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Ouch!

Ya, Garry, maybe I do get a little bit carried away. But music has such power to move one. Those flash mob videos leave me teary-eyed. But then, I get weepy when everyone stands up at a ball game and sings the Star Spangled Banner.

12/10/12 12:20 PM

#726

Jeanne Zinser (Gottschalk)

Are you guys trying to say there's Christmas music other than Bing Crosby? C'mon.

12/10/12 06:25 PM

#727

AMEN, Sally!

(And send some of that snow my way!)

Jeanne

12/10/12 07:05 PM

#728

Thanks for the flash mobs, Gary - my iPad is drenched with happy tears. Sally, your snow looks wonderful!! And thanks for printing the somewhat incoherent, but sincere, caption of the Custer video. You're absolutely right about having to reach the kids by starting where they are. I sincerely hope that their teachers are "stretching" their horizons!

12/11/12 12:48 AM

#729

I have to share one more Christmas video. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that this is actually my house, no matter what it says on the video. ("Holdman" is my California alias.) My wife always complains that I go overboard on the decorations. The only difficult part was getting it to look like it had just snowed in Sunnyvale California. Not as difficult as those 10 years we lived in Phoenix though!

If you want the entire 14 minute show try this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfz1pyq3EhE

12/11/12 04:39 PM

#730

Clark Griswold, eat your heart out!! Wouldn't you love to be neighbors of the Holdmans? (er, Sellers'?)

12/11/12 07:11 PM

#731

Okay Sally - Pretty pictures ... if you like snow.. But help me understand why sane people would choose to live in it? Terri and I can drive up to the Sierra Mountains, get more snow than you guys have ever dreamed of seeing (Squaw Valley, host of the 1960 Winter Olympics) ... and then return home to our orange trees, palms, and heated pools. Terri frequently snow skis, makes snow angels, water skis, skin dives with humpback whates, plays golf, and has a BBQ ... all in the same day! She's quite a lady ... for an old person!

12/11/12 09:47 PM

#732

If only, Garry!

But I do own up to taking long fast walks on our beautiful Open Space trails, which I can do most any day in California (wearing a sweatshirt in winter). My friend, who is not so old, takes those walks every day, because she wears her rain slicker. But the humpback whales would have to be on a different day.

12/12/12 08:16 AM

#733

Marian Schopp (Bringe)

The world is lucky I am not a teacher. When I read how teachers have to be so creative to meet the needs of our new secular world, I couldn't do it. Apparently my family is surrounded with friends who value traditions that go back hundreds of years and aren't willing to give them up or listen to rap. A few traditional Christmas events we used to go to have accepted taking Christ out of Christmas and we decided to not attend these programs any longer. Last week we went to two outdoor Christmas events and there are lots more before the end of the year. This is where we belong...... an outdoor nativity pageant or walking around Sedonal listening to live Christmas music.

12/12/12 10:33 AM

#734

Sally, I just love your teaching story about the rap. Good for you! Much more clever and flexible than I would have been. You are now on the list (with Terri) of teachers I would like to have had (not to say we didn't have many good, and several great, teachers at Custer).

And I'm so totally with you about the winter wonderland we both have just outside of our windows. Every morning when I'm Skyped by our little grand daughter, I have to walk out into the snow and show her our Christmas tree with lights. We're all hoping that Boulder will get a little more for Christmas (but, please, not on the day when we're flying out there). This morning I looked out the window to find that the lake is frozen at last. Not yet enough, though, for the ice fisherman to start building their little houses (you know, the ones where you sit there and stare at the little red bobbers in the hole, drink beer, and get away from "da wife"). Maybe we love the wonderland scene so much because we manage every winter to get out several times for a change of scenery. And when we do, we keep boots and shovels in the car trunk at the airport and the snowblower facing the door in the garage near the street. We learned that the hard way one winter when we arrived to find ourselves plowed in up to the mailbox and had to get through it to the lower garage and the house, about a football field away from the main street. We just get smarter and smarter every year. When we have everything figured out, we'll die. On this happy note - Merry Christmas to everyone!!

12/12/12 12:56 PM

#735

Warren De Smidt

Ditto !!!!!!!! Merry Christmas to all!

12/12/12 03:43 PM

#736

Sally - limited space? OMG! I shall become terse.

12/12/12 04:08 PM

#737

Everyone should find the beauty in the place they are - it's the only way to be at peace, and maybe we'd also become less nomadic, consume less oil and "the world would be a better place!" I'm not really trying to provoke my fellow Californians, but I want to go on record saying all the reasons Sally stated in the beginning were the ones that persuaded me to move back to WI and live for several years there in the 70s-80s. I really missed the beauty of the winters, being able to throw my X-country skis in the back seat and drive to the Arboretum or golf course and be skiing in minutes (no ticket necessary, no lift lines - awesome). Or put on my skates and cruise around the Vilas Park lagoon. (Originally, I was "forcibly" moved here with my family a week after graduation.) But after years I realized the ties of family in CA were strong and compelling. So I decided if I did move back here, there would be rules:

1) Never work in a place farther than 7 miles from home. No freeways!

2) Find and visit regularly the beautiful parks in CA. If possible, live near one.

3) Find the back roads (and get someone else to drive).

3) Find the small local stores - avoid the malls!

4) Walk or bike instead of driving as much as possible.

So after living back here for 24 years, I have my family and the beauty of CA both. These tricks take awhile are not immediately apparent to visitors or new residents. And some people appear to actually LIKE?? crowded places!!

Warren, looks like you're having a blast! (of cold air, that is!)

Nancy, I too, am more greatly honored to be on your list than words can say.

And Sally, since I am now a sub too, I can really appreciate your dedication to the kids you sub for - and wish you'd been out here when I needed subs! Wouldn't that have been fun? There's a special bond, I'm discovering, between the regular teacher and a sub who cares. I find myself being asked for advice/opinions about those "special ones". Love your comic strip!

Okay, after this, I will also become terse.

12/12/12 07:31 PM

#738

Wisconsin lament:

When it's springtime in Wisconsin,

and the gentle breezes blow,

about seventy miles an hour,

and it's fifty-two below.

You can tell you're in Wisconsin,

"cause the snows up to your butt.

You take a breath of springtime air and

your nose holes both freeze shut.

The weather here is wonderful,

so I guess I'll hang around.

I could never leave Wisconsin,

My feet are frozen to the ground.

But I left anyway.

12/13/12 10:33 AM

#739

Okay, okay Nanooks! I'll confess. It wasn't my house in the video; Terri doesn't skin dive with humpback whales nor waterski and snow ski in the same day (although I suspect her of making snow angels); I do miss a white Christmas; and, for 45 years I've missed having 60+ family members at our house on 33rd Street on Christmas Eve. But after that we would appreciate somebody in Wisconsin closing the door! It was all the way down to 38 last night and won't even make it up to 60 today! Burrrrrr!!!!!

12/13/12 10:48 AM

#740

DOWN to 38? We celebrate UP to 38! Actually, I lie.........it's 40 today, and therefore we'll take the opportunity to finish up some outdoor work.

12/13/12 01:11 PM

#741

OK Sally,

Garry and Terri may have to drive to the mountains to see the snow, but down here in Bottom California we can hop in the car and drive to LegoLand in a couple of minutes. They make snow there at Christmas time for the kiddies (large and small).

Ah Christmas - 65 degrees, machine made snow, and a Christmas tree made of Legos!

12/13/12 03:16 PM

#742

For all of you who had to run off to la-la land, and even for the rest of us who explored closer to "home", here's a quote from T.S. Eliot that I just love:

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time"

12/14/12 08:51 AM

#743

Warren De Smidt

and here's one I like,

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
... Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
J.R.R. Tolkien

12/14/12 11:02 AM

#744

Warren - I like it, too.

We're getting so wise as the years pass...............

12/14/12 10:31 PM

#745

There are some things in life I will never understand and today obliterates my limits of coping with indiscriminate evil. If there is a plan somewhere it’s in desperate need of revision. I apologize to those this may offend.

12/14/12 11:33 PM

#746

Amen Garry.

In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.

Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

12/15/12 12:44 AM

#747

Karen Gerstl (LeDuke)

No Offense take Garry, today was a sad and heartbreaking day!

12/15/12 07:18 AM

#748