Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

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A fine Christmas to all. Back again on Boxing Day or so. This year the holiday’s a little sad, but a drop of melancholy has its place in the occasion even in ordinary years. The season’s endless commercial messages deny that, of course, but to quote the Dread Pirate Roberts, “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

I like this version, the one that introduced the song, especially for the line, which was dropped in later versions: “Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”

Gray December

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Today was intensely gray. One of the more overcast days we’ve had in a while, with cold drizzle most of the time. Various sources said that snow was on the way—something that hasn’t stuck to the ground since late February. As of about 10 pm, we’d gotten only a little snow, though some places not so far away reportedly have much more. Here, I can still see the grass poking through.

In fact, puddles of water are still visible on the driveway, lit up by the streetlight. That can only mean one thing tomorrow: sidewalk ice. Lilly might have to brave it walking to the corner to catch the bus, and Ann might have to deal with it on her walk to school, unless it gets called off. But that doesn’t look likely, considering the piddling amount of snow.

Lilly got around to having a birthday event earlier this month, a couple of weeks after her birthday according to the calendar. “Event” because I can’t call it a party. She doesn’t call it that any more. Just a gathering of friends who spent the evening with her, ate some food, watched a movie, and all slept on the living room floor overnight.

But we did have a cake, and she got some presents, mostly gift cards to shops best known to her and her friends.

He Gave Up the Corncob Pipe Years Ago

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You never know what will turn up aggregated by Google News these days.

Washington, DC—Frosty the Snowman testified by video link today before a Senate subcommittee on the effects of climate change on Snow People. Speaking from his winter residence in Frostbite Falls, Minn., a sometimes visibly agitated Frosty recalled how his community has lost members due to unexpectedly warm spells in the continental United States that have been occurring more frequently in recent years.

The usually happy, jolly soul also complained of the hardships involved in summering much further north than in previous decades. In recent years, Frosty and his wife Crystal have established camp on the remote Ellesmere Is. in the Canadian Arctic during summer in the Northern Hemisphere, a place “even we consider a barren wasteland,” Frosty said…

And so on. Maybe it made it to Drudge, too, under the screaming head: FROSTY BITES CONGRESS!

Christmas Tintinnabulation

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Ann wanted to go to the library last night, and when we got there we chanced on a performance of the Random Ringers, a handbell ensemble. They were playing in a part of the Schaumburg Township Library sometimes given over to movies and small concerts, with about 50 people watching.

The ringers were more than half finished when we got there. Ann wasn’t especially charmed by the music, but I insisted on staying for a few songs, because I liked them—especially the large bells. The handy “Major American Handbells Sizes and Weights for Diatonic Pitches” says that the bells can weigh as little as 7 oz. or more than 18 lbs. I’m not sure the largest of the Random Ringers’ bells were at the large end of that scale, but they looked big enough to be weapons.

The Random Ringers include 12 performers and a conductor, Beth McFarland of Mundelein, Ill. “Random Ringers is a community-based choir and not affiliated with any religious environment, but most members ring in their own churches,” says the concert program (leaflet, really). “Members hail from the North and Northwest suburbs and practice in Arlington Heights each Monday night.”

We heard “Welcome Christmas,” “Good Christian Men Rejoice,” “He is Born” and “Silent Night.” A fine tintinnabulation, it was.

Funeral

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I returned from Dallas yesterday after a visit with my brother and his family. Deb now reposes at Calvary Hill Cemetery in Dallas. Her obituary is here, but I’m also going to paste it in, since who knows how long obits remain accessible on newspaper web sites.

Stribling, Deborah Kathleen of Dallas, born 28 October 1954 in Peoria, Illinois, the only child of Harold and Eleanore Triplett, died 5 December 2012, of complications of colon cancer. She is survived by her mother, Eleanore June Triplett, of Dallas; her husband of thirty-three years, Jay V. Stribling; and her sons, Samuel C.S. Stribling, and wife, Emily, of Dallas; Dees A.J. Stribling, of Austin, Texas; and Robert A.C. Stribling, of Dallas. She was a musician, choir director and teacher. Most recently, prior to her illness, she was assistant organist and children’s choir director at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in Dallas. Rosary will be at 7:00 p.m. Wednesday at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, 6306 Kenwood Avenue, Dallas, TX 75214. A funeral mass will be at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church on Thursday at 10:00 a.m., with a reception to follow at the church and interment at Calvary Hill Catholic Cemetery at 2:00 p.m.

A lot of people turned up for her funeral mass last Thursday—her old friends, former and present co-workers and many students, some very young. We should all be so fortunate to be remembered so fondly when our time comes.

In Memoriam

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Deborah Stribling, nee Triplett, wife of my brother Jay, mother of my nephews Sam, Dees and Robert, musician, teacher, and more, passed away this evening. Requiescat in pace, Deb.

I will post again after a period of mourning.

April in December

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A weather report told me it reached 70 degrees F outside today – only the third time that’s happened on a December 3 since whenever in the 19th century regular temperature records started being kept in Chicago. (Imagine the report for October 8, 1871: just over 451 F, with strong winds.)

Not that I went out to walk around much. Had much tapping work to do at my various keyboards, which is inside work. But I did go out to collect the empty trash cans in the mid-afternoon. It was like April. A good day in April, not one of those miserable winter leftover days. Go figure.

We’re sure to be slapped around by a blizzard soon. That’s what I thought last year, and I was wrong.

Winter Begins With No Bang

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Been rugging up for winter lately: heater cleaned and inspected, gutters cleared of leaf debris to prevent ice dams, some tube sand and a snow shovel put in position outside the back door, heavy coats rotated back into easily accessed locations—and what did we get on the first day of meteorological winter, December 1, 2012? Overcast skies in the afternoon, temps in the 50s, and rain in the evening. Today, it was even warmer, nearly 60 degrees F. Early December isn’t always like this.

It is fairly cold at night, however, and I needed to go out into the back yard briefly at about 12:30 a.m. on December 1, and there he was: Orion, riding high in the south, followed by his loyal dog. That mark of coming winter isn’t going to change according to the vicissitudes of local weather.

The mild daytime temps meant I could string Christmas lights on the front yard bushes without freezing any fingers. Out of two outdoor strings with C9 lights—another string is battery-power LEDs—fully 13 bulbs were dead. So I went to a large retailer, looking for replacement bulbs. They had none. I looked fairly carefully to make sure, and found none, but a lot of full sets for sale.

What’s the thinking? Buy a new string, jack. We’ve got quasi-slave labor in Shanxi Province to keep busy.

I found replacement bulbs elsewhere, though not quite enough to replace all my missing ones, since buyers had cleared most of them from the shelves. Seems like there’s still a demand for C9s, despite the movement to LEDs.

South Loop Lights

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I went to a real estate event in the South Loop yesterday, at a mixed-use property started in 2007 but delayed, as so many were — and still are — by the Panic of 2008. But there’s been some recovery since then. These days, the property’s in reasonably good shape, with its apartments leased and retail tenants committing for space.

It has a U-shaped layout, with the residential floors on either side of a drive that runs the length of property, and an upscale movie theater at the end of the U, which is open for business.

It’s one of those places that has a fancy bar upstairs from the lobby of the theater, which is where the event was held. I didn’t drink there, but the bar food was pretty good. Fine views of the city from that vantage. The room had interesting lighting, too, which allowed me to take pictures like this one of the small crowd.

Outside the theater, not far from the Seward Johnson statue, shines this array of lights.

Nice to see a spot that isn’t all decked out for Christmas yet. Unless this is Christmas décor that’s trying to smash the prevailing red-green-gold-silver paradigm.