Tag: Christmas

I Am Very Sorry, Sir, Said Bob.  I Am Behind My Time

photog Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner ,

“But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there. If he could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late! That was the thing he had set his heart upon.  And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that he might see him come into the Tank.  His hat was off, before he opened the door; his comforter too. He was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o’clock.

“Hallo!” growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice, as near as he could feign it. “What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?”  “I am very sorry, sir,” said Bob. “I am behind my time.”  “You are?” repeated Scrooge. “Yes. I think you are.  Step this way, sir, if you please.”  “It’s only once a year, sir,” pleaded Bob, appearing from the Tank. “It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir.”  “Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend,” said Scrooge, “I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore,” he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into the Tank again; “and therefore I am about to raise your salary!”

Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it,

holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.  “A merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!””

Like poor Mr. Cratchit I was making rather merry last night at Christmas and just didn’t have the time or the mental clarity to write my post in time for the 5 a.m. deadline.  So with Bob as my exemplar I’ll plead, “I am very sorry.  I am behind my time.  It’s only once a year.  It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday.”

And I was.  Camera Girl outdid herself in providing enormous quantities of delicious food and ridiculously rich desserts.  I probably gained five pounds in a single day and will have to fast for a week to return my system to equilibrium.  But it was a gathering of my descendants and it was merry.  And in imitation of Dickens I’ll say,

“God bless Us, Every One!”

Merry Christmas Day 2025

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Well, here we are.  We made it to the end of the year and now we get to spend a few days reflecting on the year and looking forward to the next one.  Christmas Day will be a family gathering here at the Compound and we’ll be stuffing ourselves with rich foods and desserts and basically enjoying each other’s company for the day that the kids and those who are young at heart wait all year for.  It sounds like we’ll be lucky and have a day without snow.  The grass is still covered with the two inches that are left over from the last few days but the driveways are pretty clean for the cars to get in and out.

Camera Girl has worked mightily for the last few days shopping and cooking and baking up a storm and there will be a roast beast and lasagna and all the fixin’s.  My oldest grandson is graduating college and we’ve been talking about applying for jobs and also all of the latest technical innovations in the computer and information fields.  He told me about the computer that is now available that uses a chunk of brain cells to play pong.  That had me shaking my head.  But I’m sure crazier things are in the future.  Maybe someday they’ll grow an entire brain in a vat and then the Matrix will be for real.

Well, I’ll try to look in on the site sometime tomorrow.  But here’s hoping everyone has the best Christmas Day they can.

Merry Christmas to all of you and yours.

Maybe I’ll Swing Down to Mar-a-Lago

photog Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family, Science Fiction / Fantasy , ,

Today was an interesting day.  The younger grandkids came over with their mothers to make Christmas cookies with Camera Girl.  In addition to the real cookies, they also got to make “sugar cookies.”  This is some kind of sweeter cookie dough that they then adorn with multi-colored granulated sugar and other impossibly sweet ingredients like chocolate sprinkles.  And they didn’t just sprinkle it on.  They poured it on like cement coming out of a truck.  It was horrifying.  No one but a child could stand the saccharine sucrosity of that unholy concoction.  But of course, no one would force me to ingest that mess so I smiled indulgently and feasted on a few of the legitimate confections that were created in the kitchen.  And they were very, very good.  Sure, they’re not good for me but it’s Christmas and this is the time to overindulge.

And later on, my proof copies of “The Sniper” were delivered by the Amazon truck.  He brought them to the bottom driveway and then had to skate across the ice that had melted from the snow and then refrozen over-night.  I apologized to him for the hazard but he laughed it off and said he’d seen much worse today.

Now these “proof” copies have a watermark across the cover that says “not for resale” or something like that.  But seeing my work (or Jake Barter’s anyway) in the flesh, as it were, was kind of fun.  After all, what could be more official than finding your product inside of an Amazon box?  Why, that’s the very definition of American commerce in the twenty first century.  Thank you, Jeff Bezos!

And after a cursory inspection it looks pretty good.  The cover art is clear, the text lines up well on the pages and the paper feels right.  I’ll page through it and make sure nothing is missing or marred.  But I think everything looks like it’s a go for next month.  I’ve applied for Author status on Goodreads and I’ve authorized my marketer to set up my ad campaign and choose the keywords or whatever they call the bait that’s meant to entice the algorithm to catapult me to viral ubiquity.  I wonder if this magic requires the sacrifice of a hecatomb or at least a black lamb.  All of it seems like black magic to me.  But I figure it’s definitely worth my while to give the whole thing the old college try.  After all. What has Brandon Sanderson got that I ain’t got?  I mean other than $41.7 million dollars of Kickstarter funding, that is.  By February I may be waist deep in royalty checks.  Movie studios may be fighting each other to get me to sell them the movie rights.  I’ll probably get a call from the White House begging me to use my vast clout and get involved in the negotiations to end the Ukraine War.  I’ll probably spend a few hours in Oval Office advising Donald about domestic and foreign affairs and signing autographs for Marco and J.D.  Who knows, maybe I’ll swing down to Mar-a-Lago and advise the President on how to lower his golf handicap.

Well, we’ll see.

We’ve Got to Have Priorities

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

Well, Christmas has arrived.  No not the Day or the Eve.  We’re still four or five days away but the reality has landed.  On Sunday, Camera Girl and her daughters and granddaughter will be making Christmas cookies all day.  Now this is a major event in the holiday.  When it happens, I can grab a cookie or two with every cup of coffee she serves between now and Christmas (and even a while after).  So, this ushers in the end of reasonable eating habits until the end of the holiday.  I approximate I’ll put on five pounds between now and then.  And at my age that’s a burden because losing five pounds is painful.  It’ll take three or four weeks to shed it.

But I have to admit it’s worth it.  Christmas dinner will include both roast beef and home-made lasagna.  And I have already seen the ingredients for ricotta cheese cake and several half gallons of very good ice cream.  I even complained bitterly until she stocked up on some Klondike Bars.  I know for a fact that several of the grandchildren love them and I refused to miss out on a chance to spoil the little guys.  As I’ve stated before, I believe my chance at immortality depends on their good opinion of me after I go to that big website in the sky.  So, I groused about the ice cream and voila!  I saw them in the groceries yesterday.

So yeah, I’ll eat too much rich food and will be pretty groggy by December 26th.

But it’s worth it.  After all, the next real holiday after this is Valentine’s Day and that’s a month and a half away.  Plus, that’s just one small meal.  The next respectable eating marathon is Easter.  And whether that’s the end of March or the beginning of April that’s an eternity away.  We’ll even be close to the end of winter and that’s an eternity away from right now.  So, I’ll begin enjoying myself with those cookies and I’ll continue with my holiday movie viewing ritual and that should insulate me from whatever insanity is breaking loose in the “so-called” real world.  And it’s working I’ve skipped right over the psychopaths shooting up innocent people at colleges and on beaches and wherever else they want to target humanity.  I’ll just let the other pundits address these depressing abominations.

I’ll concentrate on coming up with a decent line of conversation with my grandchildren and providing a chance for my children and their spouses to relax for a few hours while I distract their children with desserts and black and white movies.  That seems like a worthwhile endeavor in this crazy world we inhabit.  I won’t think about the plans at the state capitol to raise our taxes to make up for the Biden dollars that aren’t flowing in any more.  I won’t worry about the attempts to make homeless encampments permanent all over the state.  Instead, I’ll compare the relative merits of the various cinematic portrayals of Bob Cratchit over the years.  Yeah, Cratchit should be next.

You Were Always a Good Friend to Me

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As all who have followed my website know I’m a connoisseur of the various film versions of Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol.”  And I’ve opined before that the premiere version of the Ghost of Jacob Marley is Frank Finlay’s portrayal in the 1984 version with George C Scott as Scrooge.

Here is the whole scene:

Now, why do I say it’s best?  Technical presentation?  Acting ability?  Faithfulness to the book?  Emotional impact?  Actually, all of the above.  In all aspects of the scene this version is head and shoulders above all the rest.

The makeup on the ghost is wonderful as are his costume and the pattern and details of his fetters.  Even his eyes appear to be those of a dead man.  Finlay’s reading of the lines is masterful and the emotions he provides are wonderfully potent.  And the lines selected are the best selection from any of the versions out there.  And the climax of his performance is his outrage when Scrooge tells him, “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob.”

Marley howls, “Business!” Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

This one speech is easily seen as the reason for the whole story.  We see the partners face to face and we see what Scrooge cannot.  Marley was what Scrooge is; a terrible human being who cared not at all for his fellow creatures, their pain and suffering.  But death and judgement have taught him the error of his ways and in his shame and penitence he wants to save his old partner from himself.

And because he was as Scrooge is, he selects the instruments that have the best chance of reaching into Scrooge’s heart and mind and shaking him out of his evil habits and awaken in him the knowledge that the most precious treasure on this Earth is the chance to use our time to comfort those around us and recognize the kinship we all should have.

So those are the main points.  But even small bits contribute to this “Marley.”  When the ghost appears Scrooge demands to know what it wants of him.  Untying the funeral kerchief from around his head, his bottom jaw drops wide open with a loud clicking noise to indicate that he is a corpse.  Only once his mouth is unbound can he answer. “Much!”

So, yes.  This is the best Marley.  And George C Scott provides a fitting foil for Marley’s mission.  He is suitably impenitent and uninterested in Marley’s gift of potential reclamation.  When told of the three separate spiritual visits he asks Marley if they could all come at once and save time.  All in all, he is completely undeserving of Marley’s gift.  But as we shall see the scope of the gift that Marley procured manages to finally break through Scrooge’s shell of callousness.

Well done Jacob Marley.

25DEC2024 – Quote of the Day

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But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there. If he could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late! That was the thing he had set his heart upon.

And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that he might see him come into the Tank.

His hat was off, before he opened the door; his comforter too. He was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o’clock.

“Hallo!” growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice, as near as he could feign it. “What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?”

“I am very sorry, sir,” said Bob. “I am behind my time.”

“You are?” repeated Scrooge. “Yes. I think you are. Step this way, sir, if you please.”

“It’s only once a year, sir,” pleaded Bob, appearing from the Tank. “It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir.”

“Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend,” said Scrooge, “I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore,” he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into the Tank again; “and therefore I am about to raise your salary!”

Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it, holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.

“A merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!”

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

Charles Dickens

 

The Intersection of Christmas and the Woke

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It’s at this time of the rolling year that we think about what matters most in our lives.  Just as Charles Dickens designed into his story we think of the past, present and future.  And at this point in my life these become very distinct groupings.

When I think back to my childhood and youth it’s as if I’m looking out on a different world.  The America of my past was like a fantasy world where opportunity and optimism was omnipresent.  And Christmas was the epicenter of that sense of optimism because children are the center of Christmas and America was arranged around providing the next generation with a future of limitless opportunity.  And that culture back then was still a Christian culture and the religious and moral aspects of the Christmas story were at the very least still acknowledged.  Even Charlie Brown ended his troubled search for the meaning of Christmas with Linus reciting the New Testament text at Luke 2:8-14.  And all this positivity and solidarity produced a remarkably happy life for the great majority of Americans.

Now look at the present.  It’s not an exaggeration to say that pessimism is the dominant sentiment among Americans of every stripe.  And young people are convinced that the opportunities their parents and grandparents enjoyed will not be there for them.  And as far as Christmas goes, not only is religion now almost abandoned by the young but any spirituality or even morality associated with Christmas has been drained out of it by the popular culture and the cultural institutions on the Left.  Christianity is only referenced as a symbol of Western oppression or the patriarchy.  What has replaced it is a confused cult of “social justice” that allows any depravity as long as it’s in the name of sexual identity.

But what of the future?  I think it’s certain there’s no way back to the past I knew.  But that does not rule out escaping from the desolation we find ourselves in now.  We do not have to try to reclaim the lost souls that surround us on the Left.  We do not even have to hate them.  But we do have to separate from them.  In their confusion and despair, they have taken it upon themselves to destroy our children by confusing them with their insane views.  This must be prevented by any means possible.  The beginnings of this resistance can be seen appearing in various parts of the country.  To know if this will be effective, we’ll have to wait and see if it starts expanding during the friendlier environment of the Trump administration.  And there is some hope that the Supreme Court will lend a hand.  There are hints in the statements after the reversal of Roe v Wade that gay marriage may be headed for a similar reversal.  As with any discussion of the future every fork in the road is a flip of the coin.  But sometimes the coin comes up heads.  So, there’s hope.  What we’ll need to do is rebuild our culture on the durable parts of our heritage.  Morality will have to be redefined to support a healthy community that centers around normal family life.  Those who don’t fit into that pattern will have to be left to the other side to find a place in the world.  We’ll concentrate on people who can face reality and want to build something positive for their children.

So here we are on Christmas Eve and I try to remember and point to the past as a template, ignore the worst of the present and hope for and work for a better future.  Now past the roast beast and gravy and let’s get this show on the road.

Christmas Movie Time

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Here it is two days before Christmas and I’ve already eaten so many cookies that I feel like a drunk in the middle of a four-day bender.  Well, there’s no avoiding the excesses.  Camera Girl is fiendish in her strategies to kill me with food.  She should hide these evil foods somewhere far away.  Instead, she lays them out all over the kitchen where even a man with a will of iron must succumb.  I’ve kept up my exercise regimen as best I can but exercise deals in hundreds of calories while pastries are measured in the thousands.  The pain, the pain.

Yesterday I watched, “It’s a Wonderful Life” in its entirety.  That’s something I haven’t done in at least fifteen years.  Many years ago, I overdosed on it.  I watched it too many times and it became played out.  But yesterday I found it fresh and enjoyable.  Of course, every scene in the movie was extremely familiar down to the slightest word and even gesture of the actors.  But I was able to appreciate just how fine the acting and directing was.  And as highly emotional as the ending of the movie obviously is I wasn’t put off at all by it.  Maybe this American Christmas Carol is fitting for the time and place we live in.  Maybe people are ready to hope for miracles again.  It’s certainly true that we need a few of them.  I’m not going to claim that heaven interceded and put Donald Trump in the White House instead of Kamala Harris.  At best maybe a divine force kept him from intersecting with that bullet that grazed his ear.  I’m afraid that heaven is not going to let us off the hook for the situation we find ourselves in.  But maybe we are being given a chance to straighten things out on our own.  The headaches that will entail are already beginning to emerge.  Well, we’ll leave the future to next year for now.

Today it was time to begin my annual “Christmas Carol” viewing experience.  I chose the George C Scott version.  And it did not disappoint.  Marley’s ghost, the Cratchit Christmas dinner and the final scene in Scrooge’s office provide all the correct notes to ensure my approval.  And as always Tiny Tim is pathetically frail and impossibly uncomplaining.  I noted to Camera Girl at the appropriate moment that Mrs. Cratchit’s railing against Scrooge during the toast moment was pitch perfect.  I could imagine and probably have heard equivalent protest from Camera Girl when some acquaintance of ours overstepped the bounds of propriety according to Camera Girl’s standards.  She does have a highly developed sense of outrage, especially when she decides that I will have to be the one to enforce it.  Women have that propensity.  Bless them.

Well, time is running out.  I’ll have to fit in the Alistair Sim and Reginald Owen versions in tomorrow.  That should be doable but I don’t think I’ll be able to get through “The Holly and Ivy” tomorrow.  Well, that can wait till Christmas Eve morning.  Christmas Eve and Christmas will be full days and I am not sure what my posting will be like.  The quotes and the photos are all pre-scheduled but my patented rants are a daily chore so I’ll have to do the best I can to put together something fitting.  We’ll have to see how that goes.  But Christmas week is here and away we go.

Getting in the Spirit

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SONY DSC

Some snow falling today surprised me into remembering how close Christmas is.  Of course, I dasn’t say such a thing aloud in Camera Girl’s presence or she would toss an oven mitt or a ladle at me for my oblivious attitude as she soldiers on in her pre-Christmas baking and cooking marathon.  She is calculating cooking and storage times down to the nanosecond as enormous quantities of baked goods, meat, pasta, cheese and vegetables are processed in the run up to the big event.  My party line is that I am available to help in any capacity she sees fit.  This merely elicits rueful head-shaking and eye-rolling.  Well, that’s my story.  And anyway, I serve many useful functions.  I am the snow removal department and I also serve as chauffeur if the roads seem too tricky for her.  And I have a thousand and one other jobs.  For instance, I’m in charge of the yearly Christmas card design and procurement.  Well, of course.  I’m a photographer.  But such things are easily forgotten by someone who can point to a table groaning under the weight of a feast.  Well, we also serve who wait and eat.  But who’s keeping score anyway?

I have all of next week off and I’m looking forward to the get togethers.  But I’ve been keeping an eye on the situation in Washington.  It’s almost unbelievable how feckless and dishonest the Biden administration intends to be right up to the final day of their reign of terror.  Biden’s pardoning of hideously evil people would be shameful if Biden and his cronies had any shame.  I have to assume that there was a price list posted somewhere for the scum of the earth to figure out whether they could afford to be freed by Hunter and Jill and whoever else wrote out the pardons for Joe to scribble his signature on.  And the Republicans don’t disappoint with their nitwitted attempts to pass legislation in the House of Representatives.  Only the dishonesty and corruption of the Democrats allows the GOP to seem better by comparison.  But it really is a sad sideshow to behold.

The clowns and the cretins, the monsters and the madmen; the whole cast of this insane drama that is playing out on the deck of a sailing ship headed straight for an iceberg.  And at this point Donald Trump is the captain and he and his crew are locked in a cutlass fight with the usual pirates and so no one is steering the ship.  Well, it should give us a reason to pop popcorn in 2025.

But this is all beside the point.  We have Christmas to celebrate and the relief from knowing that somehow, we dodged the bullet of a Kamala Harris presidency.  And, sure, so many things will go wrong in 2025.  Trump will waffle, Democrats will lie and cheat, bureaucrats will obfuscate and interfere and Republicans will prove themselves inept and obtuse.  In other words, standard operating procedure.  But things will be better than they’ve been the last four years.  God willing, the wars will start to die down.  Energy prices will come back to Earth and that will tend to drive down the prices of everything else.  And the biggest bonus, we may never see any of the Bidens for the rest of our lives.  That alone is worth a hallelujah.