Good unintentions

You know how it is. You move just one piece of furniture and, the next thing you know, you’ve rearranged the whole room.

That’s sort of what happened to this website.

I was going to reposition the caption on a picture in my other website, one thing led to another—and here we are with a total redesign on this page instead.

Can I show you around?

I wanted to keep the blog site clean and simple, but a little less stark. This template model has crisp sections, with soft edges in muted gray.

The "boot" got the boot!

To clean it up a little more, the “about me” blurb, along with my posterized face, has been moved to a separate page; there’s a link on the right, under “Pages”.

Then I redesigned the heading, though still featuring my photo from Monument Valley. I moved the title down, used outline letters, and even managed to “trim” that annoying boot-shaped broken limb from the middle of the picture.

I fiddled with alignment, column widths and font size.

But I never did get around to moving that photo caption on my other blog.

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Cooling off period

Just to be sure, I’ve waited several weeks, but now it seems safe to assume that winter has arrived here in the Sonora. Some of the signs:

• I’ve taken to wearing socks.

• My shirt is no longer a clammy layer between my back and the recliner.

• I only run one fan, maybe two, and just in the afternoon.

• Breakfast is finished before the sun comes up.

• I can get a drink of cool water—right from the tap.

• I haven’t used my furnace, but I do wear a hoodie at night.

• I’ve already closed my window at night twice in the past three weeks.

• I keep a jacket handy if I go out at night.

• Going out in daylight is pleasant no matter what the hour.

• Sometimes I cook a meal on the stove in the middle of the afternoon.

• A hot cup of coffee seems just the thing early in the morning.

• The RV park is filling up.

Yup, I'm thinkin' summer's over here in the Old Pueblo.

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Family Feast

Today, December 6, is the Feast of St. Nicholas. The date and the occasion stand out in my mind because of a childhood custom.

In some European countries, including Poland, it was on St. Nicholas’ feast day, rather than on Christmas, that gifts were given to children. As I’m sure you know, St. Nick was the original Santa Claus.

Anyway, traditionally, the children’s shoes would be left outside the door, awaiting the nighttime passage of St. Nicholas. If a child had been good, morning would find the shoes filled with gifts and treats. If the kid’s behavior had been found wanting, then the shoes would be stuffed with the dreaded lumps of coal.

When I was a kid, Christmas was one of our two main “family” feasts, the other being our annual summer vacation trip. Now, my mother was big on anticipation. It was her belief that there was as much pleasure to be had in looking forward to an event as there was to the happening itself.

Our Christmas tree was always decorated weeks before Christmas. And Mom's seasonal mantra of behavior control, “Santa Claus is watching,” was in steady use even weeks before that. Contributing to the build up were her frequent hints of the glories to come which, when we got older, she turned into sad predictions of barren Christmas mornings that we knew were just her reverse-psychological teasers for the surprises in store.

The motivating force behind all this was that our Mom was just a big kid at heart. She was living again the joys of her childhood through me and my three sibs. She and my Dad just enjoyed the heck out of seeing us kids having a good time, and a significant portion of their lives was devoted to that pursuit. Christmas was just the perfect opportunity.

Mom used the Feast of St. Nicholas not only to increase the fun and contribute to the build up for the main event, but also as a reminder of our heritage and the original religious inspiration for holiday gift-giving. To these ends, she had us put our shoes in the hallway outside our bedroom doors on the eve of St. Nick’s feast, with sad laments about the tons of coal that were sure to result.

The next dawn, of course, saw us deep in the throes of a mini Christmas. Small toys, gadgets and wrapped holiday goodies would be overflowing our shoes and normal morning routines would be forgotten—which could be a problem if it was a school morning, as it so often was. But our parents’ joy, as well as our own, was fulfilled. And they also had the foresight to wake us up a little earlier than usual if school was on tap that day.

St. Nicholas, we thank you.