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Showing posts from December, 2024

Sound and silence

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Holiday tunes emerged and bloomed in our part of the world, this year as ev’ry in collective mem’ry. Festive music is as unifying and dividing as any ritual practice. In our own lives we might find ourselves on one or the other side of mirthful-musical enjoyment or annoyance, at any sung given time.  O holy night, so few opportunities to start a sentence thusly. Last Christmas was probably it for most. I don’t want a lot for Christmas except to let it snow, let it snow.  Would referring to a list be cheating? Yes, better to draw these from the surrounding air and to dive deep into reminiscences. It was a Sunday this year when the first bars of Mariah Carey’s seminal classic drifted through our household. A neighbor girl sang them through our daughter’s toy karaoke machine.  Last Christmas, I heard the Wham! song enough. The very next day, I heard it again. This year, what do I hear? A Jimmy Eat World cover from 2001 I had no idea existed despite having bought their long...

Relax to the max: rumination on vacation

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Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year are three of four of our national holidays established in 1870, along with Independence Day. Christmas and New Year both fall on a Wednesday this year, which will make life interesting for a couple of weeks, with students excused from classes and businesses operating on holiday hours. Oh and happy Thanksgiving, belated, good tidings to all in the days and nights coming, especially during holidays and celebrations. Christmas is coming up fast. Lots to do, oh, lots to do. Has everything been arranged? Is all in place? Down the corn stalks and harvest a young conifer tree or resurrect a facsimile from the basement like me. Decorating and undecorating will be a continual process unto and through the New Year, till straggling adornments have hung so auld long syne that neighbors begin to call in wellness checks. Old Man Winter came in on the heels of November and revived the northern Midwest’s annual, first-snow derby out on various county roads and stat...