Christmas Joys #4 - Holiday Guest Room

I always enjoy decorating our guest room at Christmas; the curtains and bedding are already red and white, so I just add a few Christmas pieces and I'm done.  It's ready for family and friends, and extra guests are welcome in the other rooms decorated for the season.  (That means air mattresses in other other Christmasy rooms, since we only  have one guest room.  Our guests are always very gracious with their humble accommodations; we haven't had a complaint yet!)



These handmade wooden Santas were Christmas gifts from my daughter, additions to my Santa Claus collection.  The smaller one is displayed with some antique spools.

I had been looking for a red and white pillow for the bed, when I found this one in the Coldwater Creek catalog.  The reindeer on the pillow is company for the plush one on the bed.  He is many years old and used to be very fragrant, but has lost his scent.

Hope you are blessed with Christmas guests, or provide that blessing for your loved ones!

Annie

Christmas Joys #3 - Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell has brought us images of American Christmases from the past.  They are very special to me, since so many were depictions of Christmas during the 1950's and 60's -- my childhood -- as featured in another staple in our home, The Saturday Evening Post.

These two favorites are part of my collection of Christmas books.  The one on the right was originally a Christmas gift to my stepmother, Jo Ann, who passed away last November.  It was given back to me as a keepsake and a reminder that we both loved Christmas and Norman Rockwell.   It contains Christmas stories, carols, poems and recollections, all illustrated by Rockwell.

The other, smaller book on the left is a collection of more than seventy of Rockwell's holiday paintings.  The buildings in the foreground are also featured on the book's cover, part of Main Street, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where the artist maintained his studio. 

Here's hoping that your holidays are as peaceful and magical as those portrayed in Norman Rockwell's work!

Annie

Christmas Joys #2 - Church Christmas Pageants

I have always loved Christmas presentations of all kinds.  I have participated in many myself, and have enjoyed the experience of being part of a living Christmas tree, and in the background as accompaniment to the Christmas story.  My favorites are the children's programs and my own children have provided some of the most interesting memories.  There is a certain level of stress involved before your own child takes the stage.  Hoping that the angel wings will stay put, the halo won't get caught in the scenery, and your husband's bathrobe won't provide the perfect opportunity for tripping can put you in a state of hypervigilance.  My own nervous tendencies have probably contributed to the pageant mishaps in our family.

Two cases in point:

The angel wings were lovely and attached as instructed.  The halo was attached to the headband.  The child truly looked like an angel.  She was ready to perform and I left her in the backstage area, confident that everything would go well.  Her sister's Sunday School class sang their sweet songs and I knew that the next group would do equally well.  The angels entered from the right.  My child was not among them.  I was in the middle section of seats and fought the temptation to climb over those in front of me to find out what was wrong.  Then, there she was -- running onto the stage and taking her place.  I didn't have to ask what had delayed her; part of her white angel robe was tucked into her panties.  The group's performance was -- well, angelic.  And so was she.

Another time involved a peppy song which was emphasized by enthusiastic clapping of hands.  Delightful!  But why was my child clapping by holding one hand open and bringing the other down in a vertical motion instead of the sideways clapping of the other children?  And why was she watching her hands carefully with each clap instead of keeping her eyes on the choir director or searching for her parents?  It was as if she were trying to kill a bug that had landed in her hand.  At least she wasn't picking her nose, I reasoned.  Then it came to me.  She had a loose tooth that she had been wiggling all day.  It was still in her mouth when we left the house.  The tooth was in her hand and she didn't want to lose it!  The up and down clapping was insurance that the tooth fairy would come. 

These stories are illustrative of my own joy in children's pageants now that my children are grown.  I can enjoy the performances of my grandchildren and the young members of our church without worrying about what could go wrong, while having the hard-won wisdom of knowing that those little incidents make the our Christmas Joys even more "perfectly imperfect."

May you have some happy pageant experiences this year!

Annie

Christmas Joys #1 - Sweet Little Jesus Boy

I'm beginning my Christmas Joys this year with a song. I first heard "Sweet Little Jesus Boy" at a high school Christmas music program 50 years ago.  I had enjoyed the seasonal selections sung by the various choral groups and ensembles and was probably thumbing the program to see what was coming next.  I heard her voice -- softly, sweetly, hauntingly beautiful -- as if she were singing a lullaby.  My attention shifted and I was there with her and the child to whom she was singing, "Sweet Little Jesus Boy."

As I write this, I am struggling to explain the effect this song had on me then, as it does today.  It stopped me in my tracks in the middle of the Christmas season when, even 50 years ago, so much was going on -- holiday concerts, shopping, parties, music, anticipation, stress -- all the good and not-so-good about that time of year.  Margaret Green's beautiful voice stopped me and her words spoke to me, "Sweet Little Jesus Boy; We made you be born in a manger; Sweet Little Holy Child, We didn't know who you was."

Today, hearing those words brings me back to the real meaning of Christmas -- not just to the manger scene, where the baby Jesus was born, but to the cross where he died:  "You done told us how, we is a tryin'!  Master, you done show'd us how, even when you was dyin'".

That's the point that this song helps me remember, to celebrate Christmas and to be thankful for that Sweet Little Jesus Boy, but that even during this season I'm going to fall short: "Just seems like we can't do right; look how we treated you."  But I know that the greatest gift he gave us is forgiveness, for all of our lives.  All we have to do is ask, and accept.

To provide a musical link, I listened to several artists' versons of  "Sweet Little Jesus Boy".   I was led back to Mahalia Jackson's.  I hope you enjoy it.

Annie

The Night the Martians Landed: A Family Story from 1938

I am reposting this story in memory of my Grandmother and Aunt Lona Mae, both of whom were born on October 31.


My Aunt "Sister", who would have been 101 years old on Halloween, shared this story at her birthday celebration the summer of 2010. Those who can remember the night of October 30, 1938 are becoming more rare, and it was a true gift to hear her first-hand account of family members' responses to a phenomenon of wide-spread panic and fear as a result of the radio broadcast of an adaptation of HG Wells' novel, War of the Worlds.

I had heard and read about the broadcast and its effect on individuals and families across the country. It was planned as a 60-minute Halloween radio drama, an episode of the Mercury Theatre on the Air, and was directed and narrated by Orson Welles. The first two-thirds of the broadcast was presented as news bulletins which suggested that an actual invasion by Martians was taking place. There were no commercial breaks, which added to the sense of realism. The use of the news bulletin format also contributed to the believability of the story, as well as to the resulting panic, since people were accustomed to legitimate newsflashes, but not those used as part of a work of fiction.

According to Wikipedia, historians have calculated that six million people heard the broadcast, 1.7 million believed it to be true and 1.2 million were genuinely frightened. According to my aunt, a number of those who believed it and were frightened resided in southeast Missouri, and were outside that Sunday evening, gazing toward the sky.

Aunt Sister, Uncle Jesse, and their three children stayed home from church and were listening to the radio, probably doing the equivalent of today's "channel surfing" between the Chase and Sanborn Hour, featuring ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and singer Nelson Eddy, and the Mercury Theater. The first comedy sketch on the Chase and Sanborn Hour ended about fifteen minutes into the program and was to be followed by a musical selection, presenting a good time to change the station. This would have taken them directly into the middle of the Martian invasion on Mercury Theater, with no reassurance that what they were hearing wasn't really happening.

This is a part of what they heard:

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed. . . . Wait a minute! Someone's crawling. Someone or . . . something. I can see peering out of that black hole two luminous disks . . . are they eyes? It might be a face. It might be . . . good heavens, something's wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now it's another one, and another one, and another one. They look like tentacles to me. There, I can see the thing's body. It's large as a bear and it glistens like wet leather. But that face, it . . . ladies and gentlemen, it's indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it's so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate.

How many of us have thought about what we would do if the world was coming to an end? Their instincts were to gather with other family members, so they left in their car to travel the few miles to the my grandparents' home.

On the way there, my aunt noticed that baby Sandra's shoe was missing, that she must have dropped it or left it at home. Uncle Jesse reassured my frightened aunt, that Sandra "wouldn't be needing her shoe."

She also noted that people standing out on the dirt roads as they travelled, looking at the sky and exclaiming, "They're coming! They're coming!"

When they arrived at Mom and Pop's, the house was empty. Mom and Pop had gone to Arkansas to church and hadn't yet returned home. After a short time, they and the rest of their children arrived, asking what was going on.

According to Aunt Sister, Pop didn't believe a word of the story. He also scoffed at his oldest child's fear, declaring, "I didn't know that I raised a child who would be afraid to die."

Little brother Earl, then stepped up and joined forces with his sister, put his arms around her and said, "You raised two of them!"

The family story ends here, and we can imagine the relief they and others like them felt when they learned the truth. We can also understand their panic and fear in a time when modern communication was still in its infancy. We might also want to temper any thoughts or comments we might have about naivete or the willingness to believe the unbelievable -- at least until after Halloween!

Annie

p.s. You can hear the Mercury Theater broadcast on YouTube. It is in multiple parts, so I am not including links.

Pre-Surgery (Halloween) Shopping is Done -- Be Back Soon!

This little Halloween Witch is helping to take the sting out of my upcoming surgery on Monday.  We bought her from the hospital gift shop when I went for my pre-op appointment.  I will be back to blogging soon.  In the meantime, here are some photos of Halloween and autumn decorations. 

Note:  Framed graphics and cards are from The Graphics Fairy .

Black Hole Decorating Challenge: Large Screen TV

I knew that it would be a big, flat, black presence in our living room when we purchased our large screen tv.  Tom has no man cave, so we really had few options for its location.  Especially in our downsized home, the mantel has always been a favorite decorating spot, particularly for holidays and seasonal decor.  I was willing to make the sacrifice, though, to make my hubby happy during his retirement years.  (And, I must admit, I'm enjoying seeing the programs and movies on the large screen, too.)  So up it went, and it has been a continuous presence in our living room ever since.

I believe in "use what you have" decorating and am doing what I can to integrate the black hole into my scheme.  This is one option:  use its capabilities to bring more visual celebration of and to the times of our lives.  Ours came with instant access to Flickr and I have put together seasonal slide shows to play to coordinate with my mantel decorations.  Here are a few from my Halloween show.  I have used about 20 photos of my granddaughters in their costumes through the years and some pretty shots from free photograph sources on the Internet.

Works for me, with my resources.  Maybe you have some other ideas for the tv or other decorating black holes.  I'd  love to see your solutions, if you do.

Saving My Place with My Bookmark Collection

I started collection bookmarks at the same time I started collecting books.  As a new librarian, I had opportunities to attend conferences, book fairs and festivals, book signings, and other events where bookmarks were given away.  Our libraries also provided bookmarks to our customers celebrating our summer reading programs, special author visits and other events, such as the Red Dirt Book Festival and Pioneer Library System's 50th anniversary (50 special bookmarks highlighting the progress of the system, such as the year we first reached circulation of 1,000,000 items, the year one of our librarians was selected one of the New York Times Librarian of the Year, the year our system won the American Library Association John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations Award, and the year one of our branches won the Outstanding Rural Library Award from ALA).

My bookmark collection was much easier to transport home than the books I found myself buying when I traveled and they provided reminders of the accomplishments of our libraries and others across the country in guiding people to the best in reading and information.  I found myself looking for bookmarks in museums and other places I visited on vacations and found they served as miniature pieces of art and history.

My collection grew as I received bookmarks as gifts and enjoyed the expression of love they represented.  Those that are handmade are the most precious, as well as those produced as commemorative of special days in family and friends' lives.

Now that I'm retired and we have downsized, I find myself "weeding" out some of the books that I carried home from conferences.  I no longer have room for 1,000 books (although I have room for thousands on my Nook and my Kindle).  I also continue to use my hometown library and use my bookmarks to mark my place.

I'll keep my bookmarks until books are obsolete; that is to say, I won't ever give them up.  I don't believe books will ever become obsolete, but if they do, my bookmarks will be even more collectible!



I Have Sirius Envy, but Stitcher Helps!

I'm talking about radio; specifically talk radio.  I don't have a SiriusXM subscription in my car, and probably won't purchase one.  NPR keeps me happy for the most part, with a mix of CD's and favorite commercial radio stations for music.  But I have wished for more radio stations that focus on my individual interests and have found that Stitcher is a wonderful source.  I discovered it while exploring apps on my smartphone and feel like I have struck gold.

Stitcher is like Pandora (music internet radio) in that you can select talk radio stations based on your own preferences and create your own station.  Then you can choose the particular program and podcast from your own station's menu when you are ready to listen. 

My own Stitcher station has a mix of programming about books, health, gardening, politics, writing, food, travel, and news.  When I go to my station, I can choose the program and the most recent podcast, or other podcasts that I may have missed.  I can also choose live radio by state or front page news.

I usually listen to my own station.  It was created by selecting programming from broad categories including Comedy; Business and Industry; News and Politics; Education, Society and Culture; Entertainment, Games and Hobbies, Lifestyles and Health; Local; Music Commentary; Parenting, Family and Kids; Science and Medicine; Spirituality and Religion; Sports; Technology; In Spanish; and World and International.  Many of these broad categories are broken down into subcategories, so that you can find just the kind of programming you want to put in your own station.

The problem may be that you will need to winnow your list down, there are so many choices -- but that's a good problem!  For example, there are about 40 programs about books and authors alone!

My radio listening has been pretty much limited to my car in the past, but now I am listening more often on my smartphone as I get dressed in the morning or work around the house.  I can also listen to my personal station on my computer through Stitcher's website.  I think that radio is pretty much like tv in that the deciding factor is the quality of the content.  Of course, "quality" is subjective, so if you want to listen to 18 hours of talk about sports or even just football, that's your call.  I can accept that, while I listen to hours of talk about books!

You might want to give Stitcher a try.  The smartphone app is free, so you could add it and explore the possibilities.  You can also download Stitcher to your computer through their website at  http://www.stitcher.com/home.php 

In future posts, I will tell you about some of my favorite Stitcher programs.

Happy Listening!
Annie

 

Why We Cook the Way We Do



Please visit Beth Fish Reads for more weekend cooking.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend



My mother had an interesting recipe for strawberry shortcake.  I never questioned the fact that there was no cake involved; it was simply the way she prepared a fresh strawberry dessert -- with pie crust.  She rolled out pie crust squares and baked them on a cookie sheet and layered them with the syrupy sweetened strawberries and topped it off with freshly whipped cream.  It was delicious, and to our family, it was "strawberry shortcake."

Recently, a mention of strawberry shortcake on Facebook led me to ask my cousin if his mother (my aunt) prepared strawberry shortcake with pie crust.  It turns out that she did, and he had grown up the same way I did, thinking that the absence of cake wasn't unusual.  I also determined that the recipe must have come from my grandmother on my Dad's side.  Dad confirmed that he had been the source of my mother's strawberry recipe; he had always had it with pie crust and had asked Mother to continue making it that way.  In other words, "It's a family thing."

Cousin Terry Joe also mentioned that his mother had always baked a pie with sweet potatoes and called it pumpkin pie.  Same spices as pumpkin pie, but made with sweet potatoes.  Another "family thing".

I began thinking about why we cook the way we do.  Some of us are Food Channel followers, may have developed into vegans, or have espoused other dietary traditions.  The Internet makes thousands of recipes at our fingertips, and many of us experiment with newly available food choices, or we grow our own.

During our earliest cooking experiences, we may have looked to our family members for advice or ingredients.  That's how we may have come up with pie crust strawberry shortcake or "pumpkin pie" made with sweet potatoes.  It's also how we may have a family tradition of "American spaghetti" (without Italian seasonings) or removing the skin from chicken before frying, years before healthy eating dictated it. (Both of these are further examples from my childhood.)

I have never been known as a great cook.  I'm the person who puts together a holiday meal for a large group, who provides the meat and most of the side dishes, and wishes for that specific compliment, "This is really delicious."  Sometimes it comes; more often, it doesn't.  My corn bread dressing will never measure up to my stepmother's, and my chocolate cake and fudge will always take second place to my mother's and my sister's.

I do have the edge with two dishes, though.  The first is what our family always called "gunk".  Gunk is that pie that you make with Eagle Brand milk and lemonade.  I like it best with a graham cracker crust that I make myself, with extra butter and sugar.  It's called "gunk" because my kids could never wait until it set up into a pie (and because it was calling me, too).  So we spooned it into bowls and dug in.  And it was really delicious -- really!

The other dish has been designated the best meatloaf my husband ever had.  That's a recent designation.  My mother's meatloaf recipe is a mixture of ground beef, chopped onion, ketchup, egg, oatmeal, salt and pepper, with ketchup poured over the top.  One day I was watching Paula Deen and noted that her recipe was very similar to mine, except that she mixed ketchup, brown sugar, and honey dijon mustard for the glaze.  I tried it and the rest is history -- I have joined the ranks of complimented cooks and now I am adding ingredients everywhere!

Back to the subject of this post:  some reasons we may cook the way we do -- to please our families and because our mother (grandmother, great-grandmother, etc.) did it that way.  You may have heard this story, or a variation:

Alice was baking a ham for Sunday dinner, and called her mother for the recipe.  Mom told her to first cut off the ends of the ham.  She did so, followed the recipe, and the ham was delicious.  Later, she asked her mother why she needed to cut off the ends of the ham.  Her mother said that Grandma did it that way and Alice should ask her why.  Alice was visiting her grandmother in the assisted living center the next week and asked her why it was necessary to cut the ends off the ham before baking it.  Grandma gave her an odd look and said, "I always cut off the ends because otherwise, it wouldn't have fit my roasting pan."

What odd recipes or food preparation traditions are in your family?

Annie