{"id":4958,"date":"2010-12-21T11:16:13","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T18:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=4958"},"modified":"2010-12-21T20:35:05","modified_gmt":"2010-12-22T03:35:05","slug":"sinterklaas-and-me-a-christmastime-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=4958","title":{"rendered":"Sinterklaas and Me: a Christmastime Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"This is Sinterklaas<\/a>, the Dutch Santa.\u00a0 Formerly the Archbishop of Turkey, Sint Nicolaas, Sinterklaas is shown with two of his Zwarte Pieten (there are six to eight Zwarte Pieten — “Black Petes” — originally Moorish slaves, but today more gently described as servants or even companions).<\/p>\n

Sinterklaas arrives in The Netherlands each November by steamboat from Spain, then parades through the streets of Dutch cities and towns on his horse Amerigo, accompanied by his Zwarte Pieten servants.\u00a0 Between his arrival and the 5th of December, children leave treats for Sinterklaas’ horse in their shoes by the fireplace. \u00a0 On the evening of the 5th of December, Sinterklaas brings gifts for Dutch children.\u00a0 The good ones, anyway.\u00a0 He bags up the bad ones and takes them back to Spain with him.<\/p>\n

Is that great or what?<\/p>\n

So what’s up?\u00a0 A dear friend asked me that question the other day.\u00a0 I’ll share parts of my response with you, patient reader, along with some catch-up bloggage.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re busy as always this time of year.\u00a0 Mammon is still a presence in our lives, though a little less every year.\u00a0 Really, what do we need?\u00a0 What don\u2019t we already have?\u00a0 Gifts for the kids are still essential, of course, and something for the stockings.<\/p>\n

Don’t want to sound like a shill, but I have to single out Amazon as a Christmastime friend with miraculous powers.\u00a0 Ordered three things for Donna on December 13th.\u00a0 Received two on the 16th and got the third on the 17th.\u00a0 My baby-boom-generation mind can barely wrap itself around that.\u00a0 It’s magical.\u00a0 I\u2019m starting a cargo cult here on Hidden Cove Place.\u00a0 I’ve already sculpted a mud & straw deliveryman out in the front yard.<\/p>\n

Our double-oven adventure<\/a> ended satisfactorily last week with delivery and installation of the oven we originally ordered (and the removal of the loaner oven).\u00a0 All is now well.\u00a0 I\u2019ll smoke a beef brisket on New Year’s Day and perhaps claim one of the ovens to bake some bread.\u00a0 Donna will use the other oven for the second main dish.\u00a0 Why two main dishes?\u00a0 I have to assume she fears that if she relies on me for the one & only main dish, I’ll ruin it somehow.\u00a0 She\u2019ll trust me on Christmas Eve, though. I\u2019m to boil shrimp and prepare a big pot of my father\u2019s famous clam chowder<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We decided not to host our annual Christmas Eve party, but Donna broke down at the first nudge from a single friend who asked if she\u2019d get to help decorate our tree again this year, and now the party\u2019s back on.\u00a0 Hence the bigness of the clam chowder pot.<\/p>\n

I love my Nook<\/a>, but have to restrain myself.\u00a0 E-readers are a trick to get you to spend more money.\u00a0 This morning Donna suggested buying Polly one for Christmas.\u00a0 Hmmm.\u00a0 Would that be a gift or a curse?<\/p>\n

We’re planning a mid-January road trip to Las Vegas.\u00a0 My sister Mary (the pioneer wife from Montana) is making a Vegas trip then, so we\u2019ll see Gregory, his family, and my sister & brother-in-law too. \u00a0Our visit will overlap with an industry gun show at one of the big casinos \u2013 it\u2019s for people in the trade, by invitation only \u2013 and Donna\u2019s going to get us passes from the gun store where she works.\u00a0 Not that I need another gun or anything; I\u2019m just curious.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve never understood why rightwingers, authoritarians to a man and anything but revolutionaries, are such gun nuts, while progressives, who know the government\u2019s going to lock them all up some day soon, are so squeamish about arming themselves.\u00a0 An NRA for pinkos \u2013 you\u2019d have to include a photocopy of your ACLU card with your application \u2013 that\u2019s what this country needs!\u00a0 Gun-toting libsymps . . . maybe that\u2019s what the gun nuts are really afraid of.<\/p>\n

Whenever I\u2019m tempted to brag about the weather in southern Arizona, I remind myself of Margaret Atwood\u2019s border wall in The Year of the Flood<\/a>, the wall Americans finally build to stem the tide of illegal immigration.\u00a0 This wall, of course, separates Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and southern California from the rest of the USA, and we Southwesterners are the illegal immigrants, unwanted refugees from drought.<\/p>\n

Think I’m kidding?\u00a0 Have you heard the latest news about Lake Mead<\/a> and the allocation of Colorado River water? Arizona and Nevada are trying to talk Mexico into storing its allocation in Lake Mead to keep the water level above that which will trigger cutbacks in the allocation for Arizona and Nevada.\u00a0 Gotta keep those Bellagio fountains flowing; gotta maintain Phoenix’s growth.\u00a0 A wise person will consider moving north before they build that wall, is all I’m saying.<\/p>\n

At a post-bicycle-ride breakfast with friends the other day, conversation turned to current events, specifically unemployment.\u00a0 Somewhere in there my staunch Republican friend Frank said that at least under George W. Bush, we enjoyed eight years of job growth.\u00a0 I didn’t remember it that way, but couldn’t come up with any numbers.\u00a0 Upon further investigation, I have to admit Frank was right: under GWB we gained three million jobs<\/a>.\u00a0 Of course the brilliance of Bush’s eight-year record of new job growth is somewhat diminished by Bill Clinton’s eight-year record: twenty-two million new jobs.\u00a0 Maybe that’s what I was thinking of.\u00a0 Won’t you come home, Bill Clinton, won’t you come home?<\/p>\n

Speaking of presidents, Obama finally delivers on a promise with the repeal of Don’t Ask\/Don’t Tell.\u00a0 Not sort of deliver, as with health care, but deliver in full — gift wrapped & tax paid.\u00a0 Now for the tough stuff: same-sex marriages in the ranks, dependents, spousal benefits.\u00a0 I blogged about this<\/a> a couple of weeks ago, pointing out that the implications of DADT repeal are enormous, and might eventually lead to a federal override of state laws on same-sex marriage. You think conservatives and the religious right<\/a> are upset now?\u00a0 Just wait.<\/p>\n

RIght after Hanukkah, I started changing my Facebook profile picture daily, putting up commercial advertising images of Santa Claus.\u00a0 Santa selling cigarettes, whiskey, color TVs, etc.\u00a0 I’ll keep it up until Christmas, then revert to boring old photos of my actual self.\u00a0 Earlier today, though, I put up a “Sant-A-Matic” image copied from the Boing Boing blog<\/a>, along with a warning that it was unsafe for children.\u00a0 Twenty minutes later, after remembering that my newest Facebook friend is my eight-year-old grandson Quentin, I replaced it with another commercial Santa.\u00a0 It is oh so easy to wax cynical about Christmas, but it just won’t do.<\/p>\n

Ho, ho, ho!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is Sinterklaas, the Dutch Santa.\u00a0 Formerly the Archbishop of Turkey, Sint Nicolaas, Sinterklaas is shown with two of his Zwarte Pieten (there are six to eight Zwarte Pieten — “Black Petes” — originally Moorish slaves, but today more gently described as servants or even companions). Sinterklaas arrives in The Netherlands each November by steamboat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,15,10,14,2,8,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumerism","category-cooking","category-current-events","category-military","category-personal","category-politics","category-the-economy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4958"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4983,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958\/revisions\/4983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}