Medlar Comfits: Under a mushroom and that port wine birthmark

20 December 2011

Under a mushroom and that port wine birthmark

"Though some suggested that he might have his prominent port wine birthmark surgically removed, Gorbachev opted not to, as once he was publicly known to have the mark, he believed it would be perceived as his being more concerned with his appearance than other more important issues."
- Wikipedia entry for Mikhail Gorbachev

But did everyone get the memo?

THE IMMACULATED MACULATION
Irkutsk 1990

"Patriotically, I refuse to paint a port wine birthmark. Make it vodka, or I'll let them see borscht!"

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from Oddness/Forbidden Futures

"Her love for the lives and fortunes of the small is most evident to me in her dog-centered stories. “The Dog Who’d Been Dead”, “Shaking Heaven’s Fleas”, and “Bones from Heaven” involve the afterlife of dogs—where they go, what concerns them, how they feel about the humans with whom they are so closely linked, and their own relationship with d/Death. Tambour beautifully enters into the minds and souls of dogs here, and if nothing else, her concern for the little ones, human creation’s overlooked ones, makes her work and this collection in particular immensely rewarding." -- Jeremy Brett, The SFF Librarian Reviews, Ancillary Review of Books, August 2023

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