What Would Jimmy Do?

If you look at the calendar, you’ll see that the year is running out and the countdown to the new year has started. Every year somewhere around this time, I give everyone an update on the New Year’s Resolutions I made back in December of last year. I grade myself — honestly — on how how well I did doing, or not doing, the things that I said I would, or wouldn’t do. 

As I say, every year, I’m not sure why I make New Year’s Resolutions — I just do, and almost every year, I list them here for everyone to see. Last year I shortened and simplified my resolution list in an attempt to make it more realistic — and more achievable. Here’s the list I made for 2019, along with a truthful assessment of how I’ve been doing.

• I will drive by the Shepherd Wellness Center once a week.
(Even though this was first on my list, I didn’t do very well. It wasn’t a complete wash-out — I did drive by, but I didn’t meet my goal of once a week.)
• I will learn the difference between ‘effect’ and ‘affect.’
(I did learn the difference and think I used them correctly, but maybe I slipped up on the usage sometime during 2019)
• I will make a new friend each month
( I have to give myself credit for this one — I did make a new friend every month, even though a couple of months, they had to be imaginary friends.)
• I will make usual things unusual
(Bingo! You’ll have to trust me on this one, but I really did it.)
• I will not run while juggling knives
(I’ll admit that the year’s not quite over, but I think I’ll nail this one, too)

So — I’d say I did pretty good. Maybe not the best year for keeping resolutions, but better than a lot. I now just have to sit down and come up with a new list that will give me yet another chance to be a better me….
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To both my faithful readers — and everyone else except my daily 263 spammers, I wish you all the very merriest Christmas. Oh, what the heck — I wish my daily 263 spammers a Merry Christmas, too.

Merry Christmas to EVERYONE!!

I see that the movie version of “Cats” is out. I saw the play/musical twice, at the National Theater and the Kennedy Center. The first time I saw it I didn’t like it. The second time I saw it I didn’t like it more. Claire liked it. She said that maybe I didn’t understand it (she was right.) Claire tried to explain that each cat was like a person, and had their own personality that they (apparently) were expressing during the performance. That may be true, but I didn’t — and don’t — get it. 

I’ve never been a “cat person.” I don’t necessarily dislike cats, But if I’m going to have a pet, I’d rather it be a dog — or a pig, or something. As far as cats having personalities — I guess they do, but I find most of them are just arrogant. I couldn’t figure out what “personality” any of the cats in the musical was attempting to convey.

I’ve heard of cat burglars and I’ve heard of Cat Stevens. I’ve taken cat naps, sat by copy cats, known some scaredy-cats and heard that if something’s good, it’s the cat’s meow. I’ve also heard that curiosity killed the cat. Sometimes people fight like cats and dogs and some people are referred to as fat cats. When you can’t think of something to say, people ask if the cat got your tongue. Some people are as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof and I’ve had a few projects that were as difficult as herding cats.

Guilty people sometimes look like the cat that swallowed the canary and sometimes when I enter a room, people say, “look what the cat dragged in.” Occassionally it rains like cats and dogs…. I guess all these references to cats in some way describe human behavior and maybe that was what Claire was trying to explain to me and that I should look deeper into the reason for writing a play about cats.
 But — I must let the cat out of the bag — I still don’t get what Cats is all about…
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A few days ago when I sat down at this blog machine, the subject was stars. I indicated that we didn’t have any stars on top of our Christmas trees… but we do have a star in the family. That would be Emily. Among several other parts, Emily played Clara’s Angel in The Nutcracker today. Needless to say, she did a great job and easily earned her “star” rating.

The Nutcracker has been performed, usually during the holiday season, for many, many years, but I never paid much attention, or even attended a performance, until a few years ago. 

Since I’ve attended a number of performances over the last few years, I’ve learned a little about the story… which, honestly, didn’t make a lot of sense to me the first time I saw it.

The Nutcracker is based on a fantasy story (“The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”) by E.T.A. Hoffman. The music for the ballet version of the story was composed by Peter Tchaikovsky. The Nutcracker ballet premiered at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, in Russia, on December 18, 1892.

The “story” is about a girl who befriends a nutcracker that comes to life on Christmas Eve and wages a battle against the evil Mouse King. The original story by Hoffman showed humanity’s dark-sided nature and wouldn’t have been appropriate for children. The version we see every year is a light adaptation of the original story and was written by Alexandre Dumas — a French author.

The ballet, now a Christmas tradition, was first performed outside of Russia in England in 1934. It was first performed in the United States in 1944 at the San Francisco Opera Ballet.

Many years ago, when I first heard about the Nutcracker, I was confused — a nutcracker is an instrument used to crack nuts. We used to use them to crack pecans when I was growing up in Oklahoma. When I was young, the only nutcrackers I knew about consisted of two hinged metal arms — you put the nut between the arms and squeezed. Even though I had never heard of nutcrackers in the form of wooden carvings, like soldiers, knights, kings, etc. they date back to the 15th century. These carvings look like people with large mouths, that is opened by pulling a lever in the back of the carving. The idea was to put a nut into the mouth, press down and crack the nut. Today nutcrackers like this serve mostly as decoration… often displayed around Christmas time. 

It seems that the carving of nutcrackers originated in Germany. According to German folklore, nutcrackers bring good luck to your family and protect your home. A nutcracker is said to represent power and strength, serving like a kind of watchdog guarding your family against danger. Long ago, rare or unusual nutcrackers were part of the social dining tradition — they served as whimsical conversation pieces as guests lingered at the table enjoying shelled treats such as pecans and hazelnuts. 

When The Nutcracker became popular in the United States in the early 1950s, demand for nutcrackers increased tremendously. Today, many people collect nutcrackers and often display them around Christmas. 

The most popular Nutcracker is the wooden nutcracker doll presented as a Christmas gift to Clara. The doll, dressed as a soldier, is crushed by Clara’s jealous brother. It is gently tucked under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, coming to life at the stroke of midnight — like magic.

And this year, like the past few years, Emily has been instrumental in making all this magic happen — I can’t say for sure it wouldn’t happen without her, but it’s sure a lot more fun watching it happen with her. So — you see, we don’t need stars on our Christmas trees — we have a much better star in Emily.
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Well, here we are at just about Christmas time already — seems like we’ve been especially busy this year — or — maybe I’m just moving slower and it seems like we’re busier. Anyhow, it’s kind of a tradition that I write some kind of a Christmas blog, so here we go….
Recently, I discussed the various types of ornaments, or tree toppers people put on their Christmas trees, and I mentioned that we have four Christmas trees in our house every year. We haven’t always had four Christmas trees…. but we have had a lot of Christmas trees over the years.
Generally speaking, the Christmas tree itself usually doesn’t stir up memories, the memories are usually some thing or some event associated with the tree. 

But some trees, in and of themselves, do generate memories. The first Christmas tree we had together, was a “fake” tree that my parents sent to us when we were in the Philippines. We had that tree for many, many years and always put it up in addition to our “real” Christmas tree. It evolved to a tree that held our kid’s ornaments — the tree is different, but our kids’ ornaments still have a tree of their own in our house every year. 

Another memorable Christmas tree was our first real/living Christmas tree when Kelly was old enough to start to realize that Christmas was something special… I still remember her coming downstairs on that Christmas morning.

But our “strangest” Christmas tree may be the most memorable of all. One year shortly after we were married, my job had me stuck in Singapore for Christmas. Fortunately, Claire was able to join me there and we celebrated Christmas in a hotel room. Some friends of ours that lived in Singapore invited us over for dinner a day or so before Christmas and their two kids, both in the 4 to 6 or 7 year old range, found out that we were staying in a hotel and we didn’t have a Christmas tree. The next day, they insisted that they come to the hotel and bring us a Christmas tree. You’ve probably heard about a Charlie Brown Christmas tree… well, this was a real Charlie Brown Christmas Tree. But having that tree made Christmas more special, and because it was delivered by children that obviously understood there was more to Christmas than getting presents, made it particularly special. You can check out the tree in the picture… Christmas (and life) doesn’t get much better than times like those. Merry Christmas to everyone.
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A few evenings ago we attended a Christmas party and everyone was given candy cane with a question on it. I’m not sure it was necessary, but the questions were intended to be “conversation starters.” The questions were all related to Christmas — and someone standing next to me got the question, “Who, in your household, gets to put the star on top of the tree?” I’m pretty sure that this question never got answered, but it did start a conversation about Christmas trees and decorations. 

The answer to the original question, in our house, would be — nobody! At the party, there was a discussion as to what was the most popular “topping” for a Christmas tree. The consensus was that a star was the most popular. 

Every year we put up four Christmas trees at our house — none of them have a star on top. Since we’ve been married, I don’t ever remember having a star on top of any of our trees. 

Well, of course, this all got me to thinking… I couldn’t find any statistics that pointed to any one type of ornament being dominant for adorning the top of the tree. It appears that originally many/most people used the infant Jesus to top their trees. Over the years, the trend evolved to either a star or an angel, both being a (Christian) symbol in the Nativity of Jesus. The Star of Bethlehem is a five-pointed star that guided the Wise Men to the place of Jesus’ birth. The angel Gabriel visited Mary to inform her that she was to give birth to the Son of God. 

The oldest “tree topper” we have is ball with fiber-optic strands — these things were popular in the early seventies. The other trees are topped with angles and Father Christmas — no stars.

I seem to remember when I was very young that we had a star on our Christmas tree… but that was a lot of years ago. I guess I’m going to have to start paying more attention as to what people put on their trees. Maybe I’ll do some extensive research and report the findings here next year… Merry Christmas!
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Tomorrow night (December 12) the last full moon of the decade will appear. It’s hard to believe we’re already entering the next decade, but here we are…

I got to thinking about things that happened in this current decade — it was pretty eventful, but probably falls into the “normal” range as far as decades with significant events go.
Some of the things I remember are….

A major earthquake hit Haiti — if I remember correctly, it killed well over 100,000 people.
There was an explosion of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that killed a number of people and spilled oil into the ocean for several months — the BP Oil Spill
One big story was the rescue of 33 miners trapped in a mine in Chile for 68 days
Gabrielle Giffords was shot at a political rally in Arizona
One of the biggest stories of the decade had to be the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
A Penn State football coach was accused, and convicted, of molesting young boys.
A lot of news was devoted to the attacks on the US compound in Benghazi 
A director of the CiA (Petraeus) resigned after having an affair with his biographer
Lance Armstrong admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs.
Edward Snowden leaked thousands of documents stolen from NSA
Bill Cosby was accused, and convicted, of sexually assaulting women
The Patriots were under scrutiny for “deflate gate.” Tom Brady was actually suspended for a little while
An Olympic medalist lied abut being robbed at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro
The #MeToo movement got started as a result of sexual assault allegation against Harvey Weinstein
Trump’s lawyer paid Stormy Daniels $130.000 to keep quite about an alleged affair
The Senate Intelligence Committee determined that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election.
Lots of people, including some “movie stars,” were indicted as part of a massive college admissions scandal
Jeffery Epstein was charged with sex trafficking along with allegations of molesting young girls
The Democrats are preparing to proceed with impeachment charges against the President.

It’s hard to sit down and try to think of all the things that has happened in the world in the last ten years, but without even trying, things pop into my mind that I’d completely forgotten about. I guess it’s good to reflect on the past sometimes, but it’s probably better to just move on and make the best of the future,

I’d be remiss, however, if I didn’t mention the four biggest events of the decade — Emily, Locke, Rory and Ellie. At the start of this decade that’s drawing to a close, we didn’t have any grandchildren…. now we have four!!
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Like some people, I’ve tried to watch some of the congressional hearings the past couple of weeks. What with holiday activities gearing up and all, I’ve just caught bits and pieces of the proceedings. I find them interesting in a depressing sort of way. It’s a shame our country has become so divided in so many areas. 

I’m not sure why, but I seem to notice references to things that have happened in the past and quotations from a number of years ago more than I once did. A lot of them seem to fit our situation, as a nation, today. The other day I ran across a quote in a book that I’m reading and it made me think how appropriate it is today…. Here’s the quote”

“A forest takes a century to grow; it burns down in a night.”

I’m pretty sure the quote wasn’t meant to describe governments or constitutions, but if you’re so inclined, just think about it….
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If you’ve read this blog over the years, you know that I often refer to the readers as “both.” That implies that there are only two people that read the blog. I’m not sure, but that may be fairly accurate — I don’t think the blog would win any popularity contest. But it is always nice to hear from someone that has looked at an entry and taken the time to comment on it….

Today I’m especially pleased — it appears that I have a new youngest reader. Emily Gifford commented in the nicest possible way to an entry on September 3, 2019. You can read what she wrote by going to that entry. 

By the way, the entry she commented on was titled “Still Special.” Her comment certainly proves that point. Thanks Emily — I look forward to your future participation in this blog…. 
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I know I’ve addressed this topic before, but a couple of weeks ago we were in Cleveland and the subject came up again and seemed to generate a bit of interest. The conversation started when I was asked, again, “now what part of West Virginia are you from?” That led to a lengthy discussion about Shepherdstown and the subject of James Rumsey came up… so here’s the background, or at least what I know of it about one of Shepherdstown’s famous residents.

James Rumsey was raised a simple man of simple means without a formal education. He did have a penchant for mechanics and early on drew up plans for various types of machinery. Not much is known about Rumsey, born in 1743, until around 1782 when he was living in Bath, Virginia (now Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.) He probably moved to the area with his family some years before the American Revolution, from Cecil County, Maryland where he had helped run the family water mill at Bohemia Manor. In Bath, he built houses, became a partner in a mercantile business and helped run a boarding house and tavern called the “Sign of the Liberty Pole and Flag.”

In 1784, a pre-presidential George Washington stayed at the inn that Rumsey helped run and hired him to build a house and stable on property that Washington owned in Bath. In his dealings with Washington, Rumsey discussed his idea for a steam-powered engine with him — George was so impressed that he provided him with a Certificate of Commendation and encouraged him to speak with investors about developing the technology. Less than five years later, on December 3, 1787, Rumsey made a very successful public demonstration of his steam-powered boat on the Potomac river in Shepherdstown. The demonstration in Shepherdstown was very impressive, but many/most people questioned the commercial feasibility of the technology of powering boats by steam and investors were hard to come by. Five years after his successful demonstration in the Potomac, Rumsey traveled to England to pitch his idea to a group of investors there. Unfortunately, while in England, he fell ill and died — never realizing his dream of commercial steam boats.

It wasn’t until 1807 (twenty years after Rumsey’s success on the Potomac) that Fulton demonstrated and began operation of the North River Steamboat — a commercial transport ship on the Hudson River.

A Rumseyan Society was formed in Shepherdstown in 1906 and was responsible for building a monument to Rumsey in a park overlooking the Potomac.

A second  Rumseyan Society was formed in Shepherdstown in the 1980s to construct a replica of the successful Rumsey steamboat and celebrate the boat’s bicentennial in 1987. The boat was constructed in the machine and blacksmith shop in the back of O’Hurley’s General Store. The replica is housed in a small building behind the Entler Hotel.

If you visit Shepherdstown, your visit should include a stop at the monument on the banks of the Potomac that memorializes not only Rumsey, but the proper birthplace of the steam boat….
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