The Range of Joy

Blue Jay Patrol

A Winter Blue Jay

Crisply the bright snow whispered,
Crunching beneath our feet;
Behind us as we walked along the parkway,
Our shadows danced,
Fantastic shapes in vivid blue.
Across the lake the skaters
Flew to and fro,
With sharp turns weaving
A frail invisible net.
In ecstasy the earth
Drank the silver sunlight;
In ecstasy the skaters
Drank the wine of speed;
In ecstasy we laughed
Drinking the wine of love.
Had not the music of our joy
Sounded its highest note?
But no,
For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said,
“Oh look!”
There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple,
Fearless and gay as our love,
A bluejay cocked his crest!
Oh who can tell the range of joy
Or set the bounds of beauty?

Joy

Joy
I am wild, I will sing to the trees,
I will sing to the stars in the sky,
I love, I am loved, he is mine,
Now at last I can die!

I am sandaled with wind and with flame,
I have heart-fire and singing to give,
I can tread on the grass or the stars,
Now at last I can live!

both poems by Sara Teasdale
both illustrations by Charley Harper

Bird Watcher

Coincidental blue jay connection:
"You know what they say about blue jays?
They say blue jays go to hell on Fridays. . . .
William Faulkner said it one of his books."

from the novel Theo of Golden (256)
by Allen Levi

A couple more
Sara Teasdale poems,
short and sweet:

The Look

Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin's eyes
Haunts me night and day.

Faults

They came to tell your faults to me,
They named them over one by one;
I laughed aloud when they were done,
I knew them all so well before,—
Oh, they were blind, too blind to see
Your faults had made me love you more.

Silverware Drawer

“If I were God’s West Coast representative,
I would have a much more organized system,
all sad and weird events were in the
knife slot in your silverware drawer,
joy and peace where the big forks go,
acceptance of the mystery in the salad fork slot,
resentments and the desire for revenge
in with the teaspoons.”
~ Anne Lamott ~

I shared this quotation and photo with my siblings because I know they all like Anne Lamott -- AND because I wanted them to see that I still have our old yellow silverware tray from the kitchen drawer of our childhood. Could they believe that I still have this plastic artifact, going back to 1965 or so? As well as some of the old silverware with stars? Our dad always had one of these beside his coffee cup!

Yeah, yeah, they could believe it, but my youngest brother had just one question:

Q:
"Why oh why, are there spoons in with the forks?
That's bugging me."

A:
"Because my silverware drawer is a complete mess!"

Full Disclosure:

Untidy, but on the bright side,
there’s some good stuff in there!

E.g.
1. my Little Green Sprouts
2. my tiny cereal box stickers
(that came stuck to my bananas 40 year ago!)

If you need a New Year's Resolution,
you can resolve to organize your silverware drawer
(but I'm probably going to keep mine as is).

New Year Sunset

" . . . the colors run
To the western sun . . . "

Contemplative Commons

with reflection of
Bonnycastle House Dormitory

Universty of Virginia ~ Charlottesville

Meadow Creek

As my friend Steven said:
"The water in this photo almost
looks like the wing of a butterfly!"

" . . . To the westering sun the colors run . . ."

lines here and above
from the poem "Color in the Wheat"
by Hamlin Garland

Read the entire poem on my post
A Bright Golden Haze

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

P.S.
Same Vicinity
Thanksgiving Eve Walk ~ Brownness
November 26, 2025

Dusk at the end of our block

New Intentions

Out will the old, in with the new!
The 12th Day of Christmas -- if not the 1st Day of January -- is always a good time to review the excellent advice I was given years ago by my esteemed Professor Leonard Orr: to throw away all old post - it notes and "notes to self," at the end of every calendar year.

To me, ever fearful of losing some crucial tidbit of information, that seems SO BRAVE! I cringed at the thought. But Len said, "No, embrace the New Year. Let go of the old intentions. New ones will come!"

What does T. S. Eliot say?
Those are "last year's words . . .
last year's language."

"For last year's words
belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice....
So I find words I never thought to speak
In streets I never thought I should revisit..."
~ T. S. Eliot

Enjoy all the days & words of 2026

~~~~~~~~~~~

See earlier:
This Year's Words & Three Passions

And more recently
Body Image & Children in the Leaves

Read full poem in comments below . . .

Last Year, This Year, Next Year

The New Year Bell
by Jenny Nystrom (1854 - 1946)
~ Influential Christmas Artist ~

Hey, New Year, wait for me!

Children in the Leaves & Straw

HAPPY:
turning straw to gold!

On my recent posts:
Lyrics by Emmylou Harris & Leonard Cohen
Poetry by Beth Vardon, Richard Wilbur, T. S. Eliot

1. Straw to Gold

&

2. There Are Children in the Leaves

&

P.S.
January 14, 2026
Continuing the theme of golden straw,
red leaves, and amber waves of grain

3. A Bright Golden Haze

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And for something to read
when the clock strikes twelve

The Midnight Blogpost

@Kitti's List

The Moon on New Year's Eve

&

The Full Moon After Yule

RE: Instatoon

Vintage Boxing Day

See Sing Along

When my Grandfather Paul J. Lindsey died in 1983, a lot of his belongings went into storage until my mother died in 2020. That's when I re - discovered his nostalgic stash of Christmas memorabilia (some posted earlier):

Above: from his last working box of blank cards,
accompanied by return labels and stickers.
I love and admire how committed he was to
the tradition of mailing Christmas cards, even
15 years after his wife -- my Grandma Rovilla -- died.

Below: a card from his nephew Hugh Victor Lindsey
(my first cousin, once removed), postmarked 1977.
Vic was the son of Paul's eldest brother
James Sankey Lindsey, Jr. and wife Hortense.

Jim & Horty at Multnomah Falls, 1942
As my second cousin Rob said:

"That's absolutely Grandma and Grandpa!
They don't make grandparents
that look like that anymore, do they!
They could have stepped right out of
the Andy Griffith Show."

*********************

Similar story from a friend:

"When we were clearing out our family home in Queens, I came across boxes in the attic filled with all sorts of things from my childhood, including stacks of greeting cards. The images shown here are from Christmas cards I received from elementary school friends and family. They are from the late 1960s /early-mid 1970s. I’ll use them for something, someday: gift tags, ornaments, etc. For now, enjoy."

Green Man & Red Woman

Red Sage, Green Sage

Green Santa

"The priests and priestesses were necessary;
they alone had the mysterious star calendars
that told when the performances must take place.
. . . at the year's turning point
to brighten the darkest days of winter . . ."

Wild Wise Woman

In The Skeptical Feminist (1987), Barbara G. Walker offers a beautiful description of Christmas Present, and an informative view of Christmas Past, explaining that "Christmas, or Yule, or Dies Natalis, or the Koreion [i.e. the legend of Persephone], or whatever other of its many names one likes, was hardly just a religious birthday party. It was immanent and real to those who invented it thousands of years ago, long before it was seized by Christianity":

"I had learned that the winter solstice festival was celebrated in much the same way in nearly all ancient societies, from Scandinavia to Egypt, with such trappings as gifts, lights, feasts, tree worship, holly, ivy, carols of praise . . . the divine Virgin . . her holy child of light, the old god's son . . . [the] promise of a new season of nourishment and blessings . . . a new season of seedtime and harvest . . ." (pp 46 - 47)

Rest in Peace Barbara G. Walker
~ July 2, 1930 - December 21, 2025 ~

amazing feminist scholar,
expert on Christmas and knitting,
and illustrator of Tarot Cards.

Additional posts: KL ~ QK ~ FN

Yet another Green Sage.
See more celebratory art
by Scottish Artist
Keli Clark

The Scent of Christmas

Any one of these gangly seedlings could push out
millions of cones over the course of its life . . .
And the forest they might remake he can almost smell --
resinous, fresh, thick with yearning,
sap of a fruit that is no fruit,
the scent of Christmases endlessly older than Christ."

From The Overstory (p 90)
By Richard Powers

One More Sleep Til Christmas

My friend Jay took this magical photograph
last month, on November 29,
~ 1st Snow ~ Kirksville, Missouri ~
but I think it is PERFECT for Christmas Eve!

"Saying the old town's name."
Heartbreaking, but in a good way.

There's just something about a county seat
town in the Midwest, built on a grid
with a courthouse in the center square.
That's America to me.

The Song ~ The Pictures

Shortness, Darkness, Coldness

" . . . The year
isn't a clear circle or some
dream of a clock but one shadowy
moment after the next. . . ."

Margaret Atwood (b 1939)
from her sequence "Small Poems for the Winter Solstice: #14"
in her book True Stories (p 39)
which also contains her poem "Christmas Carols" (pp 56 - 57)
See also fb / "Winter Vacations"

Solstice

Each year, on the same date, the summer solstice comes.
Consummate light: we plan for it,
the day we tell ourselves
that time is very long indeed, nearly infinite.
And in our reading and writing, preference is given
to the celebratory, the ecstatic.

There is in these rituals something apart from wonder:
there is also a kind of preening,
as though human genius has participated in these arrangements
and we found the results satisfying.

What follows the light is what precedes it:
the moment of balance, of dark equivalence.

But tonight we sit in the garden in our canvas chairs
so late into the evening -
why should we look either forward or backwards?
Why should we be forced to remember:
it is in our blood, this knowledge.
Shortness of the days; darkness, coldness of winter.
It is in our blood and bones; it is in our history.
It takes genius to forget these things.

by Louise Gluck (1943 -2023)
from The Seven Ages
more on QK & FN & fb

“This is the solstice, the still point of the sun,
its cusp and midnight, the year's threshold and unlocking,
where the past lets go and becomes the future."

Margaret Atwood
from her poem "Winter Vacations"

My Inner Rosemary Clooney

White Christmas ~ Red Dress!

When I think White Christmas, I tend to see red, as in all those gorgeous holiday fashions: classy red bathrobes, festive red Santa Suits, elegant red ballgowns, darling red tutus, shiny red manicures! Sometimes you just have to channel your inner Rosemary Clooney:

Red glitter for Christmas . . .

White tips for the New Year . . .

Sisters, Sisters!
Peg & Kit, sharing our color choices for the occasion

Pink hat for WTF?!

Jeopardy: No One Got It!

~ Christmas Gift Idea! ~

A funny sequence of events last night:

At 8pm:

I saw this facebook post on a friend's page:
"VILLANOVA! No one got it"
I meant to ask Gerry if it was perhaps a reference to a basketball game but forgot to do so. I don't know why my thoughts turned to basketball, but that's what came to mind.

At 9pm:
We watched Jeopardy! and could not guess this final clue on the topic of "Higher Education":

"Merrimack College is one of 2 Augustinian
institutions of higher learning in the U.S.;
in the news in 2025, this is the other."
We realized right away that they were asking where the new Pope went to college. Unfortunately, however, we did not know the answer, did not know anything about Merrimack College, and did not know that Villanova was Augustinian. Our bad.

To guess correctly, which we did not, you would need to know that

"Merrimack in Massachusetts and Villanova University in Pennsylvania are the only 2 Catholic Augustinian colleges in the USA. That’s just a fact you may know, and you may also know that Villanova was in the news in 2025 as the alma mater of Pope Leo XIV." [Reliable recaps: fikkle & fan]

At 10pm:
We decided to watch one of our seasonal favorites, Bill Murray's Scrooged.

Early in the movie, Bill / Frank announces to his coworkers that their new made - for - tv version of Dickens' Christmas Carol will "Scare the Dickens out of people." But, alas no one laughs at his joke, and he exclaims in annoyance: "No one gets me!"
At that moment the meaning of the facebook post
finally dawned on me; it was about Jeopardy!

"VILLANOVA! No one got it"!
Now why didn't it occur to me while watching Final Jeopardy! that even though I did not know the answer, I actually had the answer, as it had been given to me! As fate would have it, my friend's facebook post was such a subtly good hint — without being a spoiler -- that I didn’t get it until after the fact!

Gotta love Jeopardy!
Villanova
Moments of Truth
Running list of boo-boos
Purdue
Shakespeare
Olden days
Insomnia

Lucia & Katter

Christmas Card ~ 1916 ~ Facebook
By Adèle Söderberg (17 May 1880 — 3 March 1916)

There are so many great depictions of Santa Lucia -- including those by Betsy McCall & Carl Larsson -- and even a couple of movie scenes! However, this one by Soderberg -- new to me this year, thanks to my friend Steven, who follows all the customs -- has got to be my new favorite! Her sense of energy is so robust, as she strides purposefully through the night with her big fat home-baked luciakatter. Her little helper may be somewhat distracted, but not Lucia! Even the onlooker in the windown knows that Lucia means business! While Gertrude is known as the Patron Saint of Cats and Julian of Norwich as the Patron Saint of Cat Ladies, it is Lucia who is known for her cat - shaped cookies and saffron buns.

In honor of Lucia's delicious feline affiliations, here are a couple of the cutest cats I've seen all year:

I thought these illustrations were from the
Crystal Springs Cozy Witch Mysteries,
but, looking again, maybe not?
Does anyone know?