Between Holidays

A week ago our children, no longer children but our children nonetheless, were here, Christmas was approaching, and time was not ordinary. The amazing snow that preceded Christmas by a week, barely pausing to permit our drive to the Pittsburgh airport to retrieve the two, melted in the heat and rain that came just before [...]

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The Hewer

George Grey Barnard, 1904. Photographed in Cairo, Illinois, June 2008, while we were touring old U.S. 51

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Julekage

Julekage, or Julekaka, or Julekake — spell it however you like, but if you say it please remember that J is Y, G is hard, and the word has four syllables. In my family it always sounded like you-leh-kah-keh. This Norwegian Christmas bread (literally “Jule cake”) was a holiday standard when I was growing up, [...]

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Christmas Tree

Each year, once it’s in the stand and properly aligned in the room, we build it out from the center. First come the lights. Three strings of tiny white lights. I like to place these closer to the trunk than to the ends of the branches, as if inside the tree, so the lights twinkle [...]

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Peace, Joy, and Love Now and in the New Year We Wish You A Happy Holiday

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Julenissen

My grandmother brought Julenissen from Norway. I think she bought him during her visit there in 1937 and probably gave him to my mother, with two other nisser, as a Christmas present that year. Every Christmas when I was growing up these three nisser figures appeared on the top of our piano, sometimes standing nearly [...]

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Definition

I once tried to come up with a definition of art. Always a risky enterprise. But the best I could come up with was: create an arbitrary set of rules, and then follow them slavishly. You set up an idea of what you should and you should not do, and then you strictly adhere to [...]

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The Crystal in the Kitchen

A wedding gift, it seems to have been with us forever, almost always hanging in the kitchen window wherever we were living. Tiny itself, its many facets scatter tiny spots of colored light, tiny rainbows, when the sun is bright, and the kitchen is made more cheerful by its presence. And to entertain small children, [...]

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Buddha and the Birds

This house has a patio, a stone-paved area edged with an iron railing, and raised on stone walls one story above the ground to make it level with the house’s first floor. Windows on the west wall of the dining room overlook the patio, making a pleasant view from the dining table, and a French [...]

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Winter Arrives

Weather reports said there would be snow and warned that a large winter storm would cover the area, but it seemed unlikely that we would get much snow here. Yesterday there was no snow at all, and while it was cloudy and cold it wasn’t cold enough for snow to stay unmelted even if it [...]

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