2025: December 27: Christmas

Honestly, this was a great Christmas. We had snow the day before, so it was a white one. In the morning I walked dogs at the shelter first thing, and while I was there church bells were ringing out all over town, up and down and across the river, and it made me happy to think about the good things about Christianity. I'm not a Christian but I do think about Jesus sometimes and how he wasn't here to mess around. Be nice to strangers, share your stuff, don't fight, etc, and actually do it, don't just talk about it.  

Ella was home for a few days, which was lovely. She gave us a tree she'd designed and made from walnut and two kinds of oak, with branches that swivel. She knows we're bad at making decisions and each year we put off getting a tree until it is too late, so now we don't have to think about it and she doesn't have to hear about it. She left yesterday and is spending her break in New York City picking up odd theater jobs because she's impressively hard working.

The lit-up box is the very fancy chocolate advent calendar Michael got for us from Vosges. We first found Vosges at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, where they have a tiny store and a sign that says "voted world's best chocolate" and Michael said "I'll be the judge of that" and damn if it wasn't very very good. But not cheap, so we get it on special occasions only. Or if we're in O'Hare, which is the kind of place one needs a little chocolate to get through. 

I was not feeling like cooking a giant feast, or even a small one. I grew up with lamb as a Christmas tradition and I love it, but I've felt less and less like cooking industrial meat over the years, and ever since seeing the movie Killer of Sheep, lamb has been harder for me to face. (It is an excellent movie, but spoiler alert, some sheep get killed). So I made a leek and goat cheese quiche and damn, it was one of the best things I've ever made. Then I made pecan pie, so it was essentially two pies for dinner and it doesn't get much better than that. 

The next morning I went for a walk and look at this beautiful sunrise in the park, warning me of the storm to come (and the storm did come - last night we got several inches of snow and sleet and freezing rain). 

In New Zealand they say "red sky in the morning, shepherds' warning," but here in the US, the warning goes out to sailors. Or is it the other way around? Whatever, it is one of those things that's different. Like ladybirds vs ladybugs. 

2025: December 21: Winter Has Begun

It's the first day of winter here in the northern hemisphere. Sunset today will be at 4.35pm and sunrise tomorrow is 7.29 am. I thought holiday lights were tacky until I came north and realized just how bleak and gray and dull and cold the shortest days are up here. The various festivals of light suddenly made so much sense. Now I welcome holiday decorations as the bright colorful bringers of joy and hope that they are. We've had a bitterly cold December, temperatures rarely above freezing for weeks, so the promised return of the sun will be most welcome, even though it won't be warm for months. I understand how various cultures thought they needed to do a deal with the gods to make sure the sun did come back. Yet I'm not at all a daylight-savings-all-year-round person. That, honestly, is a position that can generally only be enjoyed by people who don't have to be at work until 9am, plus the history of daylight savings involves a big con played by the Chamber of Commerce in order to get Americans to spend more money after work. (If you don't believe me you can read Michael Downing's book, or maybe just this interview with him on PBS.) But, as I do so often, I digress. 

You want to know what else brings joy and color? The arrival of the high school music department citrus fundraiser. I used to be able to buy them from Ella every year, then she went off to college and the dark age of citrus began. But this year, a friend's child entered high school. They're in a different district, but apparently it is a tradition that transcends borders, so I ordered a Small Citrus Sampler. 

Each one a little glowing sun.

It reminds me of the boxes of grapefruit my Grandma Figg used to send from the sunny North Island every year down to us in frost-prone southern Dunedin. We'd eat them for breakfast and make marmalade, which I love. I'll probably just eat these straight, though. There's too much sugar in marmalade. 

Ooh, speaking of sugar, here's a sign I saw a few weeks ago in a local middle-school. Once you've sat in the back of a bunch of seventh-grade social studies lessons, this ban makes total sense. There's spillage, for one thing, plus do you have any idea how much energy thirteen-year-olds have when they're NOT amped up on caffeine and sugar? Lord knows they don't need more. 

God bless all middle-school teachers, now and forever.

2025: December 14: Red Tailed Hawk

Every day awfully shitty things happen and so do wonderful things. I'm currently sitting here trying not to look at any more news about the Bondi shooting. Racism, radicalized masculinity, guns, the internet, or whatever else causes people to do dreadful things, it's all exhausting.  Thank goodness for all the beautiful birds. Which also kill, sure, but only because they're hungry, 

Here is four seconds of a red tailed hawk I saw on my walk the other day. (At least, I think I'm showing you a video. I can't tell from the preview if it is working or not.) This is the time of year when you see the hawks out everywhere. 

This post was going to be all about the car turning over one hundred thousand miles. The first and only new car I've ever bought, we've had it nine years and nine months. But then I started feeling weird about celebrating a car and my ownership of it. Because cars, while awfully convenient, are killing us in many ways, both slow and fast. They turn us into isolated rage machines, we hit each other with them, we're spewing exhaust into the air, we're not walking or talking to each other, and we're paving over the world to make room for all of this. It's so hard not to be complicit. Birds don't have to think about this shit. 

I was driving during The Moment, and took this photo when I stopped, because numbers are cool. 

2025: December 6: Cat beds

Our house is full of too much stuff and much of it is a cat bed. 

Now, the cats have perfectly good purpose-made spots that they will use: 

This tower was some of the best money I have ever spent.

We call these "Nesty." Alfie used to love his and would suckle it, until the day he barfed in it and now he won't go near either one of them. Ida still enjoys hers.

But the cats also have the ability to turn anything into a bed. Ida is especially good at it: 

Pizza Box Bed

Pizza Stone Pillow

Top of the Bookshelf Bed

The Fancy Herman Miller Chair From the Mid-Century Modern Store That Now Has A Beach Towel On It.

The Couch, Obviously

Yoga Mat Bed

The Side of My Head (But Never My Lap).

Alfie has just a few favorites: 

The Heat Register and How Can You Blame Him? Warmest Spot in the House. 

Weirdo Crouching Cat Bookshelf Spot

As we continue through our slow but determined Get Rid Of The Clutter project, anything that is or ever was a cat bed will be among the last things to go. 

2025: November 29: Still on the Thanksgiving theme

It's been a nice week. 

First, Michael's birthday. We got take-out and Michael unwrapped his present from his mother - his childhood train set - which sent him down a nostalgia tunnel. Sarah (his mother) is engaging in a gradual process of "Swedish death cleaning," in which you sort out all your things before you die so no-one has to do it after. We (ok Michael, but what is his is mine, etc.,) have been the recipients of a number of lovely things - last year she sent him a beautiful print, for example. 

When Ella arrived, she spent quite some time inspecting the set to determine how it was made and out of what. "This is unusual plywood." ... "They had their blade set a tiny bit too high." and taking photos of the undersides of things to send to her classmates' group chat. 

Then, Thanksgiving. We bought a turkey from a local organic farm, made a few classic side dishes, and enjoyed a 3.30 pm feast. Why one eats holiday meals at times one never usually eats, I do not know. At one stage during the preparation, Ella asked me about the John Prine lyric  from the song "Grandpa was a Carpenter: he "voted for Eisenhower because Lincoln won the war," which is a question I spent years training to answer, then Michael started playing a John Prine album and Ella and I sang along tunelessly while we cooked (actually, I think Ella has a better voice than me. I'm the tuneless one). 

I was not up for a selfie, so here are Michael and Ella toasting to family togetherness. My mother made the gravy jug in a ceramics class sometime in the 1960s and this is pretty much the only time I ever use it. 

After we'd recovered from all that food, we played the New York Times Crossword Puzzle game from 1978 that Ella had found at a flea market and bought for Michael's birthday. Michael won, shocking no-one, and I got slightly grumpy at one stage when I remembered that I don't like losing or looking ignorant in public. Then I got over it and we enjoyed ourselves. We're not traditionally a game-playing family, but that may have just changed. 

Michael listening while Ella explains the instructions.  

Then Ella took off back for New Haven yesterday because she has lots of school things to do and I have spent the last two days filling the freezer with turkey soup, which we will eat through the long dark winter that's about to descend. 

2025: November 22: Pilgrims and Turkey

It has been another week of observing student teachers, which means another week of watching them try really hard to impart knowledge and skills and get frustrated by the larger systems within which education operates - a middle-school student chronically absent due to housing issues who understandably can't make homework a priority was one example out of many. 

Still, there were some fun and inspired moments, like the lesson where 7th graders, having spent several days reading primary documents, had a class discussion on the question "Should We Celebrate Thanksgiving Or Not," The question itself is a trick one, because the answer isn't necessarily the point, rather it is to get them to understand how complex colonialism is, to be able to use evidence to support a claim, to be able to disagree civilly with peers, among many other things. 

The students took it wonderfully seriously. There was the one who I'm half expecting to make their family sit through a land acknowledgement statement before their turkey dinner. And the one who spread out their hands to the class and said "But food IS love. You prepare a meal to take care of people."

And then there is the person down the street from me who puts up a Thanksgiving lawn sign every year. Not even a caricatured Native American joining Joe Pilgrim there for the harvest feast.

Someone get my neighbor some primary documents, stat. 

The power of the fabricated national origin story, man. I mean, the pilgrims couldn't have been more against religious freedom, yet here we are, proud of them, for what, exactly? And Plymouth was only one of many colonies in North America, yet the the myth centers on them why? Their Englishness? Is the truth really so scary we have to work this hard to deny it? Yeah, yeah, I know.

2025: Sunday November 16: But is it art?

 I've been having conversations lately about creating meaning in art, or, specifically, about NOT creating meaning, not forcing meaning, and instead letting story come through discovery. It's all been kind of liberating for me, a list and outline maker by both inclination and training. For instance, I thought I was writing a story about the intersection of individuals and structures of power and some part of me knew this was all too earnest and so in the process of making my characters human, one of the things I did was give them all mother issues and I didn't even realize the pattern until a couple of people pointed it out to me. I've decided not to investigate this too closely, I'll just notice it out of the corner of my eye as I write and see what develops. 

Otsiningo Park, you can just see the Chenango River behind.

I'm fairly certain a beaver did this before the park people cut the tree down to stop it falling on the path, but I've never seen a spiral pattern quite like this on a beaver stump, so I'm not 100% sure. Yet since I can't imagine the person who stopped by the river and chipped patiently away at a tree, let's just say, yes, this is the work of a beaver. I love looking at this and I think it is beautiful, but did the beaver care about that while it was gnawing around the tree? Is it art? Does it have meaning? Do any of these questions matter? 

Here, just for comparison and fun, is a photo I took in 2018 of a beaver deforestation and dam-building project in progress. Quite a different style. 

Binghamton University Nature Preserve