December

Heavens but life’s been hard lately.  It seems every December turns out this way.

First, this is the most difficult change of seasons humanity in this part of the world has to deal with:  the transition from warm and colorful autumn into the gray, dark, and cold of winter.  Add to that the trauma to two huge national holidays, and you get more demand on a family than there ever should be.  

And that doesn’t even count any spiritual work a soul might want to undertake as the calendar cycles back to Advent and the beginning of the church year.  You know, a little meditation on the beauty of birth and the presence of evil in the world.  Some thoughts on sacrifice, giving, respect for all creatures on this planet.  Stuff like that.  Very little time for the spiritual when house decorations and gift buying dominate consideration.  With aging, it gets a little better, but not much.

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December.  Two different great seasonal albums.  The first for me -- the one that got me into new age music over 30 years ago -- is George Winston’s December.  The warm, rich, grounded solo piano music written and performed for the holiday season lit me up when I first heard it years ago.  I loved it so much that since, I’ve bought lots more new age ambient music, including Windham Hill’s entire Winter Solstice collection.  Great new contemporary Christmas music.

And then their’s Kenny Loggins December, an album I bought digitally on the recommendation of a friend.  Good indeed.  I’ve always loved Loggin’s tenor voice.  Works beautifully on a Christmas album. 

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December 10 was Emily Dickinson’s birthday -- her 180th.  A couple of buddies, also writing group compatriots serving in Emily’s Boys, had a lunch in her honor that day.  We talked a bit how we don’t really see her as our mother, though we make mom jokes now and then.  It’s more that we appreciate what she has written and how she delivers it.  She touches us.  We know something more about what it means to be human because of what we have read in her verses and letters.  

Garrison Keillor did an Emily Dickinson segment on the 11 December 2010 issue of Prairie Home Companion.  It is positively great.  To listen to the 20 minute segment, see:  http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2010/12/11/   Hit the Segment 2 link and you’ll be whisked back to that Saturday evening in the Bronx when Keillor is joined by Sue Scott and poet Billy Collins for some reverie and, of course, some humor.  You owe it to yourself to take the time even if you have only a smidgen of interest in Emily.  

Don’t you just want to hear a little bit more about the reclusive, passionate Belle of Amherst?  Good listen. 

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I’m sure I’ve alluded to a book I’m trying to write on these pages more than once.  It’s one about Emily Dickinson’s first posthumous editor, Mabel Loomis Todd.  That Mrs. Todd ushered the first three editions of Emily’s poetry into the public forum is well known and well covered in literary history.  

What I hope to do in my writing is to focus on another aspect of her life that has been only alluded to in multiple biographical treatments since she died in 1932:  Her establishing, along with her husband David Peck Todd, of a rustic summer camp on the 300+ acre picturesque Hog Island in Muscongus Bay, Maine.  

Mabel and David found the island while sailing the Maine coast almost twenty years after first publication of Emily’s work and just over ten years after the death of Emily's brother Austin, with whom Mabel had a long-term affair.  The affair was, indeed, pretty scandalous for a small college town in central Massachusetts and the Todd and Dickinson families were both changed forever by it.  But that, as they say, is another story, one that has been well documented.  

Since I’ve had a hard time updating you on my book’s progress here in The Back Porch, I up and started another blog for the specific purpose of focusing on the Hog Island book.  Feel free to cruise over there for a look.  See:  http://thedressyadventuress.blogspot.com/

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Winter solstice this year marks Cindy and my 18th wedding anniversary.  We both feel amazingly blessed to be loved by the other.  I’m a lucky guy.  

This year to celebrate, Cindy has bought us tickets to hear Mannheim Steamroller at Dayton’s Schuster Center.  Very nice indeed.  I get to buy dinner.  

Thoughts, too, this time of year of the Paul Winter Consort annual Winter Solstice concert at St. John the Divine in New York City.  Some selections this time around, I’m sure, will be from their new Grammy nominated album, Miho:  Journey to the Mountain.  For more on the new album, see http://www.livingmusic.com/catalogue/albums/miho.html

I had thoughts of attending this year’s concert ourselves, which would have been a different winter solstice anniversary for us.  Back when we were first seeing each other -- must have been Christmas 1991 -- Cindy Lou and I trekked to the Big Apple for our first Winter Solstice experience.  Even though Cindy’s car was broken into on the Harlem sidestreet where we parked, the concert was amazing.  We look forward to getting back for an encore one of these years.  The show, by the way, is always aired on NPR.  Look for local or internet listings.    

It’s a hoot having winter solstice as a wedding anniversary.  I feel somehow more deeply aligned with the physical universe at this turning point in our planet’s orbit.  The darkest day of the year.  The day before the sun heads back our way.  Powerful stuff.  I like it.  

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One final December thought:  A whole bunch of family saw The Nutcracker performed by the Cincinnati Ballet a couple night’s ago.  One of the toy soldiers was grandson Noah’s cousin, Maddy. 

Such a performance!  I’ve seen the ballet a few times before, but not like this.  The set must have cost tens of thousands of dollars.  So well done!  A real holiday treat.  Special thanks to Frisch’s restaurants, too, who has been the sole corporate sponsor since the Nutcracker run began in Cincinnati decades ago.  

Kind of makes me want to stop in for a Big Boy sandwich. 

Today’s elder idea: A solstice thought from a Paul Winter email re: tickets for this year’s program:

In remembering the solstice, we align with the rhythm of the year, and resonate with the optimism that the light will overcome the dark. 

Happy holidays, everybody.