Word of the day – Halidom – picked out of the Scrabble Dictionary at random. Feeling lazy I look up halidom on thesauraus.com. It’s not an accepted word and the computer corrects me to halidade, which also has no synonyms. Thesauraus.com wants to know if I mean haloed—close, but not quite. Still too lazy to lift the heavy two volume Oxford Dictionary, I look up halidom on dictionary.com. Aha. It means a holy place, a church or sanctuary.

The British Dictionary describes halidom as an archaic noun. In 1906, L. Frank Baum used halidom like this: “By my halidom, churl—” He stopped to glance at the fat man. Perhaps it would make more sense in context. It’s from a book called JOHN DOUGH AND THE CHERUB. By the way, L. Frank Baum also wrote THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ.

Anyone interested in either of these two books can read them for free on Gutenberg.org. If neither of these is of interest, there are 51,341 other free eBooks on the site. Amazing where an unfamiliar word has taken me.

Blue and I dashed out between storms to walk through our halidom of trees today. Water droplets glittering on pine needles in weak sun, drenched us as the Ponderosas bow in the stiff breeze. A holy experience indeed to be out

I’m reading LOVING ELEANOR by Susan Wittig Albert. This historical novel tells the fascinating and endearing story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok, an AP journalist in the 1930s. Since writing THE WINTER LOON, I’ve become fascinated with the 1930s history and its impact on women. More about Loving Eleanor and women in the 1930s as my blog develops.