Merry Christmas!

Wishing everyone much joy, peace -- and fun. Linda

Happy Birthday, Margaret Mead

Random google for today -- it is anthropologist Margaret Mead's birthday today. I haven't really thought of her since college, but my NOW calendar has her birthday noted for today. I mentioned it to Tim over morning coffee, "Hey, it's Margaret Mead's birthday today!" His response was, "Didn't she write 'Gone With the Wind'?" Sigh. When I was in college studying soc/anthro, she was a bit of a heroine to me. Alack, alas, I have neglected my husband's education.

Among other things, Margaret Mead advocated a philosophy of educating and nurturing all the world's children as our own. . . I think of the story Dad has told me about Grandmother Brown flying to visit him and Mom in France, and how she helped a young woman she happened to meet on the plane -- a stranger traveling with young children -- to take care of her babies. A simple, kind gesture of -- for a few hours -- caring for the world's children as her own. I think of the child Tim and I are working to adopt. . .

And Mead is once again a heroine to me (alongside Grandmother Brown).

"I am glad that I am alive," Mead is quoted as having said. "I am glad that I am living at this particular very difficult, very dangerous, and very crucial period in human history."

Happy Birthday, Margaret Mead.

Linda

It Rained -- Christmas is coming!

It rained yesterday -- a fine mist as we drove home with our Christmas tree!

Christmas is coming, Christmas is coming!

Linda

I'm Dreaming of a Wet Christmas...

I have been in Southern California too long: I am longing for rain for Christmas. It won't feel like Christmas without rain.

When Tim and I first moved out here, I remember watching a news segment on television featuring people shopping for Christmas trees in the rain. They were laughing and smiling, there were Christmas lights and Christmas music playing in the background... one young woman was interviewed, and she spoke of how Christmassy it is to shop for a tree in the rain. And I thought, "Is she nuts?"

And now (gulp) I am one of those nuts. If I can't have a snow day, then I want rain for Christmas. Not flash-flood rain, just enough to wash away the dust these darned Santa Ana winds have deposited, and the ash from the fires out west of us. Enough to freshen the greenery and clean the sky.

Linda