Lucia & Katter

Christmas Card ~ 1916
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?

Why Christmas is Weird for Girls

Cartoon by Janie Stapleton,
posted by Allison Rablee Bryant,
Thanks Nikki!

Reminds me of the Christmas Story, which I want to like, if only it did not include the unhelpful message that boys are more important than girls and that ideal motherhood involves bearing children without having sex. Sadly, these are not healthy concepts for girls and young women to carry into adulthood.

In her poem "Christmas Carols," Margaret Atwood warns againt exclusivity. She says, "think twice . . .

before you . . . single out one girl to play
the magic mother, in blue
& white, up on that pedestal,
perfect & intact, distinct
from those who aren't. Which means
everyone else."
Every year around this time, I have to ask myself, could we not have something a little more life - affirming and consistent with reality? We all know where babies come from, right? We can still respect Mary, even if her child is conceived in the normal way, just like everybody else. And why isn't there a holy baby girl as well as a holy baby boy? Why can't we have A Twin Sister for Jesus?

No, I'm not just saying that because I happen to be a girl twin with a twin brother. I'm saying it because being part of the story is important. Hearing your pronoun omitted year after year is indeed -- precisely as the cartoonist says -- a weird thing to tell a kid.

Snow, Moon, Ginkgo

Halloween lingers, despite the snow . . .

by Terri Foss ~ amazon

"By Thanksgiving Day, the foliage of Broadway [in Golden, Georgia] had fully surrendered to autumn. The ground was awash in the copper tint of oak leaves, the buttery ochres of elm and maple, and the varied reds of sweet gum and dogwood.

"At one section of the Promenade, fallen leaves had drifted ankle deep at the curbside, like rust - colored confetti, in a way that children, and Theo, found irresistible. He stepped off the sidewalk and dragged his feet through the gathered softness as if wading through a stream of slivered almonds. He chuckled at his own playfulness.

"Entering the Boughery Neighborhood, he took note of three tall ginkgoes, as bright as Shekinah glory, blazing golden with evening light.

"The sun was fast disappearing below the tree line, taking with it the mild temperatures that had accompanied daylight. Theo was wrapped warmly . . . carrying a bottle of wine . . . as he made his way . . .

"On lawns and in windows throughout the Boughery, Chdristmas lights were already on display, a hint of what was to come in days and weeks ahead. It was a gladdening sight Theo made the final steps to Glissen House." (294 - 95, emphasis added)

from the novel Theo of Golden
by Allen Levi

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

The UVA Ginkgo ~ Changing so quickly!

November 10th
The Pratt Ginkgo ~ UVA
November 14th

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

November 17th

AND

The Last Full Moon of 2025

December 3rd ~ still looks autumnal!

Nativities ~ Chagall

Madonna of the Village (1988 - 1942)
&
Maternity (1954)

both by Marc Chagall (1887 - 1985)
[also FN & QK]

For more Nativities
see my recent post

Setting Up the Nativities

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

And for the upcoming
195th birthday
of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson, Writer

@Kitti's List

Brownness

"Do you think death could possibly be a boat?"
Rest in Peace Tom Stoppard
~ 3 July 1937 – 29 November 2025 ~

Dusk at the end of our block

Autumnal -- nothing to do with leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at the edges of the day ... Brown is creeping up on us, take my word for it ... Russets and tangerine shades of old gold flushing the very outside edge of the senses... deep shining ochres, burnt umber and parchments of baked earth -- reflecting on itself and through itself, filtering the light. At such times, perhaps, coincidentally, the leaves might fall, somewhere, by repute. Yesterday was blue, like smoke.
[all ellipses in original]

from Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead
by Tom Stoppard (1937 – 2025)

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

Halloween at the Pool ~ Brownness

Thanksgiving at the Pool ~ Grayness

Red Sky at Night

My November Guest

My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

~ Robert Frost (1874 – 1963)

Orange to Red

Pumpkin Landscape
by Alida Akers ~ more on Flickr

Spontaneous me, Nature,
The loving day, the mounting sun,
the friend I am happy with,
The arm of my friend
hanging idly over my shoulder,
The hill-side whiten’d with blossoms
of the mountain ash,
The same late in autumn, the hues of red, yellow,
drab, purple, and light and dark green . . .

Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)

Aidan captures the essence

Favorite plaid pillow sham

Surprise photo taken by my phone
in the pocket of my red jacket

Autumn Harvest
by Claire Spencer (1937 - 2025)

And thus the gorgeous orange holidays give way to red . . .
Look! December even has red hair!

December by Eugène Grasset (1845 – 1917)
Featured previously: March

Green to Gold

Three paintings which capture
the mellow shift from green to gold

Alone on a Pumpkin
by Kelly Louise Judd

"Many times we've watched the cornfields
turn from green to gold."
~ Anonymous ~

Lemon, Fig, Pear, Almond Trees, 1890
by Austrian artist Anton Seder

"Nature's first green is gold,
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf. . .
Nothing gold can stay."

by Robert Frost

Autumn
Longley Stanislaus Soutten (1894-1967)

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

Not green and gold, but also
lovely for Thanksgiving Day:
Autumn & Foxes ~ Lucy Mcloughlin
Fox, Lantern, Fairies ~ Naoko Stoop

Golden Cucuel

"Over the river and through the wood . . .
through the white and drifted sno - ow . . ."

The old familiar sing-along has a nice ring,
but what kind of weather do we really crave
on the day before Thanksgiving?

How about some golden autumn sun!

Herbstsonne
(aka Autumn Sun)

This one is also called
Autumn Sun

Tea in the Park ~ Autumn

Afternoon Tea ~ Summer

All paintings above by Edward Cucuel (1875 – 1954)
Additional Cucuel favorites: Friends in Art

Holiday To Do

Ellie's List, a year ago

Brian Bilston
Clever British poet, b 1970

Ellie follows Bilston's advice:
Get It Down In Writing!

Sometimes The North Pole
is Closer Than You Might Think!

Don't be listless -- or list less!

November Personified

Such an elegant personification of Autumn!

Golden Autumn (1925)
by William Henry Margetson (1861 - 1940)
More by Margetson & others

"The Professor happened to come home earlier than usual one bright October afternoon. He left the walk and cut across the turf, intending to enter by the open French window, but he paused a moment outside to admire the scene within. The drawing-room was full of autumn flowers,dahlias and wild asters and goldenrod. The red-gold sunlight lay in bright puddles on the thick blue carpet, made hazy aureoles about the stuffed blue chairs. There was, in the room, as he looked through the window, a rich, intense effect of autumn, something that presented October much more sharply and sweetly to him than the coloured maples and the aster-bordered paths by which he had come home. It struck him that the seasons sometimes gain by being brought into the house, just as they gain by being brought into painting, and into poetry. The hand, fastidious and bold, which selected and placed--it was that which made the difference. In Nature there is no selection." [Or perhaps there is?]

"We had a beautiful autumn that year, soft, sunny like a dream. Even up there in the air we had so little wind that the gold hung on the poplars and quaking aspens late in November."

both passages by Willa Cather
from The Professor's House
(Book 1, Chap 6, p 61 & Book 2, Chap 5, p 200)

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

"It is another glorious autumn day, but there is a bite the air that tells you there won't be too many left. Winter is waiting impatiently round the corner."

by Richard Osman
from The Man Who Died Twice
(Chap 4, p 22)

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

Such a stylish personification of Winter!

Autumn may be mellow,
but still she prefers a fashionable scarf,
something new for the season!

Saved ~ on Facebook
Poem by Emily Dickinson ~ Art by Dee Nickerson

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.
[emphasis added]

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

P.S.
Some Schubert for the early evenings:
Fantasie in F minor & The Trout Quintet

Connie Converse

As a trusted counselor once advised me:
You're a writer, you're supposed to be sad.

How Sad, How Lovely
Album by Connie Converse (August 3, 1924)

Title song: How Sad, How Lovely

How sad, how lovely
How short, how sweet
To see that sunset
At the end of the street
And the day gathered in
To a single light
And the shadows rising
From the brim of the night
Too few, too few
Are the days that will hold
Your face, your face
In a blaze of gold
How sad, how lovely
How short, how sweet
To see that sunset
At the end of the street
And the lights going on
In the shops and the bars
And the lovers looking
For the first little star
Like life
Like your smile
Like the fall of a leaf
How sad, how lovely
How brief

Music & lyrics by Connie Converse

For further thoughts on
Connie Converse & John Keats
see my recent post

"Half in love with easeful Death"

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

Peg's Mosaic

Mid-Century Modern Mosaic
by my sister Peggy Carriker Rosenbluth
Happy Birthday Peg!

Some Sister Poems For the Day

The Elder Sister
When I look at my elder sister now
I think how she had to go first, down through the
birth canal, to force her way
head-first through the tiny channel,
the pressure of Mother’s muscles on her brain,
the tight walls scraping her skin.
Her face is still narrow from it, the long
hollow cheeks of a crusader on a tomb,
and her inky eyes have the look of someone who has
been in prison a long time and
knows they can send her back. I look at her
body and think how her breasts were the first to
rise, slowly, like swans on a pond.
By the time mine came along, they were just
two more birds in the flock, and when the hair
rose on the white mound of her flesh, like
threads of water out of the ground, it was the
first time, but when mine came
they knew about it. I used to think
only in terms of her harshness, sitting and
pissing on me in bed, but now I
see I had her before me always
like a shield. I look at her wrinkles, her clenched
jaws, her frown-lines—I see they are
the dents in my shield, the blows that did not reach me.
She protected me, not as a mother
protects a child, with love, but as a
hostage protects the one who makes her
escape as I made my escape, with my sister’s
body held in front of me. (1984)

Ode to My Sister
I know why they say the heart is in
the heart. When you think about people you love,
you get warm there. I want to thank
my sister for loving me, which taught me
to love. I’m not sure what she loved in me,
besides my love for her — maybe
that I was a copy of her, half-size —
then three-quarters, then size. In the snapshots, you see her
keeping an eye on me, I was a little wild
and I said silly things, and she would laugh her serious
laugh. My sister knew things,
sometimes she knew everything,
as if she’d been born knowing. And I
so did not know — my wonder went
along with me wherever we’d go,
as if I had it on a tool belt —
I understood almost nothing, and I
loved pertinding, and I loved to go into the
garden and dance with the flowers, which danced
with me without hardly moving their green
legs, I was like a music box
dropped on my head. And I was bad —
but I don’t think my sister thought I was actually
bad, I was her somewhat smaller
littermate — nor did she need
my badness to establish her goodness. And she
was beautiful, with a moral beauty, she would
glide by, in the hall, like a queen
on a barge on the Nile, she had straight black hair
that moved like a black waterfall, as
one thing, like a black silk skirt.
She was the human. I aspired to her.
And she stood between the god and me.
And her hair ( pertind) was like a wing
of night, and in my dreams she could hold it
over me, and hide me. Of course,
by day, if the god wanted you for something,
she took you. I think if the god had known how to
take my curly hair from my head,
she would have. And I think there was nothing my sister
wanted to take from me. Why would
she want to, she had everything —
in our room she had control of the door,
closed, or open, and the light switch,
dark, or bright. And if anything
had happened to me, I think my sister
would not have known who she was, I was almost
essential to her, as she to me.
If anything had happened to her,
I think I would not be alive today,
and no one would remember me,
as if I had not lived. (2016)

Both poems by Sharon Olds
American poet, b. 1942

Additional posts: FN ~ QK

Birthday treat:
A heart-shaped piece of candied ginger!

Winging Wildly on Armistice Day

Ghosts of the Ancestors,
watching over the household,
on Veterans Day and everyday

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless;
the singing will never be done. (1919)
[ellipses in original]

By Siegfried Sassoon (1886 — 1967)

Our Current House Ghost, Thomasina

Our Previous Lace Ghost, Constance:
Owl ~ Samhain ~ Atwood ~ Childhood

P.S.

The Girl Who Feeds The Birds, 2024
By Elen Bezhen
See Ravenous Butterflies
On Facebook

Kingsolver & Solnit: Save Something

Inadvertent leaf fall,
right on the top of my Americano!

I love these twin quotes
from Kingsolver & Solnit:

“They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving. You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. The pain you feel is because of what you love."

Rebecca Solnit (b 1961)
From "A piece for all hard times"

Truth and love have been smacked down, so many more times in history before today. Truth, because it’s often inconvenient, and love because it is vulnerable.

But truth is like gravity, and carbon, and the sun behind an eclipse: it’s still there. And love stays alive if you tend it like a flame. If you feel crushed by unkindness today, it’s a time for grieving, reaching out to loved ones, noticing one bright color somewhere in the day. Remembering what there is to love. Starting with the immediate, the place and people we can tend ourselves, and make safe. We can’t save everything all at once, but it’s still worth saving something. Because there are so many of us to do it.

And we are all still here today, exactly as we were yesterday. Like gravity, and carbon, and the sun behind an eclipse.

Barbara Kingsolver (b 1955)
posted and shared a year ago,
the day after the 2024 presidential election.
True again this year, as we regain some hope
hope with the first quarter - term elections.

~ 2025 ~

Whenever we go to England in the autumn,
we find a recent harvest of fruit.

~ 2016 / 2017 ~

P.S.
Remember what Rose tells Finn in The Last Jedi:
"That’s how we’re gonna win.
Not fighting what we hate,
but saving what we love."

More Kingsolver: QK ~ FN ~ KL
More Solnit: FN ~ KL

Viewing the Moon from Home

"Autumn would come to this place of welcome, this place I would know to be home. Autumn would come and the air would grow cool, dry and magic, as it does that time of the year. At night, I would walk the streets but not feel lonely, for these are the streets of my home town. These are the streets that I had thought about while far away, and now I was back, and all was as it should be. The trees and the falling leaves would welcome me. I would look up at the moon, and remember seeing it in countries all over the world as I had restlessly journeyed for decades, never remembering it looking the same as when viewed from my hometown."

Henry Rollins (b 1961)
American singer and writer
Longer version posted previously

Earlier Moons

September ~ October

And the Almost November Moon
on my recent post

Black River of Loss

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

P.S.
Remember, remember, the 5th of November!
Guy Fawkes ~ Bonfire Night