Category Archives: Holidays

A Dispatch from the War on Christmas

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“War on Christmas,” huh? Seems like a fairly robust holiday to me. You hear a lot about the holiday this time of year, after all. I can’t think of any jurisdiction in Western world that has suggested banning it, or suppressing the Christmas tree trade, or sending street-corner Santas to re-education camps. Not even the Russians do that any more.

But what about a real War on Christmas? And by real, I mean with artillery.

Ellesmere Is.—The forces of Christmas suffered a serious setback on Thursday when anti-Christmas forces overran a major redoubt near Ft. Kringle on Ellesmere Is., putting the fort in a perilous position. Should Ft. Kringle fall to the hands of anti-Christmasites, the path would be open for an assault on the North Pole, which has been pounded in recent weeks by aerial bombardment.

An estimated 2,000 elves were killed or captured when the redoubt was taken. Dasher, a spokesdeer for the Claus government at the Pole, said that the little ones died heroically in defense of Christmas, and vowed that the redoubt would be retaken during an upcoming counteroffensive, though he declined to give details. Units of elves are rumored to be massing in northwestern Greenland for a flanking counterattack, but that could not be independently verified…

Cold Tuesday, Clutch, Dog ‘n’ Tree

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This from today’s Chicago Tribune: “The temperature [this morning] dipped below zero overnight at O’Hare International Airport, the earliest that has happened here since 1995… The temperature fell to one degree below zero around 12:55 a.m., according to the National Weather Service. That’s the earliest subzero readings here since a low of minus 4 on Dec. 9, 1995.”

Those are two-fisted Fahrenheit readings, not any namby-pamby Celsius, either. Remember last winter, when it didn’t seem to get cold at all, with little snow? Not this time. So far. More snow is supposed to fall in the wee hours tomorrow.

Open questions: Is Clutch Cargo enjoying some kind of vogue among hipsters? Otherwise why is the Music Box Theatre, a fine revival and arts house on the North Side of Chicago, screening five episodes of the show on Friday?

Yesterday, girls decorating the Christmas tree. Today, a snap of dog and tree.

Payton+Tree

She hasn’t shown much interest in the tree, unlike certain other trees during her walks. I figure dogs have their own holidays, which somehow have something to do with epic events in the history of smell.

Tannenbaum ’13

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I’ve turned most of the tree decorating over to the next generation. I did put the tree in the stand and string on the lights, though. Lilly and Ann didn’t quite get all of the ornaments on the first or second day, but they’re mostly done.

Christmas Tree 2013Icicles will go on tonight, and a star on top. I put on the star.

This is the first time the tree’s been in the lower level of the house, for various reasons. One is to complement the new walls and floor. The dog showed some interest in the smell of the thing, for a while, but the novelty wore off, and she hasn’t destroyed any of the ornaments yet.

Calendar Oddities

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Snow today, beginning in the morning, finally enough to obscure the grass. At about noon, Lilly asked her device – which has a male-voice version of Siri – Is it going to snow a lot today? Male-Siri said, “It appears to be snowing.” Guess it knows how to look out the window.

On Saturday a cheap 2014 calendar arrived from a company we do scant business with. I like it for its completely eccentric choice of special dates.

It’s got some presidential birthdays, of course. In order: McKinley, FDR, Lincoln, Washington, Jackson, Madison, Jefferson, Grant, Kennedy, J.Q. Adams, Hoover, Benjamin Harrison, Eisenhower, TR, and Wilson. Not a bad selection, but Benjamin Harrison? Well, he did ink the bills for six new states. And… even I have to look up the details of his administration. Maybe the calendar maker is a fan of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act.

Other calendar oddities include mentioning the first national election (Jan. 7, 1789), Alexander Hamilton’s birthday (Jan. 11, 1757), “Edison’s Incandescent Lamp Patent” (Jan. 27, 1880), Henry Longfellow’s birthday (Feb. 27, 1807), “Peary Discovered the North Pole” (April 6, 1909), “Dewey’s Victory at Manila Bay” (May 1, 1898), Col. Lindbergh’s NY to Paris Flight” (May 21, 1927), “Hawaii Annexed” (July 7, 1898), “Panama Canal Opened” (Aug. 15, 1914), “Monroe Doctrine Announced” (Dec. 2, 1823), “South Pole Discovered” (Dec. 14, 1911), and “Wilbur Wright’s 1st Aeroplane Flight (Dec. 17, 1903).” That’s right, aeroplane. It’s good to be up on to-day’s latest technical marvels.

Standard federal holidays, as well as an assortment of popular days (Ground Hog Day, Valentine’s Day, etc.) and Jewish holidays are noted. V-J Day is noted on Sept. 2, but V-E Day isn’t mentioned. (I learned elsewhere that “Victory Day” on Sept. 2 is actually a state holiday in Rhode Island; see “A Few Interesting Facts…” ) The Wright Bros. (one, anyway) and Lindbergh made the cut, but no space flight of any kind did, manned or unmanned, Soviet or American. You’d think they’d be space for the first Moon landing at least. Hawaii annexed but why not the purchase of Alaska? Longfellow but not, say, Walt Whitman?

Ah, well. We each live according to an eccentric calendar.

Christmas Light Failures

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Cold, as predicted. Well below freezing, but no snow or ice.

Seasonal decorations came out of storage today. Eleven-twelfths of the year, they’re packed away. We plan to buy a tree tomorrow. I tested our light strings, both indoor and out, and found that most of them to be non- or partly functional. But at least the eight-function string still works.

Just another thing to buy. Are light stings of the present shoddy compared to those made when I was young, or am I romanticizing the light strings of old?

Old but not too old. After all, I remember one goes out, all go out. That kind of string was considered old-fashioned when I decorated Christmas trees as a lad, but they were still around. Some of the strings I tested today showed a different kind of failure: half or a third of the string was dark, but the rest glowed. Go figure.

Turn 16, Eat Fish

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Back again around December 1. There are things to do and things to eat between now and then. This year we might not bother with a separate Thanksgiving dessert, because a fair amount of Lilly’s birthday cake is still around. I can’t resist a half sheet when the time comes, so it always takes a while to get through it all.

As for the main ingredients of the feast — or really, just a large meal, since it won’t be boisterous enough to rise to the level of a feast — it’ll be some variety of large bird. It will not be expertly prepared raw fish. We had that for Lilly’s birthday meal.

I’m pretty sure that isn’t what I ate when I turned 16. But those were slightly different times.

Armistice Day 2013

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“The Armistice” by Eugene Savage, on display at the Elks National Veterans Memorial, Chicago.

Posted nearby is the following:

The principal figure near the center is the Madonna, the Mother of Christ, the Prince of Peace. She portrays the bereaved mother with raised hands in a gesture of stopping contending forces from opposite sides. She looks down sorrowfully upon the figure of Hope, now chained to a gun carriage, symbolizing ruthless force. Those who have come to grief and defeat in the trenches are crawling out. An old clock, stopped at the Hour of Eleven, indicates the significant hour of the signing of the Armistice – the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of November, 1918. The idols and gold cloth flung about represent the ruthless destruction of churches and things made by Man. The hands pointing accusing fingers and the expression of horror on the faces of the soldiers on the top right effectively recall the unspeakable Horror of War. Balancing this are the American Soldiers, on the left, with Smiles of Joy, who are beginning the Celebration of the End of the War. They have just heard the news of the Armistice, and are ringing a bell salvaged from the ruins, upon which they carry a French peasant girl. The Dove, Olive Branch and Rainbow fill out the scene, indicating Promise of a New Peace.

Halloween ’13

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I can’t remember the last time it rained on Halloween, but today we had a fair amount. It finally slacked off in the late afternoon, and children and others emerged to collect sweets. Not as many as most years, but some. Lilly was out with friends, ignoring my opinion that she’s too old for it.

I took Ann out in the immediate neighborhood while she waited for a friend of hers to show up – they were going to some kind of park district spook-tacular or boo-nanza or something. She reported having fun at that, but I’m glad I didn’t have to take her. A little Halloween goes a long way.

Mostly she collected usual-suspect candies. In no particular order: Hershey bars, Nestle Crunch, Snickers, Kit Kats, Twizzlers, M&Ms, Twix, Tootsie Rolls and Pops, Butterfingers, Milky Ways, Whoppers, Dots, Milk Duds, Dum Dums, Take 5 and Jolly Rancher. There were a few oddities, such as Sour Face Twisters Bubble Gum, product of Mexico, and three flavors of small Tootsie Roll imitators, except they’re brick-shaped rather than rolls – Wild Cherry, Blue Raspberry, and Green Apple chews, all made in Brazil “by Riclan S/A for R.L. Albert & Son.”

A modest amount of looking around tells me Riclan is a confectionery company located in Rio Claro, in São Paulo state. R.L. Albert & Son is located in Stamford, Conn., and seems to specialize in making seasonal candies – or having them made off shore. The manufacturer didn’t short the product on brightly colored food colors, that’s for sure.

We gave away Romeo and Dreemy, two Aldi brands made in Germany. Aldi sells wonderful German chocolates, and those are two: coconut and nougat bars, respectively. I also insisted on giving away Smarties, despite mocking from my offspring. “No one likes Smarties,” Lilly said. “Oh, yeah?” I shot back. “At least a quarter of the people in this house do.”

Smarties and I go back 40+ years. And I’m happy to report that they’re made by the Smarties Candy Co. (until 2011 Ce De Candy Inc.) of New Jersey, not some secretive confectionery behemoth bent on world domination (and they know who they are). The candies are made in only two places. Smarties’ web site says that “Smarties are made 24 hours a day in two candy factories located in Union, New Jersey, and Newmarket, Ontario. The company produces billions of Smarties rolls each year.”

Kinokawa, 1991

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August 18, 1991

Osaka radio, Bonchi Rice Snack, high winds pouring through my window; such is the stuff of today, the last day of O-bon. The highlight of the week was an excursion to Kinokawa, a river about an hour south by train, and then more time by car.

Last Saturday, one of my students, Aiko, spontaneously invited me to go after I ran into her at Keyston, where my friend Don and another guy were playing a gig. Aiko had been in turn invited by her friend Kumiko who – together with her sister and brother-in-law – rented a two-room “cabin” overlooking the Kinokawa. Kumiko is having an affair with Don at the moment. So I was expecting him to come along. Wrong again. Instead, Kumiko invited my friend Bill, who’s attracted to Kumiko in spite of the fact, or maybe because of the fact, that he married another woman earlier in the summer. Why? I don’t know. Maybe Kumiko just likes fanning Bill’s ardor.

[Unsurprisingly, Bill’s marriage – to a Japanese woman – didn’t last very long, and after their divorce, rumor was she dimed on him to immigration, to make sure he’d leave the country. I went to his “deportation party” just before he left, though strictly speaking, I think he left ahead legal action.]

None of those interpersonal complications really concerned me. I just enjoyed a fine two days out of town. The river wasn’t much more than a large creek. The territory, hilly and lush, reminded me of southern Idaho, minus the tall pines. The slopes down to the river were steep, meaning a climb up from the road to the cabin, and another one down to the riverbed, which was shallow, pebbly, and remarkably clean for a Japanese river.

Larger rocks lay here and there in the riverbed. For dinner the first day, we set up a grill on the riverbank and put a watermelon afloat in the cool water, tethered to one of the rocks. That detail sticks in my mind. Almost every cluster of people I saw along the river – and there were many groups – had a melon bobbing nearby.

Most of the people visiting the river had either pitched tents, or were sleeping in their cars, as we discovered when we went to a nearby bridge to shoot off fireworks at 2 a.m. (I can’t remember whose bright idea that was.) One guy emerged from his car and yelled at us a Japanese equivalent of “Shut the f— up!”, which we deserved. I was impressed at the terrific fireworks you can buy at convenience stores in Japan. Big gaudy tubes that spit sparks and fireballs and whiz and pop.

Thursday night we drove in three cars to the Hashimoto matsuri (festival). Getting there only proved that there’s no road in Japan too small for a traffic jam. At one point all four occupants of the car I was in fell asleep while waiting for the cars ahead to move. Good thing the driver had put it in Park. I woke first and noticed that cars behind us were going around us. Odd, because I think that in most places, we’d have gotten honked at.

The festival itself was a mass of people. The centerpiece of the festivities was a big dance circling a band who played continuously. The music wasn’t exactly rock, though there were elements of it, especially the drums. Yet it was bar after bar after bar of the same thing, and forming a circle around the band were the dancers, making steps and hand motions with their fans in a pattern I couldn’t quite follow. It was mesmerizing in a way that a light show is sometimes.

Happy Birthday, Dom

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August began today warmer than the end of July, which saw a string of oddly cool days. The whole month was punctuated with cool days. Been that kind of Northern summer so far.

That was confirmed when the electric bill came the other day. Total kWh we used were higher in July than June (actually June 26 to July 26, compared with the preceding 30 days, but close enough): 873 kWh in July vs. 711 kWh in June. But we had a week or so of normal heat in July, so no surprise.

The difference in electric usage between this July and last July was a lot more: 873 kWh compared with 1601 kWh. Last year was hot and dry. Helpfully, the bill also includes average daily temps for the two months: 75 F this month, 81 F a year ago. That means the average for this July was lower than where I set the thermostat during a summer day, which is 76 F or 78 F when I can get away with it.

There’s a holiday near the beginning of June – Memorial Day – and one near the beginning of July — Independence Day – and one near the beginning of September – Labor Day. You can see the missing one in that pattern. What this country needs is a holiday near the beginning of August. Too bad George Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.  both happened to be born in the winter.

I took a quick look at notable Americans with August 1st birthdays whom we could honor with a national holiday, say on the first Monday of the month. Maria Mitchell had a Google doodle today, and strange to say, I knew who she was because I saw her telescope at the Smithsonian a couple of years ago. It’s good to remember pioneering female astronomers, for sure, but I doubt she rates an entire holiday. No more than other notable Americans born this day, including explorer William Clark, songwriter Francis Scott Key, Lt. Col. William Barret Travis (who died a Texan, of course), authors Richard Henry Dana and Herman Melville, presidential son Robert Todd Lincoln, and entertainers Jerry Garcia, Jim Carroll and Dom DeLuise.

Dom DeLuise Day? No. Maybe the holiday doesn’t need to honor anyone or anything. National Mental Health Day, or the Just Because Long Weekend.