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| Taylors Falls library entrance
Photo by J. Harrington
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This year we're going to pass on the Taylors Falls Christmas Lighting tonight. Dicey weather and already dicey roads (townships and county didn't clear all the drifting that occurred after the snowfall ceased, leaving icy, slickery stretches mixed with otherwise clear dry roads. Plus, we're tired from cleaning up after the last storm and realigning the mail box the township snow plow crew knocked off kilter, and we need to finish getting organized for putting up the Christmas tree and, probably, blowing more snow off the drive come tomorrow or Sunday.
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| a special star shone over the manger
Photo by J. Harrington
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We've noticed that slowly evenings in our countryside are brightening with the additions of Christmas lights at scattered farms and country houses. They're pretty and almost take us back to childhood times when our family of origin (mom, dad, two sisters) would go for a drive to "see the Christmas lights." In those days we, or at least I, couldn't picture places where someone could "cut their own," let alone someday live where we could cut a tree on our own property. The next month or so will be full of the joys of the Christmas season, baking bread and Christmas cookies, getting and wrapping presents for family and friends (where would Christmas be without the three wise men and where are wise men today?). We're going to focus on pacing ourselves and not get caught up in the madness of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. As Mahatma Ghandi is reported to have noted "There is more to life than increasing its speed."
We're slowly settling, we think, on a name for our skiing gnome. We'll let it sit overnight (there's that slowing down) and see if it still feels comfortable tomorrow. If it does, we'll share the gnome's name then (no, "then" is not the gnome's name).
Although the roof is just a story high,
It dizzies me a little to look down.
I lariat-twirl the cord of Christmas lights
And cast it to the weeping birch’s crown;
A dowel into which I’ve screwed a hook
Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine
The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs
Will accent the tree’s elegant design.
Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause
And call up commendations or critiques.
I make adjustments. Though a potpourri
Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,
We all are conscious of the time of year;
We all enjoy its colorful displays
And keep some festival that mitigates
The dwindling warmth and compass of the days.
Some say that L.A. doesn’t suit the Yule,
But UPS vans now like magi make
Their present-laden rounds, while fallen leaves
Are gaily resurrected in their wake;
The desert lifts a full moon from the east
And issues a dry Santa Ana breeze,
And valets at chic restaurants will soon
Be tending flocks of cars and SUVs.
And as the neighborhoods sink into dusk
The fan palms scattered all across town stand
More calmly prominent, and this place seems
A vast oasis in the Holy Land.
This house might be a caravansary,
The tree a kind of cordial fountainhead
Of welcome, looped and decked with necklaces
And ceintures of green, yellow, blue, and red.
Some wonder if the star of Bethlehem
Occurred when Jupiter and Saturn crossed;
It’s comforting to look up from this roof
And feel that, while all changes, nothing’s lost,
To recollect that in antiquity
The winter solstice fell in Capricorn
And that, in the Orion Nebula,
From swirling gas, new stars are being born.
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Please be kind to each other while you can.
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