Blazing Santa

The photo was taken tonight, the night of the luminarias. My neighbors have a bewildering display of inflatable mechanised Christmas displays. Ten foot waving Santas, a carousel with larger than life Santa's Elves riding it. A Santa in a bubble with a snow storm whirling around him. Nutcrackers, soldiers, two elves in a hammock slung between two life sized palm trees and much much more of that ilk. The problem with inflatables is that they tend to collapse. I was looking out the window at Santa-in-a-bubble when he lurched as though shot and collapsed dramatically though his bubble remained in place. Then Santa slowly arose unwillingly from the dead. A grandchild had stepped on his cord. The Really Big Santa by the door has a dirty little secret. In the small hours of Christmas morning last year, he started to deflate, and his arm fell across a still burning luminaria. Santa caught fire and was blazing brightly enough to awaken my neighbor who quickly extinguished him. Although she was able to restore him to a semblance of his earlier self, his waving days are over, and his right arm reposes inert and hidden at his side.

My neighbors also make hundreds of luminarias and line the street and their roof etc with them. I made a hundred and they looked really puny in comparison. Also a strong wind decided to sweep through at dark and the luminarias kept catching fire or blowing out. My neighbors were able to keep their's relit until the wind moderated. I couldn't keep up with mine. The grandchildren next door also set up a table in the middle of the street and served cookies and cocoa to the people in cars who came by with their headlights out to see the lights. People who walked by also got posole and a place at a big fire in the driveway. I got a large serving which will be part of my Christmas dinner tomorrow.

Making the luminarias is one of my favorite things. First you buy brown or white paper lunch bags and votive candles. On Christmas eve or the day before you 'cuff' the bags by turning the top edges out. Then you take them to a Municipal Dirt Pile and put a trowel full of dirt in each bag. Then you set the bags out in straight lines along the roads and roofs and anywhere else you please. Before dark you light them and if you're lucky they will still be burning Christmas morning. Unfortunately the wind spoiled a lot of the displays tonight. Some people and most businesses have switched to electric luminarias. They look pretty nice, last longer than a night and probably are more dependable - we're not exactly Baghdad here, but the power does tend to go out quite often.

I think I am going to take a walk around to admire what's left of the luminarias and take mine in. More than half of them are still burning. I will reuse the candles or use them as fire starters. The electric lights are off by now, 2315. The sight-seers gone so it should be beautiful

The nights are getting shorter! Snow drop bulbs are sensing the faintest beginnings of a tingling sensation..................

Thoughts on the Pursuit of Happyness.

I cried on the drive home from seeing 'The Pursuit of Happyness', not for our hero, who sacrificed his wife and son for a fancy red car, but for all the people who sacrifice their wives and sons and don't get the car.
I've been on a sort of video and movie orgy which has caused my mind to go into hyperdrive. Mainly I have been surprised. How come a 1954 episode of Dragnet has a sympathetic portrayal of a pornographer who employs high school students as models, actors and distributors of his movies and photos? Their customers were junior high kids. And then 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' with Van Johnson from the same era, which out and out cries for an uprising against corrupt capitolist pigs. They went where all men fear to tread today, and surely at a dangerous time. I also discovered an actress I'd never heard of. Annabella. She was French. She made scores of movies between 1926 and 1971. I saw 'Dinner at the Ritz' (1936) with a young David Niven. She was very beautiful and accomplished, and the movie was fun and silly. Well worth the fifty cents I paid for it. Unfortunately my yearly viewing of my precious DVD of 'The Holly and the Ivy' was rudely ended by my computer which told me the DVD was dirty or scratched and unreadable. I am devastated. I need a shot of Margaret Leighton's tragic elegance at Christmas time.

It might snow tonight. A little fell earlier, and we had hail with some marble sized chunks falling. We went on the Posada on Saturday. There was a flat bed truck with a choir, a very loud generator, a sound system and three real guitarists followed by twelve year old Mary on a very nice mule and child Joseph followed by the mob with candles and song sheets. Some of the Spanish carols were new to me and very beautiful. We went from house to house seeking a place for Mary and Joseph to stay. It took quite a while. Then we recrossed the highway after Father John cell phoned the police to get them to stop traffic for us. Then back to the church hall for cocoa and menudo and tons of sweet stuff and mule rides in the dark which were the main reasons for the good showing of kids. I was astonished at how much they could put away! In the old days the Posada continued for nine days, then it died out until it was revived quite recently, but just for one day.

My dear and longest friend wants me to rewrite some of the dialog at the beginning of her book, which is about kids and reading. I did suggest the dialog was a bit stiff, but can I do better and still convey her meaning? I doubt it. I should have curbed my fingers on the keyboard. I like the book a lot. She touches on such subjects as the unspoken middle class fear of literate kids from bad neighborhoods.

I took the picture at the petroglyph site near here. They say there are 20,000 glyphs there. I went at sunset and had a lovely time springing about in the rocks until the light was entirely gone. One good thing about using a video camera for still photos is the light gathering capacity of the lens. Why can't they make still cameras that have the good qualities of video cameras and still give a decent resolution? 1.7 megapixels have their limitations.....

The cost of living

The 16oz container was purchased in the summer of 2005 at a Grocery Outlet or similar store for one dollar. The price is built right into the label. The 11 oz container was purchased at the same place one year later also for one dollar though the price has disappeared from the label. What caused this precipitate increase? Did the cost of corn syrup and vegetable oils etc increase? Or was it the packaging? The containers are pleasing to hold. Firm yet pliant, fitting the hand well and retaining a comfortable temperature in most conditions. The label design though unexceptional is relatively pleasing. The sky blue color is soothing and the beverage cup pictured is unthreatening and approachable. Perhaps it was the plastic that increased in cost with the price of oil. I did find a thirty-five ounce container of creamer that worked out at a dollar a pound at Walmart, but I only use the stuff when I run out of Nido when I am in my van. I wonder how the powers that be never acknowledge the real increase in our yearly cost of living?

The other cost of living I have been thinking about is what we encounter in daily situations. Today I went to a tai chi class and nearly expired of cold. The teacher said you can mentally overcome cold and Tibetans do it all the time. Not the Tibetans I saw. They kept themselves warm with heavy wool clothing and an endless supply of hot tea or water in their guts. So I suffered through the class and came home and turned on the heat and poured hot liquids through myself until I regained equilibrium. After the class a German woman lectured me on the Bill of Rights and how we should practice defending these rights in all situations. Wasn't sure if she was telling me I should have left or insisted on the right to a living temperature. The others were cold, but not as cold as me.

Another example? This involves dogs and humans. At the dog park I met an apparently pleasant couple and we talked dog talk and watched our dogs. Then a friend of mine came up with his dogs. He immediately separated his dogs and appeared to snarl in our direction. He let my dogs into his section of the park to play so I went over to chat. He really hated the other couple. Their dogs were fine with each other. I am concerned, because I like this man who is Hispanic, unemployed and has bad teeth. The people he hated were white ex military RV dwellers. All three love and rescue dogs, they are all good people. My concern is that I might offend this man without knowing it, as the ex militaries seem to have done.

I guess what this all means to me is that the cost of living, even in pleasant circumstances, is inevitably high.....