It's the second Wednesday of the month, so it must be my new Cabinet of Curiosities post. This one is almost all in the voice of an 11-year-boy who is quite upset, and with good reason, after a game of war near a creepy tree goes badly & weirdly wrong. It was a nice reach back to childhood for me (I LOVED playing war), and I hope I reached far enough.

I also hope it gives you major creeps.

I took this with some ominous filter in McKinney Falls, a non-ominous state park.

What else I'm doing is preparing--though how can you really prepare?--for the Fusebox Festival, the international time-based arts festival held in Austin each spring. I'll be blogging for them again this year, and linking to those blogs here, and I hope something I write sends you to see something at Fusebox. It's insane that some of the most exciting theater, dance, music, and visual and performance art being made in the world today converges here every April. Come get your mind blown a tiny little bit. There are a number of free and free-ranging events, as well.

While I'm here, can't resist posting these two recent beautiful reviews of Summer and Bird. One's from a website called Girls Underground that tracks books and art about girls who travel Down. The other is from the blog of the Butler Children's Literature Center at Dominican University. Both of them made me so happy.

Katherine Catmull