So Many Cookies

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Christmas Cooking, Sony A7 III, Sony 90mm f\2.8 macro lens

Camera Girl is like a food terrorist. She festoons treats around her kitchen like so many high-caloric land mines. And there I am blasted to bits over and over by all of these irresistible gastronomic pyrotechnics. I know how awful will be the penalties I’ll suffer when the holidays are over and how many hours of exercise will be needed to work off the hundreds of thousands of calories of delicious, delectable evil that she has surrounded me with. But eat I must. Over the course of almost five decades, she knows which foods I cannot resist. The cookies; grandma (or white), chocolate chip, oatmeal and the chocolate dipped coconut macaroons. The pies; apple, coconut custard, pumpkin, cherry and more. And that’s not even counting the ice creams and cheese cakes. And all of this will be after the sheer tonnage of lasagna, meatballs, sausage and filet mignon. Oh, the pain, the pain.
I rate my chance of surviving this onslaught as minimal. I reckon that if the EMTs arrive while I’m still breathing, they will advise her that as a purely practical triage decision they should leave me and move on to the next 911 call. At most they may spend a few moments berating me for allowing myself to come to this pathetic end.
But in all honesty, I acknowledge, that all things considered, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Gathering around the holiday tables groaning under the weight of Camera Girl’s bounteous feast is the highlight of every year. Enjoying delicious foods with family and spending time with the people closest to me in the whole world is well worth any bout of indigestion that might occur. Each of the rituals and ceremonies is a touchstone to the past. These same words and actions bring me back to the time when I was a child and eating these same foods and gathering together with family was the highlight of our holidays.
And to ensure that this tradition will continue, Camera Girl has her daughters and now her granddaughter over each year to knead the dough and shape the cookies that they bake for Christmas. And my son and sons-in-law and grandsons share in the expectation that these cookies will be there in the years to come. And I hope they do. Family traditions and gatherings may be the most important social functions in our human existence. They don’t fall under any government program and they aren’t mediated by any of the organs of modern life. TikTok and Meta don’t decide what’s the correct way to break bread with family and I doubt that the Kardashians or Taylor Swift even know what a grandma cookie tastes like, never mind know how to bake one.
So, whatever your traditions and whoever you gather with for Christmas, enjoy the time off away from the soul-deadening dictates of our woke institutions and brain-dead social media influencers. Use the time wisely to spend time with the people who actually mean something to you and enjoy that time together.
God bless us all, everyone.

Some Christmas Music Choices

photog Current Events, Music Reviews, Reviews ,

What to listen to after you’ve been stuffed with Christmas dinner?  Take your pick.

Mid 20th Century American Christmas Songs

Classical instrumental Christmas

Traditional English Carols

I guess to be fair I should include the 1970s, 1990s and 2020s versions of Christmas music.  But I have a weak stomach.  So I’ll leave that to Ryan Seacrest and his “Dick Clarke’s Rockin’ New Years Eve” cavalcade of  sewage.

A Christmas Wish 2023

photog Current Events, OCF
Christmas Cooking, Sony A7 III, Sony 90mm f\2.8 macro lens

Christmas Eve is again arrived.  And even the busiest among us will, hopefully, put aside the day-to-day struggle and embrace the traditions of the past with friends and family.  Of course, those with young children are in the thick of it and have the primary responsibility to transmit all the customs and follow all the protocols for the children.

But even oldsters like myself are free to join in and contribute to the atmosphere of traditional cheer.  In fact, as a bridge to the long-ago times when a richer meaning was attached to the holiday, we ancients can perform a special function.  We can give a perspective into Christmas that provides a more satisfying rational than just an excuse for Amazon to sell toys and demented pop singers to screech and gyrate to “All I Want for Christmas is You.”  You can explain that even non-Christians recognize the beauty of the Christmas story and empathize with the holiday’s mandate for all people to share in a truce from preying on each other and try to feel a kindred spirit with all mankind.

And for Christians it is a celebration of the coming of a new covenant that calls on all men to treat each other as brothers and recognize the divinity of the human soul and the necessity of treating each other with the requisite dignity.

And just as importantly we can have a great time and make memories that will last a lifetime.  I always eat myself into a stupor on Christmas Eve and Day.  Camera Girl is a wonderfully good cook who always overdoes holiday meals, especially desserts.  And I’m often in danger of eating myself into an early grave.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how I eventually go.  But as they say, “What a way to go!”

We’ll be out at a family feast on Christmas Eve and at home with about the same crowd on Christmas Day.  This year will be much like the recent past but as always there will be new happy and sad tidings to talk about and we’ll welcome new acquaintances and remember sadly those who are gone.  And we’ll tell all the same stories but including to some who have never heard them before.  And we’ll talk about the New Year and everyone’s hopes and plans.

And after everyone has gone home, we’ll finally stagger into bed at some late hour and groan from all the food eaten (at least I will).  But the magic will still have performed the miracle.  I will feel at peace with the universe for at least the week between Christmas and New Year.  After that, the horrors of our fallen world will have a whole year to wear away at my faith in humanity and my stomach lining.  But it’s enough to have this holiday and to share it with the people I love and try to regain my equilibrium and pack on a few pounds that I can use as an excuse to keep up with an exercise regimen.

I hope whatever rituals you follow are joyful and satisfying and provide the mental and spiritual renewal necessary to make it through another year.  And as Dickens wrote, “God bless us all, everyone.”  Even you Democrat weirdos.

24DEC2023 – Quote of the Day

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It is from the shadow of a cloister that there emerges one of mankind’s greatest very greatest scourges. Luther appears; Calvin follows him. The Peasants’ Revolt; the Thirty Years’ War; the civil war in France; the massacre of the Low Countries; the massacre of Ireland; the massacre of the Cévennes; St Bartholomew’s Day; the murders of Henry II, Henry IV, Mary Stuart, and Charles I; and finally, in our day, from the same source, the French Revolution.

Joseph de Maistre

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 2023 on OCF

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I am going to try mightily to avoid politics tomorrow and the day after.  I’ve already written a political screed but I’ve scheduled it for 5 am December 26th.  Essentially, “Do not open until the day after Christmas!”

I’m going to look around and try to find some holiday related material to post or to link to.  Of course if the storm troopers swat my Christmas party I’ll probably defy my own edict and produce a screed from the back of the Bradley Assault Vehicle but short of that I’m going to try to take the high road this year.

2024 – Us and Them

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Without question we are now living in a new period of American history. It’s palpable. Every action of the regime and its partners in the bureaucracy reinforces the idea that they no longer want to follow the rules of the game. If somehow “the people” no longer recognize the obvious rightness of their rule then extraordinary means are justified because by definition, the people must be under the influence of misinformation or disinformation or (heaven help us) malinformation. In which case any action is justified up to and including the rack, drawing and quartering and finally burning at the stake.
I can’t even completely define the full extent of the change but you can sense it in the way that people on both sides of the fence talk and also who they will and won’t talk to. Maybe the easiest change I can point to is the fact that the two sides are no longer trying to convince each other of anything. Mostly they now just talk to themselves but to some extent the two sides are still trying to convince those in the middle to choose sides. But that middle has shrunk quite a lot. The spread between the Left, Middle and Right used to be 30%, 40%, 30%. Now it’s more like 40%. 20%, 40%. It’s still an important 20% but it’s not the same exercise any more. Instead of trying to finesse someone with a better sales pitch, both sides are now shouting bitterly at those in the middle about their blindless to the stark reality around them.
And because the reality is currently very stark indeed, the Right is having the better of the argument. Even empty-headed white feminist suburbanites are looking past their hatred of Trump and voting their dwindling bank accounts. For these dwellers in the middle there’s no permanent place on the Right. They’re part of the Left’s coalition for as long as they benefit from affirmative action. Lately white women have been starting to lose their preferred status on the Left as various other constituencies like “BIPoC” and “LGBTQ” flavors of the month increase in status and numbers. Will they reliably shift to the Right? I guess only if sex based affirmative action were to end. But that’s a long way off.
But getting back to the original point the Left and the Right do not try to convince each other of anything. The Right used to try to work in good faith to find a middle ground with the Left. And since the Left never negotiated in good faith that just meant a steady retreat leftward by the Right.
But all that has happened in the last few years has convinced any conservatives who aren’t brain dead that compromise is an illusion. Resistance and conflict are the only way to interact with the Left. And so that is the way to distinguish between media outlets that were supposed to be conservative and those that actually are. The neo-cons are still out there and you can hear them “making the conservative case” for voting for Nikki Haley or Chris Christie. Even the formerly conservative Fox News is now squarely in the neo-con orbit. Of course, they hate Trump. I guess that’s the acid test. But for me the Haley thing is the tell. It shows what their job is. Fox News isn’t there to tout Joe Biden. It’s to fool the dumber conservatives into thinking Haley would be a better version of Donald Trump. All the tax cuts without the mean tweets. Sort of JEB! 2.0. That is how the Left is going after the 20% in the middle. Biden is poison, so they’re trying to sell Haley. The fools will think that Haley can compromise with the Left and we’ll all live happily ever after.
But the 40% on the Right is finally awake to reality. They know they live in occupied territory and they are adapting to the situation. What they no longer have to do anymore is make believe the Left is part of their country. They never were but now it’s crystal clear. And as dire as our situation is, it’s still better to be making decisions based on clarity than based on delusional thinking. Us and Them.