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Lights

Wednesday 30 December 2009

Lights are an integral part of Christmas. Certainly everyone breathed a Christmas sigh of relief with the proliferation of electricity: no more candles on dried firs. And outdoor displays enter the realm of possibility.

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Add the invention of the airplane, digital cameras, powerful flashes, and unleaded fuel and you get the perfect Christmas image — post-Christmas, of course.

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Most of the Christmas exhibition at Roper Mountain was open to cars only, though — how thoroughly American.

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We walked through the small pedestrian portion,

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took some pictures, and still more

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before getting back in the car and continuing on the winding road through the lights. Stopping was prohibited, as was exiting the car, so the pictures end here.

What a shame we couldn’t have the option of exploring it all on foot. Then again, much of that would have entailed L in arms, so perhaps it’s for the best.

New Games

Tuesday 29 December 2009

I never really liked card games as a kid. I guess Uno was alright once in a while, but that doesn’t really count as a real card game. Since Windows hadn’t yet come out when I was a kid, I never learned to play Hearts. Spades was popular among some friends, as was — oddly enough — euchre, but I just didn’t get it. What was the point? (Bridge, of course, was out of the question then; now, it’s the only card game I truly enjoy.)

L learned a new game today — “learn” being used in a most generous way. She didn’t quite get the point; she couldn’t quite understand why Babcia took the upturned cards for herself sometimes and sometimes gave them to her.

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I can’t remember what this particular game is called in English. In Polish, it’s “wojna” — war. Perhaps it’s the same in English. I can’t really recall. (Another one of those odd circumstances in which I know the Polish but am unsure of the English.)

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Most importantly: the Girl enjoyed it (for a few minutes).

“Let’s play it again!” she chimed again and again.

Still in English, though…

A Walk Downtown

Sunday 27 December 2009

A cloudy day. We’d been in the house all weekend, with the sole exception being a trip to the church on Christmas day. So after L woke up, we headed downtown.

Cloudy days are good for photographing moving water: slow shutter speeds.

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0.4, f/22.0, 18 mm

One step over-exposure combined with a closed down lens meant I was able to get the shutter speeds I’d always wanted.

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1/4, f/22.0, 70 mm
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1/4, f/22.0, 52 mm

But L wasn’t interested in shutter speeds or f-stop values: we’d promised her chocolate milk once we got downtown, and that was her only interest.

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Latte for K and me; hot chocolate for Babcia; and fruit juice for the Girl (unfortunately, no chocolate milk to be found) — we were ready for a walk down main street.

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There were a few of us out for a walk. Most everyone else seemed to be huddled in the bars and restaurants that line Main Street. I guess with the bowl games and the southern love affair with football it’s logical.

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Still, there were a few families out. A grandmother and granddaughter posed for pictures against a backdrop of traffic as we crossed the street to head back to our car. Just a few blocks down the street the view is much more striking, with the waterfall and bridge and lights. As we walked by, I idly wondered about their choice of location.

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Being downtown always makes me a little frustrated that we don’t head there more often.

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The winter answer to that question is obvious. After a couple of shots in front of the large city Christmas tree, we headed back to the car.

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We parked within view of some of the most expensive condos in the area. Location, location, location. Their owners probably don’t complain about not going downtown often enough.

Accidental Christmas Present

Saturday 26 December 2009

“Ouch” by rossneugeboren at Flickr
(Obviously not a photo of the car under discussion.)

We were leaving the church after a Christmas Mass in Polish when we noticed a group of men standing around the priest’s new Volvo. Apparently, someone had hit his car and driven off without anything. I saw a little scratch, but I couldn’t discern any significant damage.

The priest was angry.

He called the parish pastor to let him know it had happened, and he requested that the local priest announce it in Mass, asking for information.

“I guess this is my Christmas present,” said the Polish priest sarcastically.

Perhaps it was.

It seems to me that the material should not be terribly important to a priest. It seems to me he should have been more concerned with the individual who hit his car: what would cause someone to do this? Is this a lack of conscience or a fear of facing consequences? It would have been heartening to hear the priest say something like this.

So maybe it was a Christmas gift. Maybe it was an opportunity to show instead of tell the parishioners that the spiritual is more important and things like cars and iPods are of little value. Perhaps it was a chance to preach with actions rather than words, to show forgiveness and express concern about the mental state — the soul — of the individual who committed the act. Possibly it was an occasion to show selflessness, to show concern for others before showing concern for one’s own silly objects.

The homily had been about having Christ in one’s heart and how God doesn’t force himself on anyone — a fairly common sentiment among Catholics and Protestants alike. I suppose the gift of salvation isn’t the only gift God doesn’t force humans to accept.

Wigilia 2009

Thursday 24 December 2009

Everyone began preparing in the morning. Truth be told, K started weeks ago: making pierogi and uszki (two different types of dumplings) and freezing them. Still, with two soups, dumplings, kraut with wild mushrooms, and a main course (accompanying salads and such not counted) on the menu, we had to get a quick start.

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There was a salad to make, beginning with boiling veggies and eggs — lots of this. And sauteing onions on a cosmic scale.

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There was chopping galore: before and after the boiling; during this; before that. “Click, click, click,” was the soundtrack of the morning.

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And there was ironing and setting of places.

In the end, it was the common lament: all the time spent cooking, and the food disappeared so relatively quickly. There’s the eternal entertaining conflict: one wants them to savor everything, yet while everything is warm and the fish is still moist, one wants everyone just to hurry up and get to the next course.

It was a special wigilia for us because it was a special Christmas Eve for L: the first one she knew what was going on, possibly the first one in her memory for some time. She ate the barszcz; she devoured the mushroom soup; and she sat calmly as the rest of us ate. Afterward, Nana and Papa successfully spoiled her with their generosity (not to mention us: as I write, I’m listening to Madeline Peyroux’s excellent new album, Bare Bones, on a new iPod — the woman is incapable of making a bad album). With guests, gifts, and attention, the Girl danced, sang, smiled, laughed, and was the center of the evening. It’s likely to be that way for, well, the foreseeable future.

Previous Years

Wigilia 2003

Wigilia 2004

Wigilia 2005

Wigilia 2006

Wigilia 2007

You Have Five Minutes

Monday 21 December 2009

Clock Top by laffy4k (Flickr)It’s amazing the number of confrontations and tantrums we’ve avoided by giving L a time frame. Simply establishing a temporal structure allows us all to avoid frustration. She knows what to expect and, more importantly, when; we know that we’ll have a much more compliant little girl.

It works for almost everything. When L is watching a movie, it’s referenced in terms of the film’s scenes: “When this scene is over, we’ll go for our bath.” The scene finishes; she toddles off to the bathroom when requested to do so. When L is reading a book before bedtime, a reminder that she’ll be going to be in five minutes elicits “Okay”; saying, out of the blue, “Okay, put the book up. It’s time for bed!” is likely to produce nothing but conflict.

It would if some parts of life had more pre-established time frames.

Photo: “Clock Top” by laffy4k

Relativity

Sunday 20 December 2009

Rereading Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (the greatest achievement in American literature), I’ve realized anew how relatively temporally close Quentin is the events Rosa Coldfield is relating. Coldfield relates the story of Sutpen to Quentin (though he knows it already — it’s in his blood from growing up in Jefferson) in 1910, and Coldfield makes it clear that Sutpen was the reason God saw fit to let the South lose the war. Coldfield wants Sutpen’s story told so that those

who have never heard her name nor seen her face will read [the story of Sutpen] and know at last why God let us lose the War: that only through the blood of our men and the tears of our women could He stay this demon and efface his name and lineage from the earth.

It is, in other words, a story of the Civil War. And while that seems so very distant to us now, it’s easy to understand the lingering resentment Southerners feel in the story. After all, it’s only been forty-some odd years since the war when Quentin sits in Coldfield’s house, listening to the story of the most mysterious man in the county.

For us today, that’s the nearness of the Vietnam War, something that’s still in most everyone’s cultural consciousness. Many are still upset about “Hanoi Jane,” and I suppose that resentment might be something akin to what Coldfield is feeling in the novel: a resentment of a defeat that seems due to so many non-military, non-combat reasons.

Yet it’s still difficult for me to understand the continuing resentment many white Southerners feel about a defeat that was almost a century and a half ago. “The South will rise again!” would have made sense in Quentin’s turn-of-the-century culture, but another century after that and so many are still boiling about it?

Then again, a century and a half is nothing compared to the length and depth of some of Europe’s ethnic and national resentments. Hatred and disappointment never die, I suppose.

Party

Saturday 19 December 2009

Though her birthday was three days ago, L’s birthday party was today. Her first birthday was a much more adult-centered party. Her second birthday party was still dominated by adults. This year, it was all about the kids.

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There was pizza and ice cream and candy and juice, but most importantly, there were games.

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I believe we were seeing a little bit of L’s school side, As mentioned earlier, L’s teachers always comment on her mellow, compliant nature, something we don’t see too often here.

Whenever we try to play a game with her, there can be tense moments of an attitude that can be described as a typical toddler egoism: “It’s mine; I’ll do with it as I please.”

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Today, there was none of that. L exhibited a simple graciousness that never demanded to be first, never begged to have it all, never stated that it must be this way and not that. She was the perfect host. It was her party, and she didn’t cry because apparently she didn’t ever want to.

And who could blame her? L’s two best friends from school were there, and what’s more, there was dancing.

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The three candles were out in a flash, and the party seemed to wrap up even faster. I glanced at the clock and saw it was, in fact, two hours since the first guests arrived.

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In a word, a success. “See you next year,” said one parent as a best friend was leaving.

We’re looking forward to it — especially the Girl.