Happy Holidays, Not

"A civilian burial party stands by their wagon filled with the frozen bodies of Native American Lakota Sioux, in a ravine south of the camp at Wounded Knee Creek. Mounted U.S. Army officers look on from a hill above."

"December 29, 2007 will mark the 117th anniversary of the slaughter of innocents at Wounded Knee. As is their custom, the Lakota people will gather at the mass grave where the bodies of men, women and children were dumped and they will pray and ask the United States government to apologize for this day of death. They will pray that the Medals of Honor handed out to the murderers be rescinded and they will pray for peace between the Lakota and the rest of America. There will be a ceremony called "Wiping Away the Tears," and this ceremony will conclude a day of mourning, a day when the Lakota reach out to the rest of America for peace and justice."

"In early December of 1990, as the 100th anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee approached, I wrote the cover story for USA Today. I quoted an editorial that appeared in the Aberdeen (SD) Saturday Review on January 3, 1891, just five days after the massacre. The author wrote about those terrible "Redskins," his favorite word for Indians. He wrote, "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one or more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth."

"That editorial calling for the genocide of the Lakota people was written by L. Frank Baum, the man who would later write, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." There have been many others before and since that called for genocide against a race of people. Adolph Hitler and Pol Pot come to mind. But then they never followed up their calls for genocide by writing a charming book for children. It appears to be unthinkable to most Americans that such a wonderful man as L. Frank Baum could be compared to other inhuman beasts that called for the extinction of a race of people."

O Happy Happy Christmas

My Christmas wish was to go downtown to do a little night photography on Christmas Eve. After taking this last shot at 5:30 we drove the ten miles back to church for the 6:00 Candle Light Service. Green lights all the way!

Double click the photo and it will fill your screen, maybe

O Antiphon, O Christmas

Last Evening's service of Lessons and Carols of Advent at Holy Cross Lutheran Church filled my heart, as did being in the presence of friends.

We sat beside the beautiful cantor who sang the seven Antiphons. Her crystal clear voice poured into our ears and into our hearts, as we responded with the seven hymn stanzas of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel."

The seven titles attributed to Jesus in the antiphons are Wisdom (Sapientia in Latin), Ruler of the House of Israel (Adonai), Root of Jesse (Radix), Key of David (Clavis), Rising Dawn (Oriens), King of the Gentiles (Rex). and Emmanuel. In Latin the initials of the titles make an acrostic which, when read backwards. means: "Tomorrow I will be there" ("Ero cras"). To the medieval mind this was clearly a reference to the approaching Christmas vigil.

The Fifth Antiphon refers to the Rising Dawn: "O Dayspring, splendor of light everlasting: Come and enlighten those who sit in darkness in the shadow of death."

Winter Solstice

It is good to have the cabinets on the wall instead of in pieces on the table. I tried not to get crabby. He Who Must Be Obeyed worked very hard for at least 10 days on this project. He didn't do much to curb his grumpiness. Grumpy and Crabby are not good bedfellows, or any kind of fellows. But that is a thing of the past and with a little work here and there it is done. Clean and tidy do wonders for us.

I love the first day of winter. Though the Winter Solstice lasts an instant, the term is also used to refer to the full 24-hour period. Sometimes it is called Midwinter.

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

The pink link to Midwinter takes you to the midi tune and a bleak picture. This is absolute pure melancholia. I will take the opportunity to wallow in it, for the rest of the day anyway. Then I must, must, must finish my now too late anyway, cards.
If I don't see you here in the next couple of days, have a Wonderful Christmas.

December Wonder

December 21st. The invitation for Christmas Dinner has been extended. A son is able to come. We are grateful for his acceptance.

The last Advent Service was Wednesday. Hands full of Christmas cards and letters come in to our mail box daily. I marvel at the number of friends that send them to us. My people light up my life. The Nation's Center News came today. Weekly newspapers from small towns are almost like reading a letter with dozens of photos of high school sports and rodeos. People visit, get cars repaired, go to various meetings, hunt coyotes, have birthday parties and it all gets reported.

A former school mate writes of Christmas Programs in one of the many Harding County one room schools in the 40's. Another school mate writes with the easy knowledge of Prince Bandar, who was "born near Taif in 1950 to Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, son of the King at that time, and a dark-skinned servant girl that would be classified as a concubine rather than a wife." "Prince Sultan, Minister of Defense during my time in Saudi Arabia, came to my school for graduations and other formal situations."

Our small high school in the 'hinter land,' as one of my Augustana College professors referred to it, graduated students that became people of distinction. People with the core values that made them outstanding in their chosen professions; all from a community and neighbors that cared as much for them as their parents. These people are my people. I am fortunate to have been born and raised there; I am fortunate to be able to go back occasionally and breathe the petrichor and see the people.

The Christmas program story takes me to the Grand River Lutheran Church Christmas programs in the basement before the church was finished. I loved the darkened room, the shiny little red chairs we sat in waiting our turn to sing or recite our 'piece.' I loved my Sunday School teachers, but can't remember the pastors. Mothers dyed gauze material a light blue for the angels gowns and boys pushed and pinched in their bathrobes and jousted with their sheep hooks.

I use another breath taking photograph by the Finnish photographer, who is also a fine artist, I see, as I explore his various web sites. No, I can't read Finnish, so I miss out on descriptions and there are 181,000 hits, some for films, some for Master's Thesis in Public Law, too many to list.

An Example of Finland's Nighttime Magic

The copyright marks are worthy protection of Pekka Parviainen's beautiful photography.

Amazing Night Photography

Several years ago I emailed Pekka Parviainen for permission to use one of his aurora photos on my Christmas letter. I lost track of his Web Site over the years and was guided to it again from a blogger. Night photography is fun and fascinating...cold this time of year though.

I miss the dark skies and occasional aurora in Harding County.

Dick Hutchinson from Circle, Alaska is another longtime photographer of the aurora.

Advent Angst

A woman loves more cabinets, but not on her table for five days. I wouldn't dare complain, after all I just got the last clear coat of finish on them yesterday. He Who Must Be Obeyed is wiring an outlet, painting around the place they will be hung; and eventually we will have a new range hood, microwave, and cabinets. Nearly every improvement is prefaced by the worst mess imaginable.

Miraculously, we agreed on the paint color for the ceiling. We abandoned the starkly blueish white for a softer peachish white. Our kitchen could be nominated for one of those worst nightmare kitchens we look at with disbelief on television. The items we are trying to match, not quite the right word, are some 50 year old knotty pine, walnut stained birch cabinets, red kitchen chairs and some 30 year old blue wallpaper that HWMBO loves. Or loves too much to endure the ghastly removal? You can see all of it in the pathetic photo.

I call the house early ugly, it started life in the '40's as a barn and then some desperate soul added on to it and moved in. It is now our "purchased under duress" legacy from the early '70's. I think more desperate people than us, have called it home. It isn't my dream home. But it is functional; that is what a deceased electrical engineer brother in law called it on a visit 20 years ago. It is still functional, although I might have disputed that statement when the john plugged up and ran over a couple of days ago. Another reason not to ever, ever carpet a bathroom. The entire functional house smelled of Clorox for two days...the carpet is white again.

Advent Blessing

Wednesday evening as we sang our way through the Holden Village Advent Evensong, it was a little alarming to see the third Advent candle lit already. Christmas is close. I love the thoughtfulness and anticipation of Advent.

Many Catholics may be surprised to learn that the Advent wreath actually came from Lutherans living in East Germany. It is a simple wreath made of evergreen and adorned with four candles equidistant from each other. They usually correspond to the liturgical colors of the four Sundays of Advent, dark purple or dark blue.

Holy Cross is using the Holden Evening Prayer service by Marty Haugen. Listening to our faith-filled pastor sing the Service of Light was breath taking and singing the 141st Psalm in two parts nearly brought me to tears. It is a beautiful service.

I love it when He Who Must Be Obeyed joins in the singing. Worshiping together is a wonderful way to observe the coming Christmas in a manner that sidesteps the cacophony of the insane commercialism that overtakes some of us. Maybe all of us at one time or another. Tomorrow night he has volunteered to set out the luminaries that for a block guide the visitors to the Living Nativity in the church lawn. A search light will alert that part of the city that the Christ Child lies in the stable; with the camels and donkeys as cold as the choirs of small angels.

The People's Chief

This proud fellow is an artist's (my dad's) rendition of the feelings of many a Chief when the white's took their land, shot the buffalo, and placed The People on poor quality reservation land. It was painted in the 1960's.

Red Viking

Another image of a Red Viking. This one was painted by my dad, Axel Sacrison, when this Viking was about 26 years old.

Viking Tribal Chief

Bryce the Red,
Champion Viking.


Don't let the
sleepy demeanor
fool you.

This guy puts on his tribal headgear to celebrate family every other year.

He took his younger brothers deer hunting the fall he turned 20. He taught them to make a living pouring concrete. He built his bride a house when he was 21, and a second one when he was 24. He saw to it that the town of Belle Fourche ran smoothly when he was 26. He wrestled in glass on the Standing Rock. He was a wild vikinger till he got blood on his own shirt.

Besides, he drinks string bean juice right from the can. How tough is that!

Cake as Symbolic

Cake has a deeper meaning than the amount of calories in each slice. Kids grow up with memories of their birthday cakes, brides look fondly upon photos of their wedding cake, young wives of my era were askance about the 'box cakes' that were new to the grocery shelves. "Oh, it is just a box cake," we might say at the coffee after church.

As my children started to read, I encouraged them to make cake when they could read the directions on the box. I handed the cook book to one of my sons when he was a third grader and was almost horrified when he proceed to make cream puffs and boil the vanilla filling. But a promise is a promise and the results were astonishing.

Early American cooks considered cake, especially chocolate cake, a symbol of well-being. A couple of days ago I made a cake with Seven Minute Icing for my beloved. It was a token of love and well-being. I thought it was beautiful.

You Tubers and Birthdays

You Tube has become the insanity of the serious. The questions on last night's debate were as droll and unrealistic as my favorite satire, The Wittenberg Door. This morning's denial by CNN and the Clinton campaign people that they knew nothing about the plant in the audience is as laughable as the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Religious."

The news just kills me. This morning I read that South Dakota has the lowest rate of depression in the US; in the same article their suicide rate is among the highest. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.

Today is the birthday of three of my favorite writers, the authors of Little Women, The Chronicles of Narnia, and A Wrinkle in Time. L'Engle said, "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."

50/50 My Eye

On this day in 1095 Pope Urban II called for the first Crusade to recapture Jerusalem from the Turks. According to the Writers Almanac, there was no imminent threat from the Muslims but Urban noticed that Europe was becoming increasingly violent, with low-level knights killing each other over their land rights, and he thought he could bring peace to the Christian world by directing all that violence against an outside enemy. So he made up stories of how Turks in Jerusalem were torturing and killing Christians, and anyone willing to join the fight against them would go to heaven.

I think I have heard the same thing more recently. "We express our determination to bring an end to bloodshed, suffering and decades of conflict between our peoples; to usher in a new era of peace, based on freedom, security, justice, dignity, respect and mutual recognition; to propagate a culture of peace and nonviolence; to confront terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis." Peace talks in Annapolis, MD.

On a lighter note, the better cook in the house and I made an apple crisp last night. It was very tasty. I love it when we cook together. Actually I love it when we work together at nearly everything except when I am right about how it should be done and he insists that he is. If it comes to the proving, I am almost as chagrined as he, when I am right. I am not very good at celebrating my accuracies. 50/50 my eye.

Helsinki Complaint Choir

Being a consistent watcher of CBS Sunday Morning from my cozy bed is one of my favorite routines. As I told our newly ordained Pastor Jan last night, I am so very thankful for Saturday evening services..but I didn't mention Sunday morning TV in bed. Anyway, their closing clip this morning was the Helsinki Complaint Choir.

It tickled me a couple of years ago when I first discovered it, and in my attempt to share it here this morning, I see the captioning is so small it is nearly worthless. If you really want to know what they are complaining about in Finland get out your magnifying glass. It is the same stuff people complain about everywhere.

I am a hopeless nerd-not. I tried to add a readability test to this blog and couldn't seem to get it to happen. When I tested one of my pages it was high school level, then another one was genius level. I decided it was probably worth what it cost, nothing.

Another Kind of Wonderful

We are going with a different kind of thankful this year. Our predictable dinner was traditional. Dishing up was done while I was stirring gravy, eating was a fast gulp, and the door shut behind the guests 45 minutes after they arrived. Stuff happens. It wasn't good, it wasn't bad, it just was.

I clicked over to Real Live Preacher a few minutes ago and saw the most amazing YouTube Video from Kansas State University. Maybe it is the old librarian in my brain that made me appreciate it so much. It is the flip, flip, flip of the card catalog I occasionally miss...not much though. They produced another one called "The Machine is Us/ing Us." Video for information nerds.

While He Who Must Be OBeyed watched for a shirt tail relative do some rodeoing on TV, I listened to Dr. Ben Carson, from Johns Hopkins Hospital lecture to a group in Baltimore. I have heard him before but the second time around was good again. He said there is no such thing as wasted knowledge; which could make one wonder as we finished "The Exploits of Ben Arnold" by Josephine Waggoner's interview notes.

Is it good to read the words of the scout, who in 1876 rode hard for $200 to deliver the first message of the Custer Massacre (Ed Lemmon's words) on the Greasy Grass from General Reno to the outside world? If you can call General Crook on the Powder River in Montana the outside world. Then there is the other version. Is all knowledge good? Some is a trivial pursuit and questionable.

Dr. Ben Carson is spot on with his wisdom and philosophy.

The Good Life

Our weekend was made happy by the visit of a son and daughter-in-law and another son stopping by to join us for dinner. Having time to sit down with ones grown sons to exchange ideas, viewpoints, opinions and information is the sweet culmination of rearing a house full of little boys. If one can call four sons a houseful of boys. He Who Must Be Obeyed was the fifth of ten, eight of them boys. That is a house full of sons.

Then there is that Finnish research about mothers of sons and the immunosuppressant testosterone that shortens her life. No wonder my real age is 15 years over my calendar age. It is, however, worth it for the hilarity that many sons bring to the dinner table of life. We heard another story that would have horrified us at the time; some hilarity is best saved for parents in their old age.

Today is the day in 1863 that Pres. Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address at the dedication of a new cemetary. His speech followed the two hour keynote speaker. Most watched the photographer set up his equipment and didn't hear a word Lincoln said. His address was ten sentences, just 272 words, and one that the school pupils in my era memorized. This was in the Writer's Almanac today, with Garrison Keillor.

In my inbox was a Tale Spinner story from an e-friend, Zvonko, of how he helped build a new nation of Tito's Yugoslavia. It begins: "I got out of the POW camp on August 15, 1945. I was happy to be back home in Osijek after the most frightening and dreadful four months of my young life. Several weeks passed before I recovered part of my body weight and some strength returned after sleeping many hours in my own bed. Slowly and persistently I succeeded in burying deep in my subconscious all the horrors and humiliations I had been through."

I have one of his books in my "To Read" pile. Joining it is a thoughtful book review from a learned cousin that arrived last night. Life is good.

Russian Thistles

As a barefoot kid I first loved the soft green Russian Thistles that lined the dirt street in front of our house on the west end of Buffalo, SD. The first green leaves were as soft as the fur of a long haired cat. Green of any kind was good and soft was welcome.

Then the lovely roundness of the bushy plant turned on us; and except for the cowboy song,we never called it a tumbling tumbleweed. I found out this morning that the round, bushy, "much branched plant growing 1 to 3 1/2 foot high originally hitched a ride from the steppes of Mongolia with a shipment of grain. The first soft branches fall off and the next set of leaves are short, stiff, spiny and about this time of the year the plant breaks off at the base and winds like we have had in the high plains bring it to life, so to speak.

This week, according to the Rapid City Journal, "The high winds that whipped through the region over the past two days drove hundreds of tumbleweeds into the town (of Fariburn) 30 miles south of Rapid City.

"Tubleweeds now fill the basketball court at the Fairburn Elementary School, clog the ditches, cover the side of at least one house, surround vehicles and cover Tammy Shepherd's backyard. ... The tumbleweeds rolled in Tuesday afternoon with the wind.

"The song was penned in 1934 by Bob Nolan, one of the founding members of the Sons of the Pioneers. Gene Autry sang it in the 1935 movie of the same name, and it was later performed by such noted cowpokes as Diana Ross and the Supremes..."

Personally I don't think the latter were exactly 'cowpokes,' who knows what they were poking. Probably fun at those of us who started wearing shoes when Russian Thistles rolled into town.

The tumbleweed snowman? http://www.dukecityfix.com/index.php?itemid=1282

Armistice Day

Today is Armistice Day, or Veteran's Day here in the US.

Kurt Vonnegut was born Nov. 11, 1922, died this past April. They seldom list his book, Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!, which was one of my favorites. Vonnegut explains it thus in the prologue:"This is the closest I will ever come to writing an autobiography. I have called it "Slapstick" because it is grotesque, situational poetry -- like the slapstick film comedies, especially those of Laurel and Hardy, of long ago. It is about what life feels like to me." Here is that 'cosmic loneliness' from which I suffer from time to time. No wonder I liked the book.

Right now I am listening to BBC Radio Player's Broadcast on the Radio 3 Night Waves Nov. 8th discussion "Exploring the cultural legacy of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five, which focuses on the Allied fire bombing of Dresden during WWII.

"On December 14, 1944, Vonnegut was captured in the Battle of the Bulge. He was held as a POW in Dresden, a beautiful German city with no major industries or military presence. The bombing of Dresden was unexpected. Vonnegut and the other POWs were some of the only survivors. They waited out the bombing in a meat cellar deep under the slaughterhouse."

While poking about the Web, I discovered this Gradesaver written by Harvard students. I suppose now that I am not concerned about grades, as such, this is a wonderful site. Maybe it is more detailed than the more known CliffsNotes. Cliff was a graduate student in geology and physics at the University of Nebraska in the dirty thirties. Working out of Lincoln, Nebraska, Cliff built the company that produces the most widely used study guides in the world. Cliff's message for students was to use CliffsNotes to better understand literature.

But I digress. He Who Must Be Obeyed has washed all of the windows already this morning, his having gone to church last night. I stayed in my cozy bed, having had one of those new inoculations for shingles yesterday. I asked the pharmacist who drove over to Belleview to get the prescription, what shall I expect. He had no idea as it was so new. That wasn't exactly comforting. I am hoping I don't break out in an elderly version of chicken pox. "Let me know," he requested. And so it goes.