CHRISTMAS LETTERHEADS

Below are a number of letterheads, quotations we have placed on our Christmas letters over the years.
We have perhaps posted one or more of them before.
We like them and find value in them...and posting or reposting seems to us appropriate.
Our house is decorated for Christmas.  Grandgirls have helped make Christmas plum puddings and they are steaming as I write.
Two acquaintances have recently died, within the last two weeks.
One, the son of friends, the other just recently met.
Still, their passing saddens.  We were not close, but now they are gone.
And so we think of that reality...and we think on the Season....and we publish the letterheads.
Christmas and the end of the year is a time to remember, to reflect.


Ah Friends, dear friends, as years go on
And heads get gray
Touch hands, touch hands, with those that stay.

Heap on more wood! The wind is chill;

But let it whistle as it will.
We’ll keep our Christmas merry still

Christmas--that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance--a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.

The quote above declares Christmas Day to be a day of nostalgia, of remembrance, of feasting, and of prayer.  2011 was that kind of year for us, a year of connecting again with friends and traditions of 47 years and a year of gratitude for being able to do so. 

AN INVENTED PEOPLE

Early Tuesday morning on second cup of coffee and a Republican strategist is being questioned by a lib news anchor re the now much ballyhooed phrase to the effect that the Palestinian people are an invented people.
O so wise anchor asked…”Well, aren’t all people invented? Aren’t Australians and Americans, etc., all invented people?

Strategist, happily enough, knew something about international politics, international definitions, and international realities.

Lib anchor evidently did not.

Here’s the deal, here is what the lib doesn’t know.
To be a non-invented people, that is, to be legally a nation, a group of folks have to possess certain prerequisites:

1 defendable borders
2 citizens [naturalization/native born]
3 viable economy [money; production capability; distribution, etc.]
4 military forces [capability of at least self-protection]
5 government [political viability – ability to id problems and solutions thereto and ability to carry them out

The above list is off top of head…as I remember it from elementary diplomacy…
Again, no time/inclination right now to look up the complete list.
Would that there was an editor requring such and willing to write a check.

That'll be the day.

If and when a group of folks possess all these characteristics, really possess them, not merely claim to do so, then and only then are they able to access the club, to take advantage of the rights of nationhood and to shoulder the consequent responsibilities.
Only then is that group truly not an invented people.

The current group of folks occupying the Middle East area in question do not currently qualify.

They are not a nation.
They are invented [nationally speaking].
Pity the ignorance of the msm media anchor….and all who try to learn from him.

FYI

A drone is down and in the hands of the iranians.


We could have recovered or destroyed it.

We did not, at the command of b.o.

FYI.

I WONDER

I wonder if the folks who made the Christmas classics 'Tis a Wonderful Life' or 'Miracle on 34th' or 'White Christmas' or 'The Bishop's Wife' knew they were making classics, films which would endure for generations.

And if they did have a glimmer of an awareness, I wonder if they were excited by their good fortune, and if they were, if they were grateful.

They have gladdened many a holiday for us at The Study.

LEST WE FORGET

No patriotic poetry this year to mark the anniversary of The Day That Will Live in Infamy.


Instead, we spent midday at our Elks Club serving a Christmas Luncheon to ca. 40 American Vets of various ages and wars.

The Vets were grateful for the hospitality.
The Elks were grateful for the Veterans’ service.

Most were elderly.
Many were suffering the infirmities of age and/or disease.

There was music and food and fellowship.

It was good for them.
It was good for us.

Our keynote speaker related 7 December to the bombing of the Towers and the attack on The Pentagon and the attempted attack on the Capitol.

Sobering thoughts at this holiest time of year.

Lest we forget.

EMASCULATION

I didn’t notice when it happened…but apparently our nation is now at the point where if a political leader utters an opinion which a sensitive group considers to be derogatory…not physically threatening, mind you, but just negative/derogatory, it is assumed that said leader might well be expected to resign from office.


How boring.
How colorless.
How insensitive to the exquisiteness of artful, critical language and thought.

Good grief!

Perhaps we are misreading the news…
This week a news anchor said that such a leader is not expecting to have to resign because of a critical statement made on facebook prior to that leader’s election to office.

Should any right thinking citizen expect a resignation?

Emasculation of civil discourse.

THE LATE 19th

It happens every year at this time.

We get involved in so many traditional doings: gift shopping, the sending of cards, the viewing of certain movies and reading certain books and thinking of days so long ago…

And it hits us that so many of our favorite and important memories and conveniences and cultural innovations had their significant takeoffs within just a few years of each other.

Marshall Fields; Macy’s; J.L. Hudson’s; New York Central Park; Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive; the Great American West [the legendary truths]; innumerable magazines and newspapers still vital (albeit evolved) to this day; thousands of townhouses in London, New York, Chicago, etc., still in good shape serving a variety of needs;  births of so many technical innovations – the forerunners of much we take so for granted today: sewing machines, elevators, ice machines, steel companies, internal combustion engines skyscrapers, medical advances; Christmas cards and Christmas trees; Sherlock Holmes and public awareness of Charles Dickens…I could go on.

The brevity of this list displays several realities: I have not taken the time to even approach completeness; forgetfulness; and ignorance of lots and lots of good stuff.

Thank goodness I do not depend on this journal for an income.

But enough.

All the enumerated above came to be in the late 19th Century…all within a few years of each other.

We think of our present as a time of great innovation.

And it is.

But what a prodigious era of development was the late 19th as well.

‘EVOLUTION’ FOLLOW UP

The link below will take you to a nyt item on the staying power of the John Wayne mystique – of the enduring fascination with such superb portrayers of great American themes, be they actors or directors.

Even the links within the article are a  joy to read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/movies/red-river-buckle-from-film-disappears-before-auction.html?hpw

Enjoy!