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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in sakkijarvi's LiveJournal:

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    Monday, December 31st, 2007
    4:16 pm
    Parentland
    My parents are finishing up there first month down here in Texas at a neighborhood Nursing Home . . . my Dad has one slow-healing injury left from his episode in October . . . the prognosis is that he will be ready to move to the retirement center adjoining the Nursing Home by early March . . . have been going over to visit fairly regularly (about six days out of each week) . . . know that I will visit less frequently as time goes by (particularly after the Spring Semester gets underway: if they all make, am scheduled to teach three classes) . . . but right now feel most comfortable visiting virtually every day (sometimes by myself, sometimes with E, sometimes with E and the Beloved Spouse) . . . believe that part of this need to visit comes from only visiting once or twice a year over the last decade . . . and, pretty much since 1997 or so, every time I'd leave it would be "Is this the last time that I'll see Mom alive?" . . . (my Dad's overall health has been much better than my Mom's) . . . tomorrow is Mom's birthday so we'll all be heading over to celebrate a bit . . . Saturday it'll be a football visit, since Washington, D.C.,'s NFL franchise has made it into the post-season . . . and then some level of equilibrium will be reached in those early months of 2008 . . . actually looking forward to it.

    Until next time, y'all have a pleasurable and safe New Year's.
    Sunday, December 30th, 2007
    10:04 am
    30 Years Ago This Week
    Among the items carried here by The Pod from the Ancestral Home was an album of miscellaneous personal brick-a-brack (like ticket stubs and programs from various entertainment performances) . . . among these was a Bio-Rhythm card.

    I remember obtaining that card thirty years ago this week . . . in Prince George's County, Maryland, back in those days, high school was three years long . . . December 1977 marked the half way point for me through high school . . . and I was still carrying a very cold, very dead torch for a certain young lady I'd developed a mad crush on back in 9th grade (the last year of junior high school) . . . let's call her Ruth . . . another friend of mine from junior high school was Alex . . . Alex (along with amlaped) was probably the most intelligent male student in my class in junior high . . . his family moved between our 9th and 10th grade year, so Alex attended a different high school . . . he, too, had fallen madly in love with Ruth back at B.S. Junior High.

    Alex and I had gotten together at Iverson Mall thirty years ago this week to talk and hang out at the mall . . . so, naturally, we talked about Ruth . . . then we came across the Bio-Rhythm computer.

    The theory behind Bio-Rhythms, according to the card I have, is that human beings have three biological rhythm cycles that determine each persons potential every day . . . there's a 23 day physical cycle, a 28 day emotional cycle, and a 33 day mental cycle . . . each one initiates on the day of birth . . . the Bio-Rhythm computer ("the ZX-1040"), given your birth date, can calculate where your cycles are on any given day . . . it then translates that into potential (low/good/high) in ten different life arenas: Luck, Romance, Creativity, Health, Sex, Driving, Endurance, Finance, Friendship, & Leisure Plans . . . for fifty cents, as I recall, ZX-1040 would produce a card for any day you chose (past, present, or future).

    Naturally, Alex and I decided that this was the ideal way to determine when the best day to ask Ruth out on a date would be . . . so we began feeding the ZX-1040 our quarters.

    In each of the ten life arena categories, a spike was generated by the computer . . . if the spike's height got over 20%, you reached the "Low" status category, if your spike reached 45% you were in the "Good" range, and if your spike got past 75% (yahoo!) you were in the promised land of "High" . . . since there were ten arenas and three biological cycles, it stood to reason that everyone could score a "High" in at least a couple of arenas . . . and Alex and I weren't picky: "Good" or better in at least two of the key categories (Luck, Romance, Sex (!), Friendship, & Leisure Plans)seemed like the Green Light from Biology that Ruth was just waiting by the phone for one of us to call.

    To review: at least 20% = "Low", at least 45% = "Good", and at least 75% = "High" . . . Ten Life Arena Categories . . . Need TWO "Good" or better in the five key categories.

    The Bio-Rhythm card I've kept these many years pretty much says it all: Barely reached 20% in Creativity, Just below 20% in Luck, WELL BELOW 20% in ALL 8 Other categories . . . in short, my bio-rhythms were flat lining.

    Alex was doing only slightly better . . . but surely we could find a good date to ask Ruth out on a date! . . . more quarters! . . . before the blessed discovery of the Perfect Day could be made, however, we both ran out of quarters . . . so we did the only logical, rational thing that two sixteen year old males, hearts filled with yearning for a sixteen year old female, could do: we went to the Roy Rogers fast food restaurant in the Mall, found our friend The Axeman at work, and begged him to loan us money so we could continue our quest for The Right Day . . . he laughed at both of us, but did loan us a couple bucks apiece in quarters . . . which we promptly fed into the ZX-1040 . . . which promptly provided us with rectangular pieces of cardboard, each containing the same cosmic message: You Two Losers Have No Chance with Ruth (P.S. Try and Find a Better Way to Spend Your Money).

    Thirty Years Ago this week.
    Tuesday, December 25th, 2007
    11:31 pm
    Merry Christmas, Y'all
    Well, well short of one post for each day from 1 December until today . . . but, perhaps, mejor que nada . . . will try and post an update before the year is out on my parents' arrival here in Texas two weeks ago and they're settling in . . . meanwhile, hope that y'all are well in mind and body and spirit . . . that you've been (and continue to) enjoy the pleasures os the season . . . and that 2008 may be a year about peace and harmony for our world.
    11:11 pm
    Wenceslas and Reasons
    I must confess to being irked whenever I encounter statements during the holidays like "Keep Christ in Christmas" and "Remember that Jesus is the Reason for the Season" . . . to me, these come across as excessively parochial sentiments . . . exclusionary . . . even bigoted . . . which I recognize as an excessive response . . . I tend to think that there are reasonS for the season . . . commemorating the birth of Jesus is one of them (although I've read that scholars believes that it is more likely that Jesus was born in April or August than in December) . . . but I think that there are other reasons for the season as well: the Winter Solstice, Saturnalia, Friends and Family, Love for Humankind.

    Which relates, I think, to why my personal favorite holiday song is "Good King Wenceslas" . . . it also helps that the tune may have had its origins as a Finnish folk song . . . have thought about using it as the basis for a handmade Christmas card: printing out the lyrics by hand, adding a small paragraph on the song's history, maybe attempting a simple drawing of a scene from the song . . . maybe next year . . . for 2007, I will just include the lyrics here:

    Good King Wenceslas looked out
    on the Feast of Stephen
    As the snow lay round about,
    deep and crisp and even;
    Brightly shown the moon that night,
    tho' the frost was cruel,
    When a poor man came in sight
    gathering Winter fuel.

    "Hither, page, come stand by me,
    if thou knowest, tell me,
    Yonder peasent, who is he?
    Where and what his dwelling?
    "Sire, he lives a good league hence,
    underneath the mountain;
    Right against the forest line,
    by Saint Agnes' fountain."

    "Bring me meat and bring me wine,
    bring me pine logs hither:
    You and I will see him dine,
    when we bear them thither."
    Page and monarch forth they went,
    forth they went together;
    Through the rude wind's wild lament,
    and the bitter weather.

    "Sire, the night is colder now,
    and the wind blows stronger;
    Fails my heart, I know not how,
    I can go on much longer."
    "Mark my footsteps, my good page,
    tread thou in them boldly:
    Thou shalt find the Winter's rage
    freeze thy blood less coldly."

    In his master's steps he trod,
    where the snow lay dinted;
    Heat was in the very sod
    which the saint had printed.
    Therefore, Christian men be sure,
    wealth or rank possessing,
    They who now will bless the poor,
    shall themselves find blessing.
    11:05 pm
    A Platoon of Drummer Boys
    My sister arrived in town a couple of days ago to spend Christmas here with me, our parents, the beloved spouse, and Little E . . . she had been telling Jim, one of her good friends, back home on the East Coast about E's strong affection for "The Drum Song" . . . Jim took the time to search for recordings of "The Little Drummer Boy" available as MP3 downloads, found eight of them, and burned a CD for E . . . which my Sis brought with her and gave to E . . . it has provided most of the soundtrack for our Christmas this year (along with the Vince Guraldi Trio's Charlie Brown Christmas tunes) . . . so we have been wishing Jim a Very Merry Christmas and the Happiest of New Years.
    10:42 pm
    Singin' and Hummin' and Getting Merry Like Christmas
    When I was growing up, my parents would take me and my sister to "midnight mass" (held at 9 and also at 11, we normally attended the earlier service) on Christmas Eve . . . the service was characterized by the singing of fairly well known Christmas songs . . . almost all of which were conveniently included in the standard hymnal.

    My sister has a good singing voice and my mother takes church services fairly seriously . . . unfortunately, I am tone deaf and my father is strongly inclined to the "blue sky" tradition (= one appreciates the Divine best and most fully when one is out amidst Nature under a blue sky) . . . being tone deaf has not (in some cases also unfortunately) acted to dampen my enthusiasm for music.

    One memorable Christmas Eve years ago me and my parents and my sister were attending a Christmas Eve Midnight Mass . . . I was making an effort to feel the spirit and unbridling my enthusiasm during the songs . . . one aspect of my tone deafness is that I have no meaningful understanding of the idea of singing in a certain key and I also have no ability to match my pitch to any other source of music around me . . . my father found my singing more akin to caterwauling and started to get the giggles . . . my mother quickly admonished him and, as a permanent solution, the family quietly huddled in the pew (made easier by the fact that we sat towards the back of the church) and decided that I should not sing any more that evening.

    Unfortunately (notice the frequent reappearance of that word), I felt that this injunction only covered singing, and so I threw myself into humming the next song that came up . . . as my sister recalls, my humming was not limited to the making of sound, but also to a kind of bodily rocking, as though I were treating my whole body as the bellows of some organic accordion . . . this physical display, combined with the consequences of tone deafness as described above, resulted in my humming being more than either my father or sister could withstand.

    They began laughing, but, trying to suppress their guffaws, it came out as a kind of merry snorting . . . just when one of them would be pulling themself back together, the garbled laughter of the other would set them both off again . . . even after I was clued in to stop humming, my mute presence--just standing there during the songs--was enough to get my father and sister laughing again . . . I will leave it to the reader to imagine the lecture that my mother delivered to all of us on the car trip home afterwards . . . although my mother did go to bed somewhat furious at us, she woke up Christmas morning filled with the spirit of the season . . . ever since, even unto today, this story makes my father and sister chuckle when they tell it . . . me and my mother as well.
    10:19 pm
    Who Are The Kings?
    My spouse is the middle child in a family of five kids . . . her younger brother and sister are twins . . . growing up, her younger sister (we'll call her Mags) had the reputation within the family for being somewhat of an airhead . . . you need to bear that in mind for the following true Christmas story to make sense.

    It's about twenty years ago (so Mags is in her late teens) and it's about a week before Christmas, in the evening . . . the family is together in the ancestral suburban home, with a Dolly Parton Christmas special airing on the television . . . in the adjoining room the family has set up for display the various Christmas cards that they've received that year . . . some of the cards are from individuals, some are from whole families . . . my spouse and her parents and her younger brother are sitting in comfortable chairs, watching as Ms. Parton engages in light banter with her guests, intermixed with the singing of traditional Christmas carols.

    Mags walks into the room, makes note of Ms. Parton's efforts to fortify her viewers' holiday spirits, and walks on into the adjoining room . . . where she begins to look over the Christmas cards . . . she picks them up, in turn, taking in the artwork and message of each card, and checking to see who each card is from . . . as Mags is looking at the cards, Dolly Parton begins to sing "We Three Kings."

    Mags gets to the cards that from various families that her family knows . . . she reads the names in the cards--"The Smiths," "The Johnsons," "The Franklins"--nodding with recognition at each family she knows . . . then she picks up a card from a family whose name she does not recognize . . . puzzled, she decides to ask her parents who these people are: "Who are The Kings?" she calls out into the TV room.

    Mags parents and her siblings get somewhat appalled looks on their faces . . . they are too stunned by the question to answer . . . they exchange appalled glances with one another . . . Dolly Parton continues to sing . . . Mags calls out again "Who are The Kings?" . . . Mags' father grits his teeth and replies, speaking in the slow and loud way one sometimes does to a person you believe will have trouble understanding you. "THEY'RE THE WISE MEN."

    Quite understandably, Mags was greatly upset that everyone in her family assumed that she did not know who the "Three Kings" were . . . but she recovered . . . the misunderstanding became an instant piece of family lore . . . and "They're the Wise Men" remains a family story that can be told in four words.
    Friday, December 21st, 2007
    12:08 pm
    The Gift Week
    Have had, for as long as I can remember, an affinity for the days between Christmas day and New Year's Day . . . partly because it seemed like the year ended with Christmas and that last week of the year was like the "But Wait, There's More" part of those Ronco product TV ads . . . partly because it was the Winter Break when I was going to elementary and secondary school . . . when I think about writing novels, one thing I think of is writing one that takes place entirely in those days . . . I also tend to think of them as a "Free Parking" Days for mailing out Christmas cards: OK, it is after Christmas BUT it's still the same year so it must be all right . . . the last week of the year: the calendar's gift to us.
    11:54 am
    Twelve Days
    Since the late 1990s, have been thinking about drawing a version of the Twelve Days of Christmas using a variety of visual puns . . . envision it as twelve sheets of white paper (preferably of card stock weight) with the drawings being done in black ink . . . one thing that has kept this entirely conceptual is that I have now talent in the drawing arena . . . but mostly it's coming up with enough concepts to get through the whole song . . . each verse, ideally, would have a different visual idea (however slightly) . . . hence I need twelve visual puns on "a partridge in a pear tree" . . . have David Casady, Susan Dey, Danny Bonaduce, and Shirley Jones for four of the Days . . . also have one Day with a Ptarmigen in the tree, with a note that the Partridge is taking a fifteen minute coffee break . . . maybe have a couple punning on "cartridge" as a rhyming alternate to partridge . . . and then there are the eleven pairs of turtle doves, the ten trios of French Hens (perhaps Julia Childs in on one Day), etc. . . . there's also the context of our times . . . was very pleased to think of drawing two turtles wearing tie-die t-shirts and carrying placards with peace signs . . . but with our ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq I feel that the cause of peace is too serious these days to be treated so flippantly . . . perhaps 2008 will be a better year for this idea . . . it will at least give me some time top practice drawing geese at a tanning salon and get together a list of ten notable people named Lord/Lorde (already have Audre Lorde: but can I draw her?)
    11:42 am
    The Little Comedian Boy
    Another Christmas idea that I remember my friend Bill having back in the 1980s was "The Little Comedian Boy" . . . basically, it's the Little Drummer Boy story only that the little boy in the alternate version tells jokes instead of playing a drum . . . Bill imagined him as a kid in the eight-to-ten year old range who told jokes in the Borscht Belt tradition (think of Morey Amsterdam and Henny Youngman) . . . remember thinking it a pretty funny idea at the time (and certainly one that has stayed with me in memory) . . . but nowadays have difficulty seeing how the snappy, suffering-focused nature of the comedy could be anything but nonhumorously grotesque in the Nativity Setting . . . so, over the last quarter of a century, I've either gotten smarter or less fun.
    Sunday, December 9th, 2007
    3:12 pm
    Seasonal Literature
    If asked what my favorite holiday scene in a book is, I usually think first of the Christmas pageant section in John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany . . . one of my favorite novels . . . also the novel that I have given most as a gift.
    2:40 pm
    Jacob Marley's Punishment
    My spouse is a fan of Charles Dickens . . . she has read something like seven or eight (maybe more) of his novels . . . big, fat novels . . . which was seven or eight more than I had read before knowing her . . . have i already mentioned that, sitting on a bookshelf, Dickens' novels are best characterized by the words "big" and "fat"? . . . since we've known one another (which would be twenty years now), I've read two works by Dickens: Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol . . . predictable titles, yes, I know.

    For a number of years, we would read Christmas Carol aloud to one another in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day . . . after parenthood, we've found we don't have the time to even read it quietly by ourselves alone . . . and, unlike most of Dickens' works, A Christmas Carol is actually neither big or fat . . . have thought how enjoyable it might be to read it aloud for E . . . but is it too scary? . . . and when will she be ready for something as long as this (right now she maxes out in the reading aloud department with The Cat in The Hat) . . . and what would be the pleasure in A) chasing her around the house while reading aloud or B) reading to her after she has drifted off to sleep in the evening? . . . the reading aloud to anyone concept is further mooted by the fact that this is the second year in a row that all of our fiction titles are cooling their heels in boxes, waiting for the creation of some new shelves to accommodate them . . . [in October, the boxed-up dream-of-reading-aloud title is Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree]

    But do think of the story . . . this year, in particular, have been thinking of Jacob Marley . . . and of how to handle him as a character in a retelling of A Christmas Carol . . . [perhaps influenced by the ways that The Wizard of Oz has been retold in Wicked and Tin Man] . . . it seems to me that one of the hardest parts of Marley's punishment is his obligation (better word?) of trying to warn Scrooge to avoid Marley's fate by changing his ways while Scrooge has time to do so . . . Scrooge's sins are the same as Marley's were . . . Marley now suffers damnation for them . . . was Marley warned by the Ghosts of Christmas and did he ignore those warnings? . . . or did Marley go to his grave without having had the benefit of a spectral warning?

    I imagine Marley's spirit being bitter and resentful at having to be the guidepost to a salvation that he himself did not attain, of having to say to Scrooge "You have committed the same sins as I, here is how you can escape the consequences of those sins, how you can escape the just punishment that I suffer for committing exactly those same sins" . . . it seems to me that this is a particularly cruel and agonizing part of Marley's fate . . . I wonder what is going on inside his head during his visit with Scrooge . . . "You don't deserve to escape this fate" . . . "I am compelled to warn you, but I hope that you do not heed my warning" . . . or, perhaps, the opposite: "If my warning helps lead you to change your ways, then my own chains will be lightened" . . . it does seem to me something that would be worth exploring in a story.
    Saturday, December 8th, 2007
    1:29 pm
    My Favorite Christmas Ornament
    Unpacked The Pod over the last couple of days . . . my sister had gone through the family Christmas decor when we were packing The Pod . . . she kept some items for herself and packed the rest for me (less those that were partially destroyed).

    We put our tree up last weekend . . . E has been pulling off the occasional ornament and playing with them (the height at which certain ornaments were placed on the tree anticipated this phenomenon) . . . it's refreshing to see how easily E can use her imagination to make an ornament into a toy . . . and then this morning, while I was getting my students' final exams together to begin the grading process, she pulled the tree over onto herself . . . she experienced no injuries . . . she didn't even seem put-out by the event: she didn't cry out when it fell and when I found her basically cornered by the fallen tree she didn't appear at all upset . . . after making sure E was OK, put the tree back up, adjusted it's stand, and found a baseboard to put under it (which is hidden by the tree skirt) . . . whereupon E walked over to the tree (it is synthetic), grabbed a limb, and pulled it over again (in a very matter of fact way) . . . which led to us having a parent-child conversation about there being certain things that one must never do.

    After repositioning the tree again, took the opportunity to add the family ornaments from The Pod to the tree (as well as replacing our ornaments which had been jostled off) . . . fortunately, my sister packed my favorite ornament from childhood in with the portion that I got . . . it's a fairly humble ornament: about tennis-ball sized, metallic red with bronze-colored depictions of holly and bells and candles on it . . . but what made it my favorite as a child is that, alone among the rest of the ornaments that my parents had in the 1960s and 1970s, it's made of plastic . . . which meant that no matter how clumsy or fumble-fingered I was, I couldn't break it . . . still an outstanding feature: now it means that, no matter what E does with the tree or it's decor, she can't break it or hurt herself while playing with it . . . and so, this ornament has now gone from being my favorite to being a family tradition . . . which makes me happy.
    1:23 pm
    A (Bleak) Seasonal Song
    If asked what my favorite Christmas song is the first song that comes to mind is usually The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" . . . probably too bleak to be anyone's favorite Christmas song . . . but I've loved it since first hearing it in the early 1990s (on The Pogues' 1988 "If I Should Fall From Grace With God" album) . . . the way it's performed . . . so very emotionally powerful . . . do like The Pogues.
    1:16 pm
    Cinema of the Season
    Have spent a few spare moments here and there thinking about Christmas movies . . . have been using a pretty broad interpretation of the concept . . . came up with a list of "favorites" (that concept is defined pretty loosely as well), in alphabetical order:

    It's a Wonderful Life

    A Midnight Clear

    A Midwinter's Tale

    The Muppet's Christmas Carol

    The Ref

    Scrooged

    Also need to mention two others, owing to family connections (albeit I also like them both a lot myself): The Polar Express, because E likes it a lot (E likes trains); and The Christmas Story, which is my father-in-law's favorite Christmas film (and one that my spouse's family watches multiple times every December).
    Wednesday, December 5th, 2007
    10:06 am
    Babushka-Momma
    In October we moved into a new house (same town) and, in the process, moved into a community tradition . . . our street is "Christmas Around the World Street" here in our town . . . each house (with some wrinkles) has a nation assigned to it and each house has a plywood figure representing some aspect of Christmas in that particular nation . . . each house also has a plywood placard designator: "Norway," "Japan," "Australia," and so forth . . . additionally, each house has a standardized set of green stakes (again with some wrinkles) and standardized strings of white lights to outline the yard with . . . we moved into The Russia House . . . our plywood cut-out is of an older women wearing a traditional peasant headscarf and carrying a sack of toys (such as a nesting doll) . . . we call her Babushka-Momma.

    A dozen or so years ago I was in the United States Air Force serving as an instructor . . . we had accumulated, over time, various extra items to jazz up various parts of the curriculum . . . one of the things we had was about six life-size solid-cast-aluminum AK-47s . . . the story I heard was that they had originally been created and used as training aids in the Polish Army . . . how they got to Texas, I don't know . . . then, shortly before a basewide inspection, our new base commander decided that everything that wasn't officially supposed to be on base had to go . . . so, among other things, I got one of the aluminum AK-47s . . . which has always posed a small degree of awkwardness whenever we've moved . . . but it's still tagging along.

    What we discovered, here in our new house, is that the canvas strap on the faux-AK-47 allows it to drape very nicely over Babushka-Momma's shoulder . . . giving her an entirely different look! . . . however, in deference to public sensibilities (and because we are the new kids on the block), Babushka-Momma has left her means of self-defense in the garage while she celebrates the season out in our front yard.

    While I have nothing against Babushka-Momma personally, am hoping to trade out for next year: hoping to get Finland, of course . . . our neighbor who currently has Finland has two other countries as well: Brazil and a second Russia (his Russia figure looks like a cross between a Tsar and Father Christmas) . . . if the trade goes forward, will attempt to make a Joullupoukki (probably misspelled) figure and, if possible, a Sami couple and a few reindeer . . . if the trade doesn't go forward, may try to go "Lappland" with the same figures as for Finland . . . if pressured to keep Russia, may try and create a plywood Russian men's choir, using Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Khruschev, Breshnev, and Gorbachev as models for the singers and have their hymnal books be Marx's Das Kapital . . . hope to get Finland.
    9:57 am
    The Pod
    Yesterday "The Pod" arrived . . . it's a transportable container used for moving purposes . . . my sister arranged for it to be ready when I was up at the old family home over Thanksgiving and we packed it with things for me to keep (and some stuff for my parents) . . . back in the early 1970s, our parents bought a small upright piano for my sister . . . that piano is in The Pod: it will become (once we get it inside) Little E's piano . . . haven't opened The Pod yet . . . need to clear out some staging space in the garage . . . also worried about stuff shifting and not being able to easily close it once opened . . . and there's also the finality of unloading The Pod: it is likely to be the last physical act of saying goodbye to the house that I grew up in . . . figuring out where to put things will also be complicated, in no small part because we moved just six weeks ago and still have not set up large sections of our new home . . . figuring out where to put stuff should, however, be easier than the process of figuring out what physical manifestations of my past and myself to load into The Pod and keep, and what parts to leave for goodwill donations or the landfill.
    Tuesday, December 4th, 2007
    10:42 am
    Santor
    WARNING: A seasonal entry follows, but not a jolly one.

    In 1971, Larry Niven, whose work I much admire (particularly fond of his novel Protector), wrote an essay speculating on Superman's ability (or rather inability) to become a parent by partnering with a human female ("Man of Steel, Woman of of Kleenex") . . . I remember a conversation I had with my friend Bill in a similar speculative vein.

    Bill had been wondering about Santa Claus and how he might occupy his time the other 364 days of the year . . . he enumerated some of Santa Claus' primary characteristics: ability to travel around the world with remarkable speed and without being detected by mere mortals; ability to enter and leave homes and other buildings of all shapes, sizes, and configurations without difficulty and (usually) without being detected; ability to know where any individual is at any point in time and what they are doing ("he knows if you are sleeping, he knows if you're awake"), and the ability to determine with infallibility whether or not a given individual is good or bad.

    From these premises (plus Santa having at his disposal a very large staff of highly trained and exceedingly loyal gadget makers), Bill postulated that, except when he was busy on Christmas Eve, Santa took on an alternate identity as a crime fighter . . . Santor! . . . Bill went on to hypothesize that Santor performed one mission each night, using his array of special powers to make the entire world a better place by identifying and counteracting one villain at a time.

    Now, at this point, I should put in a cautionary note . . . while I am not aware of any other creative artists spinning this particular tale, it seems internally logical enough that the basic idea must have occurred to many other people many times . . . it certainly seems like something that folks could write stories or speculative essays about or create comic versions of or explore in other media . . . I'm not aware of anyone else having done so, but it seems unlikely that I would be aware of it (if there was something to be aware of) . . . Bill may have actually been describing Santor as a short story idea back when we had this conversation a quarter of a century ago . . . given the very small audience that my blog will ever have (wanted to say "minuscule": perhaps I can refer to my reader(s) as "minusculites"!) and the fact that some 25 years have gone by, hope and trust that I am not stealing anything from Bill in describing what I remember of his ideas here . . . and now, back to Santor (and be advised: the story now moves into its bleak and grim phase).

    As I recall, Bill's Santor traveled a path into the abyss . . . initially, Santor set out to use non-violent means to "take out" the bad guys he identified . . . but, over time, Santor's ability to infallibly judge an individual as good or evil combined with his ability to see the whole world and what a mess it is, led him to accept using violence in an attempt to have his crime-fighting efforts have the strongest and longest-lasting impact . . . this path leads Santor into becoming a vigilante assassin . . . ultimately, Bill spins the tale out to Santa Claus/Santor being unable to reconcile the two halves of his existence and, consequently, going insane.

    Perhaps it's not such a bad thing that Bill never wrote out and published the the full story of Santor.
    Sunday, December 2nd, 2007
    2:41 pm
    Drum Song
    One of the differences of opinion that E and her teacher Ms. K have at school is over the question "When is it a good time to sing Christmas carols?" . . . Ms K's answer is "between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day" . . . E's answer is "whenever I feel like it" (which basically means every month of the year) . . . fortunately for E, we have no hard and fast rules for the singing of Christmas songs here at home.

    Consequently, we sing what has been E's favorite Christmas carol for the past couple of years a lot . . . that song is "The Little Drummer Boy" . . . sometimes E likes to sing it herself . . . some times she likes to have it performed by myself or her Mom . . . over time, my performance of "The Little Drummer Boy" (or, as E calls it, "Drum Song") has evolved in a number of specific ways . . . depending on her mood (and my energy level), my performances can have a variety of different elements . . . the full-fledged production includes me marching through the house, keeping time by patting my thighs with my hands, adding "echo" drumbeats after the "Bum Bum Bum Bum" lines, repeating the last line ("me and my drum") about six times (gradually fading it to an almost inaudible whisper),and including the verse that we made up to add to the song.

    That extra verse evolved over time . . . after having song the song two hundred or so times, I got to thinking about the story as told by the lyrics . . . the version that E and I started with had three verses: Little Drummer Boy meets the Wise Men, Little Drummer Boy meets the Baby Jesus, & Little Drummer Boy plays his drum for the Baby Jesus . . . so, we go from "So to Honor Him/When we come" at the end of the first verse to "Little baby/I am a poor boy too" at the beginning of the second verse . . . it seemed to me that part of the story was missing . . . so, with E as audience and critic, we came up with a new verse to fill the narrative gap [. . . subsequently, it occurred to me that the Little Drummer Boy might actually be meeting the Wise Men just around the corner from the manger: if that were the case, there is no narrative gap; but we'd come up with our new verse already] . . . so, for your reading pleasure, here are the lyrics to E's "Drum Song" (you'll have to provide the "Bum Bum Bum Bums" (with or without echo) yourself):

    Come, they told me,
    A newborn king to see,
    The finest gifts we bring,
    To lay before this king,
    So to honor him,
    When we come.

    Far we traveled,
    Guided by the bright star;
    To Bethlehem it led,
    To this humble manger.
    There we found Him:
    A babe newborn.

    Little baby,
    I am a poor boy too,
    I have no gift to bring
    That's fit to give a king.
    Shall I play for you
    On my drum?

    Mary nodded.
    The oxen and goats kept time.
    I played my drum for Him.
    I played my best for Him.
    Then He smiled at me,
    Me and my drum.
    Saturday, December 1st, 2007
    8:11 pm
    Keeping Christmas
    Back in the early nineties I would take a week off either right before or right after Thanksgiving and spend it writing Christmas cards and mailing off gifts that I'd bought over the course of the year . . . in each card I'd write three or five or twelve sentences, catching up with friends, asking after their families, just being in touch . . . would mail off about 250 or so cards like that, in a good year maybe two dozen or so gifts . . . really liked it, the giving part made Christmas for me.

    Then came graduate school and parenthood and needing to spend more time working in order to pay bills . . . so keeping Christmas became a kind of luxury: the kind one can't afford . . . so I haven't kept Christmas as I want to for many years now . . . it does take a combination of the resources of money, time, and energy (as do so many things).

    Have decided to try and make a beginning at returning to the keeping of Christmas here in my blog this year . . . will try to post a seasonally-related post for every day of December . . . am counting "E's Nutcracker" as Number 1 . . . we'll all see how I do at keeping this resolve . . . wish me luck .
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