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| From My Parents' Old LP Collection
Anyone else remember this one? I don't have the actual LP, just a photograph . . . and memories . . . [click to play album] |
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| Paper Collage Angels from my friend Nikki
~~~~~ Court Jester from Christmas Company UK |
"By the time we had placed the cold, fresh-smelling little tree in a corner of the sitting-room, it was already Christmas Eve. After supper we all gathered there, and even grandfather, reading his paper by the table, looked up with friendly interest now and then. The cedar was about five feet high and very shapely. We hung it with the gingerbread animals, strings of popcorn, and bits of candle which Fuchs had fitted into pasteboard sockets. Its real splendours, however, came from the most unlikely place in the world—from Otto’s cowboy trunk. I had never seen anything in that trunk but old boots and spurs and pistols, and a fascinating mixture of yellow leather thongs, cartridges, and shoemaker’s wax. From under the lining he now produced a collection of brilliantly coloured paper figures, several inches high and stiff enough to stand alone. They had been sent to him year after year, by his old mother in Austria. There was a bleeding heart, in tufts of paper lace; there were the three kings, gorgeously apparelled, and the ox and the ass and the shepherds; there was the Baby in the manger, and a group of angels, singing; there were camels and leopards, held by the black slaves of the three kings. Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches. Grandmother said it reminded her of the Tree of Knowledge. We put sheets of cotton wool under it for a snow-field, and Jake’s pocket-mirror for a frozen lake." ~ Chapter 9
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| The Holly & The Ivy
& the Winter Solstice Flamingos |
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| Autumnal Equinox Flamingos |
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Thanks to my friend Steven
for this serene illustration of approaching Winter, "where more light replaces less" |
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| "The Father, the Son and J.C."
Season 6 Episode 4 ~ Dec 16, 2001 |
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| The Ref |
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| The Wife |
"The Lucia celebration is on the morning of the 13th of December, the Nobel prize ceremony is held on the 10th of December so the time-line is wrong."
Back in the day, we kids cooked dinner most evenings when we got home from high school, and my little brother thought it would be funny to put these cartoons on the refrigerator. They have been taped inside my kitchen scrapbook for 50 years or so!
This is the same little brother who, after sampling our mother's fruitcake ingredients, referred to the glacé cherries as "plastic cherries." To this day, that's what we call them, an accurate description for those who do not like them and a term of endearment for those who do.
Because it's always "fruitcake weather" somewhere, Gerry and I try to keep our pantry well - stocked with plenty of "cherries, candied" and "pineapple, candied." Such was our quest last January, because we had used up our entire supply in December, making the Christmas Cake. We had concluded our weekly shopping, except for "plastic cherries" which had not appeared in our perusal of the store. Gerry said he would wait patiently near the cash registers while I searched one more time.
First, I re- checked the holiday baking display, which had looked like this before Christmas . . .. . . but had sadly dwindled away to nearly nothing in the New Year, certainly no candied cherries. Were there truly none to be had? I continued looking in what seemed like the most likely places: the regular baking aisle, with pie - fillings and so forth; the produce section, which sometimes harbors dried fruits as well as fresh; the breakfast aisle with prunes and raisins; the canned fruit section. My last guess was the section of novelty snacks, near the nuts, featuring dried strawberries and mango slices. But no plastic cherries. Where else would they be hiding?
Ready to admit that I couldn't find them anywhere, I headed to the front of the store where Gerry was checking his phone, casually leaning against a cartful of sale items, that -- coincidence! -- just so happened to include all of the season's leftover cherries and pineapple, marked down to half - price! Instead of defeat, we succeeded in securing a year's supply and more. The thing about that plastic fruit -- it never goes bad!
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| Thanks to my niece Chantel
for sending this sweet animated graphic! |
One Candle Now, Then Seven More
I grew up in a family that did not tell
the story. I am listening to it now:
Even the morning you see a robin
flattened on the street, you hear
another in a tree, the notes
they’ve taught each other, bird
before bird before we were born.
And elsewhere, the rusty bicycle
carries the doctor all the way
across an island. He arrives in time.
Somewhere his sister adds water
to the soup until payday. And
over the final hill in a Southwestern
desert, a gas station appears. No,
the grief has not forgotten my name,
but this morning I tied
my shoelaces. Outside I can force
a wave at every face who might
need it. We might
spin till we collapse, but we still
have a hub: Even at dusk,
the sun isn’t going anywhere.
We have lamps. The story insists
it just looks like there’s only
enough oil to last one night.
by Brad Aaron Modlin
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| Thanks to my friend Beata
for this ethereal photograph! |
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| Thanks to my friend Steven for posting
this fanciful, dichotomous depiction of the ever - changing holiday calendar! |
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| Thanks to Professor Brigit Farley, who writes:
"This is one of my favorite Slavic words, "Listopad" -- it means 'autumn,' and it describes what happens in autumn. List=leaf, and pad=fall. It's Leaf fall -- at least in some of the Slavic languages." |
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| Persimmon Tree (1816)
Sakai Hōitsu (Japanese, 1761–1828) |
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| My Father's Parents in 1969
Willard Samson Carriker (1898 - 1974) Melvina Adeline Beavers Carriker (1901 - 1981) |
Hydrangeas
Dragoons, I tell you the white hydrangeas
turn rust and go soon.
Already mid September a line of brown runs
over them.
One sunset after another tracks the faces, the
petals.
Waiting, they look over the fence for what
way they go.
Carl Sandburg (1878 - 1967)
beloved American writer, editor, poet
winner of three Pulitzer Prizes
