words needing to break free from “the warehouse of Roget,” what of Collins’ more pointed criticism, that “there is no/such thing as a synonym”? That would suggest that the whole enterprise of constructing a thesaurus is predicated on a fiction.”
- Should You Open a Personal History Business? “Are you looking to go into business for yourself but having difficulty choosing the type of business to open? Have you previously worked as a writer, editor, storyteller, or are you a history buff? Do you love talking with new people? Opening a personal history business may be perfect for you! In fact, even if you haven’t worked as a personal historian before, you may already have the transferable skills to run a successful business in this rapidly expanding industry. For example, excellent communication skills and being adaptable to new situations are qualities that will help you as a personal historian.”
- Microsoft Builds a Browser for Your Past. “Mining personal data to discover what people care about has become big business for companies such as Facebook and Google. Now a project from Microsoft Research is trying to bring that kind of data mining back home to help people explore their own piles of personal digital data.”
- How to Write Headlines That Work. “Your headline is the first, and perhaps only, impression you make on a prospective reader. Without a headline or post title that turns a browser into a reader, the rest of your words may as well not even exist.”
- Native Tongues. “The scene is a mysterious one, beguiling, thrilling, and, if you didn’t know better, perhaps even a bit menacing. According to the time-enhanced version of the story, it opens on an afternoon in the late fall of 1965, when without warning, a number of identical dark-green vans suddenly appear and sweep out from a parking lot in downtown Madison, Wisconsin…The drivers and passengers who manned the wagons were volunteers bent to one overarching task: that of collecting America’s other language. They were being sent to more than a thousand cities, towns, villages, and hamlets to discover and record, before it became too late and everyone started to speak like everybody else, the oral evidence of exactly what words and phrases Americans in those places spoke, heard, and read, out in the boondocks and across the prairies, down in the hollows and up on the ranges, clear across the great beyond and in the not very long ago.”
- Top 10 Gifts for the Bibliophile. “The classic bibliophile collects and treasures books, it’s a person who makes them an important part of their lives. This may sound all too familiar; you may consider yourself one or perhaps it just describes someone you know. Today, we take a look at 10 gifts that were made for that person. In fact, they’re sweet and clever gifts that the reader in all of us can enjoy.”
- 25 years of Christmas. [Video] “Every year, our dad would tape us coming down the stairs. This is a compilation of all the videos I could find. Relatives and pets grow up and disappear, and new extended family members appear in their place. The song is “Christmas Time is Here”, played by Vince Guaraldi”
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In a 
It’s unusually cold here in Victoria, British Columbia this week – freezing winds, ice and snow. Our winters in the Pacific Northwest are for the most part wet and mild, so people are a little shocked and in disbelief. It got me thinking how much weather plays a part in our life stories. And yet we often forget to include these details when we sit down to write our personal history. My mother still vividly recalls how it was pouring rain when she got married in the tiny hamlet of Alert Bay, British Columbia. And I remember one Christmas when I was all of eight years old. My family lived on an isolated island near the northwest tip of Vancouver Island. Rarely did we get snow at Christmas. That year it started snowing after supper on Christmas Eve. I was delighted and so excited that I staid up all night looking out my bedroom window as my little part of the world turned white. It was one of my most memorable Christmases.
