Last week I wrote about some of my cherished Christmas memories. I also love reading the Christmas memories of others. I've encountered some great autobiographical Christmas stories over the years and I have my favorites. At the top of my list is A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote. I went through a Capote binge many years ago. He was a brilliant writer. My favorite of all of his stories, was and still is, A Christmas Memory. It tells of a Christmas when he was a child during the Great Depression. It is a lovely, and tender story. There is a filmed version of it made for television in 1966 starring the amazing Geraldine Page as his cousin Sook. I watch it every year.
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| A scene from the film A Christmas Memory. |
I also love the descriptions of Christmas in Laura Ingalls Wilder's books Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, On the Banks of Plum Creek, Farmer Boy, The Long Winter, and These Happy Golden Years. Her accounts of her family's simple celebrations amid hardships bring needed perspective on what the holiday really means.
Sometimes I encounter a filmed version of a memory before its written source. In 2017 we discovered a short animated film Angela's Christmas that became an instant favorite. I'd read Frank McCourt's autobiographical Angela's Ashes and loved it. Angela's Christmas is based on a book he wrote in 2007, Angela and the Baby Jesus, recalling a story about his mother set in 1914 in Limerick, Ireland. The book and the film are both lovely.
Another favorite is A Christmas Story. We encountered this one first as the movie, which we love and watch every year at Christmastime. I only found out later that this account of Ralphie Parker's Christmas wish for a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model Air Rifle with a Compass in the Stock and this Thing that Tells Time, was based on several short stories in Jean Shepherd's autobiographical book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. Shepherd was a funny guy and his stories are great. In the movie, he is the narrator, which makes me like it even more.
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No matter how dazzlingly bright the morning, there is no getting around the misery of a temperature of 2°. That was Monday. As if it just being Monday wasn't already bad enough. When I went down to do the morning chores, I found an egg that one of the hens had laid on the floor of the coop in a corner. It was frozen solid. Whoever she is, this hen likes to lay her eggs on the floor, not in the nesting boxes. And she usually buries them in the floor litter so I sometimes find a whole clutch of them if she's hidden them well. I don't try too much to understand why chickens do what they do. I also have a hen who will not go into the coop. Sometime in the fall, she decided to live outdoors. At first she was sleeping in a tree at night, but now with the cold and snow, she sleeps under the barn bridge. She won't even go into the coop to eat or drink. I have to throw her a little food every day. I don't know where she gets water, maybe from eating snow. The other chickens won't go out in the snow, and she won't go in to get out of the snow. I expect every morning to find her dead and frozen stiff, but so far she's surviving.
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| My feral hen. |
Tuesday morning was cold and gray. In an effort to quell the gloom, I spent time tending my houseplants. I took each plant, one at a time, to the sink in the kitchen if they were small enough, or to the downstairs bathtub if they were large, and inspected them for pests. I watered them thoroughly, washed off their leaves, and gave them a dose of plant food. All of my holiday cacti have either open flowers or buds. I have three kinds – Thanksgiving cactus (Schlumbergera truncata), Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera bridgesii), and Easter cactus (Rhipsalidopsis gaertneri). I don't know why the Easter cactus is blooming now, but I don't mind. It has delicate pink flowers. One of my orchids has emerging flower stems. My plumeria also has a few new buds. Flowers in the winter are a welcome delight. Some of my plants are afflicted with pests. My lime tree and olive tree have scale and the plumeria and jade plants have mealybugs. I spent a long time that morning searching them out, scratching them off with my fingernails, or dabbing them with a Q-tip dipped in isopropyl alcohol. I love tending my plants, even the nasty parts.
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| My Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter cacti in bloom now. |
After that, I worked on my Winter Reading List. This morning at 10:03, we passed the solstice so we are officially in winter now – although weather-wise it's already been here for weeks – so I thought I should begin considering some titles. I'll probably have to order some books from the library, so I needed to start firming up my list. I'd already determined that I'm putting a few Dickens novels on it, but I wanted to look at other authors. I began that morning by taking a survey to see which authors are considered to be the greatest American authors of the 20th century. I looked at a dozen lists online and tallied the authors who appeared on them, then narrowed it down to the top ten. I'm not saying I agree with these results, this is just online consensus. The authors, in order from the best on down are:
1. Ernest Hemingway
2. John Steinbeck
3. J. D. Salinger
4. F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. Harper Lee
6. Kurt Vonnegut
7. Toni Morrison
8. John Updike
9. Stephen King
10. William Faulkner.
I think some of the lists I checked were skewed by people who equate monetary success with literary quality. And I think some just liked movies based on books they never really read. I've read all of Hemingway and Fitzgerald so I didn't put them on the list this time. I'm not a fan of Stephen King (too much gore, occult stuff, and profanity), or J. D. Salinger (bitter memories of a required reading of Catcher In the Rye in high school), so I eliminated them. I looked at titles by Morrison and Updike and none of them appealed to me. I just read East of Eden a few months ago, so I was done with Steinbeck for a while. I tend to read Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird almost yearly, but I do want to read her recently discovered and published short stories and essays, The Land of Sweet Forever, so I put that on the list. I hope it's better than her recently discovered and published novel, Go Set A Watchman, which I did not like. In my late teens and early twenties, I read Vonnegut's works and loved them. That was a long time ago now. Maybe I'll reread some of them. I've read some Faulkner, but he might be a bit too heavy for me at present. Ray Bradbury and Truman Capote weren't in the top ten. Bradbury was number fourteen and Capote was seventeen, but I'm considering adding some of their books. I'm also considering some of Marlena de Blasi's books. She wasn't on any of the lists, but her books about her experiences of living in Italy and food are perfect winter reading. My list is taking shape, but is far from final. It never really is final as I add and subtract titles all the time. Contemplating all the possibilities is a mentally stimulating way to while away a cold day.
I had a doctor's appointment on Wednesday morning early and found myself driving to Olean before sunrise. As the sun came up, the sky turned a beautiful soft pinkish gray, like the color of a mourning dove's breast feathers. I wanted to stop and take photos, but I was pressed for time. I love to watch the sun come up and was sorry I couldn't stop and enjoy it. My doctors appointment didn't take very long – an hour's drive each way for a fifteen minute appointment. On the way home, I stopped at the feed store and bought chicken feed. When I got home, the sun was shining in a clear blue sky. The temperature was a balmy 45° and things were starting to thaw. The snow became soft and sticky like brown sugar. I went out to my little greenhouse. It was 79° inside. I couldn't resist. I sat down, exposed as much skin as I could, and took a short nap in the sunshine. It was great to feel the warm sun on my skin.
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| My view from the greenhouse. |
After my nap, I unloaded the chicken feed and did the chores. A few of the chickens decided it was warm enough to venture out into the mushy snow. At the feed store I bought a bag of freeze dried mealworms to try as a treat for my guineas. When I'm in their pen, if I hold still, they will come close to me, but as soon as I move, they run away. I thought I might tame them a little by tempting them with mealworms. It is working. I can get them to come pretty close, but I have to hold very still.
The warm spell that began on Wednesday continued into Thursday. I use warm spell as a relative term. Temperatures in the 40s are warm for December. I had a haircut appointment that morning. When I got back from that, I waited around for the oven repairman to come. Our oven broke three weeks ago. In this house, that is a huge bother bordering on a crisis, especially with Christmas baking underway. We had to resort to baking things in our little convection oven. Some things we took down to Sarah's to bake. Stacey thought she could fix the problem herself and ordered the part online, a $25 igniter. When it finally arrived, she installed it, but it didn't work. Then Miriam and Tosh both tried to repair it. No luck. Stacey loves the episode of The Andy Griffith Show where Aunt Bea has purchased a load of beef, but discovers her freezer is broken. She tries to save money by having Gomer fix it instead of calling a repairman and things keep getting worse and worse. Andy keeps telling her, "Call the man, Aunt Bea! Call the man!" Stacey loves to try and fix things herself and sometimes she is successful, but sometimes she gives up and has to "call the man." The man arrived at 1:00 and took the stove apart trying to assess the problem. It turns out, mice have chewed through wires causing a short circuit. The wires are in the most inaccessible part of the stove requiring the removal of the stove top and several panels held by expensive one way screws. It turns out the repair costs almost as much as a new stove. The repairman said you have to be careful because most foreign manufacturers use wire with soy based insulation and mice love it. So buy American. Now we are in negotiations for a new stove and Christmas baking is still impaired. That's two major appliances we've had to replace in a month. What next?
We had a storm Thursday night and into Friday. It got very windy and it rained. The rain washed away a lot of the snow. It was nice to see bare ground again, if only in scattered places. I knew it wouldn't last long, and it didn't. A gale force arctic wind blew in with more snow. By the end of the day, the world was white again.
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| Friday morning after a brief thaw and some rain. |
On Friday we had a Big Event. I mentioned several weeks ago that Miriam submitted a design and won a statewide contest to paint a bell as part of Pennsylvania's celebration of America's semiquincentennial (I had to look that up) next year. Every county was given a bell to paint and Miriam painted the one for Potter County. Friday afternoon was the unveiling at the county offices in Coudersport. State and local dignitaries were there. We said the Pledge of Allegiance and sang God Bless America. There were speeches. And then they uncovered the bell. Miriam worked for five weeks on painting it. She covered it with a day side and a night side because Potter County is famous for its dark skies. She decorated it with native wildflowers and wildlife, forests and fields. She hid sasquatch, who has been sighted here, on both the day and night sides. The stars and fireflies on the night side glow in the dark. She did a great job. The bell will remain on display in the county office building all year next year.
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| Miriam with her bell. |
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| The bell on display. |
Friday's dinner was our traditional pizza, but as we've had to do for the last few oven-less weeks, Sarah made the crusts at her house and brought them here for finishing. We had a nice dinner together. The frigid wind roared on through most of the night.
Saturday was gray and cold, but it didn't snow and I was grateful for that. We had another Big Event that afternoon, our Branch Christmas Dinner. I sent out a Christmas letter several weeks ago to every member of the branch, all 117 of them, and invited them to come to our Christmas Dinner. The branch provided the dinner – pulled pork sandwiches, coleslaw, macaroni and cheese, and baked beans provided by a local restaurant. The members were asked to bring a dessert to share. We never know how many people will show up. We ordered food for forty. Our building is a small phase one building. We don't have an actual chapel, just a multipurpose room where all our activities take place – our meetings on Sundays, dinners, and everything else. The room was decorated beautifully for our dinner.
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| All set up and ready for the dinner. |
The dinner began at 4:00. Thirty-one people were there, a good turnout for our little branch. The food was good. We did what we like to do best at dinners, we sat and ate and visited with each other. It was a nice event.
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| Filling our plates. |
Even working without the big oven, Miriam and Hannah managed to bake a lot of cookies. They finished later that night.
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| A selection of the cookies they baked. |
Today was our Christmas Sunday service. I always hope that we'll have a full house on Christmas Sunday, but that usually isn't the case. Today we had thirty-eight people there, which was great. Our service was simple. We sang carols. We took the sacrament. The Relief Society sisters sang What Child is This? Miriam and Hannah sang a duet, Star Bright, accompanied by Sarah. Stacey and I gave talks. We sang some more.
In just a little while we are leaving to go to a Christmas concert at the Baptist Church in Ulysses. After that we are stopping at a few neighbors' houses to carol and give them cookies. The week ahead will be full of fun and family.
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| After church today. |
It's hard to believe we've come to Christmas already. Our preparations for the celebration are almost complete. The decorations are in place. The baking is ongoing but will be done in the next day or two. All the plans have been made, what's happening when. Some events have already happened. We've gone to concerts. We had our church dinner. The Thayns are arriving sometime on Christmas Eve Day. The excitement level will reach epic proportions. It is truly a season to be jolly full of tidings of comfort and joy. I wish you a very Merry Christmas!
