Tag Archives: Christmas

To Say Nothing of the Dog

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Great Blue in Teal Pool

“To Say Nothing of the Dog” is the title of a Connie Willis novel. Loosely based, actually more in the style of, “Three Men and a Dog”, it is my favorite novel from one of my favorite novelists. Willis set her novel in her uniquely unscientific time travel series. When you have history professors explaining the mechanics of time travel, you have to expect a little fuzziness about the physics. I mention all this only as preamble, because this weekend holds in store at least three men, more women and a dog. Whoo Hoo!

Continuing with the preamble aspect of this post, I am writing this, before anyone arrives. Here is the tentative schedule: Tonight, Bob, Nink and Zoe, the dog, arrive. Cece, Megs and our David arrive tomorrow. Short of any late arrivals that leaves us with one spare couch. I assume that Zoe will not be sleeping on the couch. All save Dave are here in town to celebrate Andrew’s college graduation. He has been at Fontbonne University, which is just a stone’s throw from here. Andrew and David are the two halves of our own little student exchange program. David went to school in Rochester and Andrew came to Saint Louis for college. Speaking of Rochester someone has brought along some of upper New York state’s winter weather with them, it has gotten cold outside tonight, Burr.

échec et mat

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White: pawn to queen four – The photograph with this post is of the chessboard in front World Chess Hall of Fame. It is located in Maryland Plaza in the Central West End neighborhood, in the city of Saint Louis. The black king and queen are festively decorated for the holidays.

Black: pawn to queen four – This hall is the focal point for chess in Saint Louis. Locals routinely gather to play and regular tournaments are held there. Sometimes tournaments of note are held there, both national and international.

White: pawn to queen’s bishop four – In the past Saint Louis has played host to a variety of unorthodox museums. Both the Bowling Hall of Fame and the Dog Museum come to mind. Both of these establishments have come and gone from Saint Louis.

Black: pawn captures pawn – The World Chess Hall of Fame is new to Saint Louis. It opened in September of this year. Originally founded in New York, it came to Saint Louis by way of Miami.

White: knight to king’s bishop three – One of my co-worker’s, Scott, his son plays there. Scott says that he is at least locally ranked. I’m guessing that he plays on the clock.

Black: knight to king’s bishop three – I never could master playing chess under the clock. I always ended up thinking more about the passing seconds than the game being played. This fixation about time made for terrible chess playing.

White: queen to queen’s rook four – Timed chess uses special wooden framed clocks. Before a game an agreed upon time budget is allotted to each player. These games are punctuated with rapid fire slaps of the clock, to switch it over to the opponent’s time budget.

Black: pawn to queen’s bishop three – In these games you can lose in the normal way of chess, or you can simply run out of time. Having learned to play chess without the clock, playing with the clock seemed an unnecessary complication in a game that was already complicated. Play by snail mail was more my speed.

…

White: knight to king five – Like I said, I never could master the timed game, but when I was young, I did play chess. As with the moves diagramed in this post, I was partial to the queen’s opening gambit. These diagramed moves are from the accepted variation, not that my approach was ever so formal.

Black: knight captures knight – My opus moment in chess occurred when I was twelve, which is always a good time to peak in life. It also occurred in Yosemite, the best of all venues. Anne and I are hoping to visit Yosemite, when we go out to California next year.

White: pawn captures pawn – I played another twelve-year-old boy, on a bench, on the floor of the valley. I started with my queen’s opening and for a while I ruled the game. I didn’t really do much damage, but I definitely had him on the defensive.

Black: knight to king’s knight five – His father came up about then. He watched the course of the game for a while. He then spoke to his son and told him to take out my queen.

White: bishop to king’s bishop four – This was blatant kibitzing. For an adult to throw the game for one 12-year-old over another was wrong. I felt wronged, but my naivety did not allow me to comprehend how and to what extent I had been wronged.

Black: queen to queen’s knight three – After the father spoke, I should have stood up and told them that it was their game now, the set was theirs anyway. Walking away would have been both the honorable and right thing to do. Instead, I stuck it out, he took my queen and I got my ass kicked.

White: queen to queen’s bishop two – I’m not saying that I would have won without the interference, but it sure would have been nice to find out. You can’t always pick your battles and even when you do, they are not always fair. There is no use crying over spilt milk.

Black: knight captures pawn – Chess is supposed to be a game of logic, but it originated in the halls of feuding knights. Even Fischer and Spassky’s matches were plagued by mind games. Maybe the computer is the only logical opponent, the only fair one.

Noteworthy Letters

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“Tennis, trigonometry, tornadoes: A Midwestern boyhood” is an essay by David Foster Wallace that is available in PDF form, from Harper’s Magazine. Autobiographical in nature, this essay melds the three title topics into a single story, the story of a Midwestern boyhood. Set in the environs of Champaign-Urbana, IL, it is a wonderful memoir about Mr. Wallace’s brief junior tennis career, his aptitude for mathematics and the omnipresent wind of northern Illinois. I downloaded and printed the essay. After I read it, I offered it to Anne to read. After she had started reading it, she realized that this Wallace was the same author of “Infinite Jest”, a very dense and at 900 pages, a very long novel that she had read earlier this year. I would never have the patience or the perseverance to tackle “Infinite Jest”, but I found “Tennis, trigonometry, tornadoes” to be quite the delectable little morsel. It was rich in flavor, with complex language and infused with right brain thinking.

On a less sophisticated note, but in its way just as literary as anything that Wallace has written, Anne handed me a note today, from one of her students. It goes something like this:

Ms. R,

I am hungry. How much time do we have left in class?

–N

P.S. I am also tired, and I have a headache.

P.P.S. HAVE A CAT!

It should be said that this person is as into cats, as some people are into mice. Purr

A couple of weeks ago a website, called Letters of Note, had a moment in the sun. Various news outlets, including NPR, attributed it, in their articles about John Lennon’s to-do list. Written to his man-servant shortly before his murder, it lists the assigned chores for the day. The to-do list made the news, because it was due to be auctioned off. Perusing Letters of Note, I found this other letter to be much more noteworthy. A 6-year-old girl named Jessica Morley, takes an exception to and then proceeds to lay waste to (with pugnacious precociousness) a commentator from “The Economist”, for his article about children.

Pail Light

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Bucket of Bulbs

Yesterday’s cleaning chores morphed to today’s Christmas traditions. We hauled all the ornaments out of the basement and setup our traditional mantle display, nativity crèche in the center, augmented by African animals, Egyptian camels, Russian matryoshka dolls, Christmas toys and candles, lots of candles. With so many years together, Anne and I have collected quite the eclectic set of sentimental ornaments.

Later, we journeyed to Ted Drewes and bought concretes and a Scotch pine. It really was all about the Christmas tree, really. We got the tree setup in the living room and then turned around and went out again to do some more shopping. It turned out to be too busy a day to fit any biking into. Over the coming week, we’ll work by day and decorate the tree by night, working just a little bit each night.

This weekend’s combined two days of cleaning and holiday decorating stirred up a lot of dust and a lot of memories. Anne found old pictures, old letters and old report cards. Here is an example, Dan’s fourth grade Above and Beyond progress report, the teacher’s summary.

Dan does well meeting the challenges in the program. He is a very creative young man. His enthusiasm leads him to loud talking or outbursts at times. He enjoys working on the projects, especially science.

That’s my boy! Anne found the following photograph of Frank and me, both younger and thinner. My hair was still coal black and Frank still had his hair. What she was most excited about though, was a letter from Michigan State, announcing her winning of the Alumni Distinguished Scholarship. The envelope had on it, six stamps and six copies of the words, special delivery, one of them handwritten. Inside the envelope was the expected letter, but there was a telegram, both announcing the award. I joked that Harry probably first thought that the telegram meant that someone had died. I was right, but this telegram only had good news to tell, now one of many happy memories.

Shop ’till Ya Drop, Locally

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Much has been made of the Black Friday hubbub. Many people go to pains to make sure that everyone knows that they do not participate in this event. I would expect no different. Only 20% of Americans that shop for the holidays go shopping on Black Friday. Not shopping puts you solidly in the majority. Shopping on Black Friday seems more sport then commerce to me and as of late it has become increasingly a blood sport. Today, Saturday, is supposed to be a shop locally day, counterpoint to yesterday’s big box excesses. This sort of humanitarian consumerism seems as pointless as Friday’s opposite extreme. No shop will succeed or fail on one day’s sales. I propose a more traditional business model, give from the heart. Don’t buy to impress. Don’t buy just to check off a name from your list. A great gift takes planning, it should be what the recipient wants, but it should also say something about the giver too.

I went bicycling today. I beat the rain that has now descended upon Saint Louis. I got 15 miles in the park. It was warm enough to ride in bib-shorts and a short-sleeve Kaldis jersey, not bad for late November. This will probably be the last time this winter that I can ride in such attire, but I’ve already said that before, so who knows. Other then that activity, it has been a quiet day. I think that everyone is as tired as I am, after all of yesterday’s non-shopping exertions. We watched “the game”, Michigan vs. Ohio State. Anne threatened to call her father every time Michigan made it into the red-zone, “Hi Daddy, what’s ya doing?” Dave and Rey proceeded to while away the afternoon watching college football. I took a nap instead, something about riding 55 miles this holiday weekend.

Yesterday, at Pi, I asked Rey, if his sister, Ashlan, had seen any celebrities in NYC. He answered yes, Jason Sudeikis, a cast member on “Saturday Night Live”. He had bought a sandwich in the shop where she works. Dan turned indignant at this turn of the conversation, “Why didn’t you ask me that question?” He proceeded to list the celebs that he has seen in LA. Danny DeVito and spouse, Rhea Perlman, who I already knew about, their daughter is a classmate of Dan’s. Likewise, I knew of his sighting of Jay Leno, driving around town in a Model A. New to me were Ellen Page (“Juno”, “Inception”, “Whip It”) who was having lunch with two unnamed actresses that appeared in the movie, “But I’m a Cheerleader” and Michael Cera also of “Juno” fame and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”. There were more, but I didn’t know them, so I can’t relay them.

Night Falls Before Christmas

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Night falls before Christmas and it is quiet in the house,
No one else is stirring, except for my spouse,
I’ve hung all of our stockings with care,
And tomorrow will make it look like Saint Nick was there.

The children are all out as I got ready for bed,
With the effects of plum wine spinning my head.
Mom with her knitting and me with a night cap,
Had settled to couch and just begun to nap.

When out in the yard there arose a great deal of chatter,
I sprang from the couch to see what was the matter.
I grabbed up my camera and turned on its flash,
Tore open the door and then slipped and went splash!

I fell on my ass, due to new-fallen snow,
Slipped down the steps and yelled, “Lookout below!”
When, I finally came to and my eyes began to clear,
I saw there before me family members, all very dear.

Some were quite old, others lively and quick,
I knew in a moment, this was my gift from Saint Nick.
Less rapid than eagles, like pelicans they came,
And they whistled, and shouted, and I called them by name!

“Now Jaybird! now, Jane! now, Banana and Karen!
On, Janet! On, Crisco! On Frank-ski and Tristan!
Carry me to the porch! Prop me against the wall!
My brains! I’ve dashed away! Dashed away all!”

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
[This is a convoluted metaphor that last week flew,
From one of Anne’s kids, with great difficulty too.]

And then, in a twinkling, I stood on the roof,
Prancing and dancing and kicking up my hoofs.
I threw back my head, and was turning around,
When I fell down the chimney in a single bound.

I awoke dressed in bandages, from head to foot,
My piled clothes, all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys had been used to prop up my back,
I looked like a peddler, having fallen on his pack.

But their eyes-how they twinkled! Jay’s dimples were merry!
Jane’s cheeks were like roses, Karen’s nose like a cherry!
Frank’s droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of Chris’ chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe I found clenched in my teeth,
And strange smoke circled my head like a wreath.
I had a broad smile and a little round belly,
Which shakes when I laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

I’m chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw my reflection, in spite of myself!
A wink of Jay’s eye and a twist of Carl’s head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

They spoke not a word, but went straight to their work,
Even though Clement Clarke Moore thinks I’m a jerk.
And laying a finger aside of their nose,
And I thought that The Sting, was as far as that goes!

They sprang all away, and like a team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew some with a Scottish thistle.
But I heard Jane exclaim, ‘ere she drove out of sight,
“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”

We got our snow for Christmas.  Not a lot, but enough.  The pictures are from early Friday, so there is more snow on the ground now.  Apologies to Clement Clarke Moore.  Everyone else, we wish you a very Merry Christmas!