Well, in our part of the Midwest we haven’t had any snow to speak of. Just a lot of gray skies.
We spent yesterday at the hospital with daughter #2 who was having some ear tube maintenance surgery.
It was a long, but thankfully uneventful day. Daughter #1 had fun entertaining herself with iPhone antics and tweets.
We were glad to go home after 4 hours, stopping at McDonald’s for Diet Cokes and Nuggets (don’t judge us). Later we went to get a prescription filled and to Walgreen’s for NyQuil and throat lozenges. I made hash with the pork tenderloin leftover from Christmas. Daughter #1 made cookies. We watched several episodes of Buffy, including one of our favorites (“Band Candy”) wherein our she-ro made an amusing reference to Nightline. (We live for such moments.)
Today’s Emerson quote is brought to you by daughter #2 with whom I had a serious intellectual conversation the other day.
Know then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phenomenon perfect. What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you perhaps call yours a cobbler’s trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar’s garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world.
(from Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson)
It is truly an amazing thing when your children reach an age where they are more knowledgeable than you on certain subjects. It is doubly amazing when that subject is Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The airport at this time of year is a fun place to people watch. There are lots of happy people picking up college students and relatives etc. There are people with balloons!
Daughter #2 arrived on time and toting a 50-lb. suitcase. Yikes. We moved on, as is our custom, to Hacienda and margaritas.
The boy came over and put the tree up in its stand (step 1) so that the branches could come down before decorating it the next day.
The tree, although there was an alarming amount of needles on the floor (zut alors!), turned out to be quite satisfactory.
I finally watched Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and A Christmas Story (1983).
I am looking forward to watching more Xmas flicks this week and another trip to the airport to pick up daughter #1 on Thursday. In the meantime…
Christmas cacti are kind of the perfect plants. You put so little effort into them, and they reward you with such extravagant gifts!
Gosh almighty, aren’t they something?
Well, I for one would not want to let their heroics go unnoticed! Bravo.
Here’s a little something I found tucked away in an upstairs closet the other day.
A Charlie Brown Christmas snow globe! How nice to discover an ‘old’ decoration which seems ‘new’ again!
I haven’t watched A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) yet this year, but it’s a good idea. I was in the fourth grade when it debuted, the first animated Peanuts special (and still the best). It is astonishing to me that Charles Schulz got away with having Linus explain the true meaning of Christmas by actually reciting Luke 2:8-14 from the King James Version of the Bible. It is a modern miracle. The success of the show was and continues to be a perfect vindication. (A total of 50% of the televisions in the United States were tuned to the first broadcast. A Charlie Brown Christmas won an Emmy and a Peabody award, and is today considered to be one of the most beloved animated holiday specials of all time.)
Out of the mouths of babes, as they say:
“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not: for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.'”
That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.
Since we have been on the subject of hymns lately, I will perk up your Wednesday with this rendition of What a Friend We Have in Jesus by The Purple Hulls. It has been recorded by everyone from Aretha Franklin to Alan Jackson to John Tesh (!), but I like this version.
The Purple Hulls are a band of siblings and that’s one reason their harmony is so great. They also do a nice instrumental version of Be Thou My Vision, which was always a favorite hymn of mine and which we sang in our school chapel (sans banjo).
(A hat tip to the wonderful Hay Quaker blog where I am always discovering new things, such as The Purple Hulls.)
And a special birthday shout out to the boy who turns 26 today!
He has always been a fine young man. This picture reminds us, to paraphrase the great Pete Townshend, that all the best cowboys have Chinese eyes.
Well, while my dual personality was posting about Achilles and The Illiad and heroes ‘n such and carrying on a deep conversation with the boy in the comments section, I was busy enjoying a Firefly marathon.
What a great show, though sadly short-lived. You may recall that it follows the exploits of a rag-tag bunch of misfits on a small spacecraft 500 years in the future. It’s an old story, but one we can relate to, can’t you? “We’re deep in space, corner of No and Where.” You gotta love it.
Meanwhile, back in reality, it is already the week of Thanksgiving. How did we get here? We haven’t even begun to post about all that we are thankful for! We have been side-tracked. We’ll have to do better.
For starters, I am thankful that the boy and his lovely bride came over for dinner last night. I made sloppy-joes and french fries. I am thankful that they live here in town and that they are always happy to come over.
We are going over to their place for Thanksgiving dinner with her parents. I am bringing my cheesy potato casserole. How wonderful, after all these years, to have an extended family!
Finally, here’s a little treble heroics ( Christ Church Cathedral Choir, Oxford: “Jubilate Deo”) to perk up your day:
Twenty years ago today our father ANC III died. He was seventy years old.
We like to think of him as the happy three-year old on an Italian beach in 1925 (pictured here) where he lived with his ex-patriot parents, although to be honest, he looks nervous and contemplative.
According to family legend, the A.A. Milnes lived nearby and he and Christopher Robin were friends/acquaintances.
To be sure, Ernest Shepard’s illustrations of Christopher Robin look more like little ANC than the Milne’s boy. Well, whatever, our father was always a big fan of Winnie-the-Pooh and friends and enjoyed reading the stories and poems to his children. The first present he bought for his first grandchild was a hardback copy of When We Were Young.
And, yes, it is Halloween today, so I leave you with this:
Well, it’s that time of year again when the old Halloween pictures come out, much to the chagrin of some people. Here is a picture of daughter #1 (age 5) and the boy (not quite 3) in 1989. Daughter #1 is (yet again) a witch, wearing the costume my mother made for her a few years earlier. The boy is (of course) a super hero. He is happily wearing his sister’s leotard and tights and her old white snow boots, which he loved and wore frequently–and why not? They were the next best thing to cowboy boots. He is also wearing the Batman kerchief (as a cape) that he wore every day to school that year. Yes, the boy always displayed a unique personal style.
P.S. I also want to let you faithful readers know that the concert I went to on Friday night was possibly the best ever.
I have seen Dylan, Springsteen, Sting, Haggard, Knopfler, Lyle Lovett (several times), and Guster (to name a few), but Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives were awesome. It didn’t hurt that I was sitting in the fourth row of a smaller venue. But it was wonderful. Great musicians all, they were in fine voice and having fun. Priceless.
And earlier that evening the Cardinals beat the Braves!
Despite the fact that I visited Eckert’s Farm on Saturday where there was a cornucopia of fresh produce for sale, including pumpkins, on Sunday afternoon I ventured to our neighborhood “pumpkin patch” at the Methodist Church.
This is where I always buy my pumpkins, because, well, I like to support the Methodists. This year they had a huge supply of orange beauties which were surprisingly reasonably priced.
I only bought one (not three as I used to), but I picked a doozy.
“I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”
–Henry David Thoreau
(This pumpkin would not really be good for sitting on, but Thoreau’s point is well taken.)
P.S. The Cardinals clinched the wildcard spot! Hello, post-season!
Here is a picture of our brother Chris when he was around 18 months old, judging from his diaper-enlarged pants and the fact that he is in Sedona, Arizona where our father taught at the Verde Valley School.
It was about 1952. Chris is holding his Kanga (and Roo) doll. He also had Winnie the Pooh and Piglet and Eeyeore.
I may have mentioned that our father was a big Winnie the Pooh fan and he enjoyed reading the stories aloud to us. I’m sure Chris enjoyed listening to the stories surrounded by his stuffed animals. Those were the golden years when for 5 years he was a happy only child.
dual personalities 