So many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible.” —Norman Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth 

This week I gave a speech. I think it possibly went quite well.

Judge for yourself, said the White Queen.

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*The time has come, the speaker said

To talk of many things:

Of shoes—and socks—and sealing-wax, and photographs that sing.

And why the world is boiling hot and whether slips have wings.

The Girls were shining. Up you see,

To shimmer was their right:

They did their very best to make

Their fabric smooth and bright—

And this was odd, because they were

A riddle clear as night.

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*Thank you to Lewis Carroll’s Alice who traveled Through the Looking Glass to meet the Tweedle brothers. Whereas Mr. Carroll offered pigs with wings, we preferred our blip with slips.

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There is no doubt that our Slips have wings. The Hotel has been a flutter with their recent activities: a lecture, two newspaper accounts and an art show. And former slip-wearers continue to come forth, bursting with their own evocative slip tales and memories of distant stars and girls on hot tin roofs. One generous guest even gave us some orphan slips to nurture and groom. These new girls are waiting in the wings, clamoring to be seen and introduced. Soon, sillies. Soon.

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All photos by Patricia Christakos from her 2016-2017  series, Permission Slips. Pictured from top – bottom:

Waiting, to Fly

Flying II (Demi-Blu Moiety)

Flying III (Blanche Marvels) 

Flying IV (Ebony Moiety) 

Flying I (Blanche Marvels)

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ps.  This post was originally intended to address the author’s fear of public speaking, something along the lines of If slips can fly, I can share their stories without throwing up. But that train got delightfully sidetracked by flying pigs, climate change and Lewis Carroll’s poem The Walrus and The Carpenter.  Thank you for trying to follow along.

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pps. We just received exciting information regarding winged pigs. Seems that John Steinbeck would sign his letters and books with a delightful drawing of a pig with wings, a symbol of himself as ‘earthbound but aspiring: Ad astra per alia porci’.  How lovely is that? Meet Steinbeck’s “Pigasus“ here.