The habit of holy silence

Early 20th Century New Years Resolutions

I like these old-fashioned, unselfish sounding resolutions.  "Repelling impurity" and "exercising economy" sound nicer than "drink less" or "get out of debt."

Thirty-eight percent of Americans don't make resolutions at all.  Of those of us who persist,  only eight percent manage to keep them. "Lose weight" is the resolution most destined to fail. Still, there is something about New Year's Eve that makes people reflect on the past and think about healthy changes for the new year.

One of my resolutions last year was to "be less judgmental."  John suggested I might want to renew it.  I'll keep them simple, instead of that generic, hard to quantify "get into shape," maybe just "stop eating so much cheese."

Seattle was colder than the North Pole yesterday. Can you believe that?  This El Nino has turned the world's weather upside down, and they say the worst is yet to come in early 2016.

Out in North Bend, the barn and pastures looked beautiful.  Too cold and snowy to ride, but it was nice getting above the city and out in the fresh air.

Happy New Year!

A long kid vacation

Shopping at Target with Opa

When Amanda and Tom went home on Sunday, they left something behind for the first time.  Nova and Maya stayed in Seattle for a two night visit with Grammy and Poppa (Tom's parents) and then another two nights with Opa and Oma (Jerry and Michelle) on Camano Island.

Some of the highlights were trips to be beach, Sunday school with the cousins, a shopping spree at the Dollar Store with Grammy, shopping at Target with Opa, McDonald's happy meals, Christmas light displays, and so on. Oh my, Twisp will seem like a quiet place after all that.

But how lucky those girls are growing up with loving, healthy and active grandparents in their lives. Today Jerry is going to drive them all the way home to Twisp.  Fortunately, the weather looks much better than last week on the mountain passes.

It sounds like it was a well-deserved break for the hard-working parents, too.  Amanda said they got a few "little things" done around the house, like clean and paint the kitchen.

Sweet

Oh, we got some nice Christmas presents this year.  Like a quart of delicious, pure Methow Valley honey from Amanda and Tom.  It's liquid gold, and will make a year's worth of honey-pecan granola.

Unfortunately, most supermarket honey comes from China, although a jar of honey will rarely say "made in China." Chinese honey is cheap and often contaminated because the beekeepers are notorious for keeping their bees healthy with antibiotics banned in North America.  Chinese honey sold in North America is more likely to be stamped as Indonesian, Malaysian or Taiwanese, due to a growing multi-million dollar honey laundering system.  What a world.

And John gave me this new reference book. It isn't about backyard beekeeping, but describes the 4,000! species of bees that live in the United States and Canada.  There's information on their habitats and an excellent photograph of each one, which is impressive, since busy bees are about the hardest creature on earth to photograph.

Our yard is messy and full of flowers and overgrown things, so the bees flourish in the summer.  I especially love my big bumblebees, but how much do I know about them, really? They must be sleeping snug somewhere, right now, on this freezing damp morning. 

That time of year

"Between Christmas and New Years"

by Carl Larsson

Larsson's 19th century Swedish house looks neat as a pin between Christmas and New Years. Where's the mess?  He liked to paint his family, so he must have married a good housekeeper. However, there is a telltale stash of empty Christmas bottles tucked behind the cabinet, ready for the recycling bin.

Speaking of recycling, our trash men were in such a foul mood this morning from holiday garbage they smashed our bin in half and left it in the alley without so much as a note. 

John went on the City of Seattle Public Utilities website and ordered up a new bin.  He has this week off work each year, which always makes us feel like we should "go somewhere or do something." But the time passes by so fast, and travel over the holidays to popular places must be planned months in advance.

Besides, the weather is deteriorating across the country so it's good to be in Seattle. Who ever heard of violent tornadoes at Christmas?  After a record wet December, it's going to be dry and cold here well into 2016. Unfortunately, that means freezing morning fog.

But soon I'll be thinking about spring, when the first bulbs start poking up in January and the forsythia blooms. There's a clean planting slate waiting out along the new back fence, which is dangerous. Before you know it,  those winter garden daydreams turn into a lot more work for the gardener.  The last thing we need is another mixed flower bed to weed and water. 

Shrubs and grass, I think.  As for the remains of the bamboo, the roots are still writhing around under there, but the new shoots look spindly and unhappy.  

Three French Hens

After months of preparation and anticipation, Christmas is over too fast. The excitement builds to a climax on Christmas morning then abruptly stops.  It's no wonder children get cranky and people feel drained and tired.  Shopping the after-Christmas sales doesn't fill the void.

In this country, the commercial Christmas "season" starts in about September, but the traditional Christian season was just the opposite.  The twelve days after Christmas were the dozen days in the liturgical calendar of the Western Church between the celebration of the birth of the Christ Child and the coming of the Magi. Today is the feast day for St. John the Apostle.

The the Middle Ages, December 25th was just the beginning of a period of feasting and merrymaking that ended in Twelfth Night, the traditional end of the Christmas season.

I like the idea of giving a little gift to your loved one for each of the 12 days after Christmas. And of course the gifts don't have to be "things," like in that tiresome song we've heard a thousand times by now.

On the third day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Three French Hens...

My gift to John today is a respite from leftover ham: fresh vegetable and "French Hen" stir-fry with brown rice for dinner.  Some of the pants in this house are getting a bit snug.  Just saying. 

Amanda and Tom are headed back to Twisp today.  It's snowing again in the mountains, but nothing like last week's storms.  In fact, we might finally be going into a welcome dry and cold weather pattern. The snowy mountains should be a spectacular sight from Seattle when they finally "come out."

December 27 is the feast of St. John the Evangelist - See more at: http://www.uscatholic.org/church/2009/11/more-days-merrier-celebrating-12-days-christmas#sthash.5Bx6VVyw.dpuf

December 27 is the feast of St. John the Evangelist - See more at: http://www.uscatholic.org/church/2009/11/more-days-merrier-celebrating-12-days-christmas#sthash.5Bx6VVyw.dpuf

Boxing Day

Christmas got off to a very early start yesterday.  The time flew by and I only snapped a few photos on the fly, but you get the picture.  It was the same sweet story unfolding in living rooms around the world.

Amanda and Nova reading Christmas books

The aftermath glow...

And by 7 pm?  Time for a long winter's nap...

The best present

"Christmas is the day that holds all time together."
Alexander Smith

The best Christmas present is having your family near, in your home or in your heart.  Amanda, Tom and the girls arrived safely last night, after a long and snowy drive across Stevens Pass.  John and I are enjoying the early morning quiet and counting our many blessings.  Wishing you a peaceful Christmas. 

Christmas wishes

 "Kersti Sledging"

We received a lovely Christmas card from some old friends with this painting by the famous Swedish painter, Carl Laarson. Although this reproduction doesn't do it justice, the child's face is adorable.

Today I wish our family was traveling by goat sled instead of Toyota Forerunner.  At this early hour, both Snoqualmie and Stevens Passes are closed, at least until daybreak when they assess the situation. There's been over 3 feet of snow in the Cascades in the past 24 hours.  It will be a long day in the car for two little excited girls.  And their parents.

“I think it is often the case that Christmas comes upon us a bit too quickly.
And we are brought face-to-face with our own humanity—
our limitations, our desires, our vulnerability, and our smallness,
our inability to fulfill our own hopes.”

Christmas Eve is always a busy day for me. I'm making an eggnog cake (new recipe) and fruit salad, muffins, lemonade, that sort of thing for tomorrow. The kitchen work is a pleasant distraction.  We might even get a few snow flurries in the lowlands.

It feels like Christmas came so fast this year, or maybe it's just the sensation that life is speeding up as we age.

Even though we try to prepare, the reality is, we are never really ready for Christmas. And that is the message of the Nativity.  Sad humanity had no room at The Inn.

“God is always being birthed into our lives. In the deepest, darkest,
shut-out corners of our worlds—in our stable places—
God is determined to be born again and again.”

Gertrude Nelson

Merry Christmas to all our dear family and friends.

Winter poetry

 Mountain Farm

Maxfield Parrish

Over in Montana

Winter stops by for a visit each year.
Dead leaves cluster around. They know what is
coming. They listen to some silent song.
At a bend in the Missouri, up where
it’s clear, teal and mallards lower
their wings and come gliding in.
A cottonwood grove gets ready. Limbs
reach out. They touch and shiver.
These nights are going to get cold.
Stars will sharpen and glitter. They make
their strange signs in a rigid pattern
above hollow trees and burrows and houses—
The great story weaves closer and closer, millions of
touches, wide spaces lying out in the open,
huddles of brush and grass, all the little lives.

by William Stafford

The forecast

Oh, dear

Travel is rough going across the mountain passes this week. There's already been more snow in the Cascades than we had the entire season last year.  On the West coast, we have the monster El Nino to thank.  Hopefully it will clear out some by the time Amanda and Tom travel on Thursday with the girls.

Today is the winter solstice in the Northern hemisphere.  It's the shortest day and the longest night of the year.  In the unlikely event we see the sun today, at noon it will be very low on the horizon. 

A white Christmas is rare as hen's teeth in Seattle, but some of the forecasts give a possibility of light snow in the lowlands this week.  This is getting the Seattle kids excited.  For Nova and Maya, a few flurries would be pretty ho-hum.  Over in the Methow Valley, the snow has been piling up for weeks now.  Here's some cute snow play pictures Amanda took this weekend.

Maya

Nova

Sledding with dad

Humbug Day

 “Bah," said Scrooge, "Humbug.”

Today is Humbug Day, the day to let it all out. Release your inner Scrooge and vent your frustrations about the stress and fuss of Christmas. Then get on with it.  We're almost there, and I for one am so done with shopping, other than a final load of food, of course.

To celebrate the day, I found my dusty old copy of "A Christmas Carol" on the bottom shelf.  I always try to read it on Christmas Eve.  Just my favorite chapters-- by then I'm much too tired to get through the whole book.

All the decorations are up and doesn't the house look pretty?  I had a Facetime call from two very excited little girls last night. Nova told me how many days it was until Christmas, just in case I forgot.

It's nice to see the old things once a year.  These dolls have somehow survived three generations of family girls.  My mom and Aunt Ruth played with them 85 years ago.  Then my sister Marji and I, over 50 years ago.  One is dressed as a fine lady and the other is her maid. Of course we fought over who got to "be" the fancy lady.  They are so fragile, I only let them out of the trunk on special holidays.

Nova and Maya find these old toys somewhat creepy, and they give them a wide berth.  Maybe that's just as well, and it will change as they get older. But as John always says, Christmas should instill a little awe and fear in children.

For me, the doll aisle at Target inspires awe and fear.  Ha.

Countdown to Christmas

Modeling the hand-knitted hats from Aunt Rachel in Florida...

And a new-old nutcracker Nova rescued from the Twisp Senior Center Thrift Store...

The mailman was busy

Nothing says Christmas like the fabulous Pizzelles John's mom sends us each year from Columbus. A Pizzelle is a Italian wafer cookie, made with flour, butter, eggs, sugar and flavoring. They're baked individually on a special type of waffle iron, a labor of love.

Anise flavoring is traditional, and John always requests extra strong.  Thank you, Mom, no one makes them like you. I remember when John gave little Nova her first Pizzelle, and she called it a "snowflake."

And how about this?  No, not oranges, these are the home-grown lemons my sister Marji sends us from Las Vegas.  I've never seen a lemon anything like this in a store, so thin-skinned, sweet and heavy. Thanks, Marji, they arrived in perfect condition!  A pitcher of fresh squeezed lemonade has become a new Christmas day tradition around here.

Stop and smell the Christmas rose

"The modern world we live in is one of constant distraction, 

where taking the time to connect to ourselves 

and having the patience to do so is 

becoming more and more difficult." 

Marina Abramovic, pianist

New Yorker, December 14th

Yesterday I brought in these last pink roses. They look a bit scruffy, but who would complain about picking flowers a week before Christmas?  Despite the endless bad weather, it hasn't been that cold here yet, although it sure feels that way because of the dampness.  My parents in Cripple Creek are waking up this morning to a temperature of zero degrees, with a high of 17 today.

Good morning, Dad!  Now, that's cold. I'll tell you though, a 40 degree rainy day in Seattle is more bone-chilling than a sunny zero degree winter day in Colorado. I hope you get outside today for a little walk.

I went to The Mall yesterday, something I usually avoid the week before Christmas because of the traffic and crowds. But I had a nice time shopping around alone, with an appointment to have my hair done at Gene Juarez-- my one big "beauty" indulgence.

Gene Juarez is a fancy salon with lovely service. The girls serve you ice water or coffee (in a real cup!) and greet you politely by name. I decided I like being called "Miss Sue." There is not a smartphone in sight, because the stylists are all giving their undivided attention to customers. What an old-fashioned idea.

Their customers are a different story. I looked around, and every woman was buried in her smartphone. Have you noticed people in waiting areas don't read paper magazines anymore? My brother Dave (who teaches high school math) said he has students who don't even have the attention span to watch television. So trying to teach them algebra must be a real blast.

Of course I'm guilty.  I looked at my iPhone a couple of times at Gene Juarez, but mostly because everyone else was. Why? It's not like I have a frantic social schedule to juggle.  Gene Juarez is such a pleasant and extravagant experience, it seems a shame to be off somewhere else in your mind.

Everywhere at the mall it was the same.  In the Food Court people were gobbling away while staring down at their phones, not even looking at each other across the table. It was kind of gross, but this is our world of addictive technology.  And I just spent an hour of my morning (and another hour of my precious life) staring at the computer writing this blog.  Guess I'm the pot who calls the kettle black.

Amanda sent this cute picture of Maya and Nova at the Cascadia Holiday Concert. They look very excited attending a live musical concert, but it might have something to so with the cookie :-)   For such a small and remote area, there's a surprising number of cultural and community events in the Methow Valley.  Good for them!

The wonder of it all

Maya is checking out the latest snowstorm.
Great news for the Methow Valley...

Get to work, Sandy

Two years after her breakdown under the Seattle waterfront, workers on the Highway 99 tunnel project are starting to cover Bertha with sand at the bottom of the 120-deep rescue pit.  Well!  Just look at the giant filling effort.  That sure puts our dinky little sewer holes in perspective.

Now they are calling her "Sandy" although I don't know if the new name will stick.  You can only imagine the next name if the drill overheats and stalls again.  Of course, there's no guarantee she won't, and she still has a long way to go. If that happens, we don't have another plan.

But why be pessimistic?  Onward we go.  Officials say they might be ready to start drilling on December 23, although workers will probably take a holiday break from all of that strenuous overtime.

No holiday break around this house today. It's cookie crunch time-- John's work potluck is tomorrow.  Like Mrs. Claus, from year to year I tend to forget how much work it is making a cookie for every child at Boeing.  Ha! And it's impossible to make too many Coconut Dream Bars.

"The key to happiness is a short memory"

Rita Mae Brown

The dark time

Sunrise is at 7:49 this morning and sunset at 4:17, not nearly enough light for these unhappy monster jade plants. They've been sitting there since October hogging the window. Jades can squeak by in a dark, warm house if you don't water them over the winter. (Well, maybe just once to keep them barely alive.)

In the summer they live outside in the shady basement stairwell and love it, because each fall they get heavier to lug inside.  Next year they'll be too big for any spot left in the house. Then what? I guess we can build a greenhouse, or move to a spacious house with lots of windows and a nice view. Hey, that sounds good! We will be moving in 2016 for the health and well-being of our jade plants.

We've had so much rain and so many storms in December, even the natives around here are getting tired of it. The rivers in the lowlands are subsiding because it's finally snowing like crazy in the mountains, instead of raining and running off.  I didn't have time to get out to the foothills last week, not that we could ride anyway. But I miss being outdoors, seeing my friends and the horses.

The Snoqualmie Falls is always beautiful but awesome in flood stage. At "Major" flood stage, it runs at 56,800 cubic feet a second. How much water is that?  A good problem for Dave's math students.

Of course they would probably just look it up on convert-me.com.
Answer: over 425,000 gallons per second, or 1.5 billion gallons per hour.

The drought that seemed endless last summer is history. 2015 is now above normal for rainfall in Western Washington.  We've had over 40 inches of rain for the year and still counting.

Praise

"Praising Manners"
by Robert Bly

We should ask God
To help us toward manners. Inner gifts
Do not find their way
To creatures without just respect.
If a man or woman flails about, he not only
Smashes his house,
He burns the whole world down.
Your depression is connected to your insolence
And your refusal to praise. If a man or woman is
On the path, and refuses to praise — that man or woman
Steals from others every day — in fact is a shoplifter!
The sun became full of light when it got hold of itself.
Angels began shining when they achieved discipline.
The sun goes out whenever the cloud of not-praising comes near.
The moment that foolish angel felt insolent,
He heard the door close.