Work With Hope

I wish I could begin this penultimate post with something more original than commenting on how quickly the twenty-three days have sped. However, that is my overwhelming feeling this morning.

It is traditional on the next to last post for me to reread all of the earlier posts and comment on my impressions of yet another year, so here goes.

Despite my concern that I’ve fully mined the Christmas season, I wrote a post every day. Of the 22 posts, two were essentially a picture with minimal comment, but every other post was a multi-paragraph idea. I never hit a truly dry day with nothing to talk about In fact, I have two or three ideas that never made it in.

I wrote earlier than usual most days. In the last two years, I have been completing the post before falling asleep. This year, probably because I’ve been home for most of the time, it’s been easier to grab a little time to write every day.

Rereading the posts, I am most embarrassed with my poor proofreading. I see mistakes in every post which I will correct later, but I apologize for anyway. I wish I could promise better moving forward, but at my age one recognizes that major changes are unlikely.

I really enjoyed doing the dueling blogposts in Fridays. I am grateful to Andrea for suggesting it, and I hope we can do that and other blogging exercises in the future. I particularly liked having a blank canvas topic and seeing how far I could go from the predictable approach. It reminded me of when I used to teach essay writing and I told kids that a teacher would get mainly predictable essays and one way to get a better grade was to go off the board and give the teacher something unpredictable.

Of course the content is highly personal. There are only two or three “issue posts.” This is a reflection of the change in my life which I discussed in my solstice post a couple of days ago. In some ways I see this as the lynchpin post of the entire season.

Fewer comments, and probably fewer readers this year. I suspect soon that this blog will be a journal, more private than a locked book stuck under the mattress. I enjoyed almost every minute of doing this, and I am looking forward already to doing it another year.

Ok, tomorrow is my “Christmas wish” post. As usual I haven’t yet thought of one, so I’ll be off to the Target of my brain for some last minute shopping.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Image: https://donorbox.org/nonprofit-blog/christmas-fundraising-ideas/

Probably the first Christmas song that children learn in the United States is “Jingle Bells.” However, for most youngsters, the first sacred Christmas song they learn is “Away in a Manger.” The simple lyrics capture the nativity tableau with concrete images of the lowing cattle, bright stars, and little Lord Jesus (not to be confused with little lord Fauntleroy).

The song first appeared in American publications in the 1890s. In many publications the text was attributed to Martin Luther, claiming it was a song he wrote to sing to his children. Occasionally it is still referred to as “Luther’s Cradle Carol.” However, the text of the carol does not appear in any of Luther’s writings, nor does the song appear to have been sung in German until well after its publication in America.

If you ask any child how to sing the carol known universally as “Away in a Manger,” they will begin with the two high notes descending through the line (probably the melody going through your head right now) . However, this melody, known as Mueller, is not the only melody for this song. In Great Britain the Cradle Song melody is better known.

While I’m sure that most children would find this scandalous, I’ve always been a fan of the Cradle Song melody. The Mueller melody is far more suited for a solo voice. The high start and the hard to navigate trip down the scale have caused more than one car wreck at a school concert. While there are few things sweeter than a small child’s voice singing the lines with an earnestness only a child can bring, it is not the most attractive melody in other situations.

The Cradle Song melody is simpler in many ways, but this simple rhythmic structure makes it well adapted for choral voices. Though it does not have the dramatic rises and falls of Mueller, it has a peaceful beauty and is more easily performed well. Choirs often ornament the melody with harmonies and soaring descants. Thus each verse can grow in complexity and glory.

I am not suggesting that kindergarten teachers force their children to sing the song to an unfamiliar melody. Children are traditionalists, and anything that different must be wrong. I’m simply saying that no one over seven years old should ever sing that melody.

The same goes for “O Little Town of Bethlehem”!

As always, I welcome your comments.

Image: https://spinditty.com/learning/Christmas-Holiday-Guitar-Songs-Away-In-A-Manger-Chords-Strumming-Pattern-Melody-Lyrics-Guitar-Duet

This is the third of the “dual blind blogging” exercises I’m conducting with my friend and fellow blogger Andrea. It was Andrea’s turn to select the topic this week. She listed a few ideas and I picked BETTER TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE. So here we go.

Andrea’s blogpost can be found athttp://adkopp76.blogspot.com/2018/12/its-better-to-give-than-to-receive.html?m=1

A YULETIDE LIE

‘Tis the season for giving. If you hadn’t noticed this, turn on any television for five minutes and you will be shown this is true. Whether it is commercials where we are assured that the greatest gift is a car during “Mazda’s Season of Giving,” or numerous Christmas movies where the protagonist learns the joy of selflessness, giving is in the air.

From our early childhood we are reminded by our parents that it is “better to give than to receive,” and we mindlessly nod at the cliche while staring greedily at presents under the tree. It is understandable and commendable that parents help to guide their children away from greediness and toward generosity However, I’m wondering if the perpetuation of this approach might actually cause as much damage as benefit.

Making giving morally and sentimentally superior to receiving creates an unbalance in every gifting situation. The giver is morally superior to the receiver, so giving becomes an act of self-righteousness. The receiver receives a gift of indebtedness, playing the inferior role in the transaction.

Let’s examine this using the characters from my yearly favorite A Christmas Carol. After his reformation, Scrooge gives generously to those around him, opening his heart (and his coffers) for the first time to the spirit of Christmas. The chief recipient of his largess is his poor clerk, Bob Cratchit and his family, most notably his long-dying son, Tiny Tim. Scrooge is doubtlessly a better man than he was when he gives to Cratchit, but is his action objectively better than the family’s joy in receiving this gift? If so, this model simply reinforces the class division between them.

This relationship is somewhat blurred by our custom of reciprocal gift giving in which both parties are giver and receiver. Indeed, I have experienced giving a gift card to someone who in turn gave me a gift card of equal value. Though both were honest expressions of good wishes, it’s hard to see any real giving or receiving going on.

Frankly the possibility of giving is only made possible through the gift of receiving, and if the Lord loves a cheerful giver, he must also appreciate a humble grateful receiver. Scrooge’s gift is doubly blessed by the fact that there can be no commensurate repayment. The Cratchits’ role in the blessing is equally essential. It is good to give and it is good to receive.

Staying within the Scroogisphere, in The Muppet Christmas Carol there is a beautiful non-canonical moment when reformed Scrooge is given a small gift without any reciprocation. The look in his eye at receiving the gift of a simple scarf indicated that his transformation is complete. He has become a generous giver and a grateful receiver.

It is my experience that there is an untapped generosity in most people. They are anxious to give, anxious to help. The humble spirit of allowing oneself to be helped to be gifted, is a vital part of this elixir of generosity and is every bit as good as the gift itself. It is good to give and a blessing to receive.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Image:  https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Scrooge1951?from=Film.AChristmasCarol1951

Between today and tomorrow the winter solstice will occur. Apparently this year the actual shortest day is the 21st, but I have always thought of the 20th as the first day of winter.

To call the winter solstice a day is a misnomer, for the solstice itself is not a day, but an instant. The earth’s northern hemisphere’s tilt from the sun reaches its apex and gradually moves in the other direction. The exact moment of this solstice is 2:23 pm tomorrow PDT.

Charting the flow of a human life, or any human endeavor, is not as simple as charting the seasons. We can chart life expectancy and other key events, but where major transitions take place is less clear. A peak cannot be recognized except in hindsight. The people of Rome never thought, “This is the apex of the empire. From here we will go downhill.” Though there must have been a peak from which the fading empire never, though the fits and starts of decline, reached again.

Likewise human stories are often told in terms of rises and falls. A person grows in competency, ability, experience, and power through a period of accomplishment before a gradual decline and letting go, ending in the ultimate letting go of death. To quote a sports cliche, “Father Time is undefeated.”

This is all a (very) long way to my own reflections this solstice. I wonder if I’ve peaked…or more realistically, I wonder if I peaked about 5 years ago.

In the coming year I will be turning 60, and though I am not days away from a retirement home (though I qualify to purchase at Leisure World), I’m not going to be an astronaut. Every year more and more doors close permanently because life is limited, and you don’t get to try all 31 flavors.

Though I am very happy with my new job and enjoy the work and the travel, my climbing spirit, which used to consume me, has gone dormant. There are a number of prestigious positions for which I could be considered, but I have no interest and no energy. I did my time at the tiller, and I don’t want it any more.

This fading carries over into my life. I live a much smaller existence than I did in my 40s and early 50s. I live in a small apartment and though I am comfortable, I don’t want a lot of things. Even cycling this year has taken a step back as the drive that used to get me up before the dawn and push me over hill after hill has a quieter voice (I need to address this in 2019).

However, as I shrink in some ways, my life is grown in others. I may no longer possess that drive to do it all. In some ways I have even more. For the message of the solstice is that it is the shortest, but everything grows from that point.

So as I rode today (!), I thought about the many good things that are growing in this next stage. I have an amazing daughter who brings me joy and terror as I watch her ascend. I have friendships at a deeper level that bring me more satisfaction than ever before. I am blessed with a wonderful girlfriend with whom to experience so many good things in life and to help each other bear the burdens. Though I don’t know if I am accomplishing as much, my life is fuller than ever before.

Seasons change and each one brings its losses and blessings. I hope that this solstice will bring a new birth of good things in your life!

As always, I welcome your comments.

Image: https://www.google.com/amp/s/people.com/home/winter-solstice-2018/amp/

I was watching the movie Nutcracker this afternoon. During the opening credits there was a scene of a magician automaton performing the cups and balls trick. I’ve seen this mechanical wonder before, and I have been fascinated by the history of automata for years.

Mechanical wonders like the magician have existed (or at least are rumored to have existed) since the ancient Egyptians. There are stories throughout history of amazing performances of lifelike birds, animals, and even people. Automatons could dance, sing, and even write (the movie Hugo was based on such a writing automaton, which, if not actual, was matched in abilities by other historical creations).

Seeing the magician reminded me of the mechanical wonder that I saw most often when I was a child.

When my Dad moved out to California from North Dakota, he lived with his Uncle Jerome and Aunt Urbanie. After meeting and marrying my mom and having four children, my dad regularly took his family to visit his Aunt and Uncle, particularly during the holidays.

I remember almost always enjoying these visits. Jerome and Urbanie were kindly and fun. Both of them were born in Belgium and moved to North Dakota as young adults. After many years of farming, they moved their family to Los Angeles where they raised their daughter Bertha.

Their house was always wonderful. In front were dozens of whirligigs and windmills, all hand made by Jerome, and in the house there was a special room where kids could play with many unusual toys.

There were Wheel-os, Slinkies and a bird that repeatedly dipped its beak in water. But the best of all was the Bartender.

The Bartender (Later study told me that this character was based on Charley Weaver, but I had not yet watched the Hollywood Squares) was not a pure automaton because it ran on batteries, but the complexities of its routines governed only by gears and switches amaze me to this day.

As pictured above, the Bartender held a shaker and a cocktail glass. He would first shake the drink and then pour it into the glass. Bringing the glass to his lips, he would “drink” and smack kid lips. Finally his cheeks and nose would light up red and smoke would come out of his ears. Then the routine would begin again. I could watch forever until my Uncle would turn it off, his Belgian frugality shoeing through not wanting to wear out the batteries.

You can see a video of the routine here

Though I don’t remember the details, I remember at some point when I asked to see the Bartender, I was told it was broken. I don’t know what ultimately happened to it.

I am amazed by computers and robotics, but my amazement cannot equal the joy I felt watching the little jerky Bartender running on gears and springs and batteries.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Image: https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/thomson-roddick-and-medcalf-carlisle/catalogue-id-srthoms10025/lot-7da9bb15-4743-44c2-aca2-a423012a38ed

The National Christmas tree of the United States is in Washington DC. It is a living tree near the White House that has been decorated every year since 1923. This tree might be slightly overshadowed in the minds of many Americans by the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, a cut tree from Wallkill, New York. Both are American grown trees, the bounty of the land.

The National Christmas Tree of England is in Trafalgar Square, but the tree always comes from Norway. This is not because there are no suitable trees in Great Britain (another position taken by a bloody immigrant!). The Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is a yearly gift from the City of Oslo to the people of Britain in remembrance of the help and support provided to Norway during World War II. This gift of friendship and remembrance has been given every year since 1947.

Every November the tree is cut in a Norwegian forest and transported by ship to London where it is decorated in preparation for the first Thursday in December, when thousands gather for carols, poetry, speeches, and the lights that remember a friendship that predates almost all who attend.

I like this thought of a tradition of thanks that outlives the generations that benefitted. We are so seldom conscious of the many wonderful things that are done for us by so many even today. It might be good at Christmas time to think of the many hands that helped us be here right now that we will never know.

We have received more gifts than we can count or would fit under any Christmas tree

As always, I welcome your comments.

Image: https://www.google.com/amp/s/secretldn.com/londons-christmas-lights-switch-on/amp/

Like most people, I abhor the commercials before YouTube videos. My favorite image is SKIP VIDEO IN 05 in the bottom corner, and I’m always quick to press as soon as I can. However, once in a while a video catches my eye and I watch until the end.

Today was such a day. I was waiting for a video, when five seconds of a commercial caught my attention and I wasn’t interested in the video any more.

The commercial, as I discovered at the end (though the color scheme should have told me), was for Tiffany’s. I’ve visited Tiffany’s before, though one wouldn’t describe me as a “Tiffany’s shopper.” But this commercial was visually interesting and just a bit mad.

A Tiffany’s employee falls into a land of strange characters and bewildering scenes reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, surrounded by Tiffany products and the tell-tale Tiffany blue. The commercial culminates with a mad tea party all to the music of Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” and is interrupted as the sales clerk is jarred awake back at the Tiffany’s counter.

Alice has always been a favorite of mine, and I love various treatments of this material. I also like commercials that work to entertain as much as to sell. It is even possible for a commercial to be a work of art. So today, this is my gift to you.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Image:  from Alice in Wonderland

By now most of us have already mailed our Christmas cards (at least those few of us who are holding on to this paper bound tradition). Part of the process for most is a review of the names to adjust addresses, add names, and in some rare occasions remove a name from the list.

I don’t know if this is true with most people, but frankly a person is more likely to be removed from the TSA “Do Not Fly” List than they are to be removed from my Christmas card list. I carry names forward long after I’ve stopped actively carrying them in my heart (and barely in my memory).

There is no logical criteria for retention or removal of card recipients. Certainly reciprocation barely figures in if at all. I don’t know how universal is my experience, but my send to receive rate is less than 50%. Every year I think of setting up a send receive matrix, but then I remember that I have things to do.

I also have not often let the vagaries of human relationship terminate the Christmas card relationship. I have sent cards to people with whom I’ve had fallings out, people with whom I barely talk, and people I frankly don’t like (no one on my current list fits into this category).

I guess it feels too final to actually take a name from the list. There is a kind of death in this culling. In fact I always move these addresses to a “Dormant” spreadsheet in the chance that they might someday re-emerge like Lazarus.

Looking through my list, and thinking about the other lists I’ve seen, I’ve found several types of people that maybe should be cut down but who persist from year to year.

1. Asymmetrical relatives: Of course you send cards to your immediate family, often grandparents, uncles, aunts, and first cousins…but there sometimes a outlier, a second cousin-in-law with a limitless list and a strong sense of genealogy.
2. Former coworkers: In most offices, Christmas cards are usually distributed using the inter-office mailboxes (or just leaving cards on desks). When one leaves one office for another, usually a few addresses are added to the list. Addresses that often stay far beyond the next job change.
3. Never answerers: These are people to whom you send cards who never send cards themselves. Since you never receive a card from them, there is no indication of when it is appropriate to stop sending on your end.
4. Downgraded: Friends who used to receive a gift, and though that no longer felt natural, it was equally weird to not greet them at Christmas, so a card (usually with comments about not seeing each other enough and strong intentions to see each other more in the new year) will suffice.
5. Newbies: Every year you add a few new names just to “try out.” You s well might remove them next year. Ten years later you wonder how that name got on there, and how it stayed on so long.

I love sending Christmas cards to everyone on my list…no matter how long they remain there.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Image: http://copycatcollector.blogspot.com/2011/12/collection-124-vintage-christmas-cards.html?m=1

Tonight I’m going to my favorite party of the year. In preparation I made a new appetizer, puff pastry with artichoke pesto covered with pepper jack cheese. I hope it tastes good.

Well, apparently it was ok

This is the second of the “dual blind blogging” exercises I’m conducting with my friend and fellow blogger Andrea. When we were talking about the topic for the week, I suggested “Silver Bells,” not with anything in mind, but because it felt relatively Christmasy. So here we go.

Andrea’s blogpost can be found at https://adkopp76.blogspot.com/2018/12/silver-bells.html

SINGING STARS

My love for Christmas music has been well documented in these posts through the years. Beyond the standards there are a huge number of “ugly Christmas sweaters” and guilty pleasures in my heart (it would take many therapy sessions to unpack my unexplainable fondness for “Christmas in Killarney”).

A Christmas album that was a great favorite of my family when I was in my early teens was “John Denver and the Muppets, a Christmas Together.” It was a offshoot record from a television special, though there were a number of additional songs. One of these was “Noel, Christmas 1913,” a solo by John Denver accompanied only by piano and flute.

The lyrics are taken from a poem that was written by the poet Robert Bridges (1844-1930), though they are somewhat simplified to fit the musical text (a recitation of the original poem can be found here). It is a simple reflection of a wanderer on a cold Christmas Eve, who stopped to take in the peaceful scene of the English countryside. Suddenly the poet heard music from the bell towers of the towers of the small villages

A frosty Christmas Eve, when the stars were shining

Fared I forth alone where westward falls the hill

And from many a village in the water’d valley

Distant music reached me, peaks of bells aringing

The constellation of sounds ran sprinkling on earth’s floor

As the dark vault above with the Stars was spangled o’er

The profound beauty of the music of the bells, reminds the poet of the first Christmas, when shepherds heard the music of the angels fill up the sky, which leads to my favorite line in the poem (as slightly rephrased in the song):

And they sat there and they marveled, and they knew they could not tell

Whether it were angels, or the bright stars singing.

Brought back to the present, the poet continues to listen softly to the “starry music”of the church bells.

If the Nativity is more than just a birth, but the heralding of that birth, then the angels (and the stars) singing to the shepherds is the central image of the event. The poem and song affect me because they capture in a contemporary scene of bells ringing echoing in the singing of the stars.

It is interesting to me that this beautiful song has never caught on as a standard, and though it has been occasionally recorded my minor singers and choirs, at least on Spotify, there is no recording by a “name” star. Ironically, no other stars have sung this. I suspect the even simplified poetry feels too stuffy for a people obsessed with “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree.” Do yourself a favor and listen to it here

The image of “singing stars” obsessed me during my artistic late teens and early twenties. As I have mentioned here before, about the age of 17 I started making fabric art banners of Christmas themes (and other themes). I always wanted to do something connected with this poem and song, because I believe they captured the true epiphany of Christmas separate from commercialism (though I recognize the irony of finding this in a muppets record) and even formal religion. Christmas bells, whatever they may signify, are a universal experience, unmissable by any in earshot, linking the many disparate elements of creation into one song, as if the stars were singing.

Now, for anyone who reads these for sweet harmless fun, you might want to stop right here. The rest of this story is somewhat dark, because the tapestry of Christmas is made of light and dark thread.

Every time I hear this song I am carried back, almost Scrooge-like to a Christmas time long ago. I was planning my Christmas banner for the year, and once again I came back to “Noel, Christmas Eve 1913” and the image of singing stars. Several drawings later I spoke to the man most responsible for my whole crazy banner art thing. He was a Deacon at my church and he was my friend through my teens into early adult hood. I wanted to be like him more than anything in the world (which probably explains my awkward year in the seminary). Anyway, he was an artist, and he made amazing banners which, coupled with my mother’s skill as a fabric artist, set me on own path of exploration. There are stylistic elements of his work that made their way into mine, though I want into some different directions as time passed.

I don’t know why, but one of only a few clear memories I have of taking with him through the probably fifteen years I knew him was talking about this banner idea. He liked the image too and we explored a couple of ideas, but we never could come up with an image which could capture the utter wonder of this line that I was capable of doing with my somewhat limited needlework skills. Ultimately, I dropped it for another year, and kept dropping it each successive year until I was done with the needle and thread part of my life. But I think back to this conversation every time I hear this song.

Because, of course, as more perceptive readers have already guessed. My friend turned out to have many darker threads along with the surface bright threads of his tapestry. Obviously I won’t go into details, though I will say that I was never directly hurt…at least not in that way. Christmas yet to come would bring accusations (which I have come to believe were true), removal, and ultimately suicide. I carry these realities with me as well, and whenever I hear the song, I know that the bells and the stars sing in a really dark world. Until the death of my mother, I carried no more profound pain. Finding the peace and joy beyond the pain and confusion is the landscape of my journey. May the singing stars and ringing bells bring us all a bit of joy and peace in the midst of a challenging world.

No comments on this one please.

Image: https://www.lynnhorton.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/staredit.jpg