Category: Holidays

A reconnaissance

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments
“A Reconnaissance,” by Frederic Remington,
liberated from the National Gallery of Art.

Saddle up, buckaroos. We’re fixin’ to mosey into the heart of the Holiday Roundup.

As is often the case, the weather seems likely to suck come Eat the Bird. Some big-ass storm is poised to gallop from Californy right through Fort Fun, taking a giant dump on many a carefully devised travel plan. Why, we may even get a dash of the white stuff here in the Duke City.

Happily, we ain’t goin’ nowhere. The mom-in-law will be joining us here at El Rancho Pendejo for the holiday feast, but this will entail a round trip of about eight miles tops. Not like those 260-mile, stop-and-go death marches we used to endure between Bibleburg and Fort Fun, watching our fellow travelers take high-speed diggers in the median and/or ditches and then clog the breakdown lanes and/or frontage roads trying to find a workaround.

Mind you, this was on dry roads. If the weather were turble bad, why, then we might really see something.

Where are all y’all bound?

Boo

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
Naw, that ain’t Orange You-Know-Who. His bulb ain’t that bright.

Nothing says Halloween like a plastic Chinese jack-o’-lantern wearing a Schwinn cap, backlit by Cygolite tail lights.

What appears to be the Ghost of Tariffs Present flapping around in the background is a blanket folded across the back of my office rocker.

Boogity boogity boogity.

Nollaig shona duit

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments
I love this maple in the back yard. It always seems to be reaching out for something. Probably the warmer weather toward the southwest.

Here we are again, gathered around the old bloc na Nalloig beneath the freeway, trying to keep both warm and unnoticed by The Authorities, which is not an easy thing in these days of modern times.

Herself and I enjoyed our traditional Christmas Eve dance last night (one of us was limping a bit), and this morning while sipping our coffee we listened to my cousin Joseph Thompson and his colleague James Bishop-Edwards performing their arrangement of J.S. Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” from their album “Baroque Masterworks for Two Guitars.”

We’ve downsized the old solstice tree. The cats are less likely to try climbing this one.

Now “Performance Today” is rocking the house, ’cause that’s how we roll on Christmas.

There are no gifts under the tree. There’s not much room beneath it, for starters. And we’ve been fortunate enough to be able to buy things as we deem them necessary, rather than delaying gratification until Dec. 25. It helps that we really don’t want much.

So instead of littering the floor with wrapping paper we jotted down some notes about organizations in need of financial support. This year we went heavy on animal rescue, free speech, independent journalism, justice, and outfits that help those whose tribulations often go unnoticed because they don’t have free internet, scads of executive time, and a nice big White House from which to make their case.

Happy happy joy joy to thee and thine. May your days be merry and bright. And if you feel like kicking up your heels a bit, give a listen to “The Rebel Jesus,” from The Chieftains and Jackson Browne. I bid you pleasure and I bid you cheer, from a heathen and a pagan on the side of the rebel Jesus.