Tag: family gathering

Pass the Paschal Lamb

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Well, Easter has arrived and Camera Girl is killing the fatted calf (well, she’s serving beef anyway).  She’s going all out and in addition to the roast beast there will be lamb and a pasta course with the requisite meatballs and sausage, and various other paschal delicacies like stuffed mushrooms, rice balls and so forth.  So that means we’ll be stuffed to the gills by the time dessert is served.  She’s serving four different homemade cakes and various ice cream flavors along with Klondike Bars which are an especial favorite of several individuals (including me!).

All of this food will incapacitate some of the attendees (including me!).  Probably the girls will avoid the worst ravages as they are more moderate in their grazing and sluicing habits.  Whereas all three generations of men will be fighting over possession of the recliners in the living room to better accommodate their bulging stomachs and comatose brains.  I don’t assume there will be any great demand for movies from this tranquilized crowd but just in case I’m trying to decide what classic cinema I should have queued up for their viewing pleasure.  I think when I was a kid the choices were “The Ten Commandments,” “Ben Hur” or “The Wizard of Oz.”  Now “Ben Hur” is easily lined up with Easter.  “The Ten Commandments” also is linked since the Last Supper occurred on Passover and the movie chronicles the occasion of the first Passover.

But exactly what is the link between Easter and “The Wizard of Oz?”  I guess back in the 1960s the television networks must have had to pay top dollar to air that children’s favorite and they must have thought it would seem even more special if it happened when families gathered for a holiday.  I guess I can continue the tradition this year.  Well, unless the kids stage an insurrection and demand some vapid modern show.

Of course I could go another direction altogether.  A double feature of mid-century science fiction (let’s say “Them!” and “The Thing from Another World”) or W. C. Fields’ “It’s a Gift” and “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.”  Both of these options would provide entertainment that greatly exceeds what would typically be found on the cable channels today.

But maybe what we should do instead is even more revolutionary.  Maybe we should sit around and talk.  After all, how often does the family all get together in one place and find out how we’re all doing?  There’s a lot going on in the family.  Businesses are being started, students are entering the work force.  There’s even a romance that will be represented at the table I believe.  That’s a lot to discuss.  Maybe that’s what we should do.  After all, pretty soon those finishing school will start dispersing far and wide and since I’m getting up there who knows how many more times, we’ll meet face to face.  So, I should take the opportunity to spend some time talking to them while I can.  I think that’s what I’ll do.  Let’s see how that works out.

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.

Thanksgiving 2025

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Tomorrow is Camera Girl’s D-Day.  The family comes over for a twenty-six-pound turkey and all the trimmings.  I counted up the individual food courses and it came close to thirty.  So, this is ridiculous and I asked her if she wants to start cutting back on all this preparation or get the daughters to help and she shook off the suggestion as heresy.  Apparently, she lives for this.  And I’m glad.  I think we all would miss something if she didn’t put this particular menu together in the traditional way that everyone in the family now looks at as the only way to have dinner on Thanksgiving.  The grandkids have never known a different menu at Thanksgiving and that’s going back over twenty years for some of them.  All in all, that’s an amazing track record.

Of course, one day things will change.  One day the grandkids will start families of their own.  And they won’t be able to come to our house every year.  Or maybe we’ll just get too old to run Thanksgiving.  But for now, we live in that golden era where all the grandkids think this regime is eternal.  And I’ll let that be the party line.

Tomorrow we’ll gather for the feast and sit down at 2pm.  I’ll have the honor (!?!) of carving the turkey and sitting at the head of the table as pater familias but all the power is vested in Camera Girl as boss of the kitchen.  She will be scurrying around making sure that the various dishes are available to people at all sections of the table (or tables, the crowd spills over onto a couple of smaller tables added onto the main table) and truth be told I don’t think she even eats a mouthful of food for the first forty minutes of the campaign.  But once the table is completely stocked and everyone has filled their plates for the first time she will settle into her seat and stay there until dessert is needed.  And this will be an assortment of home-made pies and other desserts.  The only thing I always insist on is the availability of several gallons of good quality vanilla ice cream.  Inevitably there will be several other flavors represented; chocolate chip, strawberry, even heretical flavors like cookies and cream.  But for me the gold standard is vanilla.  It is a pure element, possibly the quintessence of the Thanksgiving dessert.  And my grandchildren agree with me vehemently.  There was an open revolt one year when vanilla ice cream wasn’t clearly visible on the dessert table.  I joined in their cries of protest and Camera Girl was forced to head into the basement to the back of the freezer where the vanilla was hiding.  Since then, there’s been no more nonsense about it.

And after we’ve stuffed ourselves with turkey and fixings and dessert, the grandsons and I will head into the living room to watch our holiday movies.  Typically, we’ll bust out the Laurel and Hardy version of “March of the Wooden Soldiers.”  Afterwards I’ll try to put on one of the versions of “A Christmas Carol.”  I think they feel that the Alistair Sim version is definitive.  But we’ll see.

So, the site may be kind of quiet tomorrow but it’s for a good cause.  Happy Thanksgiving to all you folks out there.  Enjoy the day.

Escape from New York 2025

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Three down, four to go.

So, yesterday I went to Brooklyn for a family reunion.  Driving through the Bronx and Queens I could see the Manhattan skyline and as much as the city has become a cesspool, that skyline is beautiful and impressive.  It’s a bittersweet sight.  My family has lived in New York City for a hundred and forty years.  We loved it and were proud of its grandeur and dynamism.  And now?  Well, pride is impossible.  Just within the time we were travelling down the streets of Brooklyn I could see thuggery and depravity on display.  A city of eight million people that used to be a showcase of culture, business and the Arts reduced to third world barbarity.

Now it’s a dysfunctional space where crime, poverty, homelessness and drug-use dominate the landscape.  It infects everyone who lives there.  It degrades all the magnificent monuments of the past and makes a mockery of their former achievements.  And it makes travelling into its bowels dangerous, frightening and infinitely difficult.  Where can and can’t you drive?  Where can you park your car and find it in one piece when you return?  Where can you walk in the day but not at night?  All the fun questions of NYC urban life.

But ultimately it was worth it all.  For the second time in a few months, I saw members of my extended family that I haven’t otherwise seen in decades.  I met the second and third generations on these branches of the family tree and saw the family resemblances and the new additions to the stock.  Charming.

Ultimately America is convulsing under the forces that the elites can bring to bear.  How we react and compensate for these disturbances is all we have any power over.  My family, for the most part, has abandoned the cities and looked for opportunities and safer surroundings where we could find them.  And that process continues.  Those that stay in these dangerous areas tend to pay a heavy price.  There are physical and mental health consequences to trying to raise children in a hellscape.  Premature death is not unheard of.  And it’s sad to see this reality.  But it’s inspiring when you see someone who has struggled with the traps of that world overcoming the problems and succeeding.

And when it’s over we always have the epic, “Escape from New York!”  I was riding shotgun and the death-defying feats of my driver were truly inspiring.  You haven’t experienced real terror until you’ve cut across five lanes of traffic to make an exit on the BQE.  But we got out and then my drive home from the suburbs was uneventful.

When I reached home Camera Girl was entertaining grandsons Tertius and Quartus with a hockey game on television.  Apparently, this New England sport has caught on with this generation of my descendants.  And I have no objections although I myself have never been able to see the puck on television.  I have to go by the noise of the crowd to know when the puck has actually ended up in the net.  Mostly I just watch the players assaulting each other around the periphery of the rink.  Which is entertaining in its own right.  By the time the boys left it was after midnight and I crashed into the blessed oblivion of sleep.

Well, this was late for obvious reasons.  And the next few days will be equally sketchy because of my slightly punchy condition and the length of my workdays tomorrow and Tuesday but I will attempt to produce some kind of content.  Adios.

Easter Sunday 2025

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Well, it’s here.  If there is any more primal marker for spring than Easter, I don’t know what it could be.  The resurrection of God is about as on the nose as you can get.  This is our chance to embrace life.  Even old codgers like me, maybe especially old codgers like me get to see up close and personal the immortality of the human soul.  We see our children and our grandchildren do all the same things we did forty and fifty and sixty years ago.

We can see the little ones hunt easter eggs and gorge themselves on chocolate and complain about any of the specialty foods they hate and get bored sitting too long at the table and chafe at any fancy clothes their mothers made them wear and want to go outside and play and complain about the may flies and ask when the desserts are served and fight and fight and fight with each other.

As it was in the beginning, and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen.  But of course, it’s not us without end.  For me I can see that my part in the pageant is drawing to the close.  A decade or two should finish me off and leave my kids to ponder on the mysteries of the spring rebirth cycle without the incredible wisdom that they’ve come to expect!  Boy what a relief that’ll be for them.

And that’s alright.  I actually get a kind of kick out of thinking that after I’m gone, I might be the subject of some stories that play upon some of my idiosyncrasies.  In fact, there already are several stories among my children about the crazy things I’ve done that they remember.

Among my siblings, stories about my father’s expressions, habits and failings are our most cherished memories.  And to be totally fair he could take a joke at his own expense.  If stories of that sort about me became fixed in the family lore I would feel greatly honored.  It’s much better to be gently mocked by your descendants than loathed.  I’ve seen both cases and to have your foibles as the source of laughter is very strongly to be preferred.  As I’ve said before, being remembered and talked about after you’re gone is a form of immortality.  And who doesn’t want to be immortal, I ask you?

And along with all the traditions something new is being added.  Camera Girl tried her hand at a new dessert; tiramisu.  It’s very nice and I commend her ambition and enthusiasm to extend her range.  But what I want is the Italian cheesecake and a large portion of vanilla ice cream.  I’m on a perpetual diet so I look forward to these holidays as an excuse to indulge my sweet tooth with something worthwhile.  And ricotta cheesecake, vanilla ice cream and some nice strong coffee is exactly that.

So, for everyone out there who will be celebrating Easter or even if you just used to enjoy celebrating it in the old days I say, “Christ is risen!”

Never Go All in Against a Witch

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Some of the grandkids were over today to complete my transformation into a beached whale.  More food appeared from heaven knows where and eggnog and desserts rounded out the meal.  And after some talk of this and that we got down to a high stakes game of Texas hold ’em.  The game was played completely for pride with no cash changing hands.  The chips were divvied up and play went on for hours with fortunes waning and waxing almost at random.  All except Camera Girl.  She is not only a canny bettor but also possesses supernatural luck.  And finally, it came down to her and me.  I was holding a pair of aces and the flop was nothing to write home about.  She and I were betting very heavily.  On the turn an ace showed up.  The final card was a second queen.  We had put most of our chips in the pot and I went all in.  I showed her my two aces and she showed me her pair of queens.  Four of a kind!  I accused her of witchcraft and spent the rest of the game railing at her from the sidelines.

Luckily coffee was served shortly after the game was over and I could gracefully move on from my somewhat unsportsmanlike behavior to my more dignified pose as pater familia and patriarch of a great nation.  All question of who beat whom in a meaningless game of chance was left behind and more important matters took center stage.  Discussions about which were the best Christmas toys or gifts were spirited.  The remote-controlled planes seemed to be the people’s choice.  I watched some cellphone video of these battery powered wonders buzzing the neighborhood at remarkable speed and surprising acrobatic agility.  The remarkable thing was how they survived the crashes I witnessed into the ground and trees.  It seems the drone revolution has reached the adolescent fraction of the American population and it is being enthusiastically embraced.  I was happy to see that these flying wonders did not include munitions of even the mock variety.  A small victory for world peace.

Tomorrow is work.  But I’m hoping it will be a short week and I’ll be able to extend the family fun a while longer while the kids are still off from school next week.  It’s heartening to see that simple games and food can still serve as an adequate excuse for fun.  No video games were played.  We even left the television off.  Sibling rivalry and parental scolding were not absent and some folks were too drowsy from food to avoid snoozing on recliners but for the most part the generations showed sufficient tolerance for each other to bridge the boomer/millennial/zoomer chasms of culture and conditioning.  And even that most fraught relationship, father-in-law/son-in-law was carried through with mutual regard and tolerance.  Having now been on both sides of that relationship I have equal respect for both partners in that arrangement.  It’s a strange but important set of rituals that bind up families and benefit everyone.  But for grown men it will always be a somewhat awkward interaction.  Luckily the wives and daughters can help to smooth out and buffer the whole dance.

I was thinking of writing something about the H-1B visa squabble going on.  But I’ll leave that up to various talking heads to battle it out.  Trump should be smart enough to figure out which way the wind blows on immigration, legal and illegal.  If he can’t figure it out, he’s not going to have a very productive presidency.  Instead, I’ll spend a little more time calculating the odds of getting a four of a kind in a Texas hold ‘em hand.  Now that’s an important question.

Scenes from a Family Gathering

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I was at a gathering of the clan today and that’s always fun.  The younger generations are beginning to take their place at the table and unsurprisingly they’re beginning to sound almost as cynical as their ancient ancestors.  I spent a goodly amount of the day just enjoying the banter and intra-familial mockery.

But I did find the time to check in with some of the folks I don’t have a chance to see as often.  And this was interesting.  These are folks who aren’t constantly obsessed with the political situation.  They’re busy with work.  They live in the belly of the beast in NYC and they have no illusions about changing the political status quo.  But even among these folks there was a deep abiding anger and a sense that we’re reaching a breaking point.

One guy in particular was very angry about the sexual “transitioning” of children.  He was incensed that medical associations and world-renowned hospitals were championing what he considered criminal malpractice against children.  I had no idea how upset he was about this.  He said he hoped that these hospitals and the doctors involved would be sued into bankruptcy and would even face prison sentences for what was in his mind medical child abuse.

I told him that this one aspect of the woke culture seemed to be the one that was most likely to be rejected out of hand by people and even governments because it had the potential to cause a revolt of a clear majority of the population.  And I wondered if it could be the trigger for rejecting other parts of the woke agenda.

Another conversation I had today was about the story of the homeless guy who robbed and beat up the man who gave him the coat off his own back.  Apparently, the comments by Mayor Adams trying to excuse the crime as being the result of “pain” had outraged large sections of working-class New Yorkers and reinforced the nature of the broken criminal justice system in the city.  This other fellow I was talking to was of the opinion that it would be very hard to get a jury to convict the subway Samaritan, Daniel Penny because all of the witnesses in the subway car are adamant that he was justified in subduing the berserk homeless man who was terrorizing the women on the train.  And many of these witnesses were minorities.

I told him I wasn’t so sure of that.  After all the prosecution will probably be allowed carte blanche in cherry picking the jurors for the sake of diversity.  But I did agree that conditions in New York were getting so bad that even leftists were losing patience with the revolving door arrests, rampant shoplifting and terrifying violent lawlessness.

And then we finished with the meal and moved on to the desserts.  I confess to eating way too much cake and washing it down with good coffee.  The long drive home gave me a chance to think a little bit about how the current chaos is playing inside the blue bastions like New York City.  It’s starting to get to them.  The damage being done is substantial and even the true believers are getting punchy.  Will this change the votes in November?  Nope.  But it also tells me that the breaking point is getting much closer.  And when it finally cracks things will change, one way or the other.  What’s the expression?  What can’t continue, won’t.