FAMILY CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS & MEMORIES

My mother, due in part to a disrupted and insecure childhood, was very determined to create traditions in our family's holiday celebrations. We never went to the relatives and rarely did so for Thanksgiving. She created a Christmas Eve feast, a smorgasbord, in a nod to our Swedish ancestors. She was an excellent cook and baker and I can remember how busy she was in the week leading up to the feast. It was a mix of small entrees, breads and dips. Part of the idea was that there was enough to last for Christmas and indeed all the way til New Years so she didn't have to cook except to put things into the oven. Some years, our neighbors from two doors down would come up on New Years Eve and help polish off the leftovers. There would be some new stuff as well and I was allowed to stay up as the adults ate and drank until the wee hours.

We were traditionalists in some ways and always had a natural tree. We were aghast at the aluminum tree that one of Mom's sisters had bought, probably as seen on Lawrence Welk.

Between the side entrance to the house and the garage was a breezeway which my Dad would visqueen off during the winter. Here, the temperatures were temperate as compared to the outside and on a picnic table by the house door, Mom would store her covered pans of chocolate fudge and peanut butter penuche fudge.

This album was played every year at some time or another-Holy Eve or during the tree trimming party. It's entirely in German and while we did not have German ancestry, Mom thought since many of the classic holiday songs came from there, that it would be interesting to hear them in the native tongue.
 

My latest attempt at a vegan kolache with an almond paste center

 

 

This is kolache and along with onion dill rye bread, these are the only food items passed down to me (via Mom) from my Slovak Grandma Kristin. Kolache is a pastry with sweet egg/butter/cream cheese enriched dough wrapped around a ground walnut meat roll like a pig-in-a-blanket. Now, there is a bit of a mystery surrounding Grandma's choice of style. For many Czechs and Slovaks, kolache resembles what most Americans would identify as a danish.

Unfortunately, no one is left to field questions about why her kolache is different from the mainstream. Perhaps it's what her husband preferred or that is how it was made where she grew up. She was a mountain girl from the Tatra Mountains, part of the Carpathian chain whereas Grandpa was from the rolling hills south of the mountains.

As many children do, I have integrated some of the Kristin traditions and begun new ones with my family. Natural tree and trimming party (with chex mix), kolache and onion bread and Christmas Eve feast carry on. The fireplace is the center of Winter celebrations in our house. In a room with big picture windows, we watch the sky darken to twilight, see our critter neighbors come for a snack at the feeder/giving stone buffet. This year, the view has had a particular Currier & Ives feel as we haven't had this kind of snow and cold recently. Nice warm lively fire, surrounded by a variety of LED candles, with a katter curled up by one of us, watching Uncle Herriot on the tube, imbibing all sorts of goodies-snug and grateful to be together. Rejoice, the days are getting longer and Spring, with its extraordinary life energy, will be along soon.

                                                                                Volkovalrina

 
 

FIVE SECOND STORIES

 

These days, her eyes closed more often during a scritch session. I hoped my stroking motion brought back soothing memories of her mum who did this sort of thing when she was a kitten.

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Odd, in a time of evergreen, lights and hope, to have a family member dying. But, that is the main selling point of Jesus: belief in him will relieve you of the anxiety of death. Follow me, he said, and you will have eternal life and happiness. 

Bin, of course, would say that this idea is already known amongst all other living creatures on the planet except us. "The whole Jesus thing is simply another interpretation of the reincarnation cycle with the peculiar Ape spin: you guys just have to have some kind of leader to be followed. That, tends to be problematic for your species."

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The evening when the winter storm was to begin, C saw snow on the back deck and thought it had arrived. She quickly realized this was not the case, what she saw had been here for a bit and she murmured "Oh, that's old snow." 

Well, the "old snow" was offended. "Whattyamean old? Hell, I'm a survivor! Everyone else has melted away and I am still here. Soon my brothers will arrive in a multitude and merge with my being. We could be here 'til Spring. Watch your step out here, asshole. Wouldn't want you to fall."

My, someone is sensitive and totally lacking in the holiday spirit. Whatta Grinch!

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It's curious when a relative sends you an obit enclosed in their Christmas card. Happy holidays! your aunt is dead!

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Her world is shrinking. No more outside patrols or going downstairs. She doesn't have the strength to jump onto the couch by herself. She mainly rests by the Christmas tree, in the library, in the closet or down the hall especially by my bedroom door.

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Poll: images of Red Birds was the top choice of holiday cards sent to us leading the pack with a total of four. Critters of all sorts dominated the image list.

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Curious when after five solid days of high winds, it becomes calm often in the evening. I believe this is signalling the beginning of a change in the weather.

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My Uncle Tilly, who was married to my Mom's sister, flew aircraft in the '30s. I remember him telling me that the best conditions for take-off was either at dawn or twilight, when winds are generally at their calmness.

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I was in the market searching for Shake n' Bake. Kroger had moved it in a weird spot during one of their many, recent resets and I couldn't remember. I was in a hurry and thought I'd as a clerk who looked to be ordering. He had no idea of what I was looking for. He was probably 19. Weird, I thought, is this product so old school that no one uses it anymore? Or, he grew up in a house where they didn't eat meat. I suggested he look its location up on his handheld scanner which he did and found it. Next aisle, he said. The scanner showed the iconic image on the box yet it did not ring a bell. He apologized thinking I was pissed. Not to worry I said, there's a zillion items in the store and it takes a while to learn where they are. I used work for this company. He was relieved.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

 

Last night after most folks had gone home after feasting, Mr. Big Bun stopped by. Part of the buffet was still available as well as some hay that I had put out for the buns. He saw me in the darkened Great Room and stood up tall to get a better look.

In the morning, I carried Molls and set her down on a comfy blanket on the couch next to me. While having little energy, she was alert and watched us having our breakfast of cinnamon rolls and coffee in front of the fireplace. She had earlier lapped up a bit of fishy broth.

I went out and replenished the buffet. First to visit was a fluffer.
 

Word soon spread and many species stopped by. 

Messrs. Red Bird and Junco waiting for an opportunity at the buffet.

 Molls hanging out and resting.

 

CHRISTMAS EVE

 Busy day at the buffet!

CLEVER APES

Former British engineer, Simon Beck, has been creating these patterns in snow since 2004. He works in the Colorado Rockies and the French Alps. The patterns are created by Mr. Beck using snowshoes.

Simon Beck

Simon Beck

On June 26, 1998, a charter pilot spotted a huge geoglyph while flying over the district of Marree in South Central Australia.

Peter Campbell

The Marree Man, as it became to be known depicts a man holding either a boomerang or a woomera (a throwing stick once used to disperse small flocks of birds).

The size of this glyph is astonishing: 1.7 miles tall with a perimeter of 17 miles covering 620 acres. Further investigation led to images from NASA's Landsat-5 satellite which, when viewing images from daily orbits, show that the figure was created between May 27-June 12, 1998!

NASA

Stranger still, no one has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the glyph. There were a series of faxes sent to the media in Summer of 1998 suggesting that Americans, not Indigenous people created the piece but the lack of specific evidence led some to think that the faxes were red herrings. To this day, who and how created the Marree Man remains a mystery.

ARABIAN DANCE FROM THE NUTCRACKER BY TCHAIKOVSKY

 

First produced in 1892, during a time that Europeans, particularly the English, were enamored with the exoticism and eroticism of the East: The Orient, India and Arabia. Men were said to swoon in their seats during this dance, much to the annoyance of their wives, I am sure.

FAREWELL FROM 55 MILLION MILES AWAY

 

NASA's InSight dome-covered seismometer

InSight, the NASA lander which arrived on Mars in November 2019 has signalled that it probably will be shutting down soon due to lack of power caused by dust covering its solar panels. InSight's mission was to undertake geologic excavations making the first measurements of marsquakes. 

Ok, this is often the case with the machines we send out into the universe. Batteries wear out, solar panels are compromised. What I find odd are the statements that NASA attributes to the robot (I usually have the HAL 9000 voice in my head when I read them). Here is one from last month where it reminisces about its time in space:

“I’ve been lucky enough to live on two planets. Four years ago, I arrived safely at the second one, to the delight of my family back on the first. Thanks to my team for sending me on this journey of discovery. Hope I’ve done you proud." 

I dunno, did the robot actually think and transmit this message or is NASA conjouring some weird anthropomorphic myth/narrative for our valiant, but doomed explorer? In what could be InSight's final transmission on December 19, it explains the situation:

“My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me.”

The message reminded me of another doomed explorer-Lawrence "Titus" Oates-who was part of the ill-fated Scott Antarctic pursuit of reaching the South Pole in 1912. The expedition arrived at the Pole only to realize that the Amundsen Norwegian group had been there a month prior. On the return trek to Base Camp, Oates, with badly frozen feet, walked out of the tent into a blizzard. He did not want to hold up and burden the others and reportedly said "I am just going outside and may be some time" as he exited, later to succumb to hypothermia.

Eton-educated cavalry officer Lawrence Oates. Photo was taken in 1911 during the Scott Antarctic expedition by photographer and cinematographer Herbert Ponting.

 

This is the stuff of legend and fits nicely into the Edwardian view of English gentlemanhood: duty, honor, sacrifice; attributes that survive to this day in many cultures.

PS. On December 21, NASA announced that InSight had not responded to two attempts to communicate and is presumed to have lost power.

BEWARE OF SELF-ANNOINTED SAVIORS

 Illustration by Pawel Kuczynski

SPACE HURRICANE

A new study sheds light on a new type of aurora. A space hurricane is a huge, funnel-like, spiral geomagnetic storm that occurs above the polar Ionosphere of Earth, during extremely quiet conditions. They are related to the aurora borealis phenomenon, as the electron precipitation from the storm's funnel produces gigantic, cyclone-shaped auroras.

As seen from Earth

 

Illustration depicting a space hurricane from space

How it works

OUT AND ABOUT TALES

Parked in front of me in the Kroger parking lot was a junker covered with numerous hand-painted messages. The central theme was pro-choice, women's rights, MI proposal 3 etal. One, painted directly on the trunk caught my eye:

Dead Men Don't Rape

Yikes! What was this about? So, I googled the phrase and came up with this:

This is Delilah Bon, whose music fuses hiphop, punk and nu metal. One of her songs is entitled Dead Men Don't Rape. I drilled down further and found that this is a quote from the executed female serial killer Aileen Wuornos. As a sex worker, she claimed that all her victims had either raped or attempted to rape her.

All of which, including the actions by Wuornos, point to female rage. While pretty extreme for some, it is understandable. It's 2022 and in so many ways, it's the same old shit for women. Sometimes, rage is all you have left when folks aren't listening.
 

THE ROACH'S NEWEST SCAM

 

The Republican party has stopped paying his bills so he's desperate to try and generate income. So, it's back to a QVC style grift but of course, tailored to appeal to his narcissism. But wait! There's more: you buy more and you're allowed into an exclusive club! For more details:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/us/politics/trump-nft-trading-cards-superhero.html

The comics are beside themselves-this stuff is so bat shit crazy that there's no room for the writers. Who could make this up?

Operators are standing by.

PS: Media sources are indicating that nearly all the trading cards for sale have sold out in a day, netting over $4 million dollars.

RETAIL HELL: LOSING A CUSTOMER

When I bought a shipping business where I had worked part-time for a few years, one of the customers I inherited was a man who owned a classic car parts business. His niche was the Ford Galaxie 500 from the mid-60's. Often the parts were big and heavy so he relied on our packaging expertise to get them safely to his customers. Burly and surly, always dressed in a plaid shirt, he lived in his warehouse up on US 27. He had a prickly demeanor to say the least: he would only conduct business with the owner so as an employee, I would alert the boss when I saw him coming in from the parking lot. If the owner happened to be out on a job, this guy would be pissed and would threaten to take his business elsewhere unless the owner came back immediately. I would apologize and suggest that in the future that he would give us a call ahead of time to alert us or allow me to wait on him. He would leave in a huff and follow up with an angry phone call to the owner but eventually come back. He had paying customers to attend to.

After I became owner, he begrudgingly continued to come in,  keeping to his usual demand of never dealing with the hired help. This was fine as long as he did not abuse my people. I had years of experience dealing with this sort of thing which goes with the territory. In retail, you'll deal with all kinds of folk and sometimes they can be difficult. 

Meanwhile, I was in a reconciliation with my first wife Michele and we were back to living together. She began to have a cough that got worse and worse as the holidays progressed. Initial tests and treatments by the doctors failed and finally she had a coughing fit that broke a rib. She was admitted to the hospital for a lung biopsy. A couple of days later, Michele called in tears saying "it's really bad" and I told her I would arrive shortly being only a couple of miles away from Sparrow Hospital. My employee was working so I had coverage for the shop. I was putting my coat on and I heard him holler that the Galaxie guy was coming in. I met him in the parking lot, apologized that I had to leave because of a family emergency and hurried to my car. He was not pleased. 

In the end, Michele had terminal lung cancer and died about a month later. My employee had told me Galaxie guy had thrown a fit and stomped off. We never saw him again.

Some time later, I was having drinks with an old Kroger colleague and I related the tale, shaking my head. "Forget it Jeff" she said, "It's retail."

 

 

FIVE SECOND STORIES

I was waiting outside the vet's office when a pickup backed in adjacent to one of the entrances, about 20 yards from me. A husband and wife in their 40's got out despite it being a blustery day with snow and let down the gate. A door opened and 2 staff members emerged carrying a doggie casket. A big dog. The wife burst into tears and went back into the cab, on the phone to someone. The husband, clearly teary-eyed, helped secure the casket in the truck bed and made small talk with the pall bearers. They returned to their offices and the couple drove off.

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Millipedes thought they had it made: their bodies contain a chemical so foul that in time, no predator would bother them. Ahhh, they thought, we have it dicked! Until...Capuchin monkeys figured out that if they cracked open a millipede and rubbed this substance over their bodies, it would serve as a great insect repellent. "Damn smart Apes!" the Millipedes cried "they ruin everything."

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While surfing YouTube, I came across a vid featuring a lady from Bavaria who was explaining the various Pagan practices and beliefs during Jule in Eastern Europe, Germany and Scandinavia. One tradition was that folks would clear away snow in the fields or leave out hay for the horses ridden by Odin or St. Nicholas as well as goodies for the riders. It struck me that while our culture retains leaving cookies and milk (and sometimes a dram of some spirit) for good Ole Santa, we don't leave anything for the reindeer. I guess the tradition of leaving food for the critters was lost thanks to Clement Moore's 1823 poem A Visit From St. Nicholas which featured reindeer landing on rooftops. Hard to drag hay up there for sure.

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My maternal grandfather was from Croatia. One of the few tales about him passed down by my mother was that on Christmas Eve, after all had gone to bed, he would get up on the roof and make some tracks in the snow. In the morning, he would beckon his children outside and show them where the reindeer had landed on their roof. 

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A YouTube vid: Planet Uranus: Probing the ice giant. Perhaps "exploring" would seem a bit less lurid.

FADING AWAY

 

"Fading Away" 1858 photograph by Henry Peach Robinson

 

This famous and controversial print was made from five separate negatives. It was viewed by much of the public as too painful for such a literal medium. However, the controversy made Robinson the most famous photographer in England and became the leader of the Pictorialist movement, which advocated achieving painterly effects in photography.

BIRDDOGS PANTS: EVERYONE IS A FRIGGIN' HERO

Surreal ad for some new pants that arrived via a Shark Tank presentation. Promoted as the Rolls Royce of pants made out of "High-stretch, warp-knit polyester fabric that gives the look of a clean khaki finish but feels incredible on your legs." Notice that early on, the diner at left gets a major pizza gut splatter on his face like someone's head just caught a hollow point bullet but a couple of frames later, he's clean as a whistle. What a miracle! These Birddogs can be yours for...$118. A lovely piece of BS, but then again, that's advertising. 

THE THREE RAVENS

The crow bros have been visiting. Yesterday after the snow, the three came and perched together on the birch before dropping one by one to snack on the seeds I'd left on the giving stone.

It reminded C of a very old English folk song "The Three Ravens" printed in the song book "Melismata" compiled by Thomas Ravenscroft and published in 1611, but it is probably older than that.

There were three ravens sat on a tree,

Down a down hey down hey down.

They were as black as they might be,

With a down.

Then one of them said to his mate:

"Where shall we our breakfast take?"

With a down derry derry derry down down.

 

Down in yonder greenfield,

Down a down hey down hey down.

There lies a knight slain under his shield;

With a down.

His hounds they lie down at his feet,

So well they their master keep.

With a down derry derry derry down down.

 

His hawks they fly so eagerly,

Down a down hey down hey down.

There is no fowl dare him come nigh

With a down.

But down there comes a fallow doe,

As great with young as she might go.

With a down derry derry derry down down.

 

She lifted up his bloody head,

Down a down hey down hey down.

And kissed his wounds that were so red.

With a down.

She got him up upon her back

And carried him to an earthen lake.

With a down derry derry derry down down.

 

She buried him before the prime,

Down a down hey down hey down.

She was dead herself ere evensong time.

With a down.

Now God send every gentleman

Such hounds, such hawks and such a leman.

With a down derry derry derry down down.

 

CROWN ROYAL WHISKEY AD

 

Crown Royal believes wealth isn't about money and cars and things. As Anthony Ramos, "the guy who's got it all," heads out of a liquor store, he stops to help out the owner of Ms. Pak's Deli with a hanging plant. Then, he spots a couple of guys on a nearby stoop and swings by to get the daily news before arriving at his next destination: his mom's house. She has cooked him his favorite meal and they hold up glasses of Crown Royal as he toasts to the greatest mom in the world. The Canadian whisky brand says if you live generously, life will treat you royally.

A heartwarming holiday fable from everyone's pal, Crown Royal Whisky directed by Spike Lee.

 

 

ALGAE & FUNGI

On the coast of Tasmania, one can see these orange rocks. The orange are algae and fungi who have a symbiotic relationship-the algae provides food while the fungi provide a protected environment for the algae. Neither can survive on their own.

This brought to mind an idea for a silly animated TV sitcom called Algae & Fungi. They can't live without each other but whose individual habits drive the other crazy. The Odd Couple redux only with Aussie accents and hilarity ensues. Can't be any worse than...dear gawd...Square Bob Sponge Pants.

RARELY SEEN DEEP SEA SQUID

The arms can reach 13-26 feet long!

MOLLS

Molls and I have been couch potatoes in the afternoon. She rests quite a bit in the library by the sun patches. Plus it gives her a strategic view of porch and drive, down the hall and the great room. She eats little and Madame now wishes for her meal to be brought to her. I found some salmon mousse in a squeeze pouch that she enjoys.

 

Enjoying some late afternoon sun

The missing fur is from where the Vet did the ultrasound.

MADAME IS ILL

 

C and I are sad to report that Molls has multiple cancers. Rather than putting her through further tests and other procedures that we feel will give her upset and discomfort, we are choosing palliative care and let nature take its course. She is 19 years old and we want her to enjoy what time she has in the comfort of home with her loving humans.