20 Days ’til Christmas: Watch It

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Rebecca

We’ve talked about Christmas music. Now it’s time to talk about Christmas movies. They’re great when you want to snuggle by the fire, when you want something to watch while you’re madly trying to finish Christmas crafts, or when you want something playing in the background while you bake cookies. In no particular order, the five favored Christmas movies around these parts are:

The Muppet Christmas Carol

White Christmas

While You Were Sleeping

Love Actually

A Christmas Story

You'll Shoot Your Eye Out, Kid.

The Taste Tester likes It’s a Wonderful Life (I don’t so it’s not part of the five).

And these are TV programs, not movies, but A Charlie Brown Christmas and the 1966 animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas are perennial favorites. [The live action Grinch with Jim Carrey, however, is an abomination.]

What do you like to watch this time of year?

21 Days ’til Christmas: Under the Mistletoe

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Rebecca

Phoradendron macrophyllum

Followed yesterday’s suggestion and found some mistletoe on this morning’s walk. I broke this off a large bunch that had blown out of the trees during the nasty windstorms we’ve had lately. Mistletoe is a weird plant. It’s a semi-parasite, evergreen, and poisonous too. Birds eat the berries on the female plants thus spreading the seeds. The seeds are sticky which lets them adhere to branches, sprout, and then (more weirdness!) they grow root-like tendrils called “haustoria” that grow into the water-conducting tissue of the tree. Plus it’s a kind of funky shade of green. And, yet, mistletoe has an ancient association with fertility, winter festivals, and, now, with Christmas.

The mistletoe pictured above is a California native species. The mistletoe first associated with Christmas was native to Europe but doesn’t look all that different. So, go ahead, stand under the mistletoe. Maybe you’ll get kissed! Of course, be choosy. And some legends say it’s the female plant (the one with the berries) that you need–some even going so far as to say that after each kiss a berry must be removed. No more berries, no more kisses. Have fun. 😉

22 Days ’til Christmas: Naturally

Posted on December 3, 2011 by Rebecca

Christmas is the only holiday I deem worthy of decorations (except the jack-o’-lanterns on Halloween) because it lasts longer that a day. I’ll be putting up some more decorations this weekend while we wait until much closer to the 25th to get our tree. Walking by the river lately we’ve come across two reindeer some unknown artist has crafted from detritus and just a little wire. Oak galls, twigs, berries, and even some trash all add up to some excellent seasonal, if ephemeral, art. We heard from another walker that there was another deer that we missed. Aren’t they cool?

Why not walk through your neighborhood to see the outdoor decorations at other people’s houses? Or do some foraging for twigs and pinecones to make your own like the anonymous artist did for the reindeer above. Happy walking.

23 Days ’til Christmas: Sounds of the Season

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Rebecca

It’s great that, these days, we can pretty much find any music we want with a few clicks. I still have some old CDs that I pull out every December. In no particular order, the five favorites are:

Holiday Celebration by Peter Paul & Mary

To Warm The Winter’s Night by Aine Minogue

Christmas Goes Baroque by Katherine K. Davis, Franz Xaver Gruber, Christmas Traditional, James Pierpont and John Francis Wade

A Winter’s Solstice II by Windham Hill Artists

Windham Hill Winter's Solstice II album cover

Putumayo Presents: Christmas Around the World

Putumayo Christmas Around the World album cover

What do you like to listen to this time of year?

p.s. I frequently link to Amazon so you can get more info because of the convenience factor. I’m not remunerated for it. Nor do I think you should buy from them if you don’t want to. Just so you know. 🙂

24 Days ’til Christmas

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Rebecca

Start your own advent calendar tradition…it’s not too late for this year. Heck, most of the time, I don’t get mine put up until a week of December has already elapsed–makes tying on the village pieces go faster!

Here are links to just some of the cute ones that I found on the web if you need inspiration for this year or next:

From Angry Chicken
- From Allsorts
- From My Little Bookcase

To the left is my calendar with nothing tied to the date loops as of yet. It’s one my mother cross-stitched for me back in the day. You can get similar kits at the same Solvang, California needlecraft shop where she got this one. I have a tiny wooden village from what was then West Germany each piece of which gets tied to one of the day’s loops. Well, sometimes they get tied to the loops–some years that’s too much trouble and we just grab one piece out of the storage bag each day. There are houses (both blue- and red-roofed), bridges/walls, trees, cows, people (who are gigantically out of scale), and a church. It’s still fun to watch the village grow as we near Christmas, one piece each day.

Some of the village including strangely enormous zombie-like man.

Happy Birthday L.M. Montgomery

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Rebecca

The edition I read the first time around.

Anne (with an “e”) of Green Gables and Emily Starr are two of the beloved characters created by Lucy Maud Montgomery who was born on this date in 1874. Did you read all the books? I read them over and over until my copies fell apart. They’re kids’ series but still comfort reads. A while back I discovered that most (not Anne of Windy Poplars or Anne of Ingleside) of the Anne books are available for free for e-readers or to read online at Project Gutenburg so every once in a while I read one again. Also fun are the two miniseries starring Megan Follows as Anne: Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea (sometimes called Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel) though I haven’t watched them in years.

DO NOT under any circumstances watch Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story (2000)–don’t know where that one came from, the story goes way off the rails, and it just seems best to ignore it.

Since I’m talking about books (AGAIN), this story of intricately carved book art left around Scotland’s Edinburgh is amazing and touching:
Part 1: “Who Left a Tree, Then a Coffin in the Library?”
Part 2: “The Library Phantom Returns”

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow when we start our Christmas countdown with our advent calendar adventure.

Coming Attractions aka Going Loco

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Rebecca

Locoweed image from one of the weirdest books in my collection: the 1916 edition of Sheep Diseases by E.T. Baker. Long story there. I might tell you about it sometime.

We’re working hard on the Winter 2011/2012 issue of Quarterly Speed Bump Magazine (new people on the team for this issue!). If all goes as expected, the magazine should be up on December 22.

But that’s not all. Not by a long shot. We’ll be doing an advent calendar of sorts on this blog…counting down the days ’til Christmas starting on December 1st. We’ll have all sorts of Christmas-y, seasonal, and even non-seasonal things to share. That’s one post per day from December 1 and ending on Christmas Eve. Maybe something will spark your interest and help you with slowing down and relaxing for a little while during this busy time of year. Come back soon.

King Tut

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Rebecca

One of my earlier attempts at magazine "publishing"

Yesterday marked the 89th anniversary of the date (November 26, 1922) on which archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon entered the interior of King Tut’s tomb for the first time. That’s not the most exciting anniversary (100 or 75 have better rings to them than 89) but it does give me a chance to recommend a series of books that I have loved rereading lately. Have you read the Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters (aka Barbara Mertz)? Howard Carter is a peripheral character in these mysteries set mostly in Egypt from the late Victorian period until the discovery of the Tutankhamun tomb. As of now there are 19 volumes in the series. Start with the first published, Crocodile on the Sandbank. The first 2/3 of the books in the series are in chronological order while the rest of them jump around in the timeline a bit. Amelia Peabody is an early feminist, Egyptologist, and solver of mysteries. The books are somewhat tongue in cheek but most enjoyable. Plus, the author knows her stuff. She holds a doctorate in Egyptology.

Interesting stuff, Egyptology. I’ve been fascinated for years. Seeing the Rosetta Stone live and in person was a very cool thing. And, let’s not forget that the above “magazine,” the Pyramid Post, features a thrilling article about mummies wherein I described their preparation: “The brain was removed by sticking a long thin object up the nose, breaking through the bone into the brain cavity and taking the brain out bit by bit.” Now aren’t you glad you know that?

Happy Thanksgiving…

Posted on November 24, 2011 by Rebecca

…from Quarterly Speed Bump Magazine to you.