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Pan!

Sunday 05 January 2014

"Choo choo?" I suggest to calm the Boy as he bubbles and fusses over seeing everyone leave without him. He calms down immediately as we head into the living room to watch a bit of Thomas and Friends while K, L, and Babcia head to the cinema to watch Frozen.

The intro finishes and Mr. Perkins walks into the engine drivers' common room at Knapford Station.

"Pan!" cries E.

Even if I hadn't known this previously, it would be obvious now that the Boy has been watching this with Babcia. I can see it now, Babcia watching Thomas with the Boy as Mr. Perkins enters.

"O, jest pan!" she would exclaim, "pan" being a general term in Polish for an unknown adult.

And so for the Boy, Mr. Perkins has become simply pan. He's likely to generalize, though, and while this often results in humorous naming (all small animals are "Bida," the name of our cat), this time it will actually work out just about right.

Babcia Learns to Play Sorry

Saturday 04 January 2014

Joyeux Noel: The Christmas Miracle of 1914

Friday 03 January 2014

When I was in college, I was not a Deadhead — I never even saw the Grateful Dead in concert — but I was something of a McCutcheon-head, if there be such a thing. John McCutcheon is a multi-instrumentalist folk singer who is equally at home singing his renditions of spirituals and his own songs for children. In college, I saw him in concert a number of times, and there was always one song that left me truly enchanted. He introduced it most times in a similar way, telling of a concert he’d given in the early eighties when an elderly man approached him and, speaking of his song “Christmas in the Trenches,” said, “Young man, I was there.”

This was pre-internet days. One couldn’t simply Google “Christmas miracle 1914,” and it wasn’t a story I heard in history class. And that’s really too bad.

After hearing that story, I thought, “This is a fantastic story — why hasn’t anyone made a film of it.”

Tonight, K and I watched Joyeux Noel, and as I read the Netflix disc-cover summary, I thought, “Is this about that thing John McCutcheon sang about?” Indeed, it is. Well worth viewing.

Side Note

John McCutcheon is best known for his mastery of the hammered dulcimer. I once saw him in concert in Asheville, North Carolina when the power went out in the middle of a hammered dulcimer song. McCutcheon literally never missed a note though it was pitch black for at least thirty or forty seconds.