Earlier this morning, my mother sent me a note through the interwebs.

Charging around town like I’ve got a million things to do is the one part of my New York character that has been most resistant to change. But, intentionally, I slowed my stride and started talking again about the storm bearing down on New York and, for the first time in a long time, actually wishing I was up there. In general, I’ll take the 75 and sunny of Antigua six months a year. But there is something magical about a snowstorm, a storm so powerful, and so delicate, that it can take an entire city by the wrist and, without saying a word, convince it to slow down. And those days are important, because it’s tough to see the magic that’s everywhere around you if you’re constantly flying by at Mach 2.

Einstein said it better; at least he did according to the bulletin board Ms. Alvarez from the math department posted outside her classroom back when we were colleagues in Brooklyn. It read:

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Damn straight, Al, and anything that reminds us of that wisdom has a very special value. And snowstorms have a way of showing us the magic of it all.

After our meeting, as we were walking, more slowly, back across town, I found myself still lost in whited-out memories and I began telling Ingi about the last great snowstorm of the 20th century and how (as could only happen on such a day) I ended up sitting in a dark bar with a few old friends, listening to a leather-clad dominatrix sing a jazz improvisation off a 9th century Persian poem while sipping Irish Whiskey.

What can I tell ya? It was one hell of a storm.

In February of 1996 an enormous, cyclonic blizzard (a “crab-nebula of a storm,” wrote the New York Times) blew up the coast from the Caribbean where it met a wall of frozen air straight from the Arctic. The resulting cloud bank which stretched 1200 miles, from Maine to North Carolina, was 500 miles wide and, almost unheard of with winter storms, actually developed an eye, like a hurricane. By the time it had passed La Gran Manzana, 26.9 inches of snow had fallen in Central Park, the most since they started keeping records back in 1869. At the storm’s peak, over a foot of snow fell in under three hours and the skies lit up all night with silent flashes of high altitude lightning. If a band of ancient people were to have experienced it, virgins assuredly would have been sacrificed to appease the angered Gods of Winter. To the jaded romantics of The City nearing the end of the millennium, it seemed like a far more humanistic God maybe just wanted to remind his hipster children that he still had the keys to the magic store and the legerdemain to blow our minds with one of his simplest tricks, the ice crystal. Watch my hands.

When the snow started to fall, I was sitting at Flannery’s Pub on 14th and 7th with my friend, John Moynihan. The newsmen had said to expect some weather, but no one was talking about any meaningful accumulation, so we weren’t paying it much mind. As such, the storm slipped in stealthily. That, I’ve come to believe, is one of the first signs of a truly beautiful storm – it somehow arrives before it’s there. Before you know it, it’s slipped in your backdoor and is sitting at the table next to you. When you do finally see it, when you first notice the rate of accumulation and the strength of the storm itself, there’s a moment of hope – real, honest to Einstein hope. I’m sure it’s biological. The mind quiets down, the heart opens, and the possibility of a purpose in this life reasserts itself in even the bitterest amongst us. I’ve become more of a cynic in recent years, but still well remember the fervent prayers of an innocent childhood offered to the heavens from a frosted bedroom window on those nights when the snows began to fall.  In rapture and sincerity I prayed, as I’m sure you did, too, for once to a God we actually believed in, “Please, God, please…Let this one be real… Don’t stop snowing all night long. Please please please please please let the snows cover it all… and give us a snow day. Amen. Please.”

Instinctively, as he looked out the wall-high windows at the front of the bar and saw the storm’s force, Fergel the Barman’s jaw dropped. John and I saw his face and turned around to look out at the street scene, too. This one was real and it had us by the wrist. The city was wearing white.

When we pulled up stumps at the bar and headed home for the night there was half a foot on the ground and no sign yet of the plows. A few hours later I peeled my ears open just long enough to hear Howard Stern, himself, tell me that it was fine to go back to dreamland. There were 16 inches out there and the city was frozen to still-life.

The Surly Bartender has a question:

We’re not far from that now – and as is the nature of things in this increasingly ridiculous world – it looks as if the nose pickers and soap stuffers might well win the day to the detriment of us all.

The Surly Bartender, an expert on many things, cannot claim to have a profound depth of knowledge when it comes to “carbon forcing,” a “high albedo environment in Greenland,” or “evapotranspiration,” but for our purposes that doesn’t really matter. Chances are you’re clueless about such things as well. And that’s the point. Even those of us who have made an attempt to become familiar with the science have little of value to say about it. Really, I can say, “it’s anthropogenic,” you can say, “nuh-uh, it’s the sunspots” but neither one of us actually has a clue what the hell we’re talking about.  Most of us have a high school Earth science understanding of the situation and as laymen we can’t comprehend the dynamics involved. Said another way, we should all have the decency to accept that our level of understanding planetary climatic systems is like unto a carrot’s understanding of Bach.

So, let’s step back from the science. There is still a part of this debate we can analyze: the changing public perception of the science.

Over the past three years, the American public has grown increasingly skeptical about global climate change. First, the numbers: According to a Fox News / Opinion Dynamics Corporation poll, in January of 2007, 82% of Americans believed that Global Warming did exist. Whereas, in December of 2009, that number had dropped to 63%. And I’ll make a Surly prediction – by the end of the summer, when the media debate will be in full blossom – that number will have dropped to about 50%.

Whether that prediction comes true or not, one still has to ask, “What the hell happened in less than three years?”

I’ve got a Surly Theory: It’s all Al Gore’s fault.

Now wait, stick with me. During the early part of the decade the public mind wasn’t much engaged with global climate change. Back then we were all pretty busy worrying about terrorism, war, and Shakira’s otherworldly hips. That is, until our attention was pulled to An Inconvenient Truth. Gore’s movie focused the nation’s attention on the reality of global climate change in a way that had never happened before, and by doing so, Gore woke the beast.

The movie was pretty good fare as far as boiling frogs and drowning polar bears go. But the most compelling evidence presented was in one of the documentary’s quieter moments. Gore’s team had taken a random sampling of 10% of all peer-reviewed papers written on climate change in the past 30 years (700 our of 7000 studies) and discovered that ALL of them were in agreement on a central theme: Global climate change is occurring and human influence thereupon is undeniable.

To certain vested interests this demanded a rebuttal, lest those of us in televisionland feel compelled to demand action. And those who have reason to fear change, or who can profit from continued debate, decided upon a quite conscious tactic. Having lost the scientific argument, they chose to attack the public’s perception of the science. If the public could be made to doubt the consensus, then the waters would be sufficiently muddied to prevent any actual change.

I know this makes you uncomfortable. People playing scientist don’t like discovering that they are the experiment. But that’s the only reality that makes sense – unless, of course 20% of America recently snuck back into climatology school without me noticing. I have been drunk quite a bit lately, but I think I would have picked up on that.

When thinking about this, it makes sense to remember that there are about a ba-jillion dollars at stake here. Huge industries are built around releasing carbon and greenhouse gases into the environment and it is in their financial interest not to stop. Nations fight wars for these corporations. You really think they’re sitting out the debate? Take just one example: a few years back a Right Wing think tank, the Exxon funded American Enterprise Institute, offered $10,000 to any climatologist who would write a paper calling “the consensus” into question.  That might sound like small cheese, but with a budget of a million dollars, they sought to buy 100 scientists who would go on television and undercut the threat to their empires. Now that’s value for money.

The building had the air of student rental, with a notion of cleanliness a touch more maverick than I’d hoped. I might be there for one of the dirtiest deeds of my life, but I wanted no smears of those who had been there before me.

Questions tumbled around my mind. Was I adequately groomed in the vital areas? And how would one define adequately groomed for this situation? What topics of polite chit-chat would be appropriate during the procedure? All crucial issues, but not covered in the FAQs when I’d booked my colonic irrigation.

Hiding in a cupboard at work the week before, I had called to make the appointment. The clinic didn’t answer, but as soon as I’d slipped back to my desk and retuned my mind to things non-faecal, they called me back.

“Hello, this is Anthony from the hydrotherapy clinic. You tried to contact us?” His accent was cold, somewhat boxy, likely Eastern European. All you want when you’re about to broach something as hideously undignified as colonic irrigation is that the person sounds friendly. A warm middle-aged lady. A hearty “don’t worry pet, I’ve seen it all before.” An Irish lilt perhaps. This voice was gruff. These conversations don’t lend themselves to gruff.

“Oh, hi. I’ll just slip to a quieter space.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry, just bear with me a moment.” I darted along our open plan office to the stairwell.

“I don’t understand you!” he barked. Baargh!

You might presume that Anthony, receptionist of a well-being clinic, would be adorably flamboyant – that a chat about putting things up bums might lead to some riotous double-entendres and an uplifting sense that I’m a tremendously right-on sister.

Anthony was not flamboyant. His accent was not lilty and forgiving. He was incapable of sensitive delivery. Everything he said sounded like directions to the gas chamber.

“I’d like to book an appointment for colonic irrigation,” I tried.

“When would you like?”

“Um, when do you have available?”

“When would you like?” Which sounded more like, “ANSWER ME!”

“Well, actually, my friend and I want to do it together. Can we have an appointment at the same time?”

Anthony paused. “Er. Together?” I think he said “er.” He might have said “eurgh.”

“Just at the same time,” I clarified.

Pause.

“It is a private process. You really will not want to be there with your friend.”

“Oh no! I meant just having the procedure at the same time.”

“We absolutely don’t recommend this.”

Burning shame! Burning shame! “Not in the same room. I mean, do you have more than one…” what were they called? Should have researched more carefully! “…hose? More than one hose that you use?”

Pause.

I’m not sure what he was doing in his silence. Shall we say dry-heaving? Yes, that’s probably it.

“Perhaps… perhaps better that you and your friend come separately?” He had clearly decided that I have absolutely no personal boundaries. You don’t want that kind of thing marked on your record when you’re booking a colonic. I agreed to go alone.

It no longer seemed a good idea, but I was too intrigued to turn back now. According to my research, colonic irrigation can flush out years of impacted faeces, accumulated mucous, parasites and worms. Not from me obviously. All they got from me was fairy dust and snowdrops. But from other people, it’s all about the impacted faeces. Washing off the junk clinging to our colon wall can, according to their flier, help with “allergies, back ache, bloating, constipation, gas, IBS, leaky gut (eurgh), lethargy, skin problems and a runny nose.” (How? Please tell me that a runny nose isn’t some sort of reverse peristalsis?) And those are the only the ones I could understand.

On arrival, my unsettling first impression of the clinic was compounded by the empty reception area. But at least this meant I wouldn’t have to face Anthony. I peeked through a door marked “Colonic Hydrotherapy” to see if anyone was around. A guy looked up unsmilingly from his computer.

“Hi, I’m here for a colonic appointment. There wasn’t anyone in reception.”

“No. The colonic is done in here.”

Cheers, mate, but just to clarify I wasn’t planning to take a poo in reception, I wanted to say. But I was distracted by the familiarity of the voice. The abrupt articulation. The Count from Sesame Street accent. Surely not…?

“Take a seat,” he said.

“So, um, will you be doing this then?” Please just be the I.T. guy.

“Of course.” Behind him was his wall of certificates, proudly bearing his name: Anatoli. Wait…

“Did you have time to do the client questionnaire that we talked about on the phone?” he asked.

“No.” NOOOOOOOOO! Anatoli. With the accent, I’d thought I’d heard Anthony. But it was Anatoli. My colon was going to be cleaned by the receptionist. The male receptionist. Who was already disgusted by me.

We went through the horror – horror – of a questionnaire and discussion on the nature of my stools. Then it was Time.

Anatoli handed me a towel and disposable plastic slippers (whose purpose worried me), and instructed me to undress from the waist down. Regretfully, I complied. He talked me through the process: that I was to lie on my side and bend my knees towards my chest while he gave me a rectal exam (no no no no!). Then he would insert the colonic tube.

“You are ready?” he asked.

Nope. Never will be.

“Yes,” I replied.

He began to prepare the equipment. “Ask me questions,” he offered/ordered.

“Well, ok… How come you specialised in colonics?”

He hesitated. “17 years ago my mum and dad were seriously ill. We tried a number of things, and were recommended this. It really helped them. So I decided ‘Well, it helps people, I should offer that’. I trained, I worked at a clinic. Then I set up my own practice here.”

My heart melted. Lovely Anatoli, stuck forever emptying the bowels of London in gratitude for the comfort it brought to his parents. I began to recognise him as a kind-hearted man who had developed complex skills so he could help people, and who answered the phones as well as delivered the treatment because it’s not easy running a small business in London.

I don’t think the feeling was mutual, but I got a bit of a crush.

A big bit of a crush.

Then his finger went up my bum.

The December 2009 edition

Early in the Fall, I accepted LaCuadra’s invitation to put into plain language the major criteria to judge what at least for now will be called ObamaCare (Oct. / Nov. 2009) There were five:

● Could uninsured people buy a decent insurance package at a price, even with a stretch, that they could afford?

● Could the country transition Medicaid from its last-option welfare roots to a streamlined health care program for the poor?

● Could Congress agree how to raise about $50 billion per year in new revenue to add to a similar amount in projected savings?

● Could our national health care cost growth, an outlier against all other industrial economies, be slowed over time?

● Finally, can the deal survive the next two political cycles to imbed itself in the national economy?

At this point, with qualifications, it’s four “yes, we cans” on the policy issues and a “maybe” on the political question as Congress tries to nail down the final deal.

The details follow, but remarkably little substance has changed in the months since Labor Day. As is clear to any observer, the debate has become all politics all the time.  In August the myriad forces of the Right seized control of Congressional town meetings. The “plot” to create death panels emerged as among the milder charges as the shouting crowds denounced Obama’s Fourth Reich, quite a goal for someone allegedly not even born in the US of A.  A constant in earlier debates, the fear of change in our health care arrangements, was exploited into the demonization of anything governmental.  If there were potential moderate Republican supporters, the combination of frenzied constituents and threatened primaries locked Republican incumbents into total opposition.

Schooled in Chicago politics, The White House saw the scope of the potential threat. It absolutely had to regain post Labor Day control of the debate, at least among Democrats. If the Right could demonize government, the President’s team could raise the Insurance demon. When under assault, attack! And soon, the focus of health reform was to control the perceived enemies: the insurance limits on pre-existing conditions; caps on benefits; cancellation of coverage; and wasteful administrative costs. My demon checks your demon. Let’s get to counting votes.

There are real differences between the parties. During the November House debate, Congressman Joe Barton, Republican of Texas and ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said simply and honestly, “we have a difference in philosophy.”  For Democrats, the bottom line according to Barton was insurance coverage.

Republicans, he argued, want to control costs.  They assert that if you make people pay more out of pocket at the point of service, they will limit their own use of care. The premise is that consumer choice ultimately drives the health care cost equation.  Like other services in the economy, the purchase of health insurance should be a voluntary decision.

The serious Democrats say that this health care “market” doesn’t work. If you’re sick you’re quickly priced out (or closed out) of health insurance. If you face a large out of pocket cost, you may avoid or delay a service that you really need. At some point in the course of illness, you’ll then be likely to enter the health care system with greater need and in a more expensive way. More broadly, buying services piecemeal plays into the market incentives, as they exist, for providers of care (hospitals, doctors, drug and device makers) to increase the volume of the services they provide.  Broad coverage in a structured and regulated insurance market less reliant on fee for service payment, the counter argument goes, is the more effective way to control costs.  Agreeing at least in part with Congressman Barton’s label, these Democrats assert that, yes, insurance coverage is the bottom line in crafting an alternative approach to cost control.

Perhaps the best political observation is that whatever the philosophical differences, the broad health reform issue didn’t dent the Bush 43 agenda, which, following the cyclical pattern of American politics, helped bring a Democrat back to the White House.

While speaking recently with Daniel Chauche

Yesterday, upon the stair / I met a man who wasn’t there / He wasn’t there again today / I wish, I wish he’d go away…

Only with Daniel, of course, I wish, I wish he’ll choose to stay.

Chauche, to some extent in person and evocatively in his work, seems to fade in and out of the frame. At once, he is patiently explaining what his art is, but doing so by taking away layers of what it is not. During a recent conversation he said his work was “documentary photography” but then quickly refined the comment by saying it was “personal photography in a documentary style – not National Geographic, not crime scene investigator, not reportage” though it uses some of the same techniques. Then there was an instructive foray into the history of photography, and where his form fits into the development of the field in time and place. Then the conversation turned to what he hopes will be the historical importance of his whole collection of images, created over three decades of life in Guatemala that provide a unique visual memory of the country and its people during his time here.

I understood him perfectly, and then I didn’t. And then I did. Yesterday upon a stair, I met a man who wasn’t there…

To explain his art, Daniel can point to the significant subtext in any photograph which ties the image to its place in time and space – the indicators that reveal, to use his term, the “it-ness” of the image. By way of one complex example, consider the last image in the gallery at the bottom of this page. It is a photograph of a cemetery, beautifully balanced with a symbolic tree of life rising above a mid-field horizon line. But the “it-ness” of the photograph only comes clear if you know the significance of the dates (early 1982) and what that era meant in the history of Guatemala (a time of unrelenting violence and war) and that the double XX’s on the grave markers mean that the bodies could not be identified. Then might your eyes be drawn to the other crosses with the double XX’s disappearing into the background of the graveyard and sense the image’s it-ness.

But at the same time, Chauche has no desire to own your “Aha!” moment. He has plenty of his own at work and in the world, with his camera. And as he collects and creates images, he brings to his audience his own personal experience – experiences that the viewer can feel, standing alone in the gallery. And when he’s created his art, framed and represented his subject,  one feels as if you are seeing the world through the photographer’s lens, and yet also, very much through your own eyes. The realization of that shared experience between the artist, the subject, the history and the viewer is the root of the there / not there paradox. Oddly and inspiringly, you also get the sense that this means you, too. The woman with the child on her hip is not there. Nor are you. The man with the lottery tickets is not there. Nor are you. Death as a costumed  dancer is not there. Nor are you. And yet you all are – in a place out of time and space. Chauche is the conduit. It’s a rather Antigonish experience.

To explain further his philosophy of personal photography in a documentary style Daniel compared his work to a novel written so well that the reader forgets that it’s just words on a page. When that happens you are fully in the writer’s world. As we looked over images in his home, that was, for me, the “Aha!” moment.

Then, of course, Daniel changed the metaphor and said that maybe his photographs are better understood as poems. Words that, properly few in number and well chosen, somehow speak to a truth of extraordinary depth and substance. Again, that is a way of understanding the “it-ness” of the image or of the words. I thought I had him at the first metaphorical turn, but my understanding deepened with the second  reference. He wasn’t there again today.

To turn rather crassly from the inter-connectedness of images to history, and narrative to visual philosophy, you should be there to view his work personally. The artist is presenting a show that focuses on the Panchoy Valley and its inhabitants for the Sol del Río Gallery at Mesón Panza Verde located on 5a Avenida in Antigua, #19. The show opens on January 13th at 5 PM and runs through early February.

You will see Daniel there. Maybe…

It was Christmas Eve in New York City,

Growing up Jewish, I had no real context for Christmas other than it appeared to be a whole lot more fun than Chanukah. The neighbors’ houses were lit up with colored lights and lawn displays, a twinkling tree centered proudly in each living room window. Television was filled with animated specials my parents would not allow me to watch. My non-Jewish friends were nearly apoplectic with anticipation. Meanwhile, I was kept out of all Christmas-themed pageants at school and had to sit in a back room with the two creepy Jehovah Witness kids as if we were being punished. In a way, I guess, we were.

It seemed to me that Chanukah followed the familiar ‘cruel oppression/miraculous triumph’ theme of virtually all Jewish holidays. Mostly, it felt like a lame consolation prize. Eight nights were no match for One Awesome 24 Hours. And while I had no interest or affinity at all for the ‘Christ is born’ part of December 25th, it’s tough to tell a kid he’s forbidden to get excited about bright lights, happy songs and garish amounts of gift-giving on a Super-Special Snowy Day that promises Joy For All. I was never bitter when it came to Christmas, but knew I was stuck a total outsider.

My five-year-old nephew, on the other hand, was in way deep. And while I didn’t get along with his parents for any number of valid reasons, I loved the kid and genuinely enjoyed his annual frenzy of Christmas expectation. But judging from our conversations at Thanksgiving a few weeks earlier, I understood that this year would be different. He had arrived at that life-changing Santa Clause tipping point that all kids must face: Knowing he could still believe if he wanted to, but realizing that he’d have to face the truth soon enough. As the twinkle-lit houses of New Jersey whipped past the windows of the overcrowded Raritan Valley Local, I hoped my suspicions that Christmas is just another of life’s brightly wrapped disappointments would never have to become his.

I reached my brother’s home and heaved my torn bags of tattered gifts towards the general direction of the family’s large artificial tree. My nephew looked at the presents then at me, his face scrunched up in a combination of teary anger and fearful concern. “Why,” he asked, “are you so late?” I softened immediately, going down to one knee and opening my arms. He ran in for the hug. “I thought something happened or you weren’t coming,” he snuffled into my shoulder.

“Well, Jeff,” I said. “Something did happen and I almost didn’t make it.” I sat on the couch, craned my head to make sure his parents were busy in the kitchen and patted the cushion next to me. He climbed up into my lap.

“The train had just left Newark,” I began, “and we were going really fast. Everyone was smiling and singing and happy to be headed home for Christmas Eve. Suddenly the train put on its brakes. There was a long shriek of metal, then these loud, awful thuds. It felt like we hit something – or some things – really big. People and packages were being thrown everywhere. The train finally stopped, and everything went quiet. The conductor opened the door, and I followed him outside to see if I could help. I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was a terrible scene.”

K

Diddle: To insert ones fingers into a soft moist place and twirl rhythmically. To many this definition of ‘diddle’ may suggest a sexual connotation, but to me it simply says ‘Grandma’. Wait. Let me clarify. I’m talking about noodles here. Wait. Let me clarify further. I only diddle with Grandma on Christmas Eve. That still doesn’t sound good. OK. My Grandma and I diddle noodles for the whole family all day, Christmas Eve. My brother helps. So does my mom. Yeah. That sounds right.

Diddling is a Christmas Eve tradition in my family. I’ve been doing it ever since I was a little kid. So has my mom. Even my Grandma has been a skilled diddler since she was a youngster. Which amazes me because she’s incredibly old. Almost as old, I think, as those Bristle Cone Pines in California. And those are supposed to be the oldest trees on earth at something like 89 years. She tried to tell me once that HER mother diddled as well, but having read Genesis I view this statement as illogical.

One of the keys to diddling a good noodle is getting the right amount of milk. I’m not sure why this is, but to listen to my Grandma tell it, I can only assume that if the wrong amount of milk is used, one’s only remaining recourse is to burst into tears and await death. The milk is perhaps as important as the egg, and the egg is really the soul of the endeavor. The milk and the egg must be diddled together and expanded to birth the noodle. And there’s a little salt involved as well. But of course you wouldn’t want it too salty.

I still feel like maybe this whole thing doesn’t sound right.

So every year on Christmas Eve my Grandmother Jane, who has consumed the better part of nine bottles of Bailey’s Irish Cream, will stagger out into the living room and say something like “OK! Time to start diddling!” By this time our beef has been simmering for several hours, so it really is diddling time. This is also the cue for me, my brother, and my father to ‘remember’ that we still have Christmas shopping to do (as in all of it) and that we must go to the mall immediately.

Most years this shit does not fly, because my mother has ensured that we finished our shopping the previous day. She does this by employing a variety of tactics such as begging, threatening us with completely unnecessary exploratory surgery, or, failing that, doing our shopping for us. My brother will say “Oops! Forgot to do all my shopping. I have to get to the mall.” And my mother will say, “No you didn’t! You’re getting me your gall-bladder. It’s already wrapped. In YOU. Now get to diddling.” It really is a magical time of year.

We all file into the kitchen where Grandma slurs something completely incoherent at us, which leads to a rousing game of ‘What the Hell Did Grandma Say’, after which she hands/throws/drops in our direction a bowl of flour with a little depression in the middle. We each add a little salt, crack an egg into it, and then pour in a little milk. I add an amount of milk which my Grandmother declares is too much, and then my brother adds an amount that she declares is too little. But here’s the kicker: It’s the exact same amount of milk! We know this because we’ve taken to measuring the milk with the same kind of micro-pipette used in DNA testing. We are left to assume that Grandma, who has had multiple eye surgeries, can see, without magnification, actual individual molecules of milk. Because to suggest that Grandma might be wrong about anything noodle or diddle-related would be grounds for familial excommunication.

Now it’s time to argue about how many noodles we will need, a noodle being defined as one egg worth of noodle dough. This leads to a discussion of who will be attending our traditional family feast, which has, oddly enough, not been discussed at all up to this point. The usual suspects are all well accounted for and assumed to be coming: aunt, uncle, cousins, that lot. The only real wild card is Carol, a dear family friend whom we all love very much and whom we welcome to every big family event despite the fact that not one of us can stand her company for more than one minute and 15 seconds (a record held by my mother). So we settle on a number, usually five or six, and then make some other number between four and eight, the important thing being that there is a discrepancy between the number decided upon and the number produced, as contradiction makes the noodles taste better.

Here’s a question: how do you know when your noodle is completely diddled? It has to do with firmness. A well-diddled noodle is firm, but not hard, and it shouldn’t be sticky at all. If it’s sticky, by God, you are in for a world of trouble. Because it’s time for the hard part. Now that the noodles have been diddled, and diddled well, they must be flattened. My brother and I, who are responsible for the bulk of the rolling, begin to pray that my Grandmother hasn’t forgotten her big, purple, metal rolling-pin, because the little wooden one that my mother annually fails to replace is a real piece of crap. It is thin and spindly, and while it could easily be used to stake up sagging tomato plants, as a rolling pin it is virtually useless.

We take turns rolling the noodles. It takes a lot of flour. On the rolling surface (or ‘kitchen counter’ as we like to say), on the rolling pin, on myself, on the floor, and, I think, on the dog. Once the dog is properly floured I can begin to roll. I am an excellent noodle roller, unlike my brother who always tears the noodles and rolls them into weird, amoeba-like shapes, and who should probably stick to toaster-shaped items as his sole culinary endeavor. Really. I’ve seen him fail to properly microwave canned soup. And he’s 30. Take it out of the can, guy!

My brother and I take turns rolling one noodle at a time, mine getting progressively better, his slowly taking on the appearance of Jackson Pollock paintings. Grandma, whose job is basically done, occasionally wanders over to mock my brother and remind both of us that “It’s not thin enough until you can read a newspaper through it.” An absurd claim since, to the best of my knowledge, she has never been able to read.

At this point it’s getting close to dinner time and we would be cutting the noodles into strips, or ‘noodles’, were they dry enough. But of course we started much too late in the day so my mother has to get out the hair dryer and blow flour all over the kitchen, but not dry the noodles out too much or they will crack which, I’m told, really pisses off Jesus. Cutting is another moment wherein Grandma has a chance to shine by telling us how wide or skinny to slice them. It is also the only point in the noodle process, from diddle to consumption, when we can basically ignore her.

Eventually the cut noodles go into the water that the beef was cooking in all day, where they become gravy, then we all settle down to drink until someone realizes that we don’t have nearly enough potatoes. We run around awhile, eventually submitting to the grim reality that there is absolutely nothing we can do about the potato shortage, after which we settle down to drink and chat with newly arrived guests and eat too much cheese.

Soon we all congregate around the big table where Grandma is passed out, and it’s dinner time. Here is the proper way to eat Beef and Noodles on Christmas Eve.

1) Wake Grandma.

2) Take a giant chunk of beef, which is tender and delicious, and put it on your plate. DO NOT OFFER TO SERVE OTHERS! The table is very big, and the platter is very heavy, often with hilarious results.

3) Take an absurd quantity of potatoes, preferably before anyone else, because there aren’t enough and you won’t get seconds. People will point out the potato shortage. Ignore them.

4) Take a giant ladle full of noodles and apply to the potatoes as with gravy. Take as much as you like, there are WAY too many noodles.

5) While reaching for string beans, notice something out of the corner of your eye. Turn and realize it is your brother’s unwashed index finger buried up to the second knuckle in your tender and delicious chunk of roast beef. Notice that he is smiling at you.

6) Smirk, get the beans, and when he’s reaching for the rolls drop an olive into his wine.

7) Gorge. Merry Christmas.

Kevin Petrie hails from Seattle but lives and works in Antigua for no readily apparent reason whatsoever.  He is lucky to have a family who allow themselves to be publicly mocked.

Illustration by Juan Pablo Canale Banus

It wouldn’t be fair to describe my upbringing as Pagan. Paganism implies that one worships something, be it the Sun God Ra, the trickster Pan, or Zeus, God of Thunder and Lightning. No, my formative years were largely devoid of religion. Specifically, my family aligned itself with a brand of Unitarianism that required no actual religious practice of any kind. It was beautiful, really. We could call ourselves Christians and eat ourselves into a comatose state on all the relevant holidays, but we could also shoplift and engage in guilt-free masturbation.

We did celebrate the holidays, too. Easter was all bunnies and chocolate eggs, and Lent was a word I had heard somewhere. But as a family, we did (and still do) buy into Christmas a bit more than the other big days on the Christian calender. It is after all the most important, what with the birth of Christ having been arbitrarily placed on December 25th in order to coincide with the already popular pagan mid-winter festivals, thus easing the conversion of the peoples of eastern Europe.

So every year we get a tree and put lights on it and decorate it with a variety of hideous ornaments that my brother and I created through sheer talent and will power during the long, hot hours of our preschool craft time.

We top our tree with an angel, and every year as my mother pulls out the realistically-rendered, red-robed heavenly guardian she bought about ten years back (and I push hard in favor of the chintzy, haloed female figure my great-grandmother made god-knows-when out of gold wire and a plastic champagne glass) my father clears his throat and asks: “Did I ever tell you the story of how the angel got on top of the Christmas tree?”

It is one of my most cherished Christmas traditions, and one I would like to share. So allow me to present, to the best of my ability, my father’s story of How the Angel Got on Top of the Christmas Tree.

It was Christmas Eve at the North Pole, and Santa Clause, as is not unusual for a man of his carriage in a high stress position, was on the verge of a massive coronary. Or an aneurism. Or possibly both. He had just discovered 653 pages of the naughty – nice list wedged between the cushions of his sofa, and while most of the children on it were naughty, he was still short almost 17,000 gifts. He was contemplating reinstating a plan he had used once years before wherein toys already belonging to naughty children are stolen and re-gifted to nice ones, when a gruff, older elf approached him carrying a rocking horse fitted with a saddle made from old glow-in-the-dark watch hands.

“Uh…Santa?” Said the elf.

“Yeah, what is it?” asked Santa, turning to look. “Great God in Heaven! What were you little morons thinking?!”

“Well,” said the elf, “ever since this whole Indiglo thing came up, we don’t really have a lot of call for the old glowing hands, so we thought maybe, you know, this might work. They’re a little pointy, but…”

“They’re not just pointy, you nit-wit! They’re radioactive!” He slumped down onto a nearby bench. “Christ, if that one ever gets out…”

“Now Santa, not a single cancer-related death was ever positively linked to our watches. Besides, remember in the 50’s? We used to stuff stockings with cartons of Lucky Strikes.”

At this Santa sprang back to his feet, suddenly fuming. “It doesn’t Goddamn matter about one rocking horse! I’m THOUSANDS of gifts short!”

“Well, why don’t you just take them from the naughty kids again and…”

“And have INTERPOL back up my ass?” Bellowed Santa. “They’re still after me from the last time! Get out of here! Get that thing away from me!” At this the elf tucked the possibly leukemia-inducing rocking horse under his arm and scurried out of sight. Santa paced back and forth, breathing deeply, lacking even the patience to go out and check the reins on the sleigh, an act that usually calmed him down.

Just then one of the little Christmas Angels approached him. Santa disliked this particular Angel quite a lot. A little, vacuous, blonde thing named Tiffany with a habit of talking about incredibly inane subjects for long periods of time without ever pausing, even to breathe. “Santa! Santa!” she shouted. “Santa, Vixen is sick so she’s not givin’ it up and Blitzen, you know how he gets frustrated quickly, well, he got to feeling a little randy and he tried to hop up on Prancer which pissed Dancer right off even though Dasher told me that Dancer told him that things between he and Prancer aren’t even going that well lately and he’s thinking about asking for a new place in the lineup but anyway he socked Blitzen a good one and…..”

“ENOUGH!” roared Santa! “Just grab the cattle prod and tell those sniveling sacks of crap to get their game faces on! It’s Christmas freaking EVE!” The little angel staggered back a few steps, eyes wide, and then skittered off through the nearest door. Santa found himself alone once again, but couldn’t calm down. He stood with clenched fists and shouted at nobody.

I went to a Christmas piano recital

I had no sooner plopped down in a pew than the flashbacks started. Instantly, I’m stuck inside Mrs. Tiffin’s dark parlor with the two pianos and the clock that rings with the Westminster chimes. Tiny plaster busts of composers scowl at me from the mantel, accusing: “When we were your age, we’d written symphonies.” Mrs. Tiffin’s fingers are shiny, swollen with arthritis. Mr. Tiffin snuffles around the kitchen. I play as if to convince her I’d practiced my pieces every day – several times a day – but darn it, they’re just too hard. Unfazed, she hands me a brand-new piece – in five flats and three different time signatures usually reserved for her fifth-year students – and says, “The recital is Sunday; I think you can memorize this by then…”

Immediately it’s Sunday; I’m wearing a jacket, tie, and wool pants so scratchy they could scour saucepans; I’m quivering on the piano bench, sweat gushing from my fingers; I aim to hit one note and five clang down together; the kids behind me are rocking the pews with laughter; I’m nine years old and trembling like a small animal cornered by Dobermans.

Fortunately, at just that instant, the first little performer walked up front to Ms. Cheryl’s piano and began attempting one of the four The First Noels we would be treated to that evening. Others would add three Silent Nights, three Joy to the Worlds, and five Good King Wenceslases.

Most of Ms. Cheryl’s young recital participants were unfortunates who’ll use these two or three years of forced lessons only as examples to a spouse – decades hence – of just how little their parents understood who they were, really. They raced through their assigned carols with fingers uncontrollable as spiders. They played Away in a Manger and Jingle Bells like they were striking the keys with their heels. They stuttered and stumbled during Up on the Housetop and We Three Kings; if notes were words, we’d have heard “field and fountain, moor and moun..mou…mo-mo…mountain..tain…” I loved it enormously. My fingers did not sweat once.

Then, as the older kids came on with musical selections people could listen to without actually flinching, I had another flashback – kinder, goofier, altogether more spiritual. This time I’m singing in the high school choir at the Second Presbyterian Church. It’s Christmas Eve, midnight vespers. In ten minutes we’ll be outside in the new-fallen snow, exclaiming over the miracle of the season. For the past forty-five minutes, I’ve been entranced by the music, by the dim blue light throughout the sanctuary, by the lovely hair and necks of numerous sopranos and altos.

The recessional is Silent Night. The choir begins to exit the chancel, lit now only by candles bordering the center aisle. A baritone, I exit nearly last, and therefore have more time than most to fall spellbound by the conjury of music, candlelight, and beautiful teenage girls. Four steps lead down, out of the chancel; I have walked them probably two hundred times. Tonight, though, I am enraptured, and miscount the steps – three. I am singing the last chorus of Silent Night as my foot drops and extra eight inches and lands… “Silent night, … holy n-uhhhh!!!”… like I was hit by a linebacker. Heads whip up in the first seven pews; no one knows what happened, but most eyes fall on me as a likely candidate. Even so, I do not flinch; I am dauntless in body and spirit; by now my musical confidence has been tempered countless times in the unforgiving crucible of Mrs. Tiffin’s piano recitals. I do not betray my position, but continue resolutely up the aisle toward the dissolving knots of choir girls, toward the fresh snow, toward Christmas morning…

“All is calm, …all is bright…”

Michael Chrisman is the former Editor / Publisher of The Valley Comic News. He’s recently retired to Antigua where he plays music, writes, thinks and drinks.

This story is only very loosely connected to the holiday season.

The friend I was traveling with, Patricia, was a beautiful girl from Adelaide who I’d met a few weeks before in Anchorage. The first day at the hostel I saw her across the day room and overheard her chatting with someone about how much she wanted to go kayaking – which led me to grab Lonely Planet and a telephone, and to proceed to have a series of unnecessarily loud conversations with various guides in the area about the virtues of fiberglass boats over plastic. Obvious or not, the play worked and that evening we were sharing a halibut dinner and planning our hitchhike down to Resurrection Bay the following morning for a week at a remote hostel and kayak camp.

That summer Patricia and I would log thousands of miles on the side of the road, about one hundred hiking in the mountains, and dozens and dozens in our kayaks. There a particular sense of one’s humanity in the Alaskan bush and also on the side of an Alaskan road. Being out in the big mountains, looking over ice fields with black basalt peaks shooting skyward through glaciers thousands of years old brings up feelings of both humble insignificance and universal connectedness. Seeing an 80,000 pound humpback breech to your right and watching his bubble trail pass beneath your 12 foot boat only to surface on your left does much the same. And somehow, hitchhiking in the north does so, too. In each scenario, at every moment, you’re number could be up. And yet – just as you trust that the next grizzly won’t eat you, and you won’t be flipped from your kayak by an aggressive orca, you trust that on the highway north of Seward, your next ride won’t kill you either. You have faith that that next ride won’t be  any more than half-drunk and he’ll still be taking his anti-psychotics – or at least you hope that his gun will jam at  the last minute if everything goes horribly wrong.

Patricia and I, touched by that good fortune and sense of humble connectedness, had had the best possible run of hitchhiking luck that summer. We never had to wait for more than an hour for a ride. We’d been invited to camp on people’s property, we’d been offered a free gun (which we declined), we’d been picked up by an elderly couple named Earl and Mavis in an RV because we looked like “a couple of nice kids,” which I decidedly did not. And once we’d even made it from Homer to Denali National Park in a single day – a hitch of almost 700 miles for which we’d figured two days minimum, with one likely spent on the side of the road.

As a last hurrah for the season, Patricia and I decided to do one more trek outside of Seward before we had to catch separate flights back to our own corners of the world. The trail we chose was only about 20 miles long, the first leg following the Lost Lake Trail and the second on the Primrose.  The Lost Lake trailhead was about 10 miles north of town. It’s a pretty steady climb the first few hours, up through the devastated spruce forest, but once you clear the timberline the vistas became overwhelmingly beautiful with high alpine lakes set like cold sapphires in seas of lupine and fireweed. Ringing the horizon in every direction were the snow-covered and glaciated Kenai Mountains.

The skies were clear and the days so long that had we wanted to speed the journey we could have finished it in two days, but that’s just not the point. Rather than racing, we would lounge on our Therm-a-Rests after coffee and oatmeal in the morning or freeze-dried lasagna at the end of the day. In the low-angled light of an Alaskan midnight we’d sip hot chocolate spiked with bourbon and listen to the wind, or to the wolves howling in the distance, before making a small fire and bedding down for the night.