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Relative Measurements
Winter storm Fern did not finish her tour of the US without visiting New England. It snowed all day yesterday and overnight. This morning I opened the curtains to discover…
We got almost a Fit of snow! 🚗❄️
A Honda Fit, that is. *snort*
Yeah, I’m not even remotely sorry.
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A Muse at Christmas, December 25: The Company You Keep
It’s Christmas Night. The twenty-four-day countdown of Advent has finished. Now the twelve days of Christmas are underway. I hope you enjoyed this year’s Muse at Advent series. It was a pleasure to write, and I appreciate your spending time here reading my stream of consciousness. Before I leave you to enjoy your Christmas night, allow me to share one more Yuletide musing.
Christmas cookie and candy tins for the fam. December 25, 2025
Today was filled with good food enjoyed with family and friends that have become family. Thoughtful gifts were exchanged and deeply appreciated. And there was so much laughter, I brought some home with me. It was a very good day.
After we enjoyed dessert, some sat around the dining table and talked about everything from book recommendations to cornhole boards. Others watched football on TV and bemoaned the poor broadcast coverage.
As I took a moment to look around and appreciate the assembled company, I noticed that everyone was relaxed and at ease. That’s when I heard a little voice in my head say, “This is the best gift you could ever ask for.” Amen.
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A Muse at Advent, December 24: Feeling Feasty
So many of our holiday celebrations center around food. The meals we share with friends and family at Christmas are the wellspring of memories that we carry with us and share with the subsequent generations.
Open Door number 24 if you’re feeling peckish.
December 24, 2025
This is it! The big night is here. It’s Christmas Eve!
All of the shopping, baking, parties, and wrapping are done. Tonight, we’ll enjoy a festive meal with friends and family, perhaps attend a midnight service, and hang our stockings. Children everywhere hope Santa will bring them their fondest wish while grownups reflect on the gift of Salvation. It’s a big night. But first, we eat.
Whether you prepare an elaborate Feast of the Seven Fishes or order your favorite takeout, Christmas Eve meals launch the festivities which carry into the feast day of the Nativity of the Lord. Every family has its own tradition that they enjoy. Sometimes it’s passed on to the next generation, and sometimes new traditions are born and take off. Dinner on Christmas Eve is an integral part of the celebration.
I asked my husband what his Italian family did for Christmas Eve. His uncle owned a pizza place in Queens, NY, and made pizzas for the whole family. That sounds like a lot of fun! I can imagine the smell of fresh dough and tomato sauce. The warmth from the kitchen combined with laughter and conversation must have been intoxicating. His uncle’s generosity and talent made for an evening to remember.
Meanwhile, here in Massachusetts, my father brought home Chinese food from his friend’s restaurant in Boston’s Chinatown. The cuisine was authentic. There was nothing else like it and we looked forward to it eagerly. While sitting in traffic, Dad would sometimes “sample” an hors d’oeuvre. He called it his delivery fee! His friend learned to double the order of Dad’s favorite treat so they’d survive the trip. We laughed at the half empty container when he unpacked the bag.
The memories we gather from these meals while in the on-deck circle for Christmas, often turn out to be our fondest. The gathering is usually smaller and the atmosphere more relaxed than Christmas Day. On Christmas itself, meal preparations are ongoing while wrapping paper is gathered up and everyone gets dressed and goes to Mass. There’s not much time to breathe before the guests begin to arrive. Tonight, while you eat your fish or low mein, absorb the moments; they are the next stitches in the tapestry of your Christmas memories.
We’ll be dining with my mother tonight. I asked her what she’d like to eat. We ran through a list of delicious options from Thai takeout to meatloaf. It all sounded good to her. When I asked what she really, really wanted, she said, “Honestly, I don’t care what we eat. All I want is your company.” On this Christmas Eve, indecision may keep us hungry, but rest assured, our hearts are full.
Merry Christmas, friends.
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A Muse at Advent, December 23: They Name Reindeer, Don’t They?
The holiday season is the one time of year that adults are allowed a modicum of whimsy. It’s a shame. As the old saying goes, “A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”
Door number 23 lets the whimsy fly.
December 23, 2025
When we were kids, we were encouraged to imagine flying reindeer from the North Pole landing on the roof. We knew each one by name. But as time passes, their names fade and we need to refer to poetry, stories, and songs to remind us. I wondered why that is until I realized that the imagination needs exercise like the rest of us. Use it or lose it.
The easiest way to get your imagination out of its recliner is to engage your sense of whimsy. Whimsy is imagination manifest. Let your mind wander a bit. Don’t think or rationalize, just be. Children have this skill mastered. If there are small humans in your life, watch and relearn.
Whimsy lives in the present. It requires releasing the past and future to fully embrace the moment at hand. Go for a stroll where there are lots of Christmas lights and be transported to another land and/or time. Read a story out loud and use different voices for the characters. There are so many ways to release imagination and engage whimsy. Each method is unique to the person who devises it.
I’ll share an example of mine. Today while running last minute errands for Christmas dinner, I saw a van parked with its rear doors open. Inside I discovered a moment of whimsy.
Jerry the Can To me, the red jerry can in the back of the van looks like a face. If you look too long or study it, the illusion quickly falls apart. That’s the nature of whimsy. It’s fleeting, but joyful.
Do yourself a favor right now. Wake up your whimsy. Try to name St. Nick’s eight reindeer without Googling. Better yet, get some friends or family involved. Make up some names and try to convince your cohorts they’re real. Anyway, who’s to say they aren’t? Clement Clark Moore only named eight in his poem. The rest of them aren’t out there flying around anonymously! The best part is, you’ll find that whimsy is contagious. It will be soaring like the reindeer themselves.
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A Muse at Advent, December 22: Season’s Wheezings
Yesterday I wrote about my affection for the Christmas carol “O Tannenbaum.” Today it seems fitting to reflect on evergreen trees as a symbol of the winter season. It’s customary at this time of year to
take them hostagebring them into our homes, decorate them, and sing about them. But for some of us, decking the halls with fresh greens is a fir pas.Door number 22 scratches a Yuletide itch.
December 22, 2025
The Evergreen is a symbol of life persevering in the face of a long, cold winter. Its fragrance is singularly invigorating, particularly indoors. It lends visual warmth and brings an atmosphere of freshness to the home. Unless, of course, pine is one of your worst allergies. *Raises hand*
While I love spending time with evergreen trees in the woods, singing their praises in German, and seeing them decorated at Christmastime, once inside my home their pungent fragrance sets my immune system ablaze. Because I wasn’t aware that I had this allergy until I was tested, my parents nearly killed me on an annual basis. Maybe that’s a little dramatic. But when you ‘re congested and wheezing, it feels that way.
The severity of my allergy came to light when I went for allergy testing. Trees and grasses were on my left arm. Animals and food were on my right. The conifer skin pricks lit up like, well, like Christmas. Oak trees turned out to be pesky too, but that’s only a problem if we sand the hardwood floors. My right arm is the subject for another door.
Prior to the tests we started to track the evergreen allergy on our own. My folks bought an artificial Christmas tree and used faux greenery garlands. I was breathing easily and enjoying Christmastime more. I could sing “O Tannenbaum” with sincerity. It was a relief to us all.
Some people think it’s a travesty to forgo a real Christmas tree. Having a real tree is a delight. So is breathing. If you’re blessed with the ability to do both at the same time, that’s awesome. For those of us who can’t, displaying an artificial tree allows us to enjoy tree trimming and placing gifts beneath its lovely, hypoallergenic branches while respiring freely. Win, win.
Whether your tree is real or artificial, the spirit of the evergreen’s enduring beauty during the depth of winter endures and stands, in our living rooms, as a symbol of persistence and strength. I think my faux fir does its inspiration proud.
My artificial tree decked out for Christmas.
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A Muse at Advent, December 21: Carols at the Spinet
The holiday season has many traditions, and we each have a favorite. For some people it’s baking, others enjoy all the parties, and some look forward to finding the perfect gift for that special someone. I enjoy all of those things, too, but my favorite part of the run-up to Christmas is singing Christmas carols.
Bang on Door number 22 to tell me to keep it down.
December 21, 2025
I have an old soul. When I was a kid the Bing Crosby and Perry Como Christmas specials were the highlight of the season. I would ask my parents let me stay up past my bedtime to watch them. They always said yes. I also waited with excitement for all of the animated specials and Rankin-Bass productions to air on TV. They all had catchy tunes which I would sing. My siblings and parents would take turns watching Christmas specials with me. I swear they had assigned a rota to prevent burnout. I was indefatigable.
The classic Christmas fare on TV and radio every year was, and still is, great fun. I also enjoyed the hymns at Mass during Advent. But my old soul longed for more. Then my father introduced me to the carols and hymns sung by English choirs on our local classical radio. His favorite was King’s College Choir. It became mine, too. Through the years we would buy the latest album, cassette, CD. The songs were the same, but the voices and arrangements differed. It was like hearing them again for the first time. Don’t even get me started on the descants.
Not to be outdone, my mother leaned into my Bing and Perry obsession and showed me that Johnny Mathis, Harry Belafonte, Herb Alpert also had the holiday spirit at their command. I soon had all of their albums, too. While my classmates were wondering “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” I was on a “Sleigh Ride” with Johnny.
To this day, I listen to this music with reverence, joy, and nostalgia. The records have long since worn out. Anyone who ever owned cassette tapes knows what happened to those. And nothing I own has a CD player in it anymore. My old mp3 player is around here somewhere. Now I have a digital playlist that I carry with me everywhere in a slab of glass that I can play at will. With so much music at my fingertips, I’ve developed my own holiday tradition. I make a playlist of Christmas music that is unique to the year. It’s a fresh rotation of choral favorites, classics, covers, and contemporary additions. It’s my personal holiday groove.
This year’s playlist features one of my favorite Christmas carols “O Tannenbaum,” known in English as “Oh Christmas Tree.” There are many arrangements of this choral masterpiece, but there’s something about listening to a German lyric version that makes it more magical. Perhaps it’s because the tradition of bringing evergreen boughs and trees into the home for the winter solstice originated in that part of the world. Give it a listen. This one has German and English subtitles. I hope you enjoy it. I know Dad would.
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A Muse at Advent, December 20: Writing in the Dark
A violent storm packing hurricane force winds has downed trees and knocked out power to many Massachusetts communities, including mine. Today’s post started out on good old-fashioned paper and worked its way back to the digital age over the course of 24 hours. Let’s open Door number 20. It’s around here somewhere…
December 20, 2025
Darkness is conducive to poetry. For me, undistracted thought after the sun goes down usually leads to haiku or altered song lyrics. Today’s entry is a brief observation based on the last 24 hours spent without electricity. I don’t trust that the power will stay on, so let’s get to it!
In case you’re curious, I stitched the sampler. Not in 1721. I don’t actually have a time machine. My designs are inspired by 18th century needlework. Power outages
are a writer's time machine
back to quill and ink.
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A Muse at Advent, December 19: Laughter Needs No Translation
Watching movies in a foreign language is a take it or leave it kind of thing for a lot of people. Not everyone likes to read subtitles and others find dubbing disconcerting. I don’t mind either. Although I distinctly remember the time Robert Redford sounded as if the river that ran through it was the Seine.
Door number 19 is a hoot.
December 19, 2025
When I was a kid, one of my favorite party games was telephone. If you’ve never played, someone thinks of a phrase and whispers it to the person next to them and so on until it reaches the last person in the group. It’s fun to watch the confused looks as the message begins to change with each iteration. Finally, the last person announces what he has heard. It’s usually not even close to the original phrase. The more mangled the phrase, the more fun it is. While studying French, I realized that translation has the potential to become a game of telephone.
My brother, John, and I experienced this phenomenon back in the 80s. He was studying chemistry as a postdoctoral researcher on a Fulbright Scholarship in Zurich, Switzerland. Being the generous big brother that he was, he enrolled me in a French language program in Fribourg where he had become fluent in German the summer before. It was the experience of a lifetime for me, but when we’d reminisce about it, one particular memory always got us laughing.
During one of my weekend visits to Zurich, Monty Python’s And Now for Something Completely Different was playing at the theater near John’s apartment. It was shown in its original English with French and German subtitles. We were both big Python fans and it was fun to watch a film that wasn’t dubbed. Mostly because John spoke German and I spoke French which meant one of us would have to whisper the plot to the other. Let’s just say, we’d done that and it wasn’t ideal.
We arrived at the theater early and bought our snacks. It was a small auditorium and there weren’t too many people there yet. We had our choice of seats and sat in the middle. Eventually, the room filled, the lights dimmed, and the movie began. As it went from sketch to sketch, John and I were laughing almost nonstop. The people in front of us kept turning in their seats to look at us. We thought we were laughing too loud. We tried to stifle it. That only made it worse. We looked behind us to find those patrons were also looking at us. Some were laughing, but we could tell they were laughing at us. How was it that we were the only two people in the theater to find this movie funny?
Then light dawned. We read the subtitles. John read the German, and I read the French. Turns out the translations were literal. “If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?” translated in each language to “If I told you you had a beautiful body, would you be offended?” Every pun, quip, and punchline was translated verbatim, with no nuance or attempt to find a humorous equivalent. If you had to read this movie, it was deadly boring. The only hearty laughter elicited from all in attendance came from the physical comedy sketches.
Outside, after the film, my brother and I were approached by some of our fellow moviegoers. They obviously knew the subtitles were faulty and wanted to know what they missed. We explained some of the funnier jokes to our new friends. And then we asked them why they stayed for the whole film when it obviously wasn’t enjoyable for them. One couple said we were funnier than the movie. Apparently, we would poke each other as a good joke was coming and then our laughter was hilarious in and of itself. It was clear we had the script memorized. A woman told us that she enjoyed watching us enjoy ourselves. In spite of our antics, they all said they preferred English language movies that were dubbed. Completely understandable.
John and I had a lot of fun together that summer. We hiked in the Alps and Jura mountains. We spent a weekend on the Riviera. We traipsed through a botanical garden in Germany. But the most remarkable thing we did was to be the only two people in a movie theater to find Monty Python funny. And we kept laughing about it for years.
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A Muse at Advent, December 18: A Star to Wish Upon
Behind Door number 18, a star is given.
December 18, 2025
I look forward to decorating the Christmas tree every year. This love was instilled in me by my mother. When my siblings and I were little, she would buy us each a Christmas ornament so that we’d have our own collections when we fledged. Each of us had a box with our name on it. On the side of the box was a sheet of paper with a list of the ornaments and the year it was added to the collection. It was a great idea that helped us remember Christmases past as we grew up.
Every year I got a new “favorite” ornament. Until the year I got the ornament that would never lose the title.
Antique Czech glass star ornament. My first Christmas as a newly minted teenager, my mother decided I was old enough to collect ornaments that were more fragile than the wood, metal, and fabric ones in my box. I opened a small package, and to my delight this star ornament lay carefully swaddled in the tissue. I was entranced. My mother told me she had found it in little shop while she was antiquing one day and knew I’d love it. That was an understatement.
The ornament is made of tubes of glass strung on wire to form the star. Colorful glass beads decorate the center of the star and the end of each point. My mother explained that all she knew about it was that it was old, eastern European, and very fragile. I have since learned that it was made in the 1930s in Gablonz (Jablonec nad Nisou) in what is now the Czech Republic. Her thoughtful gift sparked a lifelong interest and an extensive collection of antique glass ornaments that I maintain to this day.
Our Christmas tree looks like a magical, explosion of colored glass. I’ll share photos of it another time. For now, I want to focus on this beautiful interpretation of the Christmas star from so long ago. The star that let the world know that a child lay in a manger. The star that led sages across a desert. The star that would herald salvation. My star may not be as significant as its inspiration, but it did, in turn, inspire my love for beautiful, handmade things.
Every year when I carefully unwrap my star, I think of the person, long ago, who carefully wired the glass rods and beads and bent them into the star that I hold today. As I hang it on the tree, I am thankful for my mother who loves me like no one else.
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A Muse at Advent, December 17: Tools of the Trade
When I make a mistake while writing, I can delete and start over like nothing happened. When I sew, however, the sewing machine does not have a backspace button. It has a backstitch button, and that makes the mistake even worse. So, what do I do when the stitches don’t come out right? Well, I make a date with Jack.
Door number 17 is coming apart at the seams.
December 17, 2025
Those of us who sew, as I do for my day job, need to unpick stitches for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is to undo an egregious boo-boo. Accompanying the error is colorful language, exasperated sighs, and a reflexive reach for the tool that any sewer, sew-er, sewist, or whatever you want to call us, keeps close at hand and hopes never to use again: a seam ripper.
Portrait of Jack as a red seam ripper. In order to sew, it helps to have a sense of humor. It’s almost a requirement. Sewing is immensely rewarding, but it can be intensely frustrating. Anyone who’s ever set the left sleeve into the right armscye or pieced quilt blocks in the wrong order knows what I mean. You laugh it off else you’re announcing your arrival through a hole in the sewing room door with an axe. Or, in our case, with scissors, rotary cutters, or seam rippers. And because that sense of humor we share is a bit twisted, we all call our seam ripper Jack. Yes, that’s right. Jack the Ripper. Dark, I know.
If you sit in on a sewing class or follow sewing groups on the socials, sewists will cheerfully report that they have a date with Jack. There was no swiping right to get this date. It means their project went sideways. The cheer may be forced, but the announcement is always met with enthusiastic commiseration and tales of past dates with Jack. Jack gets around and no one minds that they’ve all had a date with him. There is, however, universal agreement that Jack is a tool.
While a seam ripper is primarily used for correcting mistakes, it’s important to note that Jack helps repair and create things as well. A seam ripper takes out a broken zipper or opens a buttonhole after its sewn. There’s a fine line between erring and repairing. A date with Jack teaches us that there is no shame in undoing something we’re unhappy with and starting again.
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