Joust The Facts

Happy 2012! ... Oh, And Merry Christmas

And 'cause I missed doing my Christmas post ...

Merry Christmas, He Belatedly Wishes Everyone

Hey, Merry Christmas everyone.  I was going to embed the Linus-meaning-of-Christmas video clip that so many seem to be linking/embedding today.

Or in some cases trying unsuccessfully to embed.  It helps to check your work, Ben.  What you actually have up as of this writing is the Linus And Lucy composition of Vince Guaraldi.  It's good, but it doesn't give the meaning of Christmas.

But then, I realized that I'd be repeating a post, as I'd already used that as the substance of a Christmas post back in 2004, six years ago, when this blog was three months old.

Copycats.  I hope Santa was good to you all.

We Don't Need, Or Want, Your Permission, Ma'am

Or your approval, for that matter.

Michelle Obama said it's fine to eat what you want on Thanksgiving.

"Don't worry about how much you eat. Just enjoy it," she said. "This is the time. Have pie."

Let me make two additional points.  First, that "not needing your permission or your approval" thing?  That goes for the other 364 days of the year.  This is, I believe, the eleventh article in the Bill of Rights.  "No citizen shall be deprived of the right to pie on Thanksgiving.  Or, really, ever."  (From "Stuff James Madison Wrote," vol. 2)

Second, as you and your family currently live in public housing thanks to the good graces of the American people, wouldn't our approval of your diet while you live in "our" house be more appropriate?

By the way, I hope you all had a very happy Thanksgiving.  I hope you left the table with your belt let out one or two notches, and I sincerely hope you had pie.

I did.

11/26/10 0805: Though I didn't have six types of pie.

The Headless Horseman Rides

(image borrowed from Freaking News photoshop contest.  Not sure where it originated)

 Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight companion, and bethought himself of the adventure of Brom Bones with the Galloping Hessian, now quickened his steed, in hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up, and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind—the other did the same. His heart began to sink within him; he endeavored to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion, that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck, on perceiving that he was headless!—but his horror was still more increased, on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of the saddle; his terror rose to desperation; he rained a shower of kicks and blows upon Gunpowder; hoping, by a sudden movement, to give his companion the slip—but the spectre started full jump with him. Away then they dashed, through thick and thin; stones flying, and sparks flashing at every bound. Ichabod’s flimsy garments fluttered in the air, as he stretched his long lanky body away over his horse’s head, in the eagerness of his flight.

The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving, is a favorite classic short story.  If you're feeling mischievous tonight, read it to your children before they go to bed.

Taps

At the VA website I found this brief and fascinating story telling the history of Taps, and how it became the bugle call for military burials.  (PDF link)

The 24-note melancholy bugle call known as “taps” is thought to be a revision of a French bugle signal, called “tattoo,” that notified soldiers to cease an evening’s drinking and return to their garrisons. It was sounded an hour before the final bugle call to end the day by extinguishing fires and lights. The last five measures of the tattoo resemble taps

The word “taps” is an alteration of the obsolete word “taptoo,” derived from the Dutch “taptoe.” Taptoe was the command — “Tap toe!” — to shut (“toe to”) the “tap” of a keg.

The revision that gave us present-day taps was made during America’s Civil War by Union Gen. Daniel Adams Butterfield, heading a brigade camped at Harrison Landing, Va., near Richmond. Up to that time, the U.S. Army’s infantry call to end the day was the French final call, “L’Extinction des feux.” Gen. Butterfield decided the “lights out” music was too formal to signal the day’s end. One day in July 1862 he recalled the tattoo music and hummed a version of it to an aide, who wrote it down in music. Butterfield then asked the brigade bugler, Oliver W. Norton, to play the notes and, after listening, lengthened and shortened them while keeping his original melody.

He ordered Norton to play this new call at the end of each day thereafter, instead of the regulation call. The music was heard and appreciated by other brigades, who asked for copies and adopted this bugle call. It was even adopted by Confederate buglers.

This music was made the official Army bugle call after the war, but not given the name “taps” until 1874.

The first time taps was played at a military funeral may also have been in Virginia soon after Butterfield composed it. Union Capt. John Tidball, head of an artillery battery, ordered it played for the burial of a cannoneer killed in action. Not wanting to reveal the battery’s position in the woods to the enemy nearby, Tidball substituted taps for the traditional three rifle volleys fired over the grave. Taps was played at the funeral of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson 10 months after it was composed. Army infantry regulations by 1891 required taps to be played at military funeral ceremonies.

Taps now is played by the military at burial and memorial services, to accompany the lowering of the flag and to signal the “lights out” command at day’s end.

Yes, I know I borrowed it all.  Interesting that the Confederate buglers began to use it as well.

There are more details here, from Jari Villanueva, (scroll to the bottom) a bugler considered the foremost authority on Taps, and both sites have the 24 notes on musical staff.  If you're going to give it a go, be sure to play the call in a mournful, respectful and expressive manner.  There is some question about the proper rhythm, but here is Mr. Villanueava's reasoning for eighth notes for the seventh-to-thirteenth notes in the call, as opposed to dotted eighths and sixteenths as it has been sometimes written and often played.  The music at the VA site shows the eighth notes as well.  Have a listen.

Have a great Memorial Day, but amid the beer, the cookouts, the races, and the games, remember those for whom Taps is played.

Groundhog Day

Phil: What would you do if you were stuck in one place...and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?

Gus: That sums it up for me.

The important thing is not, of course, whether Phil sees his shadow (he did today - 6 more weeks of winter) but whether you have this great movie in your DVD collection to view it whenever life needs a pick-me-up.  I have a handfull of movies that fall into that category - The Hunt for Red October, Groundhog Day, Casablanca, Young Frankenstein, A Fish Called Wanda, On The Waterfront, Singin' In The Rain, to name a few.  But this time of year it's, understandably, Groundhog Day that does it.  Wisecracking Bill Murray with a spiritual message?  What could go wrong.  Here's 8 minutes to whet your appetite.

So go watch the movie, and drink a toast to Harold Ramis while you're at it.

A Christmas Not So Classic

Everyone remembers Frosty The Snowman, the classic Christmas cartoon.  With narration by Jimmy Durante, it features the most recognizable version of the song by the same name.  Well, back in 1992 someone came up with the idea for Frosty Returns, a pathetic attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the original.  They gave Frosty a much deeper voice (John Goodman, who made a great Sully in a later voiceover incarnation) and an environmental message.  The animation style was inconsistent.  And curiously, Frosty no longer seemed to need his magic hat to come to life, which really eliminates the initial premise behind the enchanted snowman.  I found this review quite amusing.

Garbage made with yellow snow... show

John Goodman cannot sing. Not on pitch and not on key. Not that they gave him a song you would ever, ever want to hear again anyway.

So, environmentalism is what Frosty is all about now? I would have called it horribly preachy except that it was too confused to manage being preachy.

{...}It would have been bad enough if they had ripped off the animation style of the Peanuts series but instead that was only one of a dozen different styles they ripped off, often all in the same scene. Watch the scale of Frosty to the girl he hangs around with. Apparently Frosty's hight fluctuates a lot due to his composition.

Oh, I see. Frosty can take off his hat now? And still be animated even when he doesn't even have that hat! Come on! This isn't Star Trek, they don't have a canon of a thousand different stories to keep straight here, Frosty is animated by the hat and he says "Happy Birthday" every time he reboots. That's it!!!! And you can't even do that?

So Merry Christmas, everyone.  And if you ever are forced at gunpoint to watch Frosty Returns, remember as cringes follow one after the other that, mercifully, it will be over in about a half hour.

Ah, The Cranberry

Personally I prefer the jellied version of Ocean Spray's masterpiece; others prefer the "chunky" style (it's a texture thing with me).  Here are the instructions for producing the perfect "jelly log."  The key move is not the flat knife around the perimeter of the burgundy gelatin, but the "shake" at a slight angle, not straight down.  This creates shear along the base of the can, freeing it from the overlying delicacy.

(photo shamelessly borrowed not for commercial purpose from said Ocean Spray website)

Here are a couple of my favorite cranberry spokesmen:

Happy Thanksgiving, and enjoy the jelly

A Lump Of Coal In America's Stocking

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is giving America a Christmas present. (hat tip: Allahpundit at Hot Air, video at Townhall).

First off, isn't her constituency going to be miffed at the use of the term "Christmas?"  Second, looking at the numbers at Hot Air, it seems America isn't terribly receptive of her munificence.  This is no HDTV or Swiss watch.

A Halloween Tragedy

Most parents worry about their kids on Halloween night, but they worry about other adults with not-so-innocent motives, or cars, or pets that should have been chained, or what their kids might do themselves.  They don't usually worry about the wind.

A 10-year-old boy was killed when he was hit by a falling tree while trick-or-treating last night...

[T]he windy weather caused a birch tree to snap off about 4 feet from its base and fall on the boy, who was out trick-or-treating with other children.

The boy, whose name has not been released, was transported by the Pelham Fire Department to Saints Memorial Hospital in Lowell, where he was pronounced dead...

The weather was extremely windy throughout the region last night, with gusts as high as 40 miles per hour at times, according to the National Weather Service.

My heart goes out to the family.  This is something no one should have to endure, particularly on a night that brings such joy to children of all ages.  I hope they can find the strength to deal with their grief.

A Christmas Tail

On a reindeer.  Named Rudolph.

The commission established the following narrative of events:

Rudolph suffers from an unusual swelling and discoloration of the nose.

Medical doctors who examined him at the commission's request concluded that his disability is not due to any known medical condition.

For one thing, his nose is too shiny. Witnesses testified that some “would even say it glows,” raising the possibility of radiation poisoning. That was ruled out through the use of a Geiger counter. A diagnosis of congenital disfigurement is accepted by the commission.

Civil Rights are no laughing matter.  Er, did David Burge write this?

Merry Christmas, everyone.

A Belated Happy Thanksgiving

In this castle we have a lot to be grateful for.  We wish you all a happy Thanksgiving and a splendid and joyous holiday season.

Did anyone watch much football?  The games were fairly lame matchups.  I hope there's plenty of leftover turkey.

Memorial Day 2008

A simple 'Thank You' will not suffice, but it is sincere.  Said to all the troops who serve America and protect us, by my family this morning at breakfast.

New Years Day, 2008

My resolutions for 2008?  I have three, and they're more like wishes, really:

1. I'd like to have my practice experience a successful move out of Massachusetts and into our new digs in southern NH.
2. I'd like to have a little more free time to spend with my family and to get back to the blog on a more regular basis, once the new office and practice move are completed.
3. I'd like a little less white, fluffy global warming dumped on my driveway, thank you very much.

A Patriots Super Bowl, a Celtics championship, and assorted family-related hopes and sundry other wishes are further down the list.  Happy New Year, everyone.

1/2/07 0000: (edited) Thanks, Jay Tea, for handing me the evidence to back up my impression.

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - Today's snowstorm made this month the snowiest December in New Hampshire in more than a century.

Sleep?!! Now He Tells Us

Well, maybe our sleep-deprived brains can remember this advice next year.

                        SUNDAY, Dec. 23 (HealthDay News) -- Many people sacrifice sleep in order to complete all their shopping, decorating, cooking and other holiday preparations. But a lack of sleep can reduce your ability to enjoy the season, warns Dr. Alejandro D. Chediak, president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

"In order to best enjoy the holiday season, anticipate and budget the extra time needed to carry out your holiday 'to-do' list. Getting an early start and doing a little bit each day will save time and relieve stress. Delaying your 'to-do' list until the last possible minute not only leads to sleep loss, it also makes one contend with heavier street traffic and more aggressive crowds in stores," Chediak said in a prepared statement.

Other useful tips include avoiding drinking and driving, pulling off the road for a catnap when you're tired, and avoiding caffeine late at night.

Happiness Is ...

... as happiness does.  Or, as author Steve Salerno put it in a Thursday Wall Street Journal op-ed, peace of mind and "doing what needs doing" should be the goal, and not the eternal stochastic pursuit of ecstasy.

One morning when I was 13, I elbowed my father as he got ready for work. "Dad," I said, "are you happy?" For a long moment he stared at me. Then he replied, "Son, a man doesn't have time to think about that. A man just does what needs doing." He gave me one of his you'll-understand-someday smiles, and left.

[...]

If the quest for joy doesn't take center stage at Christmas, it will surely pop up the following week. Typically, New Year's resolutions that don't involve weight loss have something to do with embracing change, choosing happiness, following your dreams, etc. We are consumed by the pursuit of happiness.

That's too bad. Because it's that very pursuit -- as currently framed -- that may prevent you from finding happiness, or at least a passable facsimile.

Now, I'm not contending that Dad's stoic machismo is what life ought to be about -- for either gender. But a lot of us seemed a lot happier, or at least less restless, before the Happiness Movement began bullying us.

Happiness is not a warm puppy.  A lot of us in medicine learned something that others in all walks of life would do well to learn, a lesson learned through long hours and inconvenient emergencies.  What matters at the end of the day, when you're reporting on your attending's patients to him, or signing out to your fellow residents, is that you did what needed to be done.  You responded to the ER call at two AM on the patient with the open fracture.  You checked the hematocrit at two AM on the trauma patient with the ipsilateral femur and tibia fractures, who lost a ton of blood even before getting to the hospital.  You checked the wound on the hip replacement patient before discharging her, because you're attending asked you to.

Mr. Salerno sums it up.

Here's something else Dad told me: "Life isn't built around 'fun.' It's built around peace of mind."

The patients, the doctors, the residents all have peace of mind when the i's have been dotted and the t's crossed, and what needs to be done has been done.  Family is important for a similar reason.  Having dependents means they depend on you to "do what needs to be done," whether it's getting up 90 minutes early to clear a snowed-in driveway or running to the market when you're exhausted to restock supplies for the next few days meals.  That, in itself, is it's own reward, knowing inside that those dependents can depend on you.  Being someone whom your family can depend on should make you happy.

Mr. Salerno also makes a point about lofty goals and loftier expectations.

Contrary to what you hear from Oprah, not "everything you want in life" is attainable (unless, maybe, you are Oprah). Consider the staple line from school administrators during self-esteem-boosting student-assemblies: "In this great country, you can even be president, if you want!" While technically it's true that anybody can be president, it is not true that everybody can be president.

Or should be.  We demand our presidents be prepared to handle every situation, to be someone you can depend upon in a crisis.  Current public opinion aside, President Bush showed himself to be one of those people on September 11th and thereafter, not losing sight of the goal of keeping America safe from people trying to destroy us.  Even if it meant going after someone who had, as everyone believed at the time, the potential to do us great harm.

Looking at the current crop of nominees, both Democrat and Republican, leaves us with only Republican candidates showing a similar stalwart commitment to continuing the effort.  And it shows us only Republican candidates with experience and a track record that could lead you to believe that they will "do what needs to be done."  The leading Democrats have all either never had such conviction and experience (Obama) or, lacking a track record, repudiated that initial impulse when it became inconvenient (Edwards, Clinton).

Of the the other Democrats only Senators Dodd and Biden have enough of a track record for you to know of them what to expect.  But neither of them has shown the conviction and determination to demonstrate that they will consistently "do what needs to be done."  Mr. Richardson has already told us that he won't.  Of the Republicans Mr. McCain and Mr. Giuliani have been in positions to show that they "do what needs to be done," and would quite obviously do so again.  Mr. Thompson's years in the Senate, similar to Senators Dodd and Biden, have established his track record enough to know that he would "do what needs to be done," and to a lesser extent Mr. Romney's years in Massachusetts in dealing with a very lopsidedly Democratic legislature have also (though admittedly his positions have shifted noticeably, and uncomfortably).  Mr. Huckabee is not someone I can count on.  Ron Paul?  No way.

Having lost a brother to terrorist actions I'm not willing to consider anyone who cannot be counted upon to "do what needs to be done" by the dependents, the American people, in terms of security.  And neither should you.  It will keep all of us happy in the sense that Mr. Salerno means.

I'll be picking up his book, SHAM: How The Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  Remember, too much turkey puts you to sleep, usually on the sofa in front of a football game, and means a couple extra sessions of exercise.  And speaking of football, here's a reprise of last years Turkey And Football post.

Turkey And Football

Today is Thanksgiving, a time for looking back on this year, looking forward to the next year, and giving thanks for the blessings that God has bestowed upon us.  It is also a time for the most sumptuous feast of the year, and football, football football.  How did that happen?  Well, high school football has long been a Massachusetts Thanksgiving tradition.

Nowhere is that more evident than in Massachusetts, where hundreds of teams renew their rivalries on Thanksgiving Day.

"We play not for us, but for the whole town," Wellesley coach Andy Levin told the Boston Globe, after his team upset rival Needham on Thanksgiving Day last year.

Needham and Wellesley first played in 1882, when Wellesley's 15-year-old quarterback Arthur Oldham challenged the Needham players to a game on Thanksgiving Day. According to an interview with Oldham's daughter in a local paper in 1984, Oldham had second thoughts after he got a good look at his bigger and stronger opponents, but he knew he couldn't back down from his challenge. Wellesley won, anyway, thus beginning the time-honored tradition of the underdog pulling off an upset in such rivalry games.

"He never got over talking about it," Anne Oldham Borntraeger was quoted as saying. That's another time-honored tradition of annual rivalries: local bragging rights.

Needham and Wellesley boast the oldest high school rivalry in the country, but it is not the longest continuous Thanksgiving Day rivalry — it's been uninterrupted only since 1921. That honor belongs to the Boston Latin-Boston English Thanksgiving Day game, which has been played every year since 1887. This year's game will be the 116th in the rivalry.

Thanksgiving Day rivalries in Massachusetts that have been going for more than a century without interruption also include Malden-Medford (1889) and Brookline-Newton North (1899). Others that began more than 100 years ago, but have not been continuous: Lawrence-Lowell (1890), Amesbury-Newburyport (1891), Winchester-Woburn (1891), Fall River Durfee-New Bedford (1893), Fitchburg-Leominster (1894), Beverly-Salem (1900), and East Boston-South Boston (1901).

College football also got into the act on Thanksgiving in the 1800's.

Intercollegiate football was in its infancy in the mid-1870s when the Intercollegiate Football Association was formed in the northeast. This organization instituted a championship game to be played on Thanksgiving Day. Within a decade it was the premier athletic event in the nation.

Ivy League powers Princeton and Yale played each other in this game almost every year thanks to their football prowess. By the 1890s they were drawing crowds of 40,000. Thanksgiving Day church services were ended early to accommodate the fans, and the game became the event that kicked off the social season for New York's elite.

Not everyone was happy about this marriage of holiday and pigskin.

A New York Herald commentary published the day after Thanksgiving in 1893 railed " ... Thanksgiving Day is no longer a solemn festival to God for mercies given. It is a holiday granted by the State and the Nation to see a game of football."

As it should be.  The Detroit Lions, with a new owner and playing their first year in the Motor City, began the tradition in 1934 with a game against the rival Chicago Bears.

The game was the brainchild of G.A. Richards, the first owner of the Detroit Lions. Richards had purchased the team in 1934 and moved the club from Portsmouth, Ohio to the Motor City. The Lions were the new kids in town and had taken a backseat to the baseball Tigers. Despite the fact the Lions had lost only one game prior to Thanksgiving in 1934, the season’s largest crowd had been just 15,000.

The opponent that day in 1934 was the undefeated, defending World Champion Chicago Bears of George Halas. The game would determine the champion of the Western Division. Richards had convinced the NBC Radio Network to carry the game coast-to-coast (94 stations) and, additionally, an estimated 26,000 fans jammed into the University of Detroit Stadium while thousands more disappointed fans were turned away.

Despite two Ace Gutowsky touchdowns, the Bears won the inaugural game, 19-16, but a classic was born. Since 1934, 65 games have been played with the Lions holding a series record of 33-30-2 (.523). And each game, in its own way, continues to bring back memories of Thanksgiving, not only to Lions' fans, but to football fans across the nation.

The big meal, with the big bird, lends itself to football in an unusual symbiosis of circumstances and chemicals.  Whether it's due a strong desire to watch the games, or to avoid the extensive post-feast cleanup, or whether the flesh of the bird simply is chock full of sedatives, in home after home the male members of the family can be found collapsed on cushioned sofas and in comfy recliners, contemplating either the proper play call to make the first down or the insides of their eyelids.

From Joust The Facts, have a happy and blessed Thanksgiving.

By the way, I'll be covering one of those traditional Massachusetts Thanksgiving rivalry games later this morning.  Good stuff.

 

 

 

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Well, among many other things. (click to enlarge)

500 pieces, many with only variations on the orange glove leather.  There are "edges", but few of them were straight.  Oh, and some of the straight ones were internal in the puzzle.  Here a shot with some of the large pieces removed.

Father's Day 2007

As I was out this morning digging two moderate sized holes in the rocky New Hampshire soil in order to plant a couple of trees, it suddenly occurred to me why Father's Day exists.  It's not so that kids can tell their dads how much they're loved and appreciated.  Kids let their dads (and moms) know that in little ways every single day.  And it's not so that dads can get a "vacation;" my Father's Day weekend was filled with doing things for my kids and my family, including the first session of "Dad's Soccer Camp," wherein an aging middling former player tries to inspire three young daughters who claim to be interested in becoming very good players.

No, as I was drenched with sweat and prying large rocks out from the dense soil, it came to me that Father's Day exists for the dads themselves, to give them a moment to realize just why they labor, why they put in the overtime and sweat the small stuff at work, why they drive themselves to be there for their kids even more than they do for their jobs, why they take the time to teach their kids things about life and living that may not sink in for 20 years.  Father's Day exists as a yearly reminder that giving of yourself and imparting the knowledge that you've accumulated to your kids is the greatest gift you can give them.

Now, let's see if they still think I'm all that when "Dad's Summer Math Camp" starts.

By the way, my choice for a Father's Day movie is Field of Dreams.

Memorial Day 2007

(from the 2006 Memorial Day ceremonies
at Arlington Cemetary.)

We thank you for your sacrifice.

Hey, It's May 13th!

To all the women out there dedicated enough ... and fortunate enough ... to be called 'Mom'.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I think a picture of a leprechaun is in order, but there's also a lot of basketball going on.  Hmmmm.  Wait, I know!

And, you know, its a

Ringing In 2007

The celebration, in Times Square...

 
Revelers celebrate the New Year in Times Square, New York. Hundreds of thousands of revellers packed into New York's Times Square to ring in 2007, braving heightened security to join in the traditional centrepiece of New Year (AFP Photo)

And the aftermath ...

 
A police officer walks over the confetti and trash left over from the New Year's Eve celebrations in Times Square in New York, Monday, Jan. 1, 2007. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Isn't that always the way?  Once all the fun is over you look around at the mess you've created and wonder, "was it worth it?"  We'll know 365 days from now.

1/1/07 1000: link added

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas ...

... everywhere you go.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev'rywhere you go
Take a look in the five-and-ten,
Glistening once again
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Toys in ev'ry store
But the prettiest sight to see
is the holly that will be
On your own front door

A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots
Is the wish of Barney and Ben
Dolls that will talk and will go for a walk
Is the hope of Janice and Jen
And Mom and Dad can hardly wait for school to start again

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev'rywhere you go
There's a tree in the Grand Hotel,
One in the park as well
The sturdy kind that doesn't mind the snow

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Soon the bells will start
And the thing that will make them ring
Is the carol that you sing
Right within your heart

A Merry musical Christmas, to one and all, from Giacomo and Joust The Facts.  One of the things I have been doing with my copious free time - three children, busy medical practice, blogging - has been piano lessons.  My goal this year was to learn some simple arrangements of Christmas carols so that the family could sing them together.  I'm happy to report that I reached that goal, and can play, in a somewhat musical fashion:

• Silent Night
• Hark, The Herald Angels Sing
• Deck The Halls
• I'll Be Home For Christmas
• Blue Christmas
• O Tannenbaum
• The First Noel
• Auld Lang Syne
• Joy To The World
• Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
• Jingle Bell Rock

And no, I don't sing - yet.  With a little time after Christmas I'm hoping to record myself and link them here - so stay tuned for bad first year piano versions of the songs above!

Howie Carr Reads The Christmas Mail

Howie Carr, Boston radio personality and columnist for the Boston Herald, annually takes a look at - and makes fun of - yuppie Christmas letters.  You know the kind, where all of the perfect children and their perfect parents have a simply perfect year leading up to a perfect Christmas.  I have to admit, the excerpts he chooses are excruciatingly amusing.

The extremely talented writers are all on the boards of “nonprofits,” they have solo art exhibits, they belong to “reformed” churches and they volunteer at the homeless kitchen. Did I mention most of them are rolling in cash.

On May 1,” Cindy and Todd report, “we began provisioning our 45-foot motor yacht ‘Mistress’ for an extended cruisse."

Only 45 feet? You pikers! Or should that be “You pikers!!!!” Because no yuppie Christmas-card writer would ever use one exclamation point when three more might suffice.

and

One noticeable trend this year: Obama-mania. Watch out Hillary!!!! As Helene put it, “We are still mired in an unjust war but there is hope.” Writing from the Buckeye State, Julia is enthralled by the rout of “the Ohio Taliban.” An 84-year-old lady who says she’s for “Duval Patick” adds, “I don’t despair for I just finished reading Barack Obama’s autobiography and I think I have found someone I can identify with.”

A little humor to lighten up your Christmas Eve day.

Turkey And Football

Today is Thanksgiving, a time for looking back on this year, looking forward to the next year, and giving thanks for the blessings that God has bestowed upon us.  It is also a time for the most sumptuous feast of the year, and football, football football.  How did that happen?  Well, high school football has long been a Massachusetts Thanksgiving tradition.

Nowhere is that more evident than in Massachusetts, where hundreds of teams renew their rivalries on Thanksgiving Day.

"We play not for us, but for the whole town," Wellesley coach Andy Levin told the Boston Globe, after his team upset rival Needham on Thanksgiving Day last year.

Needham and Wellesley first played in 1882, when Wellesley's 15-year-old quarterback Arthur Oldham challenged the Needham players to a game on Thanksgiving Day. According to an interview with Oldham's daughter in a local paper in 1984, Oldham had second thoughts after he got a good look at his bigger and stronger opponents, but he knew he couldn't back down from his challenge. Wellesley won, anyway, thus beginning the time-honored tradition of the underdog pulling off an upset in such rivalry games.

"He never got over talking about it," Anne Oldham Borntraeger was quoted as saying. That's another time-honored tradition of annual rivalries: local bragging rights.

Needham and Wellesley boast the oldest high school rivalry in the country, but it is not the longest continuous Thanksgiving Day rivalry — it's been uninterrupted only since 1921. That honor belongs to the Boston Latin-Boston English Thanksgiving Day game, which has been played every year since 1887. This year's game will be the 116th in the rivalry.

Thanksgiving Day rivalries in Massachusetts that have been going for more than a century without interruption also include Malden-Medford (1889) and Brookline-Newton North (1899). Others that began more than 100 years ago, but have not been continuous: Lawrence-Lowell (1890), Amesbury-Newburyport (1891), Winchester-Woburn (1891), Fall River Durfee-New Bedford (1893), Fitchburg-Leominster (1894), Beverly-Salem (1900), and East Boston-South Boston (1901).

College football also got into the act on Thanksgiving in the 1800's.

Intercollegiate football was in its infancy in the mid-1870s when the Intercollegiate Football Association was formed in the northeast. This organization instituted a championship game to be played on Thanksgiving Day. Within a decade it was the premier athletic event in the nation.

Ivy League powers Princeton and Yale played each other in this game almost every year thanks to their football prowess. By the 1890s they were drawing crowds of 40,000. Thanksgiving Day church services were ended early to accommodate the fans, and the game became the event that kicked off the social season for New York's elite.

Not everyone was happy about this marriage of holiday and pigskin.

A New York Herald commentary published the day after Thanksgiving in 1893 railed " ... Thanksgiving Day is no longer a solemn festival to God for mercies given. It is a holiday granted by the State and the Nation to see a game of football."

As it should be.  The Detroit Lions, with a new owner and playing their first year in the Motor City, began the tradition in 1934 with a game against the rival Chicago Bears.

The game was the brainchild of G.A. Richards, the first owner of the Detroit Lions. Richards had purchased the team in 1934 and moved the club from Portsmouth, Ohio to the Motor City. The Lions were the new kids in town and had taken a backseat to the baseball Tigers. Despite the fact the Lions had lost only one game prior to Thanksgiving in 1934, the season’s largest crowd had been just 15,000.

The opponent that day in 1934 was the undefeated, defending World Champion Chicago Bears of George Halas. The game would determine the champion of the Western Division. Richards had convinced the NBC Radio Network to carry the game coast-to-coast (94 stations) and, additionally, an estimated 26,000 fans jammed into the University of Detroit Stadium while thousands more disappointed fans were turned away.

Despite two Ace Gutowsky touchdowns, the Bears won the inaugural game, 19-16, but a classic was born. Since 1934, 65 games have been played with the Lions holding a series record of 33-30-2 (.523). And each game, in its own way, continues to bring back memories of Thanksgiving, not only to Lions' fans, but to football fans across the nation.

The big meal, with the big bird, lends itself to football in an unusual symbiosis of circumstances and chemicals.  Whether it's due a strong desire to watch the games, or to avoid the extensive post-feast cleanup, or whether the flesh of the bird simply is chock full of sedatives, in home after home the male members of the family can be found collapsed on cushioned sofas and in comfy recliners, contemplating either the proper play call to make the first down or the insides of their eyelids.

From Joust The Facts, have a happy and blessed Thanksgiving.

A Fourth Of July Address From A Wartime President

It's not who you think.

My fellow Americans:
In 1776, on the Fourth day of July, the representatives of the several States in Congress assembled, declaring our independence, asserted that a decent respect for the opinion of mankind required that they should declare the reasons for their action.  In this new crisis, we have a like duty.

In 1776 we waged war in behalf of the great principle that government should derive its just powers from the consent of the governed.  In other words, representation chosen in free election. In the century and a half that followed, this cause of human freedom swept across the world.

But now, in our generation in the past few years a new resistance, in the form of several new practices of tyranny, has been making such headway that the fundamentals of 1776 are being struck down abroad and definitely, they are threatened here.

It is, indeed, a fallacy, based on no logic at all, for any American to suggest that the rule of force can defeat human freedom in all the other parts of the world and permit it to survive in the United States alone.  But it has been that childlike fantasy itself, that misdirected faith which has led nation after nation to go about their peaceful tasks, relying on the thought, and even the promise, that they and their lives and their government would be allowed to live when the juggernaut of force came their way.

It is simple I could almost say simple-minded-for us Americans to wave the flag, to reassert our belief in the cause of freedom and to let it go at that.

Yet, all of us who lie awake at night all of us who study and study again know full well that in these days we cannot save freedom with pitchforks and muskets alone after a dictator combination has gained control of the rest of the world.

We know that we cannot save freedom in our own midst, in our own land, if all around us our neighbor nations have lost their freedom.

That is why we are engaged in a serious, in a mighty, in a unified action in the cause of the defense of the hemisphere and the freedom of the seas.  We need not the loyalty and unity alone, we need speed and efficiency and toil and an end to backbiting, an end to the sabotage that runs far deeper than the blowing up of munitions plants.

I tell the American people solemnly that the United States will never survive as a happy and fertile oasis of liberty surrounded by a cruel desert of dictatorship.

And so it is that when we repeat the great pledge to our country and to our flag, it must be our deep conviction that we pledge as well our work, our will and, if it be necessary, our very lives.

The man who spoke these words knew that you cannot ignore threats simply because they don't threaten you as directly as they do others.  Read it and internalize it, for it represents a guiding philosophy in the times we now live.

7/4/06 0950: A good choice for a Fourth of July post from Jay Tea.  Here' my post from last year.  And a comprehensive Independence Day post from Michelle Malkin.

7/5/06 0700: Submitted at Mudville Gazette.