To thine own self be true

J.T. and The Gift of Music

A Sherlock Holmes watch for Christmas. Who’da thunk?

Eating my umpteenth Asian orange on the holiday season. What a treat since the 1950s! That was one item at Christmas my poor family looked forward to–getting a wooden crate (then) of wrapped Japanese oranges–the ‘zipper orange’ as we used to call them. (A peace offering after WWII to the West after Hiroshima and Nagasaki?)

Many of these kept us going through the cold, hard winter. And then over the years, the wood packaging gave way to thick cardboard boxes with air holes, and finally Chinese oranges as well, a gift from our latest Western rival.

But for me, they remain a special memory and taste of the black-and-white 1950s that was such a remarkably welcome East-West tradition at this dark, cold time of the year and a sign of a universal accord we once take for granted.

Desmond Tutu. Larger-than-life South African social activist to his own country and the world. A true giant who made life so much better and happier for multitudes.

with a favorite Christmas photo of “the boys” from a few years back…

“Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!”

Coming back to finish clearing my driveway and Brian and the young boys beat me to the punch. They were there on the driveway, having just finished shovelling. That’s the kind of good guy he is and the altruistic way he is raising his boys. (He is a relatively young principal at a nearby church school.)

That’s the kind of good neighbors we have. Brian and his gang and the Sikh family boys on the other side have kindly shovelled here in the past. We’ve also had out sidewalk cleared by a neighbor’s mini-bobcat. Islamic neighbors gave us a chocolate box at Christmas in the past, and someone left us a Lindt package last year at this time (unaddressed/anonymous).

You hear a lot in the media about nasty, violent neighbors, especially in the States, but up here, on our cul-de-sac, we are blessed with good, kind neighbors who help us out in winter, especially. In December and around Christmas, in these parts anyway, people behave better than usual and are very friendly, which makes this our favorite month/season of the year. We count ourselves lucky to have such good, generous folks living in close proximity.

N95 masks are the only ones recommended as effective at this time.

Google: “God’s Tech Support”

(Thank you Brittlestar for this wonderfully witty, concise ad!)

“Everybody knows the plague is coming./Everybody knows that it’s moving fast”.

Long predicted by many….