Christmas music from a century ago

The Antique Christmas Lights Museum has lots of information about the evolution of Christmas lights, but hidden among its goodies is a page of Vintage Christmas Recordings. The 18 recordings were made 1908-1914 and reproduced on a 1908 Edison Home cylinder player for conversion to mp3 files.

It’s a NewMexiKen holiday tradition

Time for our annual visit to Ugly Christmas Lights.com!

Top ten things I miss about Christmas in New Mexico

Gosh, Karen makes me homesick and it’s not even Christmas and I’m at home — Top ten things I miss about Christmas in New Mexico.

The human spirit

NewMexiKen received a Christmas letter from a good friend who volunteers at the Occupational Therapy Clinic at Walter Reed Army Medical Center teaching amputees how to cook. (Bless you, Jeanne.)

Jeanne writes:

It’s amazing how upbeat they are and determined not to be defeated or defined by their injuries. While we were eating the Thanksgiving meal, one of the amputees, who’s really into cooking said, “The good thing about eating dinner with a bunch of amputees is there’s plenty of leg room under the table.”

She continues:

They joke and fool around and have a really good time–the current bunch especially. The downside, of course, is the missing limbs and sixty percent of the amputees have traumatic brain injuries. IEDs have a lot to answer for.

It’s a Wonderful Life

It’s a Wonderful Life in 30 seconds with bunnies.

Your favorite Christmas movie

Nora has nominated Miracle on 34th Street as the best Christmas movie. I said it was A Christmas Story. What do you think? Or nominate your own favorite.

Away

NewMexiKen is away. I expect to be back this weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Turkey Trivia Quiz

Get ready for next week. Take the Turkey Trivia Quiz.

Thanks to Debby and Rick for the link.

In honor of all veterans

The Allied powers signed a cease-fire agreement with Germany at Rethondes, France on November 11, 1918, bringing World War I to a close. Between the wars, November 11 was commemorated as Armistice Day in the United States, Great Britain, and France. After World War II, the holiday was recognized as a day of tribute to veterans of both world wars. Beginning in 1954, the United States designated November 11 as Veterans Day to honor veterans of all U.S. wars. Source: Library of Congress

Official Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Day website.

Yum!

Order early to be sure and get your 2007 Jones Soda Holiday Packs —

Christmas Pack Flavors: Christmas Ham Soda, Christmas Tree Soda, Egg Nog Soda and Sugar Plum Soda

Chanukah Pack Flavors: Latke Soda, Apple Sauce Soda, Chocolate Coins Soda and Jelly Doughnut Soda

And don’t forget the traditional Holiday Pack with: Turkey and Gravy soda, Sweet Potato Soda, Dinner Roll Soda, Pea Soda, Antacid Flavored Soda

I’m not really blogging, this is just a reposting from last year

From Today’s Inspiration, a Saturday Evening Post Halloween cover illustration from 1958.

And via Annette’s Notebook, the Lunch Box of the DAMNED.

Here’s the ultimate (ultimate poor taste, that is) Halloween Decoration. I can’t wait to see what they do for Christmas the holidays.

Google has a Halloween logo, though it’s not on the Google Holiday Logos page yet.

NewMexiKen could probably still identify the house that gave away packages of Krun-Chee potato chips when I was a seven or eight year old. And that someone in that same block gave out full size candy bars. Now granted, a full size candy bar in those days cost just a nickel, but “a dollar’s worth” was a common gasoline purchase then, too.

Oh, and be very careful watching this. It’s scary and the special effects will amaze you.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Holidays to you too, Tom

Functional Ambivalent opens the holiday season with a rant about the annual Christmas culture war.

Cristobal Colon

Today is the second Monday in October and the day we celebrate the federal holiday honoring Christopher Columbus. Two years ago NewMexiKen posted some thoughts on the matter. Here they are again (with a few inconsequential edits):

NewMexiKen is well aware of the feelings among many American Indians and others about Columbus Day. One Lakota woman who worked for me used to ask if—as a protest—she could come in and work on Columbus Day, a federal holiday.

My feeling is that we can’t have enough holidays and so I choose to think of Columbus Day as the Italian-American holiday. Nothing wrong with that. We have an African-American holiday on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. We have the Irish-American celebration that is St. Patrick’s Day. And Cinco de Mayo is surely the Mexican-American holiday, a much larger celebration here than in most of Mexico.

So, instead of protesting Columbus Day, perhaps American Indians should lobby to bring about a holiday of their own. Given the great diversity among Indian nations, the tribes might never reach agreement, though, so NewMexiKen will suggest a date.

The day before Columbus Day.

As for Columbus himself, a short biography from AmericanHeritage.com begins:

No matter how widely he had been hailed as a hero 14 years before, by 1506, when he died (500 years ago today), Christopher Columbus was all washed up.

Crowds from across Spain lined the streets of Seville in 1493 to welcome him home from his first voyage to the Americas, but he already hadn’t found what he was looking for, a seaway to India’s spice-trade ports. He never would, though the search consumed the rest of his life. A little genocide here, some slavery there, several mutinies, and multiple executions of crew members later, and Columbus fell out of favor with the Spanish crown and the public. When he died he was surrounded by family and by the trappings of his substantial income. But he went to his grave with the gouging sense of injustice he couldn’t forgive and of failure he couldn’t explain.

Perhaps the Italian-Americans should transfer their holiday allegiance to Tony Bennett.

Avast!

Don’t forget, tomorrow, September 19th, is Talk Like A Pirate Day.

NewMexiKen is sure me timbers will be shivering all day.

Words for Labor Day

I’d like to repeat the advice I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

Alex McCandless in a letter to his 81-year-old friend Ron Franz as quoted in Into the Wild. Franz took the advice.

Maybe I’ll go buy an old school bus.

Independence Day

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The Declaration of Independence

This Land Is Your Land

Getting in the mood for Independence Day.

Arlo’s got about as much of a claim to this song as anyone — This Land is Your Land. [YouTube video, embedding not permitted.]

Springsteen does it his way, after a long introduction. [YouTube video.]

The Dynamite’s Red Glare

A great Fourth of July story. It includes this line:

“It was around that time that my cousin suggested dynamite.”

Is this a great country, or what?

Link via Kiss My Big Blue Butt who suggests the Bush Library be a bookmobile.

Father’s Day

Today is Father’s Day, a holiday in this country that goes back to a Sunday morning in May of 1909, when a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd was sitting in church in Spokane, Washington, listening to a Mother’s Day sermon. She thought of her father who had raised her and her siblings after her mother died in childbirth, and she thought that fathers should get recognition too.

So she asked the minister of the church if he would deliver a sermon honoring fathers on her father’s birthday, which was coming up in June, and the minister did. And the tradition of Father’s Day caught on, though rather slowly. Mother’s Day became an official holiday in 1914; Father’s Day, not until 1972.

The Writer’s Almanac

Happy Father’s Day

That’s NewMexiKen’s Dad along the Oregon Coast in 2005. I miss you Dad.

Flag Day

On this date in 1777 the Continental Congress approved a national flag: Resolved, that the Flag of the thirteen United States shall be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white on a blue field, representing a new constellation. In 1916 President Wilson issued a proclamation declaring June 14 Flag Day. The present design of the flag was established in 1818 — thirteen stripes to represent the original states and a star for each state. Until 1912 the arrangement of the stars was left to the discretion of the flag-maker. The current flag with 50 stars was established on July 4, 1960, when Hawaii was admitted to the Union. The Star-Spangled Banner at Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 had 15 stars and 15 stripes.

Cinco de Mayo

The holiday of Cinco De Mayo, The 5th Of May, commemorates the victory of the Mexicans over the French army at The Battle Of Puebla in 1862. It is primarily a regional holiday celebrated in the Mexican state capital city of Puebla and throughout the state of Puebla, with some recognition in other parts of the Mexico, and especially in U.S. cities with a significant Mexican population. It is not, as many people think, Mexico’s Independence Day, which is actually September 16.

MexOnline.com

Looking spectacular in the sunshine

It’s Derby Week in Louisville and FunctionalAmbivalent is excited. It includes this, but you really do need to read it all.

The most beautiful women in the world are at Churchill Downs on Derby Day. There are thousands of them in beautiful spring dresses and flowery hats, and you can tell from their glow that every one of them feels beautiful, right down to her bones. Most of the time, when women go all-out, they’re dressed in evening wear: Dark dresses and glamorous makeup. For Derby, the theme is spring: Billowy dresses and skirts, bright colors, girl-next-door blush on the cheeks and hats that would make Carmen Miranda scream no mas. My wife, who is not a girly girl, has been enjoying the hunt for the perfect dress and accessories for a month, and she will look spectacular in the sunshine.

Vocabulary for Today

Triskaidekaphobia — the fear of 13.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia — the fear of Friday the 13th.

More information about Friday the 13th.

Easter

The word “Easter” comes from an ancient pagan goddess worshipped by Anglo Saxons named Eostre. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny. Eggs were a symbol of fertility in part because they used to be so scarce during the winter. There are records of people giving each other decorated eggs at Easter as far back as the 11th century.

The Writer’s Almanac

Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time

The Museum of Hoaxes.

April Fool

No not today, fool. Sunday. Today is March 30th.

Scott Adams has some good April Fools ideas including this:

“I haven’t seen this prank done, but I think it would work if you have a secretary who is unusually clueless about technology. Tell the secretary that some other department is out of copier paper and ask him/her to fax some blank pages, just enough to hold them until their paper shipment comes in.”

Lent

Forty days of Lent to mark Jesus’s forty days of fasting in the wilderness.

Forty you say. But today is February 21 and Easter is April 8. That’s 46 days (four this week, then six more weeks). 6 times 7 equals 42 plus 4 equals 46

Aha! But the six Sundays don’t count. (No one told me that when I was a kid giving up candy for Lent.)

The date for Ash Wednesday, of course, is determined by counting back 46 days from the date for Easter Sunday.

The usual statement, that Easter Day is the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox, is not a precise statement of the actual ecclesiastical rules. The full moon involved is not the astronomical Full Moon but an ecclesiastical moon (determined from tables) that keeps, more or less, in step with the astronomical Moon.

The ecclesiastical rules are:

• Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox;
• this particular ecclesiastical full moon is the 14th day of a tabular lunation (new moon); and
• the vernal equinox is fixed as March 21.

resulting in that Easter can never occur before March 22 or later than April 25.

U.S. Naval Observatory

The equinox this year is March 20th in the Western Hemisphere (March 20, 6:07 PM MDT).

Fat Tuesday

There are well-known season-long Carnival celebrations in Europe and Latin America, including Nice, France; Cologne, Germany; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The best-known celebration in the U.S. is in New Orleans and the French-Catholic communities of the Gulf Coast. Mardi Gras came to the New World in 1699, when a French explorer arrived at the Mississippi River, about 60 miles south of present day New Orleans. He named the spot Point du Mardi Gras because he knew the holiday was being celebrated in his native country that day.

Eventually the French in New Orleans celebrated Mardi Gras with masked balls and parties, until the Spanish government took over in the mid-1700s and banned the celebrations. The ban continued even after the U.S. government acquired the land but the celebrations resumed in 1827. The official colors of Mardi Gras, with their roots in Catholicism, were chosen 10 years later: purple, a symbol of justice; green, representing faith; and gold, to signify power.

Mardi Gras literally means “Fat Tuesday” in French. The name comes from the tradition of slaughtering and feasting upon a fattened calf on the last day of Carnival. The day is also known as Shrove Tuesday (from “to shrive,” or hear confessions), Pancake Tuesday and fetter Dienstag. The custom of making pancakes comes from the need to use up fat, eggs and dairy before the fasting and abstinence of Lent begins.

Catholic Roots of Mardi Gras

The holiday today

The federal holiday today — the reason there’s no mail delivery — is Washington’s Birthday.

There is no state holiday today in New Mexico. The state chooses to celebrate Presidents’ Day the day after Thanksgiving, November 23rd this year.

The next holiday is Memorial Day, May 28th this year. That’s 14 weeks from now!

U.S. Code: Title 4, § 6103. Holidays

(a) The following are legal public holidays:
New Year’s Day, January 1.
Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., the third Monday in January.
Washington’s Birthday, the third Monday in February.
Memorial Day, the last Monday in May.
Independence Day, July 4.
Labor Day, the first Monday in September.
Columbus Day, the second Monday in October.
Veterans Day, November 11.
Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday in November.
Christmas Day, December 25.