The Thursday Ramble: Merry Christmas to you and yours!

 A short and simple message.

Merry Christmas to you and yours.

Relax today. 

Free yourself from worry.

Everything is just fine.

Enjoy what you have, and you will have something most rich people never have, and that is enough. 

Cherish those around you, and those at a distance. 

Do what you want to do today, and if that is nothing, that is exactly what you should do. 

Feel the love from near and far. 

My World of Wonders: December 24, 2025

 

What are my gifts to my readers this year? Advertising has been turned down to a minimum and will be going away in a few short weeks. I will keep writing, hopefully sharing positive ideas for all of you. 

When will you visit the Washington DC area? This is up to you. When you do, reach out to me, you can send an email through the contact box on the left, or leave a comment on the day a post goes up. I would love to meet you for breakfast or lunch while you are here. I am glad to offer advice on how to visit DC (tip number 1, don't drive a car into the district.) I have visitors passes for Mount Vernon that I am glad to share, free admission for up to two adults. If you need helping getting to and from Mt. Vernon, I will try to help. 

What have I been up to in the kitchen this week? Oh it is that time of the year. Last Thursday I made chicken pies. I had poached chicken from a couple of days before when I made stock. I steamed fresh carrots and green beans. Made cheesy mashed potatoes and a thick sauce with the chicken stock and a basic roux. Sauted a few mushrooms. I layered the chicken and veggies in ramekins, poured over the sauce, topped with mashed potatoes and baked in a 425 F oven for about 35 minutes. Lamb stew - oh my, thanks to Stephen's late mother Peggy for telling me how to make it. 

Where have I been this week? The pool, the gym, Mt Vernon, the King Street Farmers Market, the Russian Grocery for caviar and chocolate, out to lunch at our favorite Vietnamese place, Whole Foods, Harris Teeter, lots of grocery and specialty shopping at this time of the year. Into the city for a stroll around the Hirshorn Gallery.  

Who have a talked to this week? My sweet bear. Ruth, Renee was back at water aerobics - I hadn't seen her for a few weeks - she fell the day before Thanksgiving landed on her face and broke her nose. Jon, Amy, Susan, Anna, Gabe, Max, Zack, and Mary. An editorial call, so Cathy, Emily, and others. 

What have I been reading? I have been on a reading binge. Medium Raw by Tony Bourdain, and a book on spoken language written by a professor of linguistics. Interesting facts, it takes more brain power to talk than to listen. Dogs learn to recognize words and symbols, but can not be trained to use them.  

What have I been writing? I finished an article on the importance of visiting people who are seriously ill, and hope to finish an article on travel planning. I committed to writing a fourth article before we leave for this year's grand adventure. 

My greatest Wish for each of you? A gentle and peaceful Christmas and Holiday Season. 

Travel Tuesday: Christmas Past

In a departure from exclusively posting photos I have taken, this post is entirely photos others have taken. All but one of these, is a scan from the over 1,600 slides my father collected over 60 years. 

My father, probably 1972. 

Before I was born. 

My two brothers, my sister, my aunt Edith and grandmother. 

My oldest brother.

My two brothers, long before my sister and I were born.

My sister and my middle brother.

The four of us. On the right hand corner of the top of the television is a tiny santa, I have that - at the last minute I plucked it out of the china cabinet at my father's house as we were turning the contents over to an estate sale company. I didn't realize until I scanned this slide, that it has been around as long as I have. 

Mom with a new hair dryer. The white artificial tree was bought the winter we lived in Phoenix, and put up many years. It was my father's favorite. 

On South Mountain in Phoenix the winter we lived there. 

My aunt Edith and my Mother, probably 1948 or 1949. 

My parents owned that end table all of their married life. When we cleaned out the house, no one wanted it. 

I have a couple of the ornaments that were on this tree 

Aunt Edith and my Grandmother 

My father and my oldest brother.

My mother, grandmother, Emma and Bill Baker in the first little house my father built on the farm. 

 

Monday Mood: Hanging on

I won't lie, it has been a challenging week to remain positive and upbeat. Senseless murders and TDS getting inside my head. Defiling of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It has been challenge keeping compassion from turning into depression.  It has been a difficult week, in what should be a season of hope. 

So what can we do? 

Be kind in what we say or do. If we are fortunate enough to live in a place that is safe and secure, acknowledge that many in the world are less fortunate. And really, isn't that what all but the truly deranged want in life and for the world, comfort, peace, safety and security? 

What else can I do this week?

• Find little ways to be helpful to others. 
• Random acts of kindness. 
• Send encouraging messages to friends and family. 
• Create beauty in any way I can. 
• Encourage others to be kind and peaceful.
• Speak out against hate. 
• VOTE, VOTE, VOTE. 

The holidays can be stressful. Hang on, take care of yourself, be extra kind. Hang on!  You may be the only person who can take care of you. 

I close most of my emails with the phrase "Take care."  And I truly mean it, take care of yourself, each and everyday. Be gentle as a lamb. 

 

The Sunday Five: Dancer and Prancer and Vixen

1: Do you dance in public? 

2: Will any holiday parties you attend this year include dancing? 

3: Tell us about the last time you danced in public?

4: Tell us about any dance classes you might have ever taken? 

5: Should it be illegal to dance at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC? 

My answers: 

1: Do you dance in public? Not in decades 

2: Will any holiday parties you attend this year include dancing? No

3: Tell us about the last time you danced in public? It would have been in Orlando before we moved north in 1995, at the Firestone Club on Orange Avenue. The crowd was always fun. 

4: Tell us about any dance classes you might have ever taken? I was a 4-H member as a teenager, and we had square dancing lessons one summer. 

5: Should it be illegal to dance at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC? It mystifies me as to why it is, the law is periodically protested and enforced. 

Please share your answers in the comments. 

The Saturday Morning Post: 50 States in 52 Weeks: Puerto Rico

Well we have moved past the 50 states, to a couple of territories to finish out the year. 

I went to Puerto Rico for work, an AARP training gig, at the Caribe Hilton on the water in San Juan. I have just a handful of photos, probably taken with my phone, though they might have been taken with an early digital camera.  The wind seemed to blow constantly when I was there, strong and noisy at times.  The hotel lobby was amazing, it was open on the water side and the street side, with the breezes blowing through. 

The people were welcoming and wonderful.  Most legal education materials in Puerto Rico are in English, the audience was strongly bilingual. For the question and answer part, there was a simultaneous translator, with an earpiece and all. The only time I have worked with a live translator in a training. 

I had little time to wander around, only a couple of hours. I really enjoyed it.  

When I lived in Orlando, a good part of my client base was from Puerto Rico, or as many described themselves, New Yoreakans, their family moved and they were born and raised in New York City.  

PR is a US territory or protectorate. A historic artifact. The people born there are US citizens, but self governing. Many, but not all, Federal laws and programs apply.  Items manufactured in Puerto Rico are considered US products, but the companies are not subject to US Corporate Tax - leading to the manufacture of high margin items such as pharmaceuticals and military hardware on the island.  

I would love to go back. 

Funky Friday: Walt Whitman and the National Portrait Gallery

Major parts of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, is housed buildings built in the early 1800's. Part of it was a post office, and the part pictured above housed the Patent Office. At the end of this corridor is the delightful three story space with galleries that housed the library of patent models. 

In the early 1860's, the post office and patent office packed away into storage, and the space was converted to a hospital for soldiers and sailors injured in the US Civil War.  There were an estimated 1.5 million people injured or got sick during the War, with about half of those dying. Disease killed as many, or more, than wounds. Tens of thousands of men spent weeks, months or years requiring medical care. 

Walt Whitman, an American poet of the era, volunteered in this hospital.  He spent months at bedside talking with the patients, reading to them, and helping them write letters home. He wrote about it in his journals, many of the patients wrote or spoke of the experience. 

It is clear from the writings, that his affection for some of the patients went beyond that of a kindly old author. One of nature's batchelors made some special friends while helping them recover from the war.

When I walk those halls, I sometimes think of the compassion and passion of the past in that sacred space.