Dark clouds, heavy, angry, threatening cast their gloom over the coming dawn: a foreboding of the coming year?

First light, first day of the week, first day of the year. Four score of those years behind me.

i don’t fear that foreboding. In fact, i laugh at it. As bad as the world seems in dealing well with other countries, factions, religions, political parties, any thing different from them, i am beyond that. Those four score years have earned me the right to choose to be beyond. Folks, people i have run across in my life are my concern. i wish to treat them right, equally. And i wish to live well for as long as i can live.

This idea has been percolating for a while. It burst out into the open Christmas Day.

The decorations are down and stored. Christmas is over. Not so with some neighbors. Their choice. i’m ready to move on.

i was introduced to new word on the day after Christmas: Saudade. It is of Portuguese in origin. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament.” i can relate to that. i have always wanted to go to Portugal. Since early on, i have found it intriguing, dark, mysterious, with an understanding of life. Perhaps, this is just an illusion of mine, but i would like to find out.

The word fits my illusion, i think.

i gave my bride a Native American wedding vase used in many Southwest tribal marriage ceremonies. Brilliant, i must say. i stumbled across the idea of such when i wrote my short, short story ending with a poem, “Take Me Up on the Mountain.” When the old man marries a Kumeyaay maiden, they held two ceremonies, one Catholic, the other Kumeyaay. researching my trusted, non-academic Wikipedia, i read the Kumeyaay, a local tribe in the Southwest corner used such a vase in their ceremonies:

The Wedding Vase is used in the traditional (Kumeyaay) wedding ceremony. The two spouts represent the bride and the groom with the bridge between them uniting the two. Water blessed by the medicine man is poured into the vessel. During the ceremony, the bride and groom each drink from their side of the vase.

and

…Each spout represents one member of the couple; the handle in the middle of a wedding vase represents the unity as they come together on their wedding day. The space between the handle and the two spouts is a representation of the couples’ circle of life.

i added: “I am old enough to no longer need presents even though i enjoy them as gifts from you and your lasting love. That love is the greatest gift i have ever received in my life.I am old enough to longer need presents even though i enjoy them as gifts from you and your lasting love. That love is the greatest gift i have ever received in my life.”

Maureen gave me a card with a gift i had spoiled again this year. She sees something i want or need, orders it, wraps it, and then i say i need this or that and start out to buy it. So she tells me not to buy it. i won’t relate what the card read. Maureen is much more discreet and private than i am. It makes her even more alluring, of course. However, i can inform you her card to me had almost identical thoughts as my card to her.

Now, Maureen and i aren’t always alike. For example, she doesn’t like Tennessee Pride Country Sausage. i’m not particularly fond of gussied up chicken. But there are a lot of things in which we are alike. Most importantly, our core thoughts and beliefs are about as close as a twosome could have. That’s what i discovered in a talk we had 43 years ago. The important stuff. It’s still the same.

i am a lucky man. Never won a lottery. But i am lucky in a different way.

So dark clouds with your ominous projection of the coming year, disburse. Go away. Already in mid-morning, the sun is shining.

i hope all of you have a wonderful, prosperous, and healthy (one of the more important facets of living at my age) 2024 and the wide-spread trend of inhumanity towards others at least subsides a little bit.

One of the many projects i created for myself, enough that i will not ever complete most of them, was scanning photos from mother’s and aunt’s albums. i began rather well, but it has lay fallow for quite a while. So here we go, from Aunt Betty Kate Hall’s 1948 photos.

And once again, my futility in arranging graphics is abysmal. So to hell with it. i had the photos arranged on the draft, but when i published the photo numbering was jumbled. i think you can figure it out. i quit.

This highlights a Photo 1 is my Aunt Evelyn Orr with my cousin Tim. It is in Orlando, Florida in 1948 long before it became another metropolis of entertainment and Navy, back when they orange groves, not thrill rides. Photo 2 is my Aunt Bettye Kate Hall (these came from her photo islands) with cousins Butch and Tim Prichard. The Orrs and Halls were visiting my Uncle Bill and Aunt Colleen Prichard. Photo 3 notes the names. Uncle Pipey Orr and Uncle Snooks Hall are included. Photos 4 and 5 are the likely reason for the visit: Cousins Bill (Butch) and Tim Prichard. Photo 6 is cousin Bill with his mother in the background. Aunt Bettye Kate noted “See bird” at the top: i’m thinking the predicts Bill’s later love for quail hunting. Photo 7 is Aunt Colleen with Butch. Photo 8 is the Prichard family at the time. The family grew to eight, three boys and three girls. Photo 9 is in the backyard of our home on Castle Heights Avenue with Butch about to run over Tim on my tricycle. i am in the background going up the back steps. This is a rare photo of our house before it was added on in 1956 (i think). The back porch was a wonderland for playing when it rained. The door in the center led to the basement. Great memories.

It was a crazy day.

A trip with Maureen, ostensibly to go to Balboa Park and use our new park pass to see some museums we don’t often visit, prefaced with a trip to a sewing machine shop and a tailor for Maureen began mid-morning. Her sewing machine developed a problem when she had attempted to put in a button hole on a high end fabric for a beautiful jacket she had designed.

The sewing machine visit developed into a machine assessment, adjustment, and repairs if needed. Now folks, this ain’t my mama’s Singer pedal-powered sewing machine of the past. These suckers cost more than the national debt. The repair was worth it.

We then went across the street to our tailor who announced she could create the needed buttonholes.

We were happy, and headed off to the park.

i turned onto the exit to normal path up a hill to the park only to find a line of cars all the way up the hill, probably a half-hour if not an hour to get to the parking, which was likely full. i did an illegal u-turn, tried another way and found the same thing with all entries to the park.

We decided to just go to one of our favorite digs for lunch. The first one had many folks waiting to be seated, and no parking was nearby. We went to the second, and it was closed for the holidays. We went to the third and the wait was until sometime next Wednesday. We searched for the third and fourth on unfamiliar routes and had to double back about…oh, a half dozen times.

i shall not tell you what i said, but we headed home. We stopped at a brand new place in route for take out Mexican fare of a beef stew (birria) on a corn tortilla and a shrimp taco.

We felt better.

Hell of a day. In its own strange way, it was fun.

We spent our afternoon with our own projects and settled down in the family room for our evening.

i turned on the television. Football. The think-of-the-name-of-a-corporate-advertiser-with-a- really-stupid-logo-name Cotton Bowl. Good teams: Ohio State, Missouri. Good game except for listening to announcers who wished the world to consider the game equivalent the next world war. Ugh.

As i watched a pretty decent athletic contest marred by about two dozen unsportsmanlike penalties ignored, i looked up the scores of other bowl games. That’s when it occurred to me there as a fitting quote.

Violating my usually very loose rules for what to include in my posts, i stole this from today’s “Writer’s Almanac.” It is a quote of William Gaddis, an author in the middle of the last century who wrote two apparently noteworthy novels: The Recognitions and J.R. Not only have i not read them, but i didn’t even know about them until this morning, adding them to my “to read” list which will require me to compete with Methuselah for the longest living man to read all on my list.

But William Gaddis said, “There have never in history been so many opportunities to do so many things that aren’t worth doing.”

And sitting here tonight i thought this applied to every post season playoff game of any sport.

Then i thought Gaddis’ quote applied to most damn near everything today except for my relationships with good folks.

And you know what? Those relationships are enough.

i hope you all have a bountiful and healthy 2024.

This is a quiet Christmas for us. Patsy, Maureen’s sister, will be joining us for brunch and opening presents. Maureen made an incredible supper of scallops last night and we watched “The Ref.” We have reservations for a “Christmas” dinner at Giardino’s, one of our go-to restaurants this evening. We will call our daughters, brothers, sisters and their families throughout the day, probably a couple of close friends as well.

That’s it.

It’s okay. i’m not big into getting gifts. Don’t get me wrong. i appreciate the ones i get because it shows the one(s) bearing the gift care for me. The caring is the feel good part. And i have not had a perfect Christmas since back in the late seventies. Someone was not there with me ever since then. i missed my father in 2014 and my mother in 2013, and Christmas was special when i was with them.

In the Navy, i missed several Christmases (and more Thanksgivings) away from my family. They were the toughest. Now, if i began to feel sorry i’m missing someone, i think of all of today’s men and women service members who are away from home and quit my whining.

i find today a time for quiet, reflection, living with a few of the best memories. It appears my two daughters are both in a good place along with their families. That is the best Christmas gift for me. Most of my friends are still around, a blessing in itself considering our age.

Last night, i sat by the fire reflecting these things. i actually read the Matthew and Luke verses of the Bible relating the birth of Jesus. i have the bible my parents gave me when i was a pre-teen. It has my name, “Jim Rye Jewell, Jr.” engraved in gold on the front. But i chose to read from a smaller condensed version my mother gave to my father before he sailed for the Southwest Pacific and World War II. There is no engraved name on the front. But on the first page, a black extension of the cover, she wrote his name and address in white ink and on the following blank page wrote: “To my husband, Jimmy, with Love from Estelle.”

i’m choking up a little bit here. So, i will move on.

After reading Mother’s entries and as i read the passages, i thought of Maureen and i paralleling notes to each other showing the kind of love they had for each other. i kept thinking “love does conquer all.” i believe the man for whom this holiday was created and often forgotten in our celebrations would approvingly agree.

i hope all of you, even those of you in our country’s service who are away, have the best Christmas you can have with lots of love.

Merry Christmas.

P.S. The tree is green, not blue. i remain tech photo challenged.

Since i reneged on rearranging the lights on my sign, this Christmas post is essentially the same as posted last year with a few edits and comments in green font like this intro.

Christmas decorations are going up a bit early again.

We actually put ours up on the first day of the month this December. We were later than a number of homes around us.

It seems to me back home growing up, we cut down our tree on Wynn “Papa” Prichard’s farm about a week before the big day, decorated it that evening, hung the stockings, hung a wreath on the door, put some lights around the door, and took it all down the day after Christmas. In our neighborhood today, about one-quarter of the houses have blow-up dolls, reindeer statues, lights enough to provide electricity for a small city among other amusements. The decorations here went up a week ago and many will likely remain well after the New Year.

But i wanted to get it out of the way. And so begins the Christmas season. And with that, i offer my traditional repeat of a column i wrote for the Lebanon Democrat about a gazillion years ago. Merry Christmas with this year’s version of Noel:

Have you ever had one of those days when everything turned into an embarrassment? I had a champion day like that several years ago.

It started innocently while I hung our outdoor decoration, a home-made “NOEL” sign from the eave of our garage, hoping to get it up before my wife’s friends arrived for their Christmas dinner.

Maureen and her six friends have been meeting monthly for dinners for 15-plus years. They had this December dinner catered, did it up right. It was Maureen’s turn to be hostess.

It was dark when I began. I was at the top of my step ladder attaching the second of two wires from the sign to hooks secured to the eave when the ladder lurched and toppled. I grabbed a metal ornamental grating above the garage door.

There I hung, my arm intertwined with the “O” of the sign. If I tried to drop, the sign could catch my arm and do some pretty bad stuff.

I yelled, but Maureen had Christmas carols at top volume and didn’t hear. I tried to think of what to do while simultaneously wondering how long I could hold on. The dog wandered underneath, occasionally looking up as if I was a very strange person hanging there.

After several minutes, a neighbor’s son and friend pulled into the driveway several houses away. As they emerged, I swallowed my pride and yelled “Help.”

At first, they could not discern who was calling. Then they spotted me and came to help. The dog decided to protect me and began barking threateningly. The boys hesitated. I assured them the only danger was being licked to death. They finally righted the ladder and helped me down.

I thanked them profusely and then studied whether I should tell Maureen or not. Now that I was back on solid ground, I decided it was too funny not to tell her. She was incredulous and not particularly amused.

I did not realize my embarrassment for the night was just beginning.

While Maureen made final arrangements for her dinner, our daughter, Sarah, and I went to a local spot for supper. The little place was an oasis of sorts in Bonita, where there were only Mexican, Italian, and fast food restaurants. The attraction was different, having a wide-range of ales and beers for golfers finishing a round across the street.

When we arrived, two couples were at tables and three guys sat at the bar. As we neared the end of our meal, the largest of the guys at the bar walked to the door and then turned back. I noticed his eyes seemed glazed. Then he walked back to the bar.

Suddenly, this guy and the one on the other side grabbed the guy in the middle off his stool, slammed him into the wall and started pummeling him with their fists. The three male diners, me (instinctively) included, approached from one side and two cooks approached from the back. Sarah had retreated to the door with the two lady diners. I grabbed the big guy. He spun and fell backward, slamming us into our table, knocking it over with shattering glass. It gave me some leverage, and we spun to the floor with me on top and knocking the wind out of the big guy. The other two diners helped me hold him until he calmed down. The cooks had quelled the other assailant. The two left quietly.

Even though the waitress wanted us to not pay our bill, we paid and left for home. On the way, I talked to my daughter about what I should have done (directed her outside before joining the fray) and what she should do the next time if she were ever in a place where a fight broke out (get out and away and not come back until she was sure it was over). i admonished her not to spoil her mother’s dinner party, adding i would tell her mother after the guests had departed. Sarah nodded.

I was feeling pretty good as we arrived home. Then Sarah dashed out of the car, ran into the house and yelled to her mother in front of the caterer and her six friends dressed to the nines amidst fine china, Christmas decorations, and haut cuisine, “Mom, Dad got in a fight in a bar.”

Some days, I just can’t get a break.

May your holiday season be embarrassment free.

May all of you have a most wonderful and amazing Christmas Season, and “Please, Please, Please (as James Brown once sang) remember the reason for the season,