CurlyShavings

We're going to be busy this Christmas season. This is the list of movies we're planning to watch (including six versions of A Christmas Carol).

• White Christmas (Irving Berlin)


• The Bells of St. Mary's (Bing Crosby & Ingrid Bergman)


• Santa Claus is Coming to Town (Fred Astaire)


• A Christmas Story (leg lamp, anyone?)


• Miracle on 34th Street (1947)


• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (original TV version)


• The Star of Christmas (Veggietales)


• The Muppets Christmas Carol


• A Christmas Carol (Patrick Stewart)


• Scrooge (Albert Finney)


• Scrooge (1951, Alastair Sim)


• A Christmas Carol (George C. Scott)


• A Christmas Carol (Focus on the Family Radio Theater)


• The True Christmas Story (Zondervan)


• A Charlie Brown Christmas


• It's a Wonderful Life


• Nutcracker (American Ballet Theater)


• How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (Boris Karloff)


• The Year Without A Santa Claus (Mickey Rooney)


• The Toy That Saved Christmas (Veggietales)


• Jiminy Cricket's Christmas (Walt Disney)


• A Disney Christmas Gift (Walt Disney)


• National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

If you have any questions (like why is Bells of St. Mary's on the list), feel free to write. Some of them I hope to be at work for (all the Disney ones). I think National Lampoon is the TV version so we'll be able to show that to the children. The best Christmas Carol is actually a radio version. And why are we watching A Christmas Story? Because we live 8.1 miles from the Christmas Story House and because we live in Cleveland!

And this doesn't include the 7.8 hours of Christmas music we've collected on iTunes.

Number 17 in the Aubrey/Maturin series, The Commodore starts well, builds well and even has a dramatic finish. The last fifteen pages, however, almost appear to be O'Brian's attempt to finish the book as quickly as possible and fit the whole thing into some predetermined length. The fleet action that fills these pages seems distant, as if we were watching from some captain's logbook (which we probably are).

There's plenty of small-boat sailing when the Doctor discovers that he must leave the Bellona (Jack's flagship, now that he's a Commodore), rush into London to pick up some people and two huge chests of gold and rush down to Portugal. Small-boat for O'Brian but not truly small. Knight would call it a small yacht.

Anyway, a good story and quite satisfying. There's a little bit of landlubbering and some domestic surprises to round things out.

The fifth book in C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, The Horse and His Boy is the only one of the seven that doesn't add much (that is significant) to the whole. It's just a story, while the others are vast theological works and each contribute to the larger theme that is Narnia. (OK, I'm exaggerating slightly, but not much.)

You may find that some editions of the series will have this book as the third in the series (Magician's Nephew, Lion-Witch-Wardrobe, then Horse). Please note that Lewis wrote them in a particular order, published them in that order and I truly believe that he wished them to be enjoyed in the original order (through his dying day). With the New Revised Order (Magician's Nephew first), one can never encounter the lamp in its proper setting as Lucy finds it first in Lion. It just wasn't made to be that way.

Regardless of that debate, there are a number of interesting quotes in Horse. Here's my favorite:

They were now in the palace garden which sloped down in terraces to the city wall. The moon shone brightly. One of the drawbacks about adventures is that when you come to the most beautiful places you are often too anxious and hurried to appreciate them; so that Aravis (though she remembered them years later) had only a vague impression of grey lawns, quietly bubbling fountains, and the long black shadows of cypress trees.

Which is why, when Erika and I were fighting the wind, with little battery power left for the kicker, trying to get back to port in a big blow before sundown, I had her stop and look at the Cleveland skyline on the starboard side and the sky-meets-lake horizon on the other. May she remember it always.

I am re-reading The Hobbit at the moment. Work has been, well, work, recently and I wanted something that I could enjoy without expending too much effort. And then, I found myself thinking about this passage:

     'Then what is Durin's Day?" asked Elrond.
      'The first day of the dwarves' New Year,' said Thorin, 'is as all should know the first day of the last moon of Autumn on the threshold of Winter. We still call it Durin's Day when the last moon of Autumn and the sun are in the sky together. But this will not help us much, I fear, for it passes our skill in these days to guess when such a time will come again.'

This is from The Hobbit, Chapter III, "A Short Rest", pg 56, emphasis added. Winter begins at the Winter Solstice, on or around December 22nd each year (in my hemisphere, anyway). The sun and moon can appear in the sky together in a number of different ways, but if we assume that a "moon" starts at the new moon (i.e., when there is no moon), then the first chance that this new moon and the sun have at being in the sky together is at the sunset after the new moon, when the sliver of new moon trails the sun just a little. Tolkien reinforces these details with another passage, later in the book, in Chapter XI, "On the Doorstep", pg 179.

     'Tomorrow begins the last week of autumn,' said Thorin one day.
     'And winter comes after autumn,' said Bifor.

All day Bilbo sat gloomily in the grassy bay gazing at the stone, or out west through the narrow opening. He had a queer feeling that he was waiting for something.

     If he lifted his head he could see a glimpse of the distant forest. As the sun turned west there was a gleam of yellow upon its far roof, as if the light caught the last pale leaves. Soon he saw the orange ball of the sun sinking towards the level of his eyes. He went to the opening and there pale and faint was a thin new moon above the rim of the Earth.

So we've confirmed so far that it is late autumn, the new moon has just taken place and we're looking west toward the sunset at a sliver of a moon chasing the sun toward the horizon.

     Quickly Bilbo explained. They all fell silent: the hobbit standing by the grey stone, and the dwarves with wagging beards watching impatiently. The sun sank lower and lower, and their hopes fell. It sank into a belt of reddened cloud and disappeared. The dwarves groaned, but still Bilbo stood almost without moving. The little moon was dipping to the horizon. Evening was coming on. The suddenly when their hope was lowest a red ray of the sun escaped like a finger through a rent in the cloud. A gleam of light came straight through the opening into the bay and fell on the smooth rock-face. . . . There was a loud crack. A flake of rock split from the wall and fell. A hole appeared suddenly about three feet from the ground.
. . . .
     Then Thorin stepped up and drew the key on its chain from round his neck. He put it to the hole. It fitted and it turned! Snap! The gleam went out, the sun sank, the moon was gone, and evening sprang into the sky.

The clues we can get from these passages are many. We confirm that we're looking for the last new moon in late autumn. The clues about looking west confirm for us that this is a sunset event and the sequence ("the sun sank, the moon was gone") helps us place things precisely. We're to watch the sunset on the evening of the new moon or the evening after the new moon. Why the imprecision in our precision? Because, depending on your longitude and the time of day for the new moon, not everything may appear on the first sunset.

We are currently on the threshold of winter (begins about 12/22/2007). The last moon (of Autumn) starts this weekend (Sunday afternoon, December 9th at 1241). On that day the moon sets at 1634, while sunset for my location (near N 41° 30' 36.4212" W 81° 34' 44.1588") is twenty minutes later, at 1657. I'd like to see that moon if it were possible. On Monday, the sun sets at 1657 and the moon sets at 1726, So as I read it, we just might be able to see the moon and the sun at the same time at sundown Monday, December 10th, 2007.

That would be Durin's Day.

I'll be watching.

There were too many clouds yesterday in Cleveland to properly observe the sunset/moonset combination that I'd been hoping for. weather.com currently seems to think that Wednesday might be the first day this week with a chance at seeing the sun and the moon in the same sky together for this last new moon of Autumn.

I'll let you know.

I like the idea of plastering the Cuyahoga County Commissioner's East 9th and Euclid construction fence with the graffiti that citizens post on a website. Sure, there are a million other (and largely better) ways to spend that money, but this remains an interesting idea.

I walked past this location yesterday (attempting to use RTA on the Euclid Corridor to get home) and saw that most of the posters from earlier in the year had blown away. As far as media goes, these posters become interesting social objects: I walk by, note the "checkthefence.us" domain, go home (hopefully by RTA), remember to type it into my browser, read up on the construction, create some graffiti, go back (hopefully by RTA), see my poster!

Except for the wind's impact (Oh, the irony of the first poster's image!), nothing seems to have changed. Not even the website seems to be getting much use -- there aren't any images or comments accessible from what I could find poking around. Poking around yielded a few other interesting items as well. Why did the Commissioner's feel the need to register both the checkthefence.us and checkthefence.com domains? Who is John Dowling and does he know that on all the pages, one of the links ("About the Construction") is just text? Does it mean anything that the contents of that page are all gibberish?

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of what to do with the Breuer (I'm in favor of keeping), wouldn't you like to know what our Commissioners think about it? About the Construction would be such a place. Since the links to this page don't work from the site's other pages, I can only assume that what I found is a stub of a page to be used when the Commissioners' plans are coherent enough to communicate to the rest of the public. (In case they update it later, this is what it looked like this morning.)

From The Hobbit (Chapter XVIII, pg 243):

'. . . . There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. . . .'

I was out and about yesterday with a colleague during lunch and decided to stretch the legs a bit by taking a turn around 800 Superior when I very nearly bumped into a local artist named Wesley. With a guitar over his shoulder and a smile on his face he asked us if we wanted to buy his CD. We could even listen to it first on his portable CD player and headphones. While the offer was very tempting, we needed to get back to the office in the next five minutes or so and anyway, with the wind whipping the 33°F Cleveland air around, it felt like -33°F instead. "No time to listen, but I'll get one anyway; what kind of music?" Sort of a bluesy-folksy mix, we were told. I handed him my $5.00 (now his) and he handed me his cd (now mine). "Make sure you check out my MySpace page," he insisted, tapping the cellophane cd sleeve, "With Open Eyes I'm Finally Free, and don't forget to add me to your friends list." We thanked him, headed north to the corner and then west along Superior.

Interesting, I thought. I wonder what Hugh would say about this social object. Think about it: a random stranger on the street stops two other random strangers to do some marketing, make a sale and expand his brand. We were given the chance to sample the product in a very personal way (for me, anything with a headset is a very personal device). We were invited to join his "friends" list. The "social object" (the CD) also functioned as his business card with his name, phone number and MySpace URL on it. This is just too cool.

We went back to work and I got a chance to listen to it at my desk later that afternoon. The music itself isn't for me and don't let that stop you from buying a copy or going to one of his shows (he was at Phoenix earlier this month). I think he is trying to play a style or collection of styles and is in the process of discovering his own style. And I repeat, don't let that stop you from buying a copy for yourself! Maybe if I were listening to it under the sun somewhere (Mall C?) with a warm wind gently blowing instead of our current weather I might think differently about it.

I'm not a big fan of MySpace and don't have an account. So unfortunately, Wes won't get a chance for me to befriend him there and it might be tricky for him to ever find out that I blogged about it here. I haven't found an email address for him yet.

Wes, I wish you all the luck! Keep up the guitar, singing and your global microbrand!

(Note: words "in quotes" above shouldn't be seen as actual words of the person speaking, just a way to facilitate the dialog on the page.)