I just saw an ad on TV, during the UConn Women/Stanford game--Go Stanford!...except I wanted WVU's women to end the streak in Feb....
Oh, well.
Anyhow, you can, for a short time, get a $2 bill for only $9 if you call right away. The regular price is $30 for a 2$ bill, so, what a deal....
Bern has a theory that I can't fault--we are being sold stuff we either already have or don't want.
And we keep buying.
and buying...
and buying...
Well, maybe we'll restart the economy and lower the national debt by buying $2 bills for $9, plus shipping and handling.
Who knows? Something to ponder....
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
5th day of Christmas
The Christmas Cards I've used for several years are from Michael Podesta in Carrolton, VA.
They say the following:
"If, as Herod, we fill our lives with things and again with things. if we consider ourselves so unimportant that we must fill every moment of our lives with action. When will we have time to make the long, slow journey across the desert as did the Magi? Or sit and watch the stars as did the shepherds? Or brood over the coming of the child as did Mary? For each one of us there is a desert to travel, a star to discover, and a being within ourselves to bring to life."
Instead of Five Gold Rings, I give you that to ponder on this 5th day of Christmas.
Happy Christmas--5 of 12 days in.....
They say the following:
"If, as Herod, we fill our lives with things and again with things. if we consider ourselves so unimportant that we must fill every moment of our lives with action. When will we have time to make the long, slow journey across the desert as did the Magi? Or sit and watch the stars as did the shepherds? Or brood over the coming of the child as did Mary? For each one of us there is a desert to travel, a star to discover, and a being within ourselves to bring to life."
Instead of Five Gold Rings, I give you that to ponder on this 5th day of Christmas.
Happy Christmas--5 of 12 days in.....
five golden rings
It's the fifth day of Christmas--happy 5th Day of Christmas.
I've been taking a few days off from writing anything--including the Castor Oil Tree.
I'm at a hard point in my writing about my priesthood. It's a chapter about some very nasty things that happened at St. James in Charleston WV. I just don't want it to be too judgmental. So, it is slow going.
On the Canal today a guy stopped me because I had on my West Virginia University jacket. A guy from the Soup Kitchen gave it to me because he knew I went there. He told me he bought it at the Mall. I'm sure he stole it somewhere. But it is very warm, so I wear it walking the dog on the Canal.
The guy saw my jacket and asked if I was from WV. Well, of course I am. Wearing that jacket makes that clear, I think. (You may not know it, but advertising that you're from WV isn't easy--just like it took me 30 years to admit how much I like country music....)
The guy told me about his grandson (8), who is quite an athlete and his granddaughter (11) who is musically talented. The boy's parents want to keep him from playing football, though he wants to. The guy said, "I told him, wouldn't it be great if the first day you played 2nd base for the Red Sox, your sister sang the National Anthem?"
"No," his grandson said, "what I imagine is when the New England Patriots choose, in the first round, Jake, the running back from West Virginia University."
He told me Jake liked the Mountaineers' uniforms. I had to admit I'm a long time Chicago Bears fan because I love their home uniforms--black helmets and jerseys and white pants with orange and white numbers.
So, what do you know. WVU may have a running back in 10 years or so from Cheshire. I'd like that.
I've been taking a few days off from writing anything--including the Castor Oil Tree.
I'm at a hard point in my writing about my priesthood. It's a chapter about some very nasty things that happened at St. James in Charleston WV. I just don't want it to be too judgmental. So, it is slow going.
On the Canal today a guy stopped me because I had on my West Virginia University jacket. A guy from the Soup Kitchen gave it to me because he knew I went there. He told me he bought it at the Mall. I'm sure he stole it somewhere. But it is very warm, so I wear it walking the dog on the Canal.
The guy saw my jacket and asked if I was from WV. Well, of course I am. Wearing that jacket makes that clear, I think. (You may not know it, but advertising that you're from WV isn't easy--just like it took me 30 years to admit how much I like country music....)
The guy told me about his grandson (8), who is quite an athlete and his granddaughter (11) who is musically talented. The boy's parents want to keep him from playing football, though he wants to. The guy said, "I told him, wouldn't it be great if the first day you played 2nd base for the Red Sox, your sister sang the National Anthem?"
"No," his grandson said, "what I imagine is when the New England Patriots choose, in the first round, Jake, the running back from West Virginia University."
He told me Jake liked the Mountaineers' uniforms. I had to admit I'm a long time Chicago Bears fan because I love their home uniforms--black helmets and jerseys and white pants with orange and white numbers.
So, what do you know. WVU may have a running back in 10 years or so from Cheshire. I'd like that.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Christmas memories
Since I don't have any Christmas Eve services this year--which feels odd--I've been sitting around, looking at the tree and remembering.
Two things my mother always did:
She would buy small, impersonal gifts--salt and pepper shakers (a big deal in my family, several people collected them), towels, a box of candy, stuff like that--and wrap them with a blank name tag (everyone used name tags then). If someone brought her a present she hadn't expected, she'd go into the bed room and write their name on one of the tags.
She would try to save the Christmas wrapping paper for next year. That was maddening to a child, having to unwrap carefully, but she was way ahead of the recycling awareness of today.
Have a great Christmas.
Two things my mother always did:
She would buy small, impersonal gifts--salt and pepper shakers (a big deal in my family, several people collected them), towels, a box of candy, stuff like that--and wrap them with a blank name tag (everyone used name tags then). If someone brought her a present she hadn't expected, she'd go into the bed room and write their name on one of the tags.
She would try to save the Christmas wrapping paper for next year. That was maddening to a child, having to unwrap carefully, but she was way ahead of the recycling awareness of today.
Have a great Christmas.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Christmas
It's the eve of the eve. I'm really remarkably ready for Christmas this year.
For the first time in decades, I'm not worrying about the Christmas services. I have a bit of nostalgia about it--there was a real 'rush' about those Eucharists and a real commitment to making them special, wondrous, unforgettable.
I never fretted much about the C&E crowd--"Christmas and Easter" parishioners or visitors. In fact, since they wouldn't be there much at other times, I always wanted to make Christmas and Easter astonishing for them.
But this year, I'm not fretting at all.
In fact, I'm wondering where to go to church or if I will go to church at all.
If it weren't for John's dinner party, I'd go to St. Peter's in Cheshire, probably to the second of the three services. In the early evening using Rite One. That might be soothing.
But my friend, John, has a dinner party on Christmas Eve. I've never gone to it and this year we can. His plot is to make people go to Midnight Mass with him at Christ Church, New Haven, the best Anglo-Catholic parish in the diocese. I probably will. It will be a show of great proportions with incomparable music and lots of incense.
Christmas on Saturday was always my greatest nightmare as a parish priest. It meant having two or three services on Friday, a Christmas Mass (hence the word: "Christ-Mass") and two services on Sunday with only the most committed 'church rats' there. Lots of work and no time to really celebrate for me.
This year I don't have all that. I truly look forward to it.
Our trees are trimmed. There are gifts (Bern and I only give each other things we've made--she does some remarkable arty thing for me and I write her a poem or a story. This year, not worrying about 'churchy stuff', I wrote her two stories and bound them in the kind of book you use for photographs. They are a little hokey--since Christmas is, after all, the permission to be hokey and sentimental. But they are good, I think. I hope she loves them.
For the last week and a half I've been barred from the TV room on our second floor because she was working on my present. I don't watch morning TV anyway so it was no problem, especially since the things she's made for me in the last five years (since we've been doing this 'make something Christmas') are all now hanging on the walls of our house. She may have missed her calling. Or, perhaps, found her calling in the things she makes for me in multi-media forms.
Josh and Cathy and the girls won't be here for Christmas. They came here for Thanksgiving and alternate years. But since Cathy's parents live in Baltimore, Josh's family is having its first "family Christmas". They have a tree and 3 girls and we sent them some of the family ornaments. We'll go down on Jan 6--take care of Tegan on Fri (Cathy will give the nannie the day off) and have a second Christmas with them.
Here in Cheshire it will be quiet and sweet. Mimi will be here, but not Tim (her partner) since his parents are moving to Florida and he promised to help them pack over Christmas. The only other person with us will be John, my friend. He always comes for Christmas dinner.
It will be quiet and sweet. Since Mimi is the introvert of our two kids, we'll be able to be with her completely, though she can stay only a little over a day. She works for the American Ballet Theater and they're in the midst of a performance run. But it will be lovely, quiet and sweet.
May I wish you that, more than that, of course, but at least that--May your Christmas be lovely, quiet and sweet.
And may Santa and the Christ Child bring you gifts you didn't expect or knew you wanted....
Noel.
And, as my friend, Ann's card said this year: "Lang may yer lum reek."
That is, the card says, an old Scottish New Year's greeting: "Long may your chimney smoke...."
Not a bad wish in this weather.
Merry Christmas. May Light and Joy be your companions this Christmastide....
For the first time in decades, I'm not worrying about the Christmas services. I have a bit of nostalgia about it--there was a real 'rush' about those Eucharists and a real commitment to making them special, wondrous, unforgettable.
I never fretted much about the C&E crowd--"Christmas and Easter" parishioners or visitors. In fact, since they wouldn't be there much at other times, I always wanted to make Christmas and Easter astonishing for them.
But this year, I'm not fretting at all.
In fact, I'm wondering where to go to church or if I will go to church at all.
If it weren't for John's dinner party, I'd go to St. Peter's in Cheshire, probably to the second of the three services. In the early evening using Rite One. That might be soothing.
But my friend, John, has a dinner party on Christmas Eve. I've never gone to it and this year we can. His plot is to make people go to Midnight Mass with him at Christ Church, New Haven, the best Anglo-Catholic parish in the diocese. I probably will. It will be a show of great proportions with incomparable music and lots of incense.
Christmas on Saturday was always my greatest nightmare as a parish priest. It meant having two or three services on Friday, a Christmas Mass (hence the word: "Christ-Mass") and two services on Sunday with only the most committed 'church rats' there. Lots of work and no time to really celebrate for me.
This year I don't have all that. I truly look forward to it.
Our trees are trimmed. There are gifts (Bern and I only give each other things we've made--she does some remarkable arty thing for me and I write her a poem or a story. This year, not worrying about 'churchy stuff', I wrote her two stories and bound them in the kind of book you use for photographs. They are a little hokey--since Christmas is, after all, the permission to be hokey and sentimental. But they are good, I think. I hope she loves them.
For the last week and a half I've been barred from the TV room on our second floor because she was working on my present. I don't watch morning TV anyway so it was no problem, especially since the things she's made for me in the last five years (since we've been doing this 'make something Christmas') are all now hanging on the walls of our house. She may have missed her calling. Or, perhaps, found her calling in the things she makes for me in multi-media forms.
Josh and Cathy and the girls won't be here for Christmas. They came here for Thanksgiving and alternate years. But since Cathy's parents live in Baltimore, Josh's family is having its first "family Christmas". They have a tree and 3 girls and we sent them some of the family ornaments. We'll go down on Jan 6--take care of Tegan on Fri (Cathy will give the nannie the day off) and have a second Christmas with them.
Here in Cheshire it will be quiet and sweet. Mimi will be here, but not Tim (her partner) since his parents are moving to Florida and he promised to help them pack over Christmas. The only other person with us will be John, my friend. He always comes for Christmas dinner.
It will be quiet and sweet. Since Mimi is the introvert of our two kids, we'll be able to be with her completely, though she can stay only a little over a day. She works for the American Ballet Theater and they're in the midst of a performance run. But it will be lovely, quiet and sweet.
May I wish you that, more than that, of course, but at least that--May your Christmas be lovely, quiet and sweet.
And may Santa and the Christ Child bring you gifts you didn't expect or knew you wanted....
Noel.
And, as my friend, Ann's card said this year: "Lang may yer lum reek."
That is, the card says, an old Scottish New Year's greeting: "Long may your chimney smoke...."
Not a bad wish in this weather.
Merry Christmas. May Light and Joy be your companions this Christmastide....
hat hair
If hat hair were fatal, I'd be a dead man.
The first mistake was a haircut. I had a hair cut a couple of weeks ago since not having one for seven months or so. My hair was down to my shoulders but too heavy to curl. So, on a whim, I had it cut.
I had forgotten something I learned long ago: No Good Can Come Of Haircuts.
(The truth is: really long hair is great to grow but not so great to have.)
Whatever the hair cutter did--and she did what I told her, leave it just over my ears and long enough to curl in the back. She did that. And the first day I really liked it. Then the terminal hat hair sat in. With my long hair, most of it wasn't under the hat and stayed normal. Now, after the hair cut, my hair is immediately transformed into little, hair sized worms, that lay close to my scalp and (I believe) are sucking out what is left of my brain.
So, I decided to wear my cap everywhere, inside and out. Which, oh, by the way, made the hat hair even worse.
I am pondering all this because I just took a shower and my hair is full and wild and out of control, moving away from my head as hard as it can. But as soon as I put on my hat, I know I'll have worms on my head....sucking brain matter that I actually need....
So, I think I'll grow my hair really long again. By the time its a good length, I won't have to wear a hat. That will be good.
I do love a healthy head of hair....
The first mistake was a haircut. I had a hair cut a couple of weeks ago since not having one for seven months or so. My hair was down to my shoulders but too heavy to curl. So, on a whim, I had it cut.
I had forgotten something I learned long ago: No Good Can Come Of Haircuts.
(The truth is: really long hair is great to grow but not so great to have.)
Whatever the hair cutter did--and she did what I told her, leave it just over my ears and long enough to curl in the back. She did that. And the first day I really liked it. Then the terminal hat hair sat in. With my long hair, most of it wasn't under the hat and stayed normal. Now, after the hair cut, my hair is immediately transformed into little, hair sized worms, that lay close to my scalp and (I believe) are sucking out what is left of my brain.
So, I decided to wear my cap everywhere, inside and out. Which, oh, by the way, made the hat hair even worse.
I am pondering all this because I just took a shower and my hair is full and wild and out of control, moving away from my head as hard as it can. But as soon as I put on my hat, I know I'll have worms on my head....sucking brain matter that I actually need....
So, I think I'll grow my hair really long again. By the time its a good length, I won't have to wear a hat. That will be good.
I do love a healthy head of hair....
Monday, December 20, 2010
the moon, the moon....
Tomorrow is the longest night of the year. Then the light begins again to grow daily. Tonight we are almost as far tilted from the sun as we can be, save tomorrow night.
Light and darkness are the metaphors and images that have filled the imagination of human beings for as long as there have been human beings. Powerful they are, more than we know or could realize.
The moon tonight is shining, full and wondrous, through a covering of clouds. I've been watching it since it rose.
There is a full eclipse tomorrow night, though I'm not sure we can see it here. And I won't anyway since it starts at 1:30 a.m. or so.
God of Darkness, we have known you,
as the Light more dimly came.
And the 'morrow is your apex,
from then on your power's wane.
The Light grows stronger every morning,
leaves us later, when day is done.
Your hold upon us now is lifted
and we lean into the sun.
Darkness powerful loses hold
and the Light begins to run.
The chill you leave behind you
will continue to endure
but Spring will follow winter
and the Light will make that sure.
The Dark that held us all in thrall,
weakens now, cannot endure.
Light that lightens, illumines all.
Light and darkness are the metaphors and images that have filled the imagination of human beings for as long as there have been human beings. Powerful they are, more than we know or could realize.
The moon tonight is shining, full and wondrous, through a covering of clouds. I've been watching it since it rose.
There is a full eclipse tomorrow night, though I'm not sure we can see it here. And I won't anyway since it starts at 1:30 a.m. or so.
God of Darkness, we have known you,
as the Light more dimly came.
And the 'morrow is your apex,
from then on your power's wane.
The Light grows stronger every morning,
leaves us later, when day is done.
Your hold upon us now is lifted
and we lean into the sun.
Darkness powerful loses hold
and the Light begins to run.
The chill you leave behind you
will continue to endure
but Spring will follow winter
and the Light will make that sure.
The Dark that held us all in thrall,
weakens now, cannot endure.
Light that lightens, illumines all.
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