Be It Resolved

It's always nice to blow off the trivialities of profession and production for a few days and focus in on the vital core of life--the rapid and repeated consumption of fat grams and the application of a high "burn rate" to one's accumulated savings. A disgusting spectacle, to be sure, but why stint? Few of us will start up from our deathbeds to lament, "I wish I had spent less on Christmas!" Parsimony is the province of the next holiday down the line, the New Year's new leaf--the vows of virtue by which we seek to bargain with higher powers. A pale and Puritan exercise at the nadir of winter.

Look, No Reindeer

I tend to stutter into the end the year like one of those old Battle of Britain war movies: shot full of holes, two engines feathered, leaking oil, blowing smoke, and hoping I have enough altitude left to clear the White Cliffs of Dover. What can I jettison to gain a little lift? Not the truffles and sugar cookies, not the Cuban pork roast, surely not the nuts and chocolate and eggnog. The credit cards are too hot to touch and my belly is shaking like a bowl full of jelly, so foam the runways--I'm comin' in.

A Note from Flivverspace

My grandfather's first car was a "flivver," a Model T Ford. To start it up, you got inside, set the hand brake, depressed the clutch and shifted into neutral. Then you set the spark and throttle levers and adjusted the choke. Then you got back out and blocked a wheel (in case the hand brake slipped or it popped into gear). Then you put the crank handle into place and proceeded to crank the recoil starter, being careful to keep your thumb clear in case a backfire tried to break your arm. If you were lucky, it would start after a few cranks. Then you would put away the crank, pull out the wheel block, get in, release the hand brake, advance the throttle and spark, depress the clutch, shift into first, let out the clutch and try not to stall. Sometimes it worked. Writing to you once again a little late, and from home (due to ongoing and delicate adjustments to our network services), I declare the internet to be at the flivver stage of development.

The Owl's Christmas

It hasn't snowed for a couple of days and the stories the animal tracks tell grow more complex in my yard. Here's where the deer bounded out of the driveway when I pulled in two nights ago--twelve feet between the prints. I see signs of other deer, and dogs, and a rabbit and a racoon all the way back by the fenceline. They hold a silent yard party while I sleep. But this mouse track, it just ends in an indecipherable scuffle.

The dark of the year
when the mouse's funeral
is the owl's Christmas.