My annual St. Nick’s Day post. Back on November 7, the Hallmark Channel was showing about eight Christmas-themed TV movies. I’m sure this continues to this day and beyond. This does not bother me whatsoever.
A radio station in Chicago started playing holiday music even earlier than that. As long as I don’t have to actually listen to it, I just don’t care.
Thanksgiving is as late as it can be this year. This encourages retailers to offer pre-Black Friday sales as soon as the Halloween pumpkins are put away. Whatever.
It’s my opinion that people fuss WAY too much about Santa’s sleigh jumping into the turkey’s and jack-o-lantern’s lanes. In fact, I saw a cartoon somewhere depicting that. It just does not rise to an impeachable offense.
But MY seasonal music listening starts TODAY and runs to January 6, which is Three King’s Day or Russian Christmas. Here are a bunch of links, mostly from after last year’s St. Nick’s Day.
The first ad I came across this season was Argos Christmas – The Book of Dreams (Extended Version). Arthur always has adverts, usually from New Zealand, that tend to irritate me less than American commercials; here are all of them.
More Yule
Et in Terra pax – Vivaldi and Handel. The former, which I’ve sung, is particularly moving to me.
STAR IN THE EAST – The Southern Harmony, from ROSE ENSEMBLE. I stole this from fillyjonk, but the other video in the post was no longer working, alas.
Tigger – PRONUNCIATION: TIG-uhr
MEANING: noun: Someone filled with energy, cheerfulness, and optimism.
ETYMOLOGY: After Tigger, a tiger in A.A. Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Earliest documented use: 1981.
The family trekked to Kennebunk and Kennebunkport ME the first weekend in October 2019. We got to pass through four states – NY, MA, NH, ME – in less than five hours. Twice in three days.
We went to a nice little museum, with a historical house. When it was in danger of closing in 2011, President George H.W. Bush offered to have some of his memorabilia be collected in one large room of the museum. This saved the day. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Bushes, but this was a kind and decent offer.
Mark Evanier has decided that until djt leaves office — and maybe even after — he “will feature one story each day about what he’s doing to The World, America, The Rule of Law, The Dignity of the Executive Branch and himself. He, of course, is concerned only with the last of these.”
Alexander Hamilton warned that a man “unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents… despotic in his ordinary demeanour — known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty” might “throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.'” from “Founders foresaw Trump nightmare,” USA Today.com, October 7, 2019
Arthur and Nigel – pic stolen from Arthur’s Facebook page. I hope he doesn’t mind.“The largely artificial Internet life is all too often detached from real life, and we lose sight of the real-life humans we’re interacting with. Yet the Internet can also deliver connections we’d never have had otherwise.”
That was something Arthur@AmeriNZ wrote about me upon the passing of my mother in 2011. I’ve almost certainly have mentioned him more than any other person on this blog. I catch his typos and he catches mine; we’re both mortified.
In his blog, you read how the kid from Chicago traveled all the way to New Zealand in the mid-1990s and found love with Nigel. I think I get along with Arthur so well because he marks all of those anniversaries: when he came to Kiwiland, when he and Nigel had their civil union (because that was all that was allowed at the time), and when they were married, among many others.
It was only Friday, September 13 when Arthur wrote that Nigel had been in hospital since the previous Monday, originally for an infection. The doctors had discovered that Nigel had late-stage liver cancer. At the very best, he would have around two years.
Of course, Arthur was angry that they were to be cheated out of growing old together. Still, I thought they would have some time to be together for a little while more, something they had worked toward for a quarter of a century.
Less than a week later, Arthur wrote on Facebook. “Nigel left us around 6:59 this morning. I am destroyed.” And I am overwhelmed with a sense of loss for Arthur, who I care for deeply. I can’t explain how you can develop a relationship with someone you’ve never met in person, but there it is.
The funeral of Nigel King will be Monday 1:30 pm, Auckland time, which is 16 hours ahead of New York time. In lieu of flowers, the family would appreciate donations to the Anxiety New Zealand Trust.
To paraphrase Arthur, “I hope that the support and aroha Arthur is receiving from around the world helps comfort him in this sad time.”
Created / Published: New York, Published by G. Woolworth Colton; agent, Chicago, Rufus Blanchard, 1858. From the Library of Congress.An interesting thing to me: of the four of them, three of the I states, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, are in a line, east to west. I had been to NONE of them in the 20th century. OK, I rode a train through Indiana in 1998, and I had been to Chicago, Illinois’ O’Hare airport a few times. But I never counted those.
Then in 2008, I made it to Chicago, for real, which I wrote about HERE. That was state #30 I visited. And in 2019, I made it to West Lafayette, IN, making the tally 31. At this rate, I’ll have visited every state by the year 2228.
ID Idaho Abbreviation is first two letters The usual traditional shorter version was Ida. My great aunt’s sister was named Ida. Capital and largest city: Boise. It’s in two time zones, Mountain (primarily) and Pacific.
That B-52’s song Private Idaho is irrationally stuck in my head.
IL Illinois Abbreviation is first two letters, traditional version is Ill., which is kind of sick.
Capital: Springfield, home of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.
Largest city: Chicago, which used to be referred to as Second City – thus SCTV – because it was the second-largest city in the US, but now it’s third, after New York City and Los Angeles.
Arthur pointed out recently that this season was the centennial of the Red Summer, a painful picture of America’s racist past.
Here’s Chicago by Frank Sinatra.
IN Indiana Abbreviation is the first two letters, traditionally Ind.
Capital and largest city: Indianapolis.
Here’s a Wikipedia factoid: “As of 2013 Indiana has produced more National Basketball Association (NBA) players per capita than any other state. Muncie has produced the most per capita of any American city, with two other Indiana cities in the top ten… The 1986 film Hoosiers” – which is very good – “is inspired by the story of the 1954 Indiana state champions Milan High School.”
Vice-President, and former Indiana governor Mike Pence has been feuding with South Bend, IN mayor, and Democratic Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg (pronounced like it’s spelled).
Strange song on a Motown label: Indiana Wants Me – R. Dean Taylor
IA Iowa First and last letters in the abbreviation, which is the traditional abbreviation, if people bothered to shorten it at all.
Capital and largest city: Des Moines.
The state gets outsized attention because it holds the first presidential caucus in the country, even before the first primary, which is in New Hampshire. Gatherings of voters select delegates to the state conventions.
The Iowa State Fair claims to be the inspiration for a novel and three movies. It is home to the world-famous Butter Cow, weighing about 600 pounds and standing 5.5 feet tall.
Here are a bunch of songs about the Hawkeye State.
My annual St. Nick’s Day post. Back on November 7, the Hallmark Channel was showing about eight Christmas-themed TV movies. I’m sure this continues to this day and beyond. This does not bother me whatsoever.
