Category Archives: Holidays

Thursday Natterings, But Not From Nabobs of Negativism

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I woke the heater up yesterday from its summertime hibernation, mainly to see whether it would wake up and blow hot air, which is all I ask of it. Fortunately, the machine snapped to its single job without any complaint, such as some weird noise I don’t want to hear. The previous night had been quite cool, as they are starting to be, lowering the house temp to 69 F. My test took it up to 70 F. Normally I keep the house at 68 F. when it’s cold outside.

I saw the first Halloween decorations in the neighborhood the other day when walking the dog. It was a small faux cemetery in a front yard, featuring hand-painted sturdy cardboard (or cheap wood) tombstones. I don’t remember what any of them said.

Probably not Here Lies Les Moore. No Les, No Moore. I think I saw that in a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not collection years ago. That one I believe. Sounds like frontier humor to me.

Another remarkable collection of recent space photos from the Atlantic. As the intro notes, “We [as in, mankind] currently have spacecraft in orbit around the Sun, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, a comet, Jupiter, and Saturn; two operational rovers on Mars; and a recent close flyby of Pluto.”

Closer to home, here are two signs I saw recently in Chicago.

That’s a little alarming. I can think of a lot better places to pass the future. The only future I want from McDougall’s are occasional breakfast sandwiches.

Dirt cheap, eh? And what do your beneficiaries get? Enough to pay for the dirt that covers you, maybe.

The last Weaver is gone. Fred Hellerman died recently, I just learned. Time then to listen to the re-union Weavers sing “Get Up and Go.”

One more thing: I don’t think I’ve ever seen olives packed this way before. A Trader Jose offering, as the package tells us.

olives

I opened them today at lunchtime. Not bad at all.

Summertime Hiatus

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Time for a summer hiatus. Time to celebrate what ought to be a string of less-than-working days from Juneteenth to the Solstice to Canada Day to July Fourth to Nunavut Day (July 9), just to make it inclusive for all North Americans. Back to posting around Sunday, July 10.

Yesterday I learned more sad news, that my old friend Ed Henderson has died. I’ve mentioned him periodically in BTST over the years, and I believe he was one of a handful of people who read it regularly. Last year I visited him at his home near Bellingham, Wash., and we had a fine time — as fine a time as his precarious health allowed. I’m very glad I went. Sometime in the not too distance future, I will write more about him.

On the Solstice, I took a look at the full moon. First one on the Solstice since 1948, they say. Looked like all the other ones I’ve seen, but it was pleasant enough.

Closer to home, as in our back yard, the clover is lush.

Schaumburg cloverWho considers clover a weed? Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, this is my own, my native clover? Pleasing to gaze at, pleasing to lie on.
Payton dog 2016The dog knows that, too.

Another Year, Another Tree

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Notes on taking down the Christmas tree, which I did yesterday, because the village comes to collect dry trees in my neighborhood on early January Mondays. First, no one wants to help. Other members of the household don’t mind putting on decorations, but no one cares much for taking them off. No surprise there.

Once unadorned, the tree goes from its month-long position in the living room, around a left turn into the “foyer,” then out the front door. From there it’s a direct line to the edge of the street, where it sits with the regular trash and recyclables.

Also unsurprisingly, the tree leaves a thick path of pine needles in its wake. These are mostly vacuumed or swept up before long, but it will be days or weeks before the last visible needles disappear, and others hide for months or longer. There are probably a needle or two from ’00s trees behind some of the larger pieces of furniture several feet from where any Christmas tree ever stood or passed by on its way out.

Also, there’s always one bit of decoration — not counting the icicles — inadvertently left on the tree, which then falls off on the way outside. It doesn’t matter how thoroughly you examine the bare, dry tree. Sometimes I’ve taken a flashlight and shined it on interior branches, though I didn’t do that this year.

Doesn’t matter. There’s always something clinging to the bitter end, and so it was this year. But it was one of the uglier decorations, a plastic Santa. It could have vanished and I’d never have missed it. I found it just outside the front door.

One year I found a small wooden decoration in the snow out where the tree sat, waiting to be hauled away. I wouldn’t have missed it either. Why hang such forgettable items on the tree at all? That’s a question for another day, one in December, about the informal aesthetics of your tree.

I’m Dreaming of a Muddy Christmas

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Actually, no need to dream. Heavy rains every few days mean puddles and mud for the Yuletide landscape. Such is this year.

Merry Christmas to all. Back to posting around January 3, 2016, with any luck.

How did it happen that more than half of the second decade of the 21st century is over already? That it’s been nearly 40 years since “Disco Duck” was on the charts? Or, in a more personal vein, that it’s been nearly 30 years since I looked at the Chicago skyline from Grant Park and thought, I’d like to live here. That it’s been nearly 20 years since we agreed, Let’s have that baby. That it’s been nearly 10 years since I sent a postcard of Moraine Lake and the Valley of the Ten Peaks in Alberta from near there, and my entire message was Oh My God.

Enough of that. In a more forward-looking mode, we had lunch on Saturday at a restaurant on Southport Ave. before we went to the Music Box, and a couple wheeled in two very small children in a two-kid stroller. “You know,” I said to Lilly and Ann, “those kids might live to see the 22nd century. Maybe not, but it’s entirely possible.” Food for thought to go along with regular food.

Divers Christmas Trees

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Time to bring a pine into our home and festoon it with lights and baubles. Which we did on Friday.

Liily & Ann Dec 11, 2015My participation, beyond buying the tree and physically bringing it inside, was fairly modest this year.

Dec 11, 2015On Saturday we went downtown, enjoying a cloudy but amazingly mild day — about 60 F. One of the things to see downtown in December are various Christmas trees.

The city of Chicago moved its tree from Daley Plaza to Millennium Park this year (oddly enough, the tree has its own Wiki page).

Chicago Christmas Tree 2015Behind the tree are the curves of the Pritzker Pavilion. That would be something to adorn with lights, but maybe the logistics of getting it done would be too daunting.

The splendid Rookery lobby had a tree as well.

Rookery Christmas Tree 2015As did Pioneer Plaza, which is just south of the Tribune Tower.

Pioneer Plaza Christmas Tree 2015The tree at Union Station wasn’t particularly interesting.
Union Station Chicago ceiling 2015Better were the vaulted ceilings.

How the Whos Really Dealt With the Grinch

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Ann and I decided to watch one of this year’s airings of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! last night, which, except for the commercials interrupting in places not originally intended for that purpose, was worth a watch, as always. I may or may not have seen the show on December 18, 1966, when it first aired, but I did watch it most years during the early ’70s, and occasionally since then.

This time it occurred to me just how forgiving the Whos really were. Not only did they welcome Christmas with song despite having no presents or toys (and no food), when the Grinch returned all of that, they didn’t toss him in the Whoville jail for burglary.

Or worse. Naturally, I had to come up with an alternate ending.

The Whos organized a posse with care
And tracked the Grinch down near his lair.
You’ve stolen our presents, from largest to least,
You’ve grabbed our Who pudding, and glommed our roast beast.
They hit him hard in the name of their town,
They kicked his shins and knocked him down.
And without a word or even a sniff
The Who posse tossed the Grinch over the cliff.

An El Niño Winter?

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Some years, December comes in with the kind of snow we had before Thanksgiving. This year, rain as November ended and December began. El Niño?

I can’t pretend to understand exactly how that works, but I do defer to NOAA on the matter of the impact of El Niño on North America: “Seasonal outlooks generally favor below-average temperatures and above-median precipitation across the southern tier of the United States, and above-average temperatures and below-median precipitation over the northern tier of the United States.”

As a northern-tier location, so far we haven’t had below-median precipitation, but it has been warmer than usual. Suits me.

Other marks of the season, recently spotted in the neighborhood, include creeping Christmas lights. They started appearing just before Thanksgiving and have accelerated since. I expect a rush to put them up next weekend. The neighbors across the street have them up already. A few blocks away, someone did the full Griswold on their house, as a few people do: hundreds of lights everywhere, inflatables, glowing Santas, reindeer, elves, “Nutcracker Suite” characters, and a Nativity setup that might be visible from space.

It’s enough so far that I brought the lights in from the garage, for testing. That makes me ask all over again, how can simple strings become so tangled? Also, three of the four strings lit again after 11 months or so. One did not wake up, like the woman astronaut in the original Planet of the Apes.

Thanksgiving & The Days After ’15

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On the whole, Thanksgiving outside was gray and rainy, but pleasantly warm for this time of the year. The days afterward were drier but much chillier, though not quite freezing.

Pictured: an all-too-common meal snapshot, in this case most of my Thanksgiving dinner. Note the artless presentation. I did that myself. I don’t remember what the plastic fork was doing there, but I will assert that we used metal utensils.
Thanksgiving chow '15The ham came from a warehouse store, while Lilly prepared the various starches, with Ann’s assistance. She combined four or five different cheeses for the macaroni and cheese. It isn’t Thanksgiving without that, she said, and it was the star attraction of the plate. For those who fret about such things, there was a green item on the menu, too: green beans, which didn’t make into the picture, but did make it into my stomach.

Once again, Martinelli’s sparkling cider was the main drink — original and cranberry/apple — though we also opened a bottle of wine we bought at a winery near Traverse City in 2007. I’d post the name of the wine, but that would involve going out to the refrigerator in the garage, where it’s now stored, and reading the label. It was a pretty good Riesling.

Some people shop on the Friday after Thanksgiving. That’s never been my ambition. My ambition is to do as close to nothing that day as possible. Days like that are very rare. This year I almost achieved it. Almost, but not quite.

Which reminds me of this exchange in Office Space.

Michael Bolton: You were supposed to come in on Saturday. What were you doing?

Peter Gibbons: Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.

On Saturday, we watched Vancouver Asahi, a Japanese movie on TV about the baseball team of that name, composed of Japanese-Canadian players during its heyday in the 1930s, when there used to be a Japantown in Vancouver. Not bad on the whole, though about 30 minutes too long. It also had the virtue of being about something I’d never heard of before.

After the movie ended, at about 11:30 in the evening, I went out on the deck and could see Orion to the south, parading across a nice clear sky. Never mind the solstice. Winter’s here.

Post-Thanksgiving Days of a Previous Decade

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Sunday, Nov 22, 2015

Most years the first snow’s a light dusting, but this year full-blown winter precipitation started falling late on Friday and well into Saturday, leaving us with about a foot of wet, heavy snow. Wet probably because it was barely cold enough to freeze, but it did stick to every tree and bush. Turns out the official amount on Saturday — 11.2 inches at O’Hare, where the NWS takes its Chicago-area measurement — was the most for a November snowfall since 1895.

Nov 21, 2015Friday, Nov 24, 2006

Another major holiday come and gone. Now it’s Buy Nothing Day. So far, I’ve bought nothing today, unless you count electricity, natural gas, phone service, etc. I don’t think even the most dyed-in-the-wool believer in the “America as World Pig” model of global economics would shut off his utilities for the day after Thanksgiving.

I’m no purist when it comes to Buy Nothing Day, since I have a strong suspicion I’m going to invest in fried poultry in a few hours, to feed the whelps and my nephew Sam, who’s visiting from Cincinnati. No whelp he, since he’s 23.

Yesterday’s feast was reasonably conventional: big bird, smashed spuds, various breads, even that all-North American berry, cranberries. The only peculiarities involved Sam, who is peculiar in his eating habits and ate a species of Polish sausage instead of bird meat; and our choice of dessert: a pie of no sort, but instead cream puffs.

Lilly, who just turned 9, ate as heartily as the rest of us, but at about 9 pm last night threw everything up in the vicinity of the downstairs toilet. No one else here was afflicted in the same way, not yet. Such are the stuff of special holiday memories. She felt better this morning, fortunately. [But the virus wasn’t through with us.]

Wednesday, Nov 29, 2006

Early this morning, after I’d woken up once to hear the rain on the roof, I returned to the imaginal realm and dreamed of flying – not too common a variety of dream for me, but it happens occasionally. Flying as if I were a kite, tethered to a moving train far, far below through a broad prairie landscape. That was only a part of an elaborate, vivid dream, the likes of which I only have a few times a year. I have plenty of other dreams, of course, pleasant or anxious, but more pedestrian. (The Japanese verb associated with dreaming translates as “see.” I like that. I saw a dream last night.)

Friday, Dec 1, 2006

A foot of snow today, and you’d think that would quiet things down outside. It did, for a while, since the blanket of snow muffled the streets and closed the airports beginning a little after midnight. I was up briefly at 3 am or so and wished I could leave the windows open, since the traffic noise was gone. But as soon as the sun came up this morning, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr went the snowblowers. And traffic started again.

The National Museum of Mexican Art’s 2015 Day of the Dead Exhibition

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In January 1990, when I knew I was leaving Chicago and not sure I’d ever move back, I spent some time visiting local places I hadn’t gotten around to. That included a few smaller museums, such as the DuSable Museum of African-American History, the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, and what was then known as the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum. Now it’s the National Museum of Mexican Art, but the museum is still located in Harrison Park in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. I made it back there on Saturday for first time in 25 years.

Mainly I wanted to see the museum’s notable Día de los Muertos exhibit, which it mounts every October through December. Who can resist colorful skulls, in two and three dimensions?

Day of the Dead 2015Day of the Dead 2015But there was much more. “Come celebrate the Day of the Dead with the works of over 90 artists of Mexican descent from both sides of the border,” the museum web site notes. Among other works, “thirteen ofrendas and installations were created to remember distinguished artists and members of the community alike. Folk art, paintings, and sculptures comprise the largest annual exhibition of Day of the Dead in the U.S.”

The ofrenda (“offering”)  consists of objects arrayed on a ritual altar for the Day of the Dead, to honor someone who has died. The one that really caught my attention was for El Santo of Lucha Libre fame.
El SantoThe title of the ofrenda in full: “Santo in the World of the Dead: Altar to the Silver Masked Wrestler/Santo en el mundo de los muertos: ofrenda al enmascarado de plata,” by Juan Javier and Gabrielle Pescador of Michigan.

I had only the vaguest notion of El Santo, so I read more about him: Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta (1917-1984), one of the biggest stars of Lucha Libre. It’s too bad that some of his many movies, dubbed clumsily in English, didn’t show up on Saturday afternoon TV when I was young. Such as Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro, a poster for which is part of the ofrenda. After all, we did get the likes of The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy on English-language TV in ’70s San Antonio.

Not to worry, in our time the original version of Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro is posted in its entirety on YouTube. If you watch it, and maybe a few other Santo clips, you might start getting YouTube commercials in Spanish, which I find easier to ignore.

(Something that made me smile from the Wiki entry on The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy: “The movie shows a notable lack of awareness of Mesoamerican civilizations…” There’s a shocker.)

Another large ofrenda was for a woman in a rather different walk of life, though a public persona all the same: Irene C. Hernandez (1916-1997), who was on the Cook County Board of Commissioners from 1974 to ’94.
Day of the Dead 2015The work was created by a number of artists, including students at Irene C. Hernandez Middle School in Chicago. A lot of skeletons have their parts to play.
Day of the Dead, 2015Other ofrendas and installations honored the likes of Anthony Quinn, Selena, Brooklyn artist Ray Abeyta, and notable Chicagoans like Soledad “Shirley” Velásquez. Considering that the theme is death, they’re remarkably life-affirming.