My father wore a ring on the pinky of his left hand — a star sapphire set in white gold. The word for him in his time was “dapper.” Today is the 22nd anniversary of his death. The Christmas holiday has often been a trial for this family.
Surprisingly, this Christmas was not so bad. There were no arguments. My brother even did the dishes. My mother said it was the best Christmas she’s had in years. She’s right.
This afternoon, she sat at her organ and played Christmas Carols. Then, I sat her in front of my computer screen and linked over from Jack Bogdanski’s blog in Portland, OR, to a video of the St. Stanislaus choir in that city doing a program of Polish Koledy. She watched, teary-eyed, remembering how her brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins would get together every Christmas Eve and sing those same songs. They had beautiful voices and knew how to harmonize. My generation of cousins would gather around and listen. I still remember many of those Polish lyrics.
My mother misses the big family that all used to live within a five-block area where I grew up. Now, there are very few left in her generation, and those of my generation have scattered. We spent much of the day today calling all over the state — and even out-of-state — so that she could wish what relatives there are a Merry Christmas.
I miss my kids a lot –-b!X across the country there in Portland, my daughter and her family in Massachusetts. It just doesn’t seem right not to have been with them all this holiday.
Who knows what will happen in the next year. Maybe next Christmas will be the best yet.

No, that’s not a typo. I really mean “sweeps” not “sleeps” (although she is doing that now).
When I finally got up this morning and went to see what my mother was up to, I found her standing over a pile of stuff she had swept up from the floors and rugs. She didn’t know what to do next — couldn’t remember where the dust pan was.
She likes to sweep because she remembers how to do that and seems to need to do things with her hands. This afternoon she had a couple of rubber bands on her wrists and kept putting them off and on, in between which she wound them around her fingers. I wish I could think of something I could give her to do, but the options are infinitesimal — given the limits of what she is able to do combined with what she is willing to do.
For supper I will go through the Christmas Eve food rituals — a meatless meal of soup made from dried imported-from-Poland mushrooms. and also pierogi, which I bought at Shop Rite. My mother used to make the best pierogi I’ve eve tasted. She had it down it a science. Although she can’t make them anymore, I probably could. But I just didn’t have the energy this year. Maybe next.

Manana.
Merry Manana.

Over at Blogher, Ronni Bennet (of Time Goes By) highlights eight women bloggers in her piece on “Some Elder Women of the Blogosphere.”
And I’m one of them, in extremely good company.
I recently had my fifth year anniversary as a blogger. I used to say that I was the longest-blogging female elderblogger over 65 out there. That might or might not be true; it’s impossible to know for sure.
According to Ronni’s post:

In July of 2006, The Pew Internet & American Life Project published a survey of bloggers titled, A Portrait of the Internet’s New Storytellers [pdf] that is packed with facts and figures.
Fifty-four percent of bloggers are under age 30, reported Pew, and 14 percent are between the ages of 50 and 64. Just a tiny two percent are 65 and older.
But our numbers are growing. When I started my blog about aging late in 2003, I could find only about a dozen other bloggers older than 50. Nowadays, I can barely keep my Elderbloggers blogroll current; I find new ones every day.

Well, with only two percent over 65, I just might be the oldest-longest-blogging women blogger.
But that’s not as important as being included in Ronni’s list and having her write such good things about Kalilily Time.
Hooray for me!

As I was posting about the Wicker Man movies last night, I was remembering the buttons I have stashed somewhere that I picked up at various feminist rallies. My favorite was always this one:

I did a little googling to see if others collected those old 70s buttons. I couldn’t find that particular one, but there sure are others that I remember wearing
Given where I am in my life now, these two are now my favorites:

Time certainly does go by.

That’s my 90 year old mom, doing a hell of a lot better than I am.

Merry Christmas, anyway.

It’s two for one Tuesday, since i missed last week. What follows are some news tidbits that you might not have heard about. Aw, c’mon, you know that your inquiring mind wants to know. You can check out the validity of these items by linking to their sources from last week’s review or this week’s.
&#9733 A Christmas party in Dublin was canceled after Gus, a camel starring in Santa’s Magical Animal Kingdom Show, got drunk on Guinness and ate all the mince pies. A 43-foot-tall Swedish straw Christmas goat was doused with flame-retardant chemicals so that only its hooves could be burned, and a mother in South Carolina had her son arrested for playing with his Christmas present early.
&#9733 The invention of rap was traced back to Muhammad Ali.
&#9733 Several U.S. cities were complaining that they had too many churches, and a man in Tampa was selling his soul on the Internet.
&#9733 A plane bound for Texas made an emergency landing after a female passenger lit matches to mask the odor of her fart.
&#9733 NASA announced that by 2024 it would open a space camp for astronauts at the south pole of the moon, and astronomers watched a giant black hole eat an entire star.
&#9733 A study found that standard-sized condoms were too large for the men of India. The National Institutes of Health said that circumcision is an effective method to limit heterosexual transmission of HIV, but Kevin De Cock, HIV/AIDS director of the World Health Organization, warned that circumcision was “not a magic bullet.”
&#9733 A hunter in Wisconsin shot a seven-legged deer, and a Texas lawmaker introduced legislation that would allow the blind to participate in “the fun of hunting.”
&#9733 British geneticists investigating the case of a 10-year-old Pakistani boy who could walk on burning coals announced that they had discovered a gene that influences the perception of pain. They could not examine the boy directly because he had died after leaping off a roof to impress his friends.
&#9733 The baiji, a species of blind white dolphin extant for 20 million years, was declared extinct, and two dolphins who had swallowed toxic plastic were saved by the world’s tallest man, who used his long arms to retrieve shards from their stomachs.
&#9733 Former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, who is said to have strangled Emperor Haile Selassie with his bare hands and buried him under a toilet, was convicted of genocide by an Ethiopian court.
&#9733 Seattle-Tacoma International Airport removed fourteen Christmas trees after a local rabbi threatened a lawsuit if officials did not add an eight-foot menorah to the arrangement,
&#9733 An international war crimes court sentenced a Rwandan Roman Catholic priest to 15 years in prison for ordering his church crushed by bulldozers while 2,000 ethnic Tutsi remained inside.
The last three tidbits are so symptomatic of why organized religion is the scourge of humanity.
Now, as far as this next bit is concerned, I hope Iran watched 60 Minutes on Sunday as the long-secreted archives of the Nazi concentration camps were revealed. The Nazi’s extermination camps took the lives of 17 million individuals. 6 million of those were Jews ; that leaves 11 million “others” — gypsies, homosexuals, the “politically incorrect” intellectuals, and all those who might cause trouble. Nevertheless,
&#9733 Iran held a conference to examine whether the Holocaust happened.
Finally, it seems appropriate to end with this little bit, which Harper’s aptly combined into one sentence.
&#9733 Police and firefighters on Long Island rescued a veteran who had walled himself in with a seven-foot-high pile of fecal matter and other debris, and Representative Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.) said President Bush was in “deep shit.”

a gang of blackbirds by the side of the road, huddling around some
glimpse of camel colored fur, patches of white
too big to be a dog
another deer
roadkill

You Are Pretty Logical

You’re a bit of a wizard when it comes to logic While you don’t have perfect logic, you logic is pretty darn good Keep at it – you’ve got a lot of natural talent in this area!

It was 57 degrees here yesterday. Today it was a few degrees cooler. And it was cloudy. But it sure doesn’t feel like winter — you know, that kind of winter when the sun shines so bright off new snow that you have to go back in the house and put on those old-lady wrap-around sunglasses.
As we drove into Poughkeepsie today to look for shoes for my mother — of course we couldn’t find any that fit her and she’s totally pissed at me for getting rid of the shoes that have gotten too tight for her bunion and hammertoe — I wished I had my camera with me to catch the stretch of haystrewn acreage that included what looked like a “goose farm” and a “pumpkin graveyard.” I don’t know if these geese stay here all winter or if they just haven’t bothered to leave yet because it’s been so warm. But, in any event, they were lined up and down what had been a summer cornfield, heads bobbing for whatever was caught in the hay.
A while back, my local newspaper had an article about how smart the birds are around here. They no longer bother flying south because everyone out this way has birdfeeders. We have several. And those canny creatures clean us out every other day.
If you’re female and over 60 and are looking for a good movie to rent, go and get Mrs. Palfrey at the Clermont. Joan Plowright is her usual exquisite older female character. And Rupert Friend is delicious.
For Christmas, I sent sonb!X the only tangible permanent result of this past year of my life: a bedspread-sized “crochet on the double” item that started out as an afghan but somehow got away from me. I was making the pattern up as I went along, which I often tend to do, not always with usable results. Oh well, I figure that he can use it as his futon cover/blanket. It’s cotton yarn, it stretches, and it’s washable. It was so heavy that the cost of sending it was almost as much as the cost of the yarn. (No, not really; that’s an exaggeration.)
Here’s a photo of it spread over an extra-long couch.

This is my first post in several days. I have been annoyed at myself for being annoyed at my mother for never wanting to leave my side. It makes it impossible for me to take care of my own living space. It’s so dusty that I wake up with a headache every morning.
And the other day I went over to By Bea’s Bedside blog, and discovered that Bea had died. The blog was written by her daughter, who eloquently and lovingly chronicled her mother’s last months of life.
And I’ve been checking in at Jeneane’s, who, I’m sure, will come through into the Christmas season with the same strength and humor that seem to be her hallmarks. Her daughter, Jenna, I have found out by emailing her, has come through her surgery and is doing fine. Here’s to a healthier year, Jeneane.
We spent last Christmas in the hospital’s ICU watching as the staff totally mishandled my mother’s condition.
This Christmas HAS to be better than last, although around here, that’s not saying much.