Christmas cards

I love Christmas! I love the story of the birth of Jesus, the celebration of light coming to the world in the darkest season of the year, a time set aside for the greeting of family and friends. Gifts are not my big focus although I enjoy wrapping gifts a lot. I love the feasts, the gathering around tables and all the seasonal goodies: cookies, spiced cider, egg nog, fruit cakes, gingrbread.... For me, it's not Christmas without a tree--a real one that fills the house with the scent of fir. Maybe most of all, I love the cards. Yes, I even love the infamous Christmas letters. I want to see pictures. (I'm always just a bit miffed when my friends send pics of "the cutest children/grandkids in the world" and don't include one of themselves. They are afterall the friends we know and love.) Pictured are 18 of the cards that David & I have sent through the years.



I used to have one of every card we had sent since our marriage in 1971, but the mice-in-the-attic disaster of a few years ago caused me to lose some of the earliest. I noticed patterns: the earliest cards were cardinals, then we went through a spell of Christmas trees decorated with birds and wild life, then there are all the rabbit cards from the house bunny years. Wise men have been a frequent motif. David always wants blue cards; I want deep red and gold.

A decade or so ago when my arthritis made it difficult to write, we began to order our cards pre-printed and used the computer to print lables. For the past 5 years at least, we have ordered our cards from cardsdirect.com and we get to choose the verse as well as the design. In early September we selected our custom verse, scriptures from Hosea and Isaiah: May you obtain joy and gladness and may sorrow & sighing flee away. Arise! Shine! The Light has come.

Our Christmas letter is written and I've started the mailing process. The average household sends about 30 cards; we ordered 125. We'll have cards left-over if I run out of time or I'll have to send left-overs from previous years if I keep thinking of people to add and find the time to act on my thoughts. No matter how many cards make it into the mailbox, we'll always feel like we missed someone we really want to wish, Merry Christmas & God bless you in the coming year.

VOTE! Houston Run-Off

Let one of those jingle bells be a reminder of the run-off election. Early voting is underway now. My endorsements in this race go to:



ANISE PARKER for Mayor of Houston because she is the better qualified candidate with the background, experience, and independence to do the job. Hubby said he was voting Locke in the main election but changed his mind and like me voted for Ray Morales. Locke's tax returns raised issues that concern us. As we have learned just how strong the influence of the Houston Sports Authority is with this candidate and because the one thing Houston needs least is yet another stadium burden, it's easy for both of us to go with Anise, a Rice alumna. As her campaign brochure said, "What's wrong with sensible?"


We don't live in District A or F, so I don't get to vote for City Council in those races but I urge those who can to consider Al Hoang in District F because I like his concerns for Southwest Houston and the infrastructure.


Stephen C. Costello, Houston Council at-large position 1, had my vote in the main election and easily retains it for the run-off since he is the qualified candidate in this race. He is a civil engineer with the background to decide Houston's most important issues: infrastructure, flooding, environmental and he also has the experience to handle the business end of the city.

Sue Lovell, Houston Council at-large position 2, is doing a good job. She had my vote in the main election and will have it in the run-off.

Jack Christie, Houston Council at-large position 5, had my vote in the main election and retains it based on his concerns and views regarding recycling, environment, and infrastructure which align well with mine. He gets a boost because the incumbent opponent has sometimes irritated me greatly with ill-considered statements.

M.J. Kahn, City Controller, gets my reluctant vote because he is the only choice left in the race who may be qualified to do the job. If his opponent cannot manage his own finances, I can't trust him with my city.

Anna Eastman, HISD Trustee District I, was my choice in the main and remains so in the runoff. This may be the rare race that has two acceptable candidates.

Early voting continues through Tuesday, December 8. Election Day is Saturday December 12. Early voting locations and election day polling places and other information is available at: http://www.harrisvotes.com/

What I'm Reading...

Fiction:

Barrie, James M.: What Every Woman Knows. (1906) Project Gutenberg. Kindle. We watched Finding Neverland (Netflix) and the movie prompted me to review Barrie's life and browse a couple of his books. (It's a good movie but it does play fast & loose with the facts.) I don't remember having read this particular play before. Clever, fun and I think it would stage rather well.

Potter, Beatrix: The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter. Project Gutenberg. Kindle. We watched Miss Potter (Netflix) and so I'm reading bedtime stories.

Richmond, Grace S.: Red Pepper Burns.
Richmond, Grace S.: Mrs. Red Pepper. (1913)
Richmond, Grace S.: Red Pepper's Patients. (1919) Project Gutenberg. Kindle. I read these books as a child and have read them at least once more as an adult. The stories are about a doctor in the early 20th Century. What stricks me about these books on this reading is the frequent mention of drug addiction. These writers are part of the "living clean" movement: fresh air, exercise, don't drink.

Palmer, William J.: The Detective and Mr. Dickens. A Secret Victorian Journal Attributed to Wilkie Collins, Dicovered and Edited by... New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990. The author is/was English prof at Purdue. He writes a compelling story set in the dark underbelly of London at night . The sinful pleasures of male Victorian life are the primary plot device. Every woman in this book is a prostitute or a pander or a victim. As one would expect given the sub-title, several scenes are quite graphic and push into pornography. In real life (as opposed to his life in this novel) Collins had arthritis and a laudanum/opium addiction. Needed to see Dr. Red Pepper Burns.

Bedside Book:

Peterson, Eugene H.: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A conversation in spiritual theology. Kindle. I continue my slow exploration, reading and re-reading, of issues of salvation and the relationship between Exodus and Mark.

SEASONS:

Whitaker, Evelyn: Laddie. We are exploring the 19th Century woman novelist as theologian.

Veterans' Day. A love story...

Today is Veterans Day. Daddy still calls it Armistice Day, remembering "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918 marking the cease fire on the Western Front of WWI. His father, Pvt. Zach Carter Cummings, Co. D 39th Infantry 4th Division, was marching toward the sound of the guns when over the hill he heard the silence of peace. Instead of fighting in the bloody trenches of France, his war experience was with an occupation force in Germany. Here is a photo of my grandfather, taken "on the Rhine River Germany April 1919."

And a photo of the girl he left behind him, Miss Oma Calahan, in Farmersville, Texas. She wrote on the back of this photo: "I wasn't mad when this was made. I was just facing the sun." This photo was made in the autumn of 1918 and was one of those she sent to him in a letter.

For family and others who would like a bit more of the story, I've transcribed and linked three of my grandfather's letters:

1. in late October as he sailed for Europe
2. on November 19 at the edge of the battlefield in France
3. on November 28 from Germany

at my domain: http://www.evelynwhitakerlibrary.org/blog_the_life_i_read/id9.html

And as she always does on this date Mother recited a poem:
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/mccrae.html

Autumn Leaves of Grass

My favorite season has always been autumn. Morning cool. The last of the garden. Harvest. I'll never forget driving over a hilltop in the Poconos and seeing a child-gone-crazy-with-the-Crayolas landscape. During my childhood, the family often made an October drive to the mountains of New Mexico to look at the aspens and to gather apples. David & I vacation with the Colorado colors.

It's commonly said that Texas doesn't have seasons but like much that is commonly said that's incorrect. Our deciduous trees are turning now although they are out-numbered by evergreen live oaks and pine and magnolias and tropicals--Houston truly is the emerald city. When we make our Christmas road trip across Texas there is often great color; we're all just too busy looking at Christmas lights to notice. It's like the robins which in Houston are not a sign of spring but of winter. Each place has seasons of its own but one must have eyes to see.

As I've been driving across Texas from the Gulf Coast to the Hill Country, I've enjoyed being back in touch with the seasons. What I've seen on the most recent trips are the autumn grasses which are truly as lovely as the wildflowers of spring.

There is great variety and diversity of grass--tall, short, straight, stiff, plumed, lacy. This photo is pink-haired grass waving in a row at pavement's edge but the colors are limitless: green, chartreuse, gold, brown, black, red, maroon, orange, purple, aubergine, silver, copper. Grass in fields, grass in roadside clumps, grass in swaths of self-sown sweeping waves. Seed time and harvest. A festival of grass.

I, of course, named this post for Walt Whitman's famous poem:

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1764.html

But in looking for that link, I found this poem by Brian Patten:

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/998.html

Mighty is our LORD and great in power

whose wisdom is beyond all telling...

Sing a song of thanksgiving to the LORD...

who clothes the hills with grass.

Psalm 147: 5,7,8

What I'm reading...

September is always a very busy month for me and this year the busyness lingers into October. A trip to Clifton, a family wedding, Colorado vacation, a trip to Clifton, David's surgery, church library, church chairs, another trip to Clifton... Yikes! who has time to read. I do. The crazier things get the more I need words, words, words to keep me sane.

Vacation reading:
Poole, Ernest: His Second Wife. Kindle. Project Gutenberg. Originally published in 1918. Having enjoyed his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, His Family, I gave this author who is new to me another chance. Another good read by an author I plan to read again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Poole

Showalter, Elaine: A Jury of Her Peers. American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Kindle. This compelling book by the author of A Literature of their Own sabotaged my vacation fiction binge. I've spent the last month reading and chasing rabbits e.g. women authors I've read and those I haven't and I was surprised at the number in both categories. I've got more reading to do than I'll have time to do it. What struck me most was how time and again a woman writer was "silenced as much by her activity in a repressive political movement as by her domestic life." And, I wonder if feminism is not at least to some extent yet another repressive political movement. Women who celebrate heterosexual marriage and motherhood (certainly in the late Victorian era and I suspect in other past eras and the present) are still silenced by women as well as by men with the label "sentimentalist." Surely some of those writers have something of interest to say and a few at least say it well. But then I have a hobbyhorse: http://evelynwhitakerlibrary.org/

Fiction:
Kelley, Jacqueline: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2009. Recommended by my friend, Cathey R. This coming-of-age book focuses on a young girl and her grandfather, interweaving rural Texas in the early 20th Century with Darwin. This a wonderful story beautifully told. Must reading for anyone (of any age, of any gender) who enjoys good fiction. I found it even more delightful as a break from and continuation of the study of Showalter.

Smith, Alexander McCall: Friends, Lovers, Chocolate. New York: Pantheon Press, 2005. Cathey R. passed on this book from her collection as part of the thank you for the border collie puppy adventure. I had read and enjoyed The No. 1 Ladies' Dectective Agency and at least one other book in this author's series. This is the 2nd book in the Sunday Pholosophy Club series and the first that I've read of that series. It stood alone very well and was more to my tastes; probably due to the Edinburgh, Scotland setting. Good light ready with a thought provoking phrase now and then.

Bedside Book:
Peterson, Eugene H.: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. A conversation in spiritual theology. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2005. Kindle. Yes, a Kindle book works at bedside if I remember to keep the battery charged. I plan to linger with the book for quite a while. It is dense and rich in food for thought. I have long loved the introduction to John's Gospel and his presentation of Christ--the Word, the Logos, the creative speaking of God. Peterson is building on and expanding my appreciation of this text and helping me see application in my own life.

Seasons:
Johnson, Elizabeth A.: She Who Is: the Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. New York: The Crossroads Publishing Co., 1992, 2002, 2003. This month we are discussing the Chapter 1. Introduction: Speaking rightly of God and Chapter 6. Classical Theology.