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  • Science Gift Guide: Top Holiday Picks from the Exploratorium Store

    The Exploratorium is our family’s favorite ‘museum’ in San Francisco; it moves from its current location at the Palace of Fine Arts to re-open on April 17, 2013 on the Embarcadero, overlooking the Bay in a 330,000-square-foot indoor and outdoor space. Before it moves its exhibits, here is a list of gifts for this season, characterized by imaginative dedication and devotion to the scientific.Pi Pizza Cutter

    Pi Pizza Cutter

    Make Your Own Snowglobe Kit – Create your own little world in a snow globe. Model figurines or a small scene — then add water, glitter and shake to make it snow! This kit contains: a plastic globe, Make and Bake polymer clay, a snow globe stand, glitter, EVA sheet and instructions. Recommended for ages 6+ years. $28.00

    Lab Notes Necklace by Jen Lorang – Created specially for the Exploratorium, this lovely, handmade necklace is a mini embossed leather notebook with 20 pages. Crafted by Oakland artist Jen Lorang from recycled leather and hung with a gold-toned chain. This tiny lab book comes blank inside, for you to fill with observations close to your heart. $35.00

    Fuzzy Face Picture Frame – Give your mom a mustache, hang a mullet on your ex-boyfriend, or grow yourself some junior some sideburns. Simply insert any 4×6 photo into this heavy plastic frame and use the magnetic wand to ‘paint’ with the iron filings. A magnetic lock holds everything just the way you left it, until you decide to try again.  $20.95

    Motors & Generators – Electric motors and generators are all around us in things we use every day.  With the Thames & Kosmos – Motors & Generators kit, you can conduct 25 experiments to learn how an electric motor converts electricity into motion — and that an electric generator does just the opposite, converting motion into electricity.  The electric motor is made of transparent plastic to show how the components work.  Experiment with magnets to learn about the force of magnetism.  Build simple circuits and learn about gears and drive-trains.  Includes full-color, 48 page manual with step-by-step instructions.  For ages 8+ years.  $31.95 motors and generators

     Pi Pizza Cutter – Get ready now for the next Pi Day at the Exploratorium!  Like your pizza cut by a mathematical symbol? Got a pizza/math lover on your holiday list? The Pizza Pi Cutter helps serve up a true slice of genius with its double stainless steel blades. Just don’t be surprised when math geeks invite you over on March 14th.  $18.95

  • Isabel, Lolo and Elena’s Lists: A selection of fiction and non-fiction books for children and young adult readers certain to make great holiday presents

    by Jill Norgren

    Here is an opportunity for grandparents and special friends looking for children and young adult books to hear straight from the mouths of young readers. Granddaughters, nine, twelve, and sixteen answered my simple question, “which four or five books did you most enjoy reading this past year?”Girl reading, Tarbell - circa 1903

    Nine year old Isabel headed her list with Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. She likes “the way he thinks … that he has a different mind.” She next recommended Walter Dean Meyers’s Bad Boy: A Memoir. She told me that it was set in Harlem and was “an autobiography that sounded like a story.”

    Crying Rocks by Janet Taylor Lisle also made Isabel’s list of good books. It is the story of an adopted child who is told different stories about where she was found. Isabel thought this book was “unique … one-of-a-kind,” and that it was interesting to find out the ending: a bit of a mystery story. Gloria Whelan’s Homeless Bird won a 2000 National Book award. Isabel liked reading about a girl, Koly who, married at the age of thirteen, faced extraordinary challenges making a life in India.

    Isabel decided that younger siblings should not be forgotten. She brightened when mentioning Ezra Jack Keats’ classic pre-school book, Whistle For Willie. Nancy Carlson’s How to Lose All Your Friends is a silly and useful book about manners. It makes Isabel giggle.

    For kids eight and nine years old, Rafe Martin’s The Rough-Face Girl, which Isabel described as a Native American Cinderella story is a “first choice,” along Louis Sachar’s Wayside School series. Pearl Buck’s The Big Wave makes the cut along with — how could a book with this title not appeal — Thomas Rockwell’s How to Eat Friend Worms.

    Isabel’s twelve year old cousin, Lolo, put Scott Westerfeld’s futuristic Uglies series first on her list of recommended books. The series has sold more than three million copies — who said children today do not read?

    Painting:  Girl Reading by a Window, Edmund C. Tarbell, 1909

  • A MoMA Look Back: The Delphiniums of Edward Steichen

    Editor’s Note: We’re subscribers to Garden Design, a magazine that we look forward to for the cutting edge (or is that pruning edge?) of its articles.  The magazine’s article, Art & Botany: Edward Steichen’s Delphiniums, inspired us to reprint the original press release of the exhibit that New York City’s Museum of Modern Art hosted 76 years ago.

    For release Monday, June 32, 1936 weather permitting!

    Delphinium Exhibit, 1936

    Installation view of the exhibition, Edward Steichen’s Delphiniums. June 24, 1936 through July 1, 1936. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photograph by Edward Steichen

    The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, announces a very unusual one-man, one-week show which will be opened to the public Wednesday, June 24, at one p.m.  It will be an exhibition of  “Steichen Delphiniums” — rare now American varieties developed through twenty-six years of cross-breeding and selection by Edward Steichen. Although Mr. Steichen is widely known for his photography, this is the first time his delphiniums have been given a public showing. They are original varieties, as creatively produced as his photographs. To avoid confusion, it should be noted that the actual delphiniums will be shown in the Museum — not paintings or photographs of them. It will be a “personal appearance” of the flowers themselves.

    Mr. Steichen is President of the Delphinium Society of America. His interest in cross-breeding and selection of flowers began thirty years ago, but in 1906 he became interested chiefly in the breeding of delphiniums. He now devotes ten acres in Connecticut to that purpose and uses about one plant in forty for cross-breeding. The rest are plowed under. Some day when he feels satisfied with his work he hopes to give the results of it to the world in a few rare varieties of delphinium.

    The delphiniums will be shown in relays at the Museum of Modern Art. The first group starting Wednesday, June 24th will consist of the garden hybrids of the true-blue or pure-blue colors, and the fog and mist shades. The final group, with giant spikes in the Metropolitan area from four to six feet high, will be placed on exhibition Monday,June 29th. The flowers will be shown on the first floor of the museum in connection with the current exhibition of Modern Exposition Architecture on that floor.

    The modern delphinium grown in this country is a fusion of qualities of countless species that have existed in many parts of the world: North America, Tibet, the Swiss Alps, the Mediterranean countries, Central Europe, Asia. The name was given the flower in its primitive state by the botanists of Ancient Greece, who saw in its unopened buds a resemblance to the dolphin. As the dolphin was the fish into which Apollo Delphinius transformed himself on occasion, the derivation of the name goes directly back to the god of the arts and music. One of the early Greek festivals was the Delpninia, held in April, when young girls proceeded to the principal temple of Apollo, the Delphinium, bearing flowering branches.

  • Shopping for History, a Firebird Doll, Pact and Ozone Socks

    At the Shop of the Library of Congress:Creation Scarf

    Little Librarian will provide book lovers with everything they need to transform their book collection into a library. Kids can practice the important skills of organizing, sharing, borrowing, and returning. Book pockets, check out cards, library cards, and bookmarks are just like the ones from a real library. Little librarians will issue overdue notices and awards. Favorite book memories can be stored in a reading journal and shared with friends. To get started, just add books!*

    Contains 7 file folders, 15 book pockets, 15 book cards, 4 library cards, 4 reading awards, 2 bookmarks, 6 overdue slips, 1 reading journal.  $19.95

    Creation silk scarf (right) : The design of this heavily screened silk scarf embodies part of the biblical creation story from Genesis, as interpreted by Sir William Richmond. Hand-screen printed on 100% silk twill, with hand-rolled edges. 35″ square.

    The  Shop of the Library of Congress has a journal inspired by the hand-stamped due date cards from libraries in days gone by, this clever journal has sections for keeping track of books to read, favorite passages in books you have read, and books loaned and borrowed, plus a handy pocket for review clippings. 

    Showcase this Declaration of Independence baseball and celebrate American principles. The full-sized baseball features the date July 4, 1776 and portions of the document’s text. 2.75″ diameter

    Women Who Dare is a book written about both the women of the north and south in the Civil War and whose courage and daring brought them into the fray, whether by donning men’s clothes and fighting as soldiers, becoming spies, working as nurses in the bloody battlefields, or becoming propagandists for the Cause. Acting out of patriotism, personal commitment, or simple unwillingness to be left behind, these women accepted the dangers and privations of war and earned their place in history.

  • Culture Watch: J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy and Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts

    THE CASUAL VACANCY

    by J.K. Rowling, ©2012

    Little, Brown & Company/Hachette Book Group, Publishers

    Hardcover: 303 pp

    J.K. Rowling’s brave leap into the world of adult fiction has hit the shelves with a bang, garnering some shocked gasps from people who expected something Harry Potterish and uplifting. If you’re going to read this novel, you need to toss such expectations out the window, and brace yourselves for some serious social commentary and true-to-life language of the kind that used to be called shocking. Considering the expletives we hear on daytime television these days, such language should no longer shock, but a steady diet of it can still be distressing, even if it is absolutely true to the way many people speak.

    Distressing is exactly what Ms. Rowling wants. There is a long line of British novels that aim to raise social consciousness: Dickens springs to mind, as do the mysteries of writer Dorothy L. Sayers, whom Ms. Rowling has said she admires. Rowling’s standards could hardly be higher than those two, and her story comes close to being every bit as distressing and rewarding and inspiring as the books of her idols.

    Like the characters created by Dickens or Sayers, the caste of Ms. Rowling’s novel lives within the rigid class framework of Britain’s social structure. It is the genius of all three writers — Dickens, Sayers, and now Rowling — to show us that every stratum of society contains people both moral and immoral.J.K.Rowling

    Rowling has a delicious ability to delineate the pomposity and blinding greed of some members of the middle class, who are sublimely sure of their superiority over anyone they perceive to be below them in the social hierarchy. Other reviews have mentioned that those avatars of the grubby middle class must be first cousins to Harry Potter’s relatives, the Dursleys. If we go that route, we can see the roots of Dolores Umbridge, the acquisitive, smarmy and fortunately temporary head mistress of Hogwarts, in Rowling’s spot-on depiction of the upwardly mobile snobs in the village of Pagford.

    However, this book is most emphatically not something you’d want to hand to a youngster who loves Harry Potter. Let them grow up and find it for themselves. Rowling has made the transition from writing for youngsters and adults, to writing something for grownups, period. Her skills have not lessened in transit. She has written something that we need to read, even though it can at times be grubby and painful. “Good” characters sometimes behave in unlovable ways; “bad” characters are sometimes redeemable, but gains that are made, both personal and communal gains, are modest. No one comes off without pain and/or guilt. Some grow with the experience; some do not.

    There is no magic here beyond the kind one can sometimes glimpse in hopeless situations: the flash of vibrancy in a child coping with a brutal life, or the kindness of someone who sees that flash and tries to encourage it. The story is heartbreaking, but with a sliver of uplift and hope as characters learn from their experiences.

                                                                ———————-

    A word of caution: the first several chapters introduce multiple characters, and at times, it is hard to remember who is who (or maybe my constant flicking back of pages is just a tribute to my advancing age and retreating short-term memory). For what it’s worth, I found that jotting down a very abbreviated “cheat sheet” (on a tiny scrap of paper, which also served as bookmark) helped me to remember who was who or belonged to whom.

    Oh, and for anyone who has ever raised a teenage boy, you may find eye-rolling recognition in the depiction of the horny male teenage brain. Spot-On, Ms. R. 

     

    IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS: Love, Terror and An American Family in Hitler’s Berlin

    by Erik Larson, ©2011*

    Broadway Paperbacks/Crown Publishing Group, div. Random House

    Paperback; 364 pp (plus extensive annotation and notes)

  • Women Leaders Elected and Newly Elected; Passed: The PREEMIE Reauthorization Act (S. 1440)

    Senate Passes Bill to Reduce Preterm Delivery
    On November 15, the Senate passed the Prematurity Research Expansion and Education for Mothers who deliver Infants Early Reauthorization Act, also known as the PREEMIE Reauthorization Act (S. 1440). 

    Senate Passes Bill to Reduce Preterm Delivery

    On November 15, the Senate passed, by voice vote, the Prematurity Research Expansion and Education for Mothers who deliver Infants Early Reauthorization Act, also known as the PREEMIE Reauthorization Act (S. 1440). The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee approved the legislation on September 19 (see The Source, 9/21/12).

    Sponsored by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the bill would reauthorize the PREEMIE Act (P.L. 109-450) through FY2017; the law expired in 2011. Under the measure, the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) would be required, acting through the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to conduct epidemiological studies on the factors relating to preterm birth and to improve national data to track the burden of preterm birth; $5 million would be authorized annually through FY2017 for such activities.

    The legislation also would authorize $5 million annually through FY2017 to reauthorize and expand demonstration projects established by the PREEMIE Act in order to facilitate public and health care provider education and improve outcomes for preterm babies.

    The bill would allow the secretary of HHS to establish the Advisory Committee on Infant Mortality, which would provide advice and recommendations to the secretary on strategies and efforts to reduce infant mortality and improve the health status of pregnant women and infants. It also would require HHS to conduct a study on hospital readmissions of preterm infants and to submit a report to Congress on the findings and recommendations resulting from the study.

    During consideration of the measure, the Senate adopted, by voice vote, a substitute amendment by Sen. Alexander to strike provisions that would allow the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to expand and coordinate research efforts to reduce preterm birth.

    Women to Fill Key Leadership Positions in 113th Congress
    Last week, several women were reelected or newly elected to leadership positions in the upcoming 113th Congress.

    In the House, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) was elected chair of the Republican Conference, following her tenure as vice-chair during the 112th Congress. The position of vice-chair will continue to be held by a woman, as Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS) defeated Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL) for the position. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) will serve as secretary of the Conference.

    The House Democratic Caucus is scheduled to hold its leadership elections the week of November 29. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is expected to be reelected as Democratic Leader.

    On the Senate side, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) was reelected to the position of Democratic Conference secretary. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) will remain vice-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.

    Also this week, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) elected Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) to serve as chair. Reps. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and Karen Bass (D-CA) were elected to serve as second vice-chair and whip, respectively.

    Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-CA) was elected second vice-chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, while incoming freshman Rep.-elect Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) will serve as whip during the 113th Congress.

    Neither the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues nor the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus have held leadership elections for the upcoming Congress.

    Bills Introduced

    November 19, 2012

  • Divorce and Women’s Risk of Health Insurance Loss: Will the Affordable Care Act (ACA) correct these deficiencies?

    By Bridget Lavelle and Pamela J. Smock

    Journal of Health and Social Behavior, November 12, 2012

    Abstractdivorce of napoleon and josephine

    This article bridges the literatures on the economic consequences of divorce for women with that on marital transitions and health by focusing on women’s health insurance.

    Using a monthly calendar of marital status and health insurance coverage from 1,442 women in the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we examine how women’s health insurance changes after divorce.

    Our estimates suggest that roughly 115,000 American women lose private health insurance annually in the months following divorce and that roughly 65,000 of these women become uninsured.

    The loss of insurance coverage we observe is not just a short-term disruption. Women’s rates of insurance coverage remain depressed for more than two years after divorce. Insurance loss may compound the economic losses women experience after divorce and contribute to as well as compound previously documented health declines following divorce.

    From the Discussion

    Not all women are equally likely to lose health insurance after divorce. Those insured as dependents on husbands’ employer-based insurance plans are most vulnerable to insurance loss, while stable, full-time employment buffers against it. Women from moderate-income  families are particularly vulnerable. Many of these women fall into the ranks of the near-poor after divorce, with too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to purchase private health insurance coverage.

    Our findings also add to the body of evidence that the current health care and insurance system in the United States is inadequate for a population in which multiple family and job changes over the life course are not uncommon.

    It remains to be seen how effectively the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 — expected to be fully implanted by 2014 — will remedy the problem of insurance loss after divorce. Moving forward, policy makers should be aware that a system that induces a de facto linkage between marital status and health insurance may have unintentional adverse consequences.

    Read the entire article. http://hsb.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/11/09/0022146512465758.full.pd…

    Illustration: Divorce of Napoleon and Josephine

  • Unintimidated by a Domestic Crisis and Moonlighting Repairmen

    by Joan L. Cannon

    Sometimes we learn things we never wanted to know (which is different from not needing to know). When my trusty old washing machine (a mere 15 years young) decided not to spin out a tub full of water, I was taught two of those lessons. I kept thinking that until that day, I had never had a washing machine give me a hard time. My last one was 23 years old and still performing like a champ when we moved out of the house it was in.

    About 25 years of my married life was spent with a traveling salesman. His first territory was New York State and Canada. He would be gone usually from early Monday morning till dinnertime on Fridays, except for the times he had to leave on Sunday for a Monday morning meeting. After a couple of years like that, the world became his territory when he was made Export Sales Manager. I mention this to indicate that with three children in a rural home, I’m still not easily intimidated by domestic crises. Another time it might be fun to list those that didn’t defeat me.Washing Machine

    A careful perusal of the machine’s owner’s manual soon showed me I was licked. I began the search for service. The manual had several 800 phone numbers, now long out of service, and, of course the dealer’s information. That dealer no longer exists in the appliance business. The helpful people at the local Ace Hardware (who had bought the dealership where the washing machine came from) were able to give me the names of a couple of moonlighting repairmen. Did I mention that this was the Friday before Veteran’s Day?

    I called the first name on the list and left a message. By Saturday afternoon, having heard nothing, I resorted to a new dealership for several brands of home appliances and electronics. I was assured that I would receive a call first thing on Monday. I thought about the washing machine filled with water and two bathroom rugs, and decided I’d better figure out some way to make the thing movable. If anyone did come to fix it, they’d probably have to get behind it.

     The next order of business seemed to be to get those rugs out of there, rinsed or not. That was when the second challenge revealed itself. Those rubber-backed rugs had been washed before without a problem. I heaved tons of wet, raveling mats over the edge of the washer into a large plastic waste basket. Feeling I should have one of those Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales to help, I dragged the thing out to the deck, managed to tip it and pour out the sodden mass so it could drip through the spaces in the flooring. Maybe then I’d be able to throw them away in their own garbage bag.

    As I looked at the mess, I saw the water was full of grey bits of some kind of ugly flotsam, torn shreds of blue nylon yarn, as well as grunge and soap. Imagine a glorious autumn day, still some golden leaves on the trees, Carolina blue sky, and a gross mass of baby blue, hairy carcass desecrating the planks of my deck, now speckled with some extra unidentifiable detritus. I felt a decided chill, so I went back inside to face the laundry room.

    My husband had bought a siphon, the better to clean out a little pool in our front yard. Sure enough, there it was, on a shelf in the garage, still unopened. I got a bucket, read the instructions on the package, and got started. That’s the operative word, “started.”

  • For Architecture Buffs: National Building Museum’s Building Brain Busters

    Editor’s Note:  We’re great fans of the National Building Museum in Washington, DC and besides patronizing their shop online  we found their Brain Busters a fascinating, informative and entertaining compilation. The questions and their answers are below, with the Museum’s permission.

    November 2012

    Q: What famous early American architect was incarcerated in 1811 in a jail of his own design?

    A: Charles Bulfinch, architect of the Massachusetts State House and the first completed dome of the US Capitol, was imprisoned for the month of July 1811 due to unpaid debts. 

    October 2012

    Q: The movie RoboCop (1987) was set in Detroit. In what city was it filmed?

    A: Dallas. The production team assumed that the movie would be shot in Detroit, but curiously, after scouting locations, producer Jon Davison declared that “the architecture  just wasn’t right.” Such are the ways of Hollywood.

    September 2012

    Q: What is the longest building in the United States?

    A: The Klystron Gallery in Menlo Park, California, which is more than three kilometers (approximately 10,085 feet) long. The structure sits directly above Stanford University’s linear accelerator. Klystrons are vacuum tubes that generate or amplify microwaves.

    July 2012

    Q: What common material, typically associated with much smaller buildings, did Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo & Associates use as the primary cladding on the 1.3 million-square-foot headquarters of General Foods, in Rye Brook, NY, completed in 1983?

    A: Aluminum siding.

    June 2012

    Q: In 1953, a famous architect was selected for the position of dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, but he was unable to accept. Who was the architect and why did he have to decline the appointment?

    A: The architect was Oscar Niemeyer. He had to decline the appointment when the US government denied him a visa due to his membership in the Brazilian Communist Party. Now 104, Niemeyer is still practicing architecture despite a recent hospital stay.

    May 2012Tower at Olympic Stadium, Montreal

    Q: What is the tallest inclined (i.e., leaning) tower in the world? Hint: It’s not in Pisa.

    A: The tower at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Canada, completed in 1987 (11 years after the Olympics were held there) and designed by French architect Roger Taillibert, rises 165 meters (or about 541 feet, according to official measurements) and is inclined approximately 45 degrees.

    April 2012

    Q: What document declared “that oblique and elliptic lines are dynamic, and by their very nature possess an emotive power a thousand times stronger than perpendiculars and horizontals, and that no integral, dynamic architecture can exist that does not include these?”

    A: The Manifesto of Futurist Architecture, by Antonio Sant’Elia, 1914. This was only one of many futurist manifestos, the most infamous of which was written by poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who also wrote the original manifesto of Italian fascism.

    March 2012

    Q: What does the Piazza San Pietro (St. Peter’s Square) in Rome have to do with a malformed pearl?

    A: The Piazza San Pietro is one of the most famous examples of Baroque architecture. The word “Baroque” ultimately derives from the Portuguese word barocco, meaning “irregularly shaped pearl.”

    Photograph: The tower at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Canada by French architect Roger Taillibert. Wikipedia

  • The Holidays: So Help Me, Muse . . . To Rhyme my News

     By Doris O’Brien

    I’m writing this little over a week before Thanksgiving, and  I  have already received in the mail my first Christmas card.  Yes, I  realize that downstairs in the mall above which I live the festive Yuletide decorations – the same ones as before — are even now being put in place.  As usual, aside from decking the malls with boughs of holly, etc., there is a massive Hanukkah menorah on a second level, surrounded by large, fake presents, colorfully wrapped in silver foil and tied with big blue bows.  When I passed the newly-assembled  display, I thought I detected a whiff of mothballs.

    Last year, my daughter and I wagered a modest bet as to whether the mall maintenance crew would light each candle of the menorah separately for the nine successive days of the Jewish holiday, or make a single ceremony out of it — one impressive  electrical show on the initial day. I held to the latter assumption. She won. Somebody in authority actually materialized every evening of Christmas card of the 1930sHanukkah, as dictated by tradition, to see that another candle blazed. I was impressed — if a little poorer. 

    But if I was impressed with that, I am distressed with what seems to be the ever-advancing schedule for mailing out Christmas greetings. It used to be that I could reliably count on getting the first of these early in December, invariably  from a friend who lives in Toronto, where I spent two frozen years in the early ‘70s.  The reason for her jump on the season, she once explained, was that her grown children now live in the States. So when she visits them at Thanksgiving, she brings along all of the cards addressed to her American friends,  with instructions to her kids to affix a US stamp before promptly dropping the envelopes into the nearest mailbox.  This saves  her a bundle in postage over what it would cost to send them from Canada.

    But this year, she has been usurped. Even before Election Day, an acquaintance in Minnesota sent what wasn’t technically a “card,” but a long holiday-style letter, summing up his year and that of his six children and their children and even their children.

    Yet, it’s made me nervous — for a particular reason. Every year, for at least the last 35, I have been composing my holiday greetings in verse.  This takes time, frankly, and I often think of quitting what some have now come to regard, flatteringly, as a “holiday tradition,” akin to my late Aunt Fannie’s pearl onions at Thanksgiving dinner. I once suggested to a friend that I might stop the practice and she was outraged.  But, honestly, how many different ways can one rhyme “rhyme” with “ holiday time”?  Or cheer” with “year,” etc,? 

    Growing up, my children had mixed reactions to my annual effort. They seemed embarrassed to have their exploits condensed into a rhyming couplet. But when they left home and were relegated to only an occasionally mention in my holiday verse, they were put out. And I always had to be careful to give the three of them equal space. One year when my older daughter was hit by a car in a crosswalk, the clan actually wondered how I would write up the unfortunate incident, and if I could find any word to rhyme with “accident.” It was becoming a bit much.

    But now, even as a widow, I persist. I’m not sure why, except that it has evolved into a challenge of wits. And of fear, possibly. “Don’t keep me out of the loop,” a British correspondent of mine warned a while back.  “You know how I always look forward to your Christmas poem!”Menorah

    And so, yes, I plead guilty to having already turned out several drafts, and in a different meter and rhyme scheme than those of last year’s piece. Variety spices life, even in  small, poetic measures.  And this year I plan to add something else: a photo of the clan taken during our summer outing. That ought to mitigate any literary slights from the offspring.   And if they find fault with either picture or poetry, I’ll remind them that this is the season of peace on earth, good will toward Mom.

     ©2012 Doris O’Brien for SeniorWomen.com

    Christmas Card: Flickr: 1930 Christmas Card. Late 1940s Menorah by Chava Samuel, Israeli painter, ceramic sculptor.  Wikimedia Commons