Slow Going

I was going great guns on this site last year and this year is a bit slow. The car accident threw a big wrench in the works and I seem to have had some emotional repercussions from it. Also, we're going through a reorg at work and even more importantly, my mother isn't well and it's worrying me.

It's one of those atypical years that they talk about in Unplug the Christmas Machine. It happens, especially as you grow older. Once the car issue is resolved and I can see my mom (the two are tied together as we're driving to see her--if the body shop ever gets it fixed!), perhaps I'll be on a little more even keel.

But holidaywise I can recommend some things:

The new issues of Thanksgiving Ideals and Christmas Ideals are out. I like these Ideals season issues much better since they began using photography and better artists. I never could get into the old issues where they used very bad commercial art and tinted pages along with trite poetry. The modern fall editions, for instance, now have gorgeous photos of autumn leaves, and the Christmas edition has lovely snowscapes. The poetry, which has improved immensely, also contains lovely imagery, and the poems are interspersed with essays about the season and one or two articles about collecting antique items or profiles of historical people.

I received "Christmas at the Almanac Town Hall" a few weeks ago. It's delightful--it sounds as if several neighbors who play different instruments got together to play seasonal items for a gathering at a Grange supper or community dance. Also, just found out there is a new "Windham Hill Christmas" album out, called "I'll Be Home for Christmas." Anonymous 4 also has a new one out, "Wolcom Yule" I believe is the title, with medieval and Renaissance carols.

How Fast the Earth Spins!

Here it is Columbus Day again! While there are no leaves to see here like up in New Hampshire, we have completed a long-anticipated job in our master bedroom. It was a tiring weekend and a very short one.

I picked up a nice Christmas CD at Walmart of all places: "Christmas Dinner," instrumental carols done on saxophone. I'm about to order another, "Christmas at the Almanac Town Hall," which is distributed by Yankee magazine. It's Christmas songs and carols done with guitars, fiddles, and other "homely" instruments, as the British would say. The result, as a reviewer on Amazon.com says, is as if you're hearing a band at a VFW hall in the 1930s and 1940s. I'm also about to order this year's Thanksgiving and Christmas Ideals.

I'm hoping this will be a lovely and memorable (in a nice way) holiday season. We have plans to drive north and visit my mother for Thanksgiving, taking the pets with us. We want to stop in Washington, DC, and see the new Air and Space building at Silver Hill and also the World War II memorial. But the best part will be being home and seeing the relatives, although, sadly, most of the older ones are ill. My mom herself is suffering from scalp cancer. She doesn't do much any more except go to church, to the supermarket, and to the doctor, so we're hoping we can show her some fun.

Mediocre Drumming

I was interested to notice earlier this year that Sony Wonder would be releasing a stand-alone copy of Rankin-Bass' moving story of The Little Drummer Boy. Last year I did a nasty review of the version that was included as a bonus on last year's DVD release of R-B's classic Santa Claus is Comin' to Town. While Santa was pristine, Drummer Boy was a dreadful, dirty, dark transfer with parts of the soundtrack missing. I was disappointed.

I took the risk and ordered the stand-alone copy in the hopes that this new release would be a better version of the complete story.

No such luck. I'm arranging to return it now. Sadly, it's the same version as on the previous DVD. It's sad that the videotape version is better than this misbegotten copy.

(Ironically I'm just starting to watch my set of Make Room for Daddy's fifth season, from 1957. The episode quality, filmed ten years before Little Drummer Boy, is excellent.)

Skipping Grisham

I placed a book review of John Grisham's Skipping Christmas in my book blog, "A Cozy Nook to Read In."

Warning: if you liked the book, you'll probably hate my review.

Fall at Last

And of course we had to shut the windows again and put the A/C back on because it got warm again. Summer has its claws dug in tight and doesn't want to let go.

Despite my "wrecked car depression," I did manage to dress the house for fall on Wednesday. I thought I needed a new small autumn wreath for the glass doors this year (turns out I'd purchased one last year) and went crazy trying to find a new one. I usually use a candle ring, but such an animal doesn't seem to exist in Michael's or JoAnn any longer! Instead, I found something that was a curved, woven cane with fall leaves and gourds on it in appropriate colors. I put a fall ribbon on it and it looks just fine.

I ripped down all the summer things in my cubicle today and decorated with a leaf bouquet, autumn leaf garland, a smaller fall bouquet of leaves, nuts, corn, etc. and some stunning autumn photos and drawings culled from old calendars. So now it's bright and cheery again, even if work is going to the dogs...

A Happy Rosh Hashanah!

May your new year be sweet!

It's Never Too Early to Begin

The folks at Organized Christmas.com have already started their countdown.

Many ideas and plans herein, and forums to share thoughts.

A Glow on the Horizon

I had a joyful experience on Friday--walked into Barnes & Noble and found out that all the fall magazines were out, including Yankee magazine's Seasons, which I had considered ordering online. It's a lovely magazine, but it's not quite as spectacularly photographed as last year's; this year's photos seem more misty and dreamlike and subdued. Yankee's issue is only September, so there aren't many fall photos yet. But there was a welcome September feeling to it.

But Vermont Life--oh, the autumn issue of Vermont Life! Last year's was so disappointing, and this year's has so wonderfully made up for it. Several dozen gorgeous photos of blazing trees and white churches and green meadows interspersed with interesting stories, including one about a World War II training flight crash. But I wanted to fall--pun intended--into those glorious photos and go walking among the paths of shimmering color so badly...

Christmas in August

As I previously posted, I ordered a few used Christmas books from Amazon.com Marketplace and Inventing Christmas had already come. In the past week I also got copies of The Reader's Digest Book of Christmas, Christmas at the New Yorker, and Flight of the Reindeer.

The Reader's Digest book was a real bargain: this is a beautiful, as new copy of an oversize , 303 page hardback volume full of color illustrations and stories. I bought it for several Yuletide short stories I didn't have, primarily Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory." It cost me only 52 cents, with the postage only $4. The Christmas story is illustrated with beautiful old paintings and the end of the book talks about Christmas customs in different lands. The illustrations throughout the stories are quite lovely.

I was a little disappointed by Christmas at the New Yorker. Since this is the New Yorker, I had no illusion that the stories were going to be fuzzy, warm little Christmas tales ala the "Christmas in My Heart" books, but most of the tales were so depressingly boring, populated with tediously spoiled rich kids and cheating husbands. I do love the cartoons, however, and enjoyed most of the poetry. I'm glad I didn't pay more than the $1.69 price tag, though.

And then there's Flight of the Reindeer, a whimsical book filled with enjoyable Jan Brett-like illustrations, proving the existence of Santa Claus and especially those flying reindeer. Again, something I'm happy to have, but glad I didn't pay full price, either.

Too Early a Season

The first day of school is today.

After 20 years in the South, it still disorients me. For 13 years (sixteen if you count college), the routine was inviolable: school began in September, in public school’s case the Wednesday after Labor Day. First that week would be the holiday, then the first day of school, then the Fall Preview TV Guide. September was the universal school month, celebrated in magazines and books, linked inevitably with leaves starting to turn, the apples ripening in the orchards in the western part of the state, shorter days, and counting the days until Christmas.

My mom tells me they are starting school end of August now, too, but I can’t tell you how it astonished me when I first arrived down here and discovered school started in August. Maybe it’s because of the air conditioning in school. In Rhode Island August was still a raging inferno and you wouldn’t send a dog into those superheated airless classrooms. The first couple of weeks of September were bad enough.

Of course we didn’t get out of school until the third week of June, where the kids here are out by Memorial Day. Given the choice, I preferred school in June, which was noticeably cooler, than in terrible August. But it seems to me the date has "pushed up" in the past 20 years. I seem to recall the kids starting school the last week in August when I arrived here, now it's the second week of the month.

Of course they get more vacation time, or at least it seems, but it's probably a trade-off. We got only Thanksgiving and the day after back then; it seems now that they get the entire week. But here they don't get Columbus Day and Veteran's Day off, either. I can't imagine not having had Columbus Day off. This was the last hurrah, the final weekend the family could go to summer venues before it turned into winter-coat weather. We usually joined the thousands of "leaf-peepers" that weekend in enjoying the peak of fall glory up in southern New Hampshire and Vermont.

As much as I disliked summer heat and enjoyed most of school (except for math and PE and some of the science), I still used to stand in back of my door at bedtime before the first day of school and hum "Taps." ("Stop that," my mom would say with a roll of her eyes.) Well, I did at least until the summer I had to go to work. :-) Even algebra was better than work...

First Christmas Book of 2004

Had found a few more expensive Christmas books online at remainder prices and snapped them up; I get most of my Christmas books that way, since half of them are so expensive.

Today's arrival was one of them, a mostly graphic volume by Jock Elliott called Inventing Christmas: How Our Holiday Came to Be. The narration is exuberant and the beautiful 19th century lithographs are worth the price of the book--as long as it's priced a bit lower. :-) Original price on this one was $24.95.

Elliott talks about the development of Christmas as a family holiday rather than an excuse for drinking and sex, Christmas cards, Christmas gifts (with illustrations of the original Christmas gift, the compilation "gift book"), Santa Claus, Christmas trees, Christmas carols and "the genuine article," Dickens' A Christmas Carol. But it's the illustrations of 19th century cards, gifts, and book illos that really make this volume shine.

(And when I put up the book, I get to walk into the library, which is decorated for fall all year...)

Sleigh Bells Ring...

...in the distance, anyway.

We attended the preview of the 2004 Hallmark Christmas Ornament line today. (Hey, it's a summer Sunday; what can I say? The only good place to walk is inside.) Of course, turns out the ornaments I like best this year are the animated variety, including a darling Noah's Ark and Santa's Workshop. They also have Herbie the Love Bug and a new Nature's Sketchbook bird ornament based on Marjolein Bastin's art--it has chickadees on it, which means I'm committed. I love her birds and I adore chickadees; they have such "attitudes"! James has already bought me the chickadee and the English robin sculptures based on Bastin's artwork.

James, of course, wants this year's airplane, which is a Spartan.

Signs of Fall

Yes, this early in the summer. Michael's has begun putting out their autumn flowers and decorations.

Please God, that there's a light at the end of this tunnel...

“But It’s Comin’ By Gum, You Can Feel it Come...”

You know, I remember when I used to love June 1.

Of course I was in school at the time and wasn’t old enough to have to work in the summer and June 1 meant that school would be over in about three weeks. Plus the unrelenting heat of summer hadn’t really started yet (living a thousand miles south now really ruins that aspect).

But on June 1 all a child has to dream about is endless days of not having to get up early and only donning good clothing for church or going somewhere with your parents. Watermelon, cherries, Del's frozen lemonade, playing kickball on Overland Avenue, Japanese lanterns, doughboys at Oakland Beach, Dad’s vacation and trips out of state, beach excursions, picnics in a grove somewhere in South County, a trip to the zoo, later bedtime, summer replacement TV series, Dad in the summer bowling league, the Diamond Hill Music Festival, Fourth of July, Sundays in Newport on Brenton Point or at Point Judith, miniature golf, Rocky Point amusement park and clam cakes, the church feasts and doughboys sold at a booth...

There were lots reasons why that on June 1, a kid like me grabbed Mom’s “Summertime” record album and played “June is Bustin’ Out All Over” as loudly as an adult would allow and sang along...

Memorial Day

Dad was still a babe in arms when the cannons began going off in Europe in 1914. It's possible he might have had a dim memory of the Armistice. I'll never know.

In the meantime, he lived the life of most Italian boys growing up in the Silver Lake neighborhood in Cranston, RI. At home his parents spoke Italian with their children. His dad dug ditches for the Providence Gas Company. His mother made home-made macaroni every day. He went to school and tried to escape the usual punishment in those days, being rapped across the hands with a wooden ruler. He and his brothers and sisters lived through the usual childhood illnesses and occasional crises--his sister actually did poke out one of her eyes with a stick, as our parents always warned us about. He learned to swim in Dyer's Pond and learned to drive at age 14 by borrowing a neighbor's car from the curb. Age 14 was also when he had to quit school, at his father's insistence. He learned to polish knives like his older brother and went to work in a factory like most of the boys he grew up with.

In the meantime, a madman started ranting in Germany about Third Reichs and master races. One day he gathered his armies and began his takeover of Europe. We here in the United States watched it warily. After the carnage of the Great War, we wanted no part of Europe. The America First protesters were strident, even as Adolf Hitler and his minions overran Czechoslovakia and Austria and Belgium and France. And the Netherlands and Norway, and also marched east to Moscow.

Dad did join the National Guard. He trained at Fort Adams in Newport. He always had a bit of a peeve with the U.S. Navy: "We cleaned up the beach for them, and then they wouldn't allow us on it." They'd leveled the shingle and cleared up the tourist trash and cleared the land and then the Navy moved in and forbade anyone else on the property.

To add insult to injury, the folks on Bellevue Avenue (where the Newport Mansions are situated) ordered that the troops not march there. It ruined the look of the neighborhood. Heaven forbid Mrs. Rich Bitch had to look at social underlings in khaki passing her home.

And then one Sunday afternoon in December 1941, when folks had settled down to listen to a football game or a concert on the radio, or were at the movies, or visiting their mom, there came a news bulletin that changed everything...

After Pearl Harbor, Dad was sent to Fort Jessup in Georgia for basic training. He'd never been out of New England before, except by train to New York, and he was astonished by the men of Italian descent he met there. They didn't speak Italian with their parents, or eat Italian food, or even know which paese their families came from. Talk about culture shock! And the climate, he said, was about as bad as the Army chow.

He was then shipped to Germany, near the Black Forest. I never did ask him for more details, which I'm sorry for. All I have left are his photos. When I was a little girl one of my favorite stories was about Dad and the fawn. He had a photo of it, a red deer fawn that he and his troopmates had found wandering alone after a battle. They fed it and cuddled it and took pictures with it--until its mother appeared, bawling for it at the edge of a field, and they let it go home. Now that I know the whole story of what happens on battlefields, that event must have seemed like an oasis of normality for the men. Perhaps when they cared for the fawn they were thinking of a pet at home, a bunch of homesick American boys remembering a beloved dog, or cat, or horse, or a pet bird no bigger than a minute.

Dad liked the German people as much as he hated the Nazis. He always talked about how clean they kept their homes, even in the horrendous situations created by war. And he was astounded, when they actually found intact forests, at how neat those were from the foraging of surrounding townsfolk for firewood. Much later we found out that a German woman was running the motel we stayed at in Lake George, New York, and she and my dad would talk about "the old country."

Of course he survived the war. He didn't talk about the more harrowing memories, at least not to me. The only "war story" I'd heard was a relatively mild one, about his platoon capturing some German soldiers. He confiscated a pistol from a German officer. After the war, he confided his memories to my mother, who had already had heard the worst listening to her younger brother's harrowing postwar dreams. I expect my grandmother heard the same nightmares, for Dad's bluster covered a sensitive soul, one he'd been teased about as a child. He must have remembered, though, the buddies he'd made that had been killed, sniped from his side, blown up by mines or mortars. I'm sure, as bullets screamed over his head, as he was deafened by cannon fire, as he was sleeping in the dirt, eating out of cans and washing out of his helmet, he dreamed of all the things he'd rather have been doing: eating a heaping plate of his mother's spaghetti and meatballs, fragrant with tomato sauce and basil, squiring a young lady to a dance--oh, how Dad loved to dance, even the jitterbug!, even grumbling in the early morning light as he got ready for work.

He left that all behind to defend his country.

I wish I had some beautiful words for him, and all the men and women who went into that cauldron, especially for the ones who never came out, and for the ones who came out broken and battered. I don't have any beautiful words.

All I can say is "Thank you."

Let's Hear It for Mom

I'm a long-distance Mother's Day giver these days. Oh, there's a phone call and a present (this year it was a DVD player), but it's just not the same.

Mother's Day was always heralded with flowers when I was a kid: not many florists' bouquets, because I was allergic to flowers. Occasionally my dad got my mom some roses, her favorite flowers, but then they would have to stay on the porch.

No, Mom's beautiful pink azalea bushes usually managed to bloom just around Mother's Day. They flanked each side of the front door and gave the house a cheery look. But behind the house was something I loved. Our neighbor on the other side of the chain-link fence had an errant lilac bush that always grew into our yard. My dad hated it, but I reveled in it. In May it would bloom in rich lushness, dangling thick bunches of sweet-smelling lilac blooms over the fence. Allergy or no--and I paid for it later--I buried my face in the flowers, breathing in that heavenly smell. It's still my favorite scent and, had I been able to manage it, I would have had live lilacs at my wedding.

Mother's Day was an occasion to go out to eat in those days, a luxury for us. Oh, we dropped in at the occasional hot dog place or Arby's and later McDonald's on summer Sundays. But going to a "real" restaurant was another story. It was time to dress up: skirt, nylons, good shoes instead of Hush Puppies, the whole nine yards. Dad wore his suit and we squired Mom to someplace that had white tablecloths, cloth napkins, clean menus, and waiters in suits. Our usual early venue was Venetian Gardens, on the way to Oakland Beach. We ate all our Thanksgiving dinners there as well. Then one of them discovered The Inn--now Bassett's Inn--on West Shore Road. We went there to fill up on salad and baked stuffed shrimp.

One Mother's Day--I think it was Mother's Day--we tried that epitome of Rhode Island restaurants, Twin Oaks. Twin Oaks sits on the shore of Spectacle Lake in Cranston. (We lived not far from the opposite shore of "Spectacle Lake," which we always called "Speck's Pond." I nearly laughed myself silly when I found out this tiny body of water was actually called "Spectacle Lake.") It was a legend in Rhode Island, one of those restaurants that gets written up in newspaper food guides and tour books. They took no reservations and people waited two and three hours to get in. On the day we went--and it couldn't have been Mother's Day; it would have been SRO--we went at an "off hour," after two on a Sunday afternoon, because we didn't think any restaurant was worth waiting in line so long for. We only waited about 45 minutes at this odd hour.

The place was nice and the food was good (although the portions were pretentiously small like those served at famous restaurants). We had a good time. But we emerged thinking that we had eaten just as good food other places, like the Inn, and never went again. Twin Oaks still marches on and I still haven't figured out what people see in the place.

"In Your Easter Bonnet..."

Do people even have Easter bonnets anymore? :-) I know they still do the Easter Parade in New York; my friend Dana talked about going to it the year before she died. She had been planning to go the next year, too, wheeling her new baby and with her little daughter dressed up to the nines with her and her husband. But this didn't happen...

Remember having an entire new outfit for Easter? When I was a kid this was usually a new suit for the little boys--depending on their parents they could be with short pants or long ones. The shirt was usually blue, maybe with a white tie and matching white shoes, if the boy was young enough, otherwise the footwear was black. We little girls were in pastel dresses with skirts that billowed out by means of hideously scratchy petticoats underneath, ribbed leotards, patent leather shoes, and the inevitable straw Easter hat, brave with a ribbon band and perhaps a flower or two, with the elastic band to hold it on. It rubbed under your chin and was annoying. I knew a lot of little girls who chewed on theirs.

It also meant having your hair washed and put up in curlers the night before. These were hard and rubber and you hardly got any sleep, but heaven forbid you appeared in front of the aunts without curls!

If the petticoats and the elastic and the curlers were bad, there was always the good part: the holiday itself. You woke up to find a big Easter basket full of chocolate eggs and a chocolate bunny, and perhaps even a stuffed rabbit. My favorite stuffed rabbit was the last one I got, because he looked like a real rabbit. His name was "Harold J. Rabbit," or "Hoppy" for short.

After church there was the visit to the cemetery to bring big pots of geraniums to the grandparents' graves (and my uncle Ernest, who I barely remembered), and then visiting the relatives. All the aunts had made cookies, piles of Italian cookies on big round platters: butterballs coated in powdered sugar, wine biscuits, molasses cookies, almond bars, scattered with foiled Hershey kisses in between. One of the aunts or cousins, more ambitious than the rest, probably had made wandis, big crispy fried knots of dough that crumbled as you bit into them, scattering the powdered sugar on top all over your new Easter outfit, to your mom's dismay.

For dinner we had ham, and dessert was probably rice pie, which is exactly what it sounds like: a custardy dessert that used white rice as one of the fillings, rice pudding in a pieshell. There was always an apple pie for those of us who hated rice pies, and always more cookies with the coffee at dessert.

If Easter didn't come too early, it was probably sunny and warm and we kids could go outside and play--as long as we didn't get our clothes dirty. We were ingenious and managed to play anyway, even if it was just hopscotch on the long sidewalk outside Papà's house. It was then we could finally leave the straw hats and ties in the capable hands or purse of mom's and be as free as one could in dress clothes.

Mangia!

What do Irish folks traditionally do on their holiday? Drink!

What do Italian folks traditionally do on their holiday? Eat a fattening pastry!

I dunno about you, but of the two unhealthy alternatives, I'd rather take the latter. :-)

All joking aside, I remember doing St. Patrick's Day things at school. We learned to do Irish jigs in gym class and they were usually featured in a St. Patrick's based assembly that included songs like "Danny Boy" and "My Wild Irish Rose" (which I ended up playing for the organ recital in fifth grade). My favorite "Irish" song, however, was the rollicking "McNamara's Band." I loved the sound of "Hennessey Tennessey tootles the flute."

"Our" holiday, however, was today, which is St. Joseph's Day. It's not a Holy Day of Obligation, nor is it celebrated with parades. However, there is one tradition: the zeppole. Take a pastry shell and shape it like a hollow doughnut. Fill it with yellow cream. Top it with piped white cream in a ribbony flow. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a zeppole. They are unapologetically rich and are still eaten despite Lent and fasting, to celebrate the foster father of Jesus. No one knows what rich pastry has to do with St. Joseph--but hey, enjoy!

Seriously, I've never been all that much of a zeppole fan because I never liked yellow cream. I would avoid the cream puffs from the Italian bakeries for that reason. The only bakery in town that made cream puffs with white cream was Bob Carol's bakery out on Oaklawn Avenue, so I enjoyed the very occasional visit immensely.

I was amused to notice, however, that most of the zeppole recipes I found on a short web search were more like doughnuts. I believe that is the Sicilian version of the pastry; they are made differently all over Italy. Or the filled ones are a specialty version that only bakeries have the patience to make. Certainly a pseudo-doughnut is a lot easier to cook than a filled pastry shell!

Wearin' O' the...Green?

I'm wearing red, actually. I'm Italian...Friday's my day. More later...

Birthday Dog

Sometime at the end of May in 1998, after the death of sweet, laid-back Leia, we went to the Cobb County Animal Shelter and found a shivering fuzzy brown three-and-a-half pound puppy. She had big liquid eyes and was shy, so the name "Willow" from the Buffy character suggested itself immediately (this was before Ms. Rosenberg turned from shy geek to überwitch). They told us she was about 10 weeks old, so we counted back and declared her birthday to be something we could remember, hence the St. Patrick's Day date.

Please be assured we aren't having a canine birthday party for her, complete with doggy buddies in party hats and a special dog ice cream cake as I've seen done. Wil is spoiled in ways, but she's still a dog, and she doesn't get party hats or cuddled and called "little sweetie doggums" or the equivalent. James won't even let me buy her reindeer antlers. :-) She has to "make do with a Christmas bow.

She probably will get a nice Little Champions packaged dinner tonight--and as always wolf it down in ten seconds and then look eagerly for more.

I was thinking about the birthday party thing with some amusement because one of the guests yesterday on Dr. Phil was a woman who claimed she felt like her husband loved his dog more than her. He comes home from work and, although wife and baby son are sitting right there, the first one hubby goes to greet is Lola, the lab/pit bull mix. He snuggles with Lola in bed instead of his wife. Plus, the wife is pregnant again (so I guess there are some times Lola isn't in bed) and her nose is so sensitive that all she can smell is the dog in bed. (Dr. Phil has a beagle and part of the conversation digressed into what it was with women and the smell of dogs.)

I don't have to worry about Wil in bed; I'm allergic to her so she's banned from the bedroom. Seeing how she sleeps, though, I wouldn't want her there anyway; she'd hog the bed and make sure she got a pillow! James does greet her first, but it would be hard not to: she's usually been staking out the door for an hour waiting for him, giving deep sighs when the next car down the street isn't the truck, and is scrabbling at the glass when he enters.

Over the years, too, we've joked about changing her name. Sometimes we'd like to call her "Hilary Booth," because she's occasionally a demanding little bitch. Lately, though, she's turned into "Teeny," the little girl who always bedeviled Fibber McGee. When Wil curiously sticks her nose into something, we can almost hear her saying "Whatcha doin' mister? Whatcha. huh?"

I figure if Wil could talk she'd either sound like Marian Jordan doing Teeny or Josie Lawrence of the British version of Whose Line is It Anyway.