I enjoyed Mathematical Footprints, though there were parts that I did not understand. For example, the suggestion that there did not used to be a square root of negative 15 but now there is is hard for me to grasp. That it hadn’t been discovered, okay. It took a long time before people thought of zero, after all, but not because it didn’t exist. Nothingness was around before we had a symbol for it. Bertrand Russell suggested (and is quoted doing so in this book) that it probably took a long time for people to consider that two days and a brace of pheasants were in any way the same thing. But the suggestion that some not-very-real number came into existence at some time baffles me.

I also find that my eyes slide off the page when there are lots of numbers all together, so I missed out on the discussion of fractals, and the pictures of four dimensional shapes continue to look two or perhaps three dimensional to me, no matter how hard I stare at them. I’ve seen those things in three-dimensional models, in fact, and they still don’t look four dimensional. 

“Where’s the four dimensional part?” I asked the builder of one.
“You can’t see it,” he said, pityingly.

 The mathematical explanation of Magic Eye pictures was quite fascinating, though, and I now know a lot more about bar codes than I ever expected to.

But it may well be that the thing I will remember best from this book is the method of determining longitude on a ship using powder of sympathy.

You start by getting a wounded dog. There is no suggestion that you should wound the dog intentionally, but it is hard to escape the thought that this must have been part of the plan sometimes, in cases where there was no wounded dog around and the ship was otherwise ready to set sail. You put a bandage on the dog’s wound. When the dog is better, bring it on the ship with you, leaving the bandage behind on land.

Are you with me so far?

Now, enlist someone back on land to put powder of sympathy (a weird 17th century cure, usually applied to weapons that had hurt someone) onto the bandage at precisely noon every day. The dog will react to this sympathetic magic in some way, at which point you merely determine what time it is on your ship at that moment (by looking at the sun, I suppose), and swiftly calculate your longitude by comparing the time where you are to the time back in Portsmouth or wherever you left the bandage.

The author mentions that this method doesn’t work, possibly in case we were planning on trying it out.

Fortunately, the invention of portable clocks in the late 1700s made the wounded dog method obsolete. You could set the time in Portsmouth and the clock would keep it for you as you sailed about.

There was also a method which involved observing the moons of Jupiter, a difficult task at any time, let alone on a ship, and another which seemed to require putting into port and asking what time it was there. I really don’t see that one. If you are in port, surely you could just ask where you are, at which point you could look up your longitude in a trice.

For the solstice, let’s sing “The Holly and the Ivy.” This is a nice 14th century English carol, lots of fun to sing, and filled with pagan imagery in case you are going to that kind of party.

My next party is on Saturday morning, at Partygirl’s, and she has promised me champagne. Really, she serves champagne more than anyone else I know. You can just drop by her house on the way to the grocery store and find that she has champagne going. I am not supposed to drink alcohol, what with my triglyceride numbers being imperfect, but I make an exception for champagne at Partygirls’ house, much as one would go ahead and eat the sheep’s eyeballs if that were the custom in the country in which you were traveling.

Last night after choir practice (most memorable line from the rehearsal: “There I was singing the first verse over,  big as Dallas.”), #2 son and I made Cranberry Caramel Bars. We got the recipe from Southern Living, but this site provides just about the same recipe. They are good, and just the thing if you are having a party.

The picture here is of their prettiest stage. Then #2 son covered them with caramel and I sprinkled a crumb topping on and we baked them some more and they ended up looking less colorful but tasting terrific.

Add champagne, sing pagan carols — you’re set.

Oh — the meeting with the teacher became a meeting with the teacher, then the counselor, and then the counselor and the principal together, and it reminded me of the story of The Blind Men and the Elephant. #1 son feels that he is incapable of grasping chemistry and needs a Special Class. His teacher says he behaves as though he is an Artist and above petty things like chemistry, but is certainly capable of doing the work if he chooses to. His counselor says he is “adorable” and she and the principal (who said chemistry is like a wall for some students) fixed it up to move him into the class of a nice lady teacher. His dad says it is all the fault of the computer. He didn’t have computers in his day, and he always did his homework.

He didn’t have electricity, either, I pointed out. That might not have been tactful of me. It was shortly after that that he said he was going to buy a new car and move to Wyoming. He has taken that back. I have pointed out to #1 son that no matter how adorable he is and how nice the lady teacher, he still won’t pass if he never does his assignments.

If you read the comments, you may have noticed Sighkey’s polite incredulity over the whole scale of Christmas here in the U.S. People who study this kind of thing assure us that the average American mom takes on the equivalent of an additional full-time job for the period from Thanksgiving to the New Year. Add the cost of the festivities, the stepped-up socializing, the break in our healthy eating and exercise routines, and it is no wonder that holiday stress is a common problem.

Thanks to the HGP and a certain amount of moderation, I haven’t been dealing with much holiday stress. But yesterday morning, I got the following pieces of information:

My husband is on “shut-down” (that is, laid off) for a couple of weeks.
The bank put my husband’s deposit from Friday into the wrong account, so I had to go to the bank yesterday to straighten it out instead of going to the gym.
#1 son is not doing well in chemistry, so I have to meet the teacher of his chemistry class and his counselor instead of going to the gym today.
While I have been collecting things for my parents’ Christmas baskets, I did not actually acquire any baskets to put them in.
My car, when I went to head to the bank, was on empty.

So I went to the bank, and then, nervously, to the gas station, where I filled my gas tank. I have been stubbornly refusing to do this, insisting instead on putting my budgeted $10 per week into the gas tank. If I run out of gas during the week, I just walk, that’s all. I decided that it would be sensible to go ahead and fill the tank for the holiday week, and was shocked by the $29 total.

Then I figured, since I was over in the business part of town anyway, I would swing by the Dollar Store. I have been giving gift baskets to my parents for so many years that they must now have an enormous collection of nice baskets, I figured (I usually buy them in the fall, when the good ones go on sale all over town. I don’t know why I didn’t do that this year). They wouldn’t mind if I used a Dollar Store basket this year, and the Dollar Store was open at that hour.

I walked in cheerfully enough, and found that the worker in the store was shouting into the telephone.

“I just want what’s mine! I’m going to get what’s mine!” And then, after a pause, “You said you didn’t want the house!”

He continued his furious divorce negotiations as I wandered helplessly around the store. I am not a regular Dollar Store shopper, and I couldn’t figure out where a basket might be. Just before I gave up, the worker appeared, fresh from his fight, and I asked him. He led me around the store, pointing out trash cans and mop buckets. I said no, I really wanted a basket, and prepared to leave.

“Let’s go back here,” he said, leading me back into the stock room.

Why did I follow an angry man into a deserted stockroom? I don’t know. But we did come upon a large stack of boxes with a picture of a pretty woven basket with a handle.

“That’s exactly what I want,” I said with relief.

He pulled out his box cutter and slit the box, then pulled out an item from inside — a flat plastic woven thing that looked as though it might contain the rolls on the table at a casual restaurant. No handle. Not really a basket. Way too small.

I took it anyway. I flung my $1.09 at the fellow and hightailed it out of there, finished up the morning’s tasks, and got to work on time.

Blessings’ children had set her kitchen rug on fire and she had to go to court today to testify in her husband’s custody case, so I guess I am still not dealing with that much stress.

“Do you feel bad that you aren’t baking this year?” she asked me sadly. “I do.”

“Oh, I’m baking,” I said. And in fact I made snickerdoodles last night, after #2 son’s gymnastics class. But I also called the baker and ordered the Buche de Noel. Somehow I don’t think I need to add that to my list, even if #2 son was planning to do most of the work.

By lunchtime I was calm again, though I do have a soldered charm bearing the motto “Exhaustion should not be confused with calm.” I had the pleasure of hearing Kathleen Battle and Frederica Von Stade sing “Gesu Bambino.” This is a lovely 20th century piece by Pietro Yon that incorporates “Adeste Fideles” or “Come Let Us Adore Him.” It is rarely sung in casual settings, perhaps because it takes a couple of good female singers and a children’s choir to get the full effect. And I don’t think I have ever heard it recorded except by classical musicians, but the link I have given you will get you the sheet music for your viola and cello, as well as a midi so you can learn it real quick.

Perhaps if you are meeting up with a girlfriend to finish your baking, you can get all your kids to do the choir part and you and she can sing the solos.

Me, I have a date at the high school to discuss my son’s lack of skill and/or diligence in chemistry, and then back to the salt mines, with a stop off at the grocery (wasn’t I supposed to be through with that?) for dish soap and more baking supplies. After work is choir practice (with cookie boxes for the director and organist), and then more baking.

I am getting a fair amount of reveling in, too, though, and the boys are helping with the baking, at least by offering criticism and stealing the cookies before they make it into containers. I say “Those are for Christmas!” and they assure me that we always have too many cookies, that I am trying to starve them, that they have to try them all out…

I was reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything yesterday. I will not be reading it today. Here’s what happened.

I had a hardcover copy of this book waiting for me to get around to reading it for some weeks, and then #1 daughter and Son-in-law visited and we got into a conversation about books. Son-in-law said that he never read nonfiction, though he would like to. So I got copies — in hardcover, since he prefers hardcover — of a couple of my favorite nonfiction books for him for Christmas.  

Then I noticed that A Short History was out in paper, and I know that anything by Bryson is going to be great, so I orderd a paperback for myself at the bookstore where I work and packed up the hardcover along with Son-in-law’s other books and sent them off.

Yesterday, I was going to buy the paperback of A Short History, so I had it out on the counter. Toward the end of the day there was a slow spell and I read the first 93 pages or so. Thus it was that when Suwanda and her daughter came in, I helped her with her shopping and then told her about this cool book I was reading. She said her husband would love it, and did we sell it?

Well, since I hadn’t bought it yet, yes, we did sell it. We had a copy in stock so I had to sell it to her. I will order myself another.

Reviews of this book have complained about Bryson’s lack of knowledge. I think this depends on the audience. Reviewers have complained about the other books I sent Son-in-law, too (he doesn’t read this). The Science of Harry Potter, they say, is too hard. I can’t agree. I sell it as a children’s book, it is not hard for a reasonably-well-read layman like me, and it is not going to be difficult for Son-in-law, who is a chemist. The Omnivore’s Dilemma is elitist, they say. I don’t get that. It is true that the author looks down on Twinkies, but so do I, and I don’t intend to apologize for it. And I am also too ignorant to read things like ” Recent numerical integrations, however, suggest that stable planetary orbits exist: within three AUs (four AUs for retrograde orbits) of either Alpha Centauri A or B in the plane of the binary’s orbit; only as far as 0.23 AU for 90-degree inclined orbits; and beyond 70 AUs for planets circling both stars,” and I’m not going to apologize for that, either. Bryson’s explanations of astornomy are just about my speed.

Bryson, in writing about physics and geology, writes as much about the scientists as the science, and I like that about the book. For one thing, the stories are interesting. For another, there is something very appealing to me about the scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries. There you have a failed pearl diver who retires to spend his time doing what he really loves: trigonometry. There a country doctor who is also an expert on poetry and mosses. They remind me of Baring-Gould, the mill-town parson who wrote hymns and was an expert on werewolves. These guys were interested in things simply because they were interesting.

Nowadays, when so many of us won’t do a thing unless we are graded on it or paid for it, and the two main hobbies here in Hamburger-a-go-go-land are shopping and watching TV, it does me good to read about people who were willing to do mad things just for the love of knowledge.

To change the subject entirely, I promised Pokey a picture of the cat and dog stockings that Janalisa helped the middle school youth group make. They are using them to raise money for a good cause, and they are filled with cat and dog treats which the kids (and Janalisa) made.

This is why she has been showing up to choir practice carrying a roll of parchment paper.

You don’t like to ask, do you, though I finally did. I think our animals will like these, and more importantly, the kids thought they were very cool. I have read that the majority of Americans give Christmas presents to their animals. I am not that sentimental, but I am making an exception, this year.

For today’s song of the day, I offer you an old French carol about animals, “The Friendly Beasts.” The link will tell you that it is English, but that is not true. The internet is crawling with misinformation. This is a 12th century French tune, and I have not been able to discover who translated it, but they did a good job. It is a sweet song about the all the animals who helped the holy family — the donkey who carried Jesus’s mother uphill and down, the doves who cooed him to sleep, the cow all white and red who gave him a manger for his bed. It is a good one for children.

We had a standing ovation for the music in church yesterday, an odd thing for a church, where the music is worship and not performance, but it did make us feel as though they had really liked the music. It was not a Lessons and Carols, because the notes between the pieces were historical notes about the music. That was surprising, but of course I liked it.

Then I came home and we made turtles and fruit and nut clusters and eggnog cutout cookies.

Perhaps you have never made turtles. This is a great thing to make with kids. Here is how you do it:

Arrange 5 pecans into the shape of a turtle. If you are not very imaginative, you can think of it as a 5-pointed star.

Melt caramels over low heat and stir in a spoonful of cream. You can make your own caramel, and we have done that sometimes, but kids will have more fun if you use ready-made caramels, and it will still taste very good.

Also melt chocolate in a double boiler, or whatever your personal preferred method of melting chocolate may be. My late sister-in-law did hers in a coffee carafe, but I found it surprisingly difficult to get the chocolate out. If you like mocha, you could do this and then make a pot of coffee and not feel that you were wasting anything.

Spoon a dollop of melted caramel onto the pecans, leaving the tips of the head and feet (pecans) showing. Then spread melted chocolate over the caramel. Depending on how many kids you have, you can do an assembly line with these and get lots made at once.

If you use foil, as we did this year, you will then want to put your turtles into the freezer for a bit so you can get them off the foil in one piece.

Because of the boys’ depredations on the freezer-stored cookies, the whole cookie and candy making thing is being done this year in a messy burst rather than a pleasant gradualness.

The result may be fewer kinds of cookies and candies, but the boys claim that we usually have too many. I am not sure where they get this austere attitude toward cookies, since they are able to eat them in massive quantities.

I will be making up the cookie boxes today for the postman, Schwann’s man, and UPS man. It happens that all these people are men, and that is why I describe them in this way. We used to have a UPS woman, and she used to bring cookie boxes to us, so that it was an exchange.

We do have an occasional female letter carrier. However, she is just the substitute, and will not take packages unless you force her to, so she does not get a cookie box. Only the good and deserving postman gets the cookies.

With lots of sugary things packed up and the mess cleared away, we had a quick and reasonably healthy meal.

Considering the things we slapped together this weekend and called meals, this was downright wholesome.

This is why the Holiday Grand Plan has you make freezer meals, so that you can eat properly even when rushed. I cannot explain why my freezer contains nothing but two whole turkeys. I suspect that after-school snacks had something to do with it. Teenage boys can think of large pans of lasagne as after-school snacks just as easily as they think of cookies that way.

 We also lighted the Advent candles, though they have not stayed lit for very long this year. This is because the boys think it is funny to extinguish them in novel ways such as passing their hands over them or leaping over them or — you get the picture, I am sure. Especially if you have boys or if you ever were one.

This is an Advent wreath, in case you are unfamiliar with this custom. There are three purple candles and one pink candle, to be lit on the four Sundays of Advent, and often there is also a central white candle to light on Christmas day. If you attend a church where Advent is observed, or have a strong family worship tradition at home, then you will also have readings and hymns and stuff. I do that in church, not at home. I think it would be distracting to have the boys leaping over the Advent wreath while we read out bits of Mark and Luke.

Then we watched “How the  Grinch Stole Christmas” and “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas,” reviewed for #2 son’s final exam today, and fielded calls from #2 daughter on her party preparations.

It is one week before Christmas, which is exciting if you have done everything you need to do.

I believe that I have. I am still having the occasional burst of inspiration, but that is part of celebrating. Now I merely have to avoid sounding smug when people tell me how behind they are and how they haven’t done anything and their lives are in a state of chaos.

Here’s something I thought of doing with soldered charms.

If you use a hymnal in church, it is handy to have a multi-armed bookmark, so that you can mark all the hymns before the service and not be searching all the time. Often these are made of ribbons, but I found this silver chatelaine and attached charms to it. This allows the user to pin it to her music bag so as not to forget it, and also to remove the charms if she wanted to use one for a pendant.

A calming song for today, in case you haven’t done everything you need to do: “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.” This is a fifteenth century German tune, in a setting by the great Michael Praetorius. It is one of the most beautiful tunes of the many beautiful tunes in Christmas music. If you have musical friends, gather them up and do this in four parts. If not, you could stand on the sidewalk, singing it or playing it on your flute, and passersby will hear it and decide that they will, henceforth, be nobler and kinder than they have been, and rush off to do some good deed.

 We are managing to be festive in spite of our lack of daughters in the house.

#2 son is an adventuresome cook. He is adventuresome in the sense of making difficult things, and also in the sense of particularly liking odd recipes. If it is cooked on a plank or a skewer, includes weird ingredients, or requires a lot of tools to prepare, he is on it. This boy has actually made the Coke Cake.

So yesterday, along with spaghetti and hot bread, he decided to make Hot Gingered Cider and Hello Dollies. The cider is a Better Homes and Gardens recipe. Here it is:

1 liter ginger ale
4 c apple cider
1/4 c mulling spices
2 T lemon juice
1″ piece fresh ginger, peeled and sliced.
Combine all ingredients and heat through.

This is really quite good, and not too sweet.

Hello Dollies are called Magic Cookie Bars by the Eagle Brand company, but around here, where you meet them at every potluck, they are called Hello Dolly cookies. I have no idea why. I had never even eaten them before, let alone made them, but you might want to try them sometime. They are not made as a normal cookie is. You take a hammer to a sleeve of graham crackers and put the crumbs into a pan, pour condensed milk over them, and then layer on various goodies such as chocolate and nuts, depending on the variation you have chosen to make. You then bake the unlikely-looking stuff. They are very easy to make and turn out a nice rich, gooey treat. We had trouble getting them to cut neatly into squares, but have no other complaints. I snuck some into the freezer to keep for Christmas.

We had a productive day, actually. We mailed Christmas cards, delivered jars of marmalade to folks we wouldn’t be seeing in the coming week, got the shopping done, ordered the meatitude for Christmas Eve, and cleaned house. I soldered the remaining jump rings on and cleared away the crafting mess which has possessed the kitchen table for a week. The boys washed the dogs in something called “Fur So Fresh” in an effort to lessen the overall dogginess of the atmosphere. Presents arrived in the mail from my sister and #1 daughter, much improving the look of our Christmas tree. I knitted another inch or two on Pipes.

#2 son also had the inspiration to teach his dad the expression “Bah, Humbug!”

You may be thinking that this is a middle-aged man who has spent more than half his life in the U.S. and must therefore already know about “Bah, humbug,” but you would be wrong there. My husband’s ability to ignore his adopted country rivals that of the Brits in India in the time of the Raj.

#2 son thought it would be funny to get his dad to say “Bah, Humbug!” in response to “Merry Christmas.” I discouraged this. But then he was telling us that his American friends are asking him whether he has finished his Christmas shopping, done his decorating, and so on.

He could of course draw himself up and say, “I am Buddhist” in a chilly voice. Instead, he smiles sweetly and says, “My wife does that.”

The other day one of his friends asked him, “Has your wife thrown you out yet?”

So we suggested that when people ask about his holiday preparations, he can say, ”Christmas! Bah, Humbug!”

He wrote it down. I’ll let you know how it works out.

Today is the Big Music in church and more baking and cleaning at home. I am hoping that there will also be a nice Sunday afternoon nap, or at least a good bit of reading and knitting.

I heard a cute song, new to me, on the radio, and it could make a good song for the day if you are wrapping things or shopping or baking or something like that. “I Want to Hitch a Ride With Santa Claus” was recorded by Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters, ansd also by Bing Crosby with a little boy, perhaps one of his sons. I could not find sheet music or the tune online, so here is another option, in the public domain: “Good Christan Men, Rejoice!” This song, to the tune “In Dulci Jubilo,”  is really just as sprightly as “Hitch a Ride,” though in a different mood. Of course, nowadays we sing “Good Christians all, rejoice” or “Good Christian friends, rejoice” since there is no reason to suppose that the women are all off shopping and baking and have no time to rejoice. This link, however, will take you to a rather cool image of old sheet music showing a group of men in knee breeches gathered around a table singing very seriously, perhaps while they wait for someone to bring them dinner.

(Ummm, if that link doesn’t work, you can click here and scroll down the page and click on the thumbnail… it might not be worth it, though. Sorry.)

Today is my final foray into stores before Christmas. This is because it is payday, and the Saturday following the December payday is always the day that I do the last grocery shopping, buy stamps and mail the Christmas cards, pick up the remaining stocking stuffers, help the kids with their holiday shopping, order the goods for reveillon from the butcher and baker (although #2 son says he will make us a Buche de Noel, so I may not be going to the baker after all), and generally tidy up any leftover errands for the holiday.

Today I also have a haircut and Mrs. Santa’s Kitchen (a charity cookie do).

Since I have done the Holiday Grand Plan and Ovecome Agoraphobia, I am almost able to look forward to all this. I will not be a Stage 3 shopper or even a Stage 2. The weather is lovely, and the cookie thing will probably be fun. I may even buy cookies there.

I am definitely looking forward to getting back home this afternoon, though of course there will be much cleaning and decorating and baking still to do then.

This has for the past several years also been when #2 daughter got home for Christmas, and between declaring preparations (outside the kitchen) complete and having her home, we have gotten into the habit of letting this be the beginning of the revels.

She will not join us till Christmas Eve this year, since she is not a college girl any more but a grownup with a job and her own home and all that. #1 daughter and Son-in-law will not be here at all for the holidays.

Unfortunately, while I got all my gingerbread boys baked, I did not get them decorated, owing to a complete lack of powdered sugar in the house. I must therefore go to the grocery, come home and decorate cookies, drop them off, get my haircut, go back and help, and then do the remaining errands on a Saturday afternoon the week before Christmas. For which read: crowds and traffic.

Well, I may be trying to stay positive about all this, but I am not sure that I am succeeding. I am feeling a little grim abour it, frankly.

The only possible song for today is “Silver Bells.” You probably know this one already, but it is a happy, jolly song about crowds and rushing around doing errands, and will uplift those of us who have to do that today.

Later, taking a lunch break… It hasn’t been bad at all. It has been fun. I am making a note of this for my future self. Onward!

I finished reading Performance Anxiety. It was set in Canada, and I learned only one new word from it: “garburator,” which is apparently the term for a garbage disposal in British Columbia. There were perhaps too many characters; it was hard to care about them all. The musical background was handled well, though.

Today is the day for the big cookie baking. I must deliver 6.5 dozen to Mrs. Santa’s Kitchen, a charity fundraiser, in the morning, so I figure that will be my Friday evening. I’m thinking I’ll put on a movie while I decorate.

Some of the ladies participating in this recently had a cookie exchange. I’ve had these before. It’s a party where everyone brings a batch of cookies and you swap, so everyone goes home with many different kinds. Mine was fun. This particular cookie exchange is an annual event, and has become competitive.

Not merely competitive in that unpleasant pissing contest way that sometimes underlies things that aren’t supposed to be competitive. They actually award prizes.

I saw some of the cookies. I even tasted one: a snowman with a wee scarf made by weaving tiny strands of different-colored dough together, and a matching hat. It was quite charming. It could have been made from Fimo and put on a Christmas tree.

In fact, it should have been. It tasted like nothing. And since I am not supposed to eat sugar, I don’t like it when I break the rule and it turns out not to be worth it.

I’m breaking that rule every day lately, I confess. I will wait till after the holidays to deal with that.

Today is the day for gingerbread. And possibly also The Empress’s enormous sugar cookie recipe.

These will be plain cookies, though they will also be delicious and worth breaking rules for. But I must think of some very exciting way to decorate them. Not that I intend to join in that competitiveness, but knowing that at least some of my fellow bakers take their cookies very seriously, I don’t want to let down the side.

#2 son, on the other hand, needs an authentic French recipe for Buche de Noel and intends to make one for his Monday French class, thus scoring extra credit points to make up for the homework he has skipped. So it will be a big baking weekend around here.

We clearly need something really inspiring to sing for the occasion. So today’s song of the day is “What Sweeter Music,” a setting by John Rutter of a poem by Robert Herrick to another of those great 17th century German tunes.

Here are the words for you:

What sweeter music

What sweeter music can we bring
 Than a carol, for to sing
 The birth of this our heavenly King?
 Awake the voice! Awake the string!
 Dark and dull night, fly hence away, 
And give the honour to this day 
That sees December turned to May. 
Why does the chilling winter’s morn 
Smile, like a field beset with corn? 
Or smell like a meadow newly shorn 
Thus on the sudden? Come and see 
The cause, why things thus fragrant be: 
‘Tis he is born. whose quickening birth 
Gives life and lustre, public mirth, 
To heaven and the under-earth. 
We see him come, and know him ours, 
Who, with his sunshine and his showers, 
Turns all the patient ground to flowers. 
The darling of the world is come, 
And fit it is, we find a room 
To welcome him, to welcome him. 
The nobler part of all the house here, 
is the heart. Which we will give him: 
and bequeath This holly, and this ivy wreath. 
To do him honour. who’s our King, 
And Lord of all this revelling. 

Robert Herrick

Herrick is the guy who wrote “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” and he wrote this poem for the king of England, presumably intending the dual kingly allusions to flatter old Charles. Other people besides John Rutter have arranged it, but Rutter’s version is very beautiful, and he has recorded it with the Cambridge singers. If you like choral music at all, this would be a good CD to add to your collection.

Betsy Burke’s novel Performance Anxiety turns out to be one of those which I enjoy, but not without taking the occasional break, so I stopped and read A Christmas Caroline, a new take on A Christmas Carol from Kyle Smith. I enjoyed it very much. The Scrooge character is a selfish, materialistic young woman with an eating disorder, and the whole thing is a clear piece of chick lit, even though it was written by a man. Smith is the author of Love Monkey,  a highly successful book often described as a male Bridget Jones’s Diary. His first book suffered, according to reviewers, from a really unpleasant main character with whom one couldn’t identify . He has turned this into a virtue by doing a story that requires a truly unpleasant protagonist.

So, yes, good things on the reading front. The rehearsal last night was something else entirely.

The choir’s Big Music is this Sunday, so we gathered in the sanctuary with the bells (“bells” here meaning humans playing handbells). The room was dressed in red and gold striped ribbons cascading from brightly-trimmed wreaths. The bells were tinkling, the narrators (a couple of radio announcers from the congregation) checked their microphones, the accompanist  warmed up. We got our music in order. The director stood before us and raised his hands.

At that point it turned into one of those dreams. It seemed that we had never seen the music before, none of us could actually sing, and the entire concept of rhythm had deserted us. It sounded like a field of cattle at sundown.

“I can’t sing an E sitting down.”
“Sit down! It’s the knees on this row!”
“It’s the notes on this row!”

“Can I hear page 9, which I realize is the melody.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Umm… we’re adding edgy harmonies.”
“It’s at a key change”
“And the words change.”
“We have a variety of excuses.”

“You tenors have got to come in strongly. We’re getting our note from you.”
“We really wish you wouldn’t.”

“You have to do this merrily! If you don’t do it merrily, there’s no point in doing it at all!”

“I don’t remember this one.”
“You don’t have to remember it. Read it. That’s why we have it written down.”

Yes, well, it was a tiring rehearsal. I then came home and opened the door to the kitchen preparatory to cleaning it at 9:00 at night, and #2 son jumped out from behind the door and shouted “Boo!” at me. When I objected, he explained that it was an illustration of the economic principle that what is good for one is not good for all.

So, while as a singer I have a natural preference for lovely and complex tunes, the song for today is something quite different. Chanthaboune worked on it last night with the choir she directs (and I hope her rehearsal went better than mine did) and brought it to my mind: “Personent Hodie.” She is doing this 15th century Latin carol in English, with the text you can find by clicking here. Both these sites present it a bit more slowly than I am accustomed to. I have done this with crisp precision in good choirs, but it is well suited to raucous shouting.

It is good to have a few Christmas tunes in your repertoire which are suited to raucous shouting. Sometimes you are at the kind of party where beer is served, and people decide to sing. In most circles, I know, this does not mean madrigals. It means some loud and lively thing that everyone knows. Often, let’s face it, it means “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” or “Jingle Bells” with half the words forgotten. Teach “Personent Hodie” to your inner circle this year, and from now on you will be able to sing it every year in these cases. It is a much more manly choice than “Rudolph,” I promise you.

We now have a new computer, and have switched to broadband (it has become cheaper than dial-up in our neck of the woods). This necessitated moving the computer. It had been in the place with the phone hookup, and had to move to the place with the cable hookup.

So the boys made an impromptu reading corner in the erstwhile computer corner. They are going to put a floor lamp in the corner. We will be scouring yard sales and flea markets for something suitable.

“Personent Hodie” is a good song for moving furniture, if you have that on your to-do list for today.

There were a lot of very interesting responses on the subject of grooming, in the comments and in emails. I was interested in your personal experiences of this matter.

There was a suggestion that my failure to, as it were, know where my towel is all the time is my mother’s fault.

It is true that I was brought up in a family in which attention to one’s appearance was considered frivolous. With all the important issues in the world, how could any sensible woman devote her time to thinking about clothing and suchlike?

But it is also true that I grew to womanhood in an era when refusal to pay attention to one’s looks was part of being a feminist.

We didn’t shave our legs, wear makeup, put on bras or girdles (which existed at the time, I believe, though I have never seen one), have our hair cut by someone who knew what she was doing, or otherwise kowtow to male expectations about us. We wore painter’s pants and T-shirts, and unwittingly spawned a whole industry intended to give “the natural look” to girls who weren’t prepared to follow our lead. We caused employers to quit admitting that they hired receptionists on the basis of their looks, and to feel uncomfortable about their continued policy of keeping women (though not men) out of the public eye once they were no longer decorative.

There were girls for whom this was a sacrifice, who could have looked pretty had they made some effort, and who never got to date anyone except fellow revolutionaries all the way through college. They deserve some credit for bringing a greater degree of freedom to today’s women.

I was not one of those girls. I was a dancer with a Pre-Raphaelite face and hair, and braless and unkempt was actually a great look for me. So much of attractiveness is actually about the luck of having the look that is in style at the time.

But there is an essential distinction here, I think. Attractiveness is the not the same as beauty. Ozarque had a discussion a while back about the idea that older women are by definition ugly. One commenter pointed out that it would be maladaptive for the species to define postmenopausal women as sexually attractive. The best thing, from the standpoint of reproductive success, is for fertility to be highly attractive. He has a point.

But that is sexual attractiveness, not beauty. People can also be beautiful as a tree is beautiful, in a purely aesthetic way. The Water Jar used to argue for this, though he limited his claim to women and illustrated his essays on the subject with pictures of strippers and movie stars, thus robbing them of some degree of their moral authority.

There is the beauty that comes from having a beautiful spirit. There is charm, which is much longer lasting than a pretty face. There is style.

Any of these things might be what your clothes and face and hair are saying about you, but they can also say much more abstract things.

But sometimes — as with my youthful feminist statement — the things our self-presentation says aren’t entirely true. I got all the benefits of being a pretty girl (and the disadvantages, too, of course) while also having the self-satisfaction of my feminist statement. Now I am not as self-deceiving. I have never curled, permed, or colored my hair, and I actually get some credit for this from other women, as though I were making a statement about getting older. In fact, I have thick, healthy, curly hair which is graying nicely. What I mean by a hairstyle is that I go to the trouble of getting a haircut, from the wonderful Cecilia, to whom I explained that I wouldn’t do anything but wash it, so I had to have a really good haircut. I know a woman with a mousy pageboy who claims to spend 45 minutes fixing it every day. I would have thought that 45 minutes would be sufficient for Marie Antoinette to fix her hair, but I may just be lucky. I obviously don’t deserve any credit for, as one woman put it, resisting the pressure to change my hair.

It is very easy for me, being mostly interested in the abstract and inclined toward absentmindedness — and yes perhaps because of my upbringing and early experiences, to make a statement with my self-presentation that says something like “I am unable to care for myself” or “I am an eccentric” or “I live alone, possibly in an alleyway, and have no access to mirrors.” This does not affect my level of charm or beauty of spirit, but it isn’t the effect I want to create.

Well, in honor of my mother, who is in fact an excellent role model, I offer you as today’s song  “The Star Carol” by Sydney Carter. If you click on its name you will get the lyrics. Click here for midi file, pennywhistle notation, sheet music, dulcimer tab, etc.

I have never heard this song done by anyone else but my mother and was very surprised to find it in the Oxford Christmas carol collection. I didn’t remember all of the verses, but the first verse is enough all by itself to explain why you don’t see it in hymnals:

“Every star shall sing a carol!
Every creature, high or low,
come and praise the King of heaven
by whatever name you know.
God above, Man below,
holy is the name I know.”

Praising God by whatever name you know is not an option in your average Protestant church. The song goes on to suggest that there might be other incarnations of Christ on other planets, making it a science fiction carol but also theologically unorthodox to say the least. Thus, while Carter’s “Lord of the Dance” is one of the most commonly sung modern hymns and included in most mainstream hymnals, this one is not generally heard in churches, and maybe not ever. And yet, even a heretical hymn is religious, and cannot be sung in schools. So grab your dulcimer and pennywhistle and sing it yourself. It has a beautiful haunting tune, with a folksong feel, and should be better known than it is.

 So I was heading to the gym, in black yoga pants and a big shapeless T-shirt given me for donating blood, with the straggly bits of my past-due haircut scraped back in a two-inch semblance of a pony tail and the bits that were still too short sticking out crazily, no makeup, and wearing my son’s cast-off athletic shoes.

I had to stop for gas, though I thought seriously about waiting until I was decently dressed. I zoomed in to pay for the fuel, and of course ran into someone I knew. Blessing, to be precise.

“Sorry,” I said, “I’m on my way to the gym, and was hoping I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew.”

I thought about it while climbing imaginary hills on the treadmill. If it is wrong to subject Blessing to myself looking like a derelict, why is it right to do the same to the strangers at the gym? Or alternatively, if I can comfortably go to the gym looking like a derelict, does it really matter if I see someone I know?

I had just read Leonidas’s suggestion that makeup is like armor. I think it is — for women in my age and circumstances — like the galactic hitchhiker’s towel.

In case you haven’t read Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it is recommended that a person hitchhiking through space should always keep a towel handy. Not only is it useful, it also causes others to assume that someone who has a towel must also have soap, a facecloth, and all other needed accoutrements, and must therefore be on top of things. The others will then respond with friendliness and helpfulness, not fear.

“In my circumstances” is important, because I assume that the expectations for women who work as roustabouts or spend their free time organizing spontaneous grrl power performance art are different. For a woman like me, having an intentional-looking hairstyle, tidy clothes, and makeup is the default option. It means that I took the trouble to get dressed and am on top of things.

Not wearing makeup is a statement. The statement can be anything from “I won’t buy into patriarchal strictures on women” to “I’m too depressed to bother.” Woodall and Constantine suggest that we often think we are saying one thing and are really saying another. We think we are saying “I like a natural look” and really we’re saying “I’m afraid you won’t take me seriously if I dress well.” We think we are saying “My children come first” and really we are saying “I feel invisible.” We think we are saying “I just like to be comfortable” and really we are saying “I’m not comfortable with my body.”

Back in my hose-and-heels days, I attended a seminar on personal power where they told us that women in our positions should have “polished” makeup. If we wore it some days and not others, they said, we were saying “I am on top of things…. sometimes.” It made us seem less trustworthy.

That’s where I am. Some days I bother to get properly dressed like a grownup and some days I don’t. I may know that on the days when I don’t it is because I have been too engaged with Art or Study and ran out of time, but the people I meet don’t know that I wasn’t too engaged with soap operas and online poker, do they?

Our song for today has some image problems. It is a Victorian hymn by John Goss, “See, Amid the Winter Snow.” The Victorians never seemed to catch on that Bethlehem wouldn’t have been all that snowy, even if Jesus had been born in midwinter. And there is the line right near the beginning of the hymn, “See, the tender Lamb appears” which reminds British singers of lunch. The last verse asks the Virgin Mary to pray for us, which kicks it out of Protestant churches. It also extols humility and meekness in true Victorian fashion, a choice which isn’t popular in America today.

So it probably isn’t in your hymnal. But that is a mistake, because the tune has everything. The verse is simple and lovely, just the thing to showcase a pure, sweet treble solo voice. Then the refrain has repetitions of “Hail!” in mighty trumpet-like voices followed by a grand and stately bit. The whole thing finishes up with a sustained high note which you can do triple fortissimo for a big finish.

If you go caroling, consider doing this song. The people you visit will be rushing around looking for good cookies and hot cider for you. No matter how you are dressed.

Here are the completed moccasins I was telling you about.

And here, some completed omiyage.