Planning ahead for negative holiday experiences

This thoughtful article from Psychology Today give some tips about living through the holidays with chronic illness and accompanying loneliness. It is bitter to recognize the experiences the author recalls, but there is sweetness in her discussion of practicing Buddhist philosophies of compassion, mudita, and tonglen. I believe they offer an alternative to the absorbed negativity of living with chronic illness, especially during the stressful and emotionally-loaded holiday season.

Thanksgiving Reincarnations

 Every year around this time I think about how nice it’d be if the U.S. officially evolved Thanksgiving into a national holiday celebrating food & the people we love and who love us. In the context of extreme economic inequality, it would be meaningful to think about where we stand and what we can do to make everyone feel thankful. Maybe it’s as simple as making your grandmother’s favorite food and driving to the nursing home to feed it to her. Maybe it makes sense to sit down with a beloved chosen family for a vegan potluck. Or, maybe it means revolution.

The spread at our ragtag Thanksgiving dinner, Antioch College 2000. My best college friend and I cooked and assembled the whole meal between three different dorms. The first, where we lived, had a kitchen with a microwave and fridge, but no stove or oven. The second, nearby, had an oven where I made the stuffing. The third—all the way across campus—had an oven big enough for the turkey. Somehow, between the two of us, we made it happen. It was my least traditional Thanksgiving celebration, but also the most memorable one by far. There is something lovely about sitting down with a table full of fellow students far, far away from home and actively creating an environment of such bounty and camaraderie.

Click here for my inaugural Thanksgiving piece from 2009, in which I begin to ponder the politics behind the holiday.

90 days until Christmas!

I found this Amy Winehouse gem on Youtube today. It's her rendition of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." I love a musician who isn't too serious for covers, and holiday ones at that.

Busy, Busy times!

The winter holiday planning continues, and is much more pleasurable now that it is not simply a procrastination technique for other parts of my life. I am realizing that I need to sit down and pick a few specific crafts to do for my DIY gifts rather than just bookmark several dozen ideas and pick up various accouterments as I find them. I'm going to end up with too much stuff I'll never use. So--that's the next step. Hammer out the details. I wish I could say more, but I don't want to ruin the surprises for any friends who may read the blog! I also printed out a handy series of holiday planning page templates from Organized Christmas, which I've begun filling out. I'm doing a lot of picking and choosing with it; not every page they think is necessary is appropriate for my situation. For example, no matter how much I dream of it, I am not able to afford a full new outfit for every holiday party I attend. I do like that they have a template specifically for gift brainstorming, and even one that goes into specifics about handmade gifts. Perfect! I wish I were this organized in other aspects of my life.

In between all this planning, I came across a quote about Tori Amos that I wrote down more than a decade ago, and which happens to be very blog-appropriate. From Barbara Ellen at New Musical Express in 1992: "She's a Grade A, Class One, Turbo-driven Fruitcake." You bet your bottom dollar I'm itching to re-post the Superion's Fruitcake music video!

So remember that DIY ethic I was thinking about last year?

Well, I've begun gathering ideas for DIY crafts that would make good, inexpensive gifts, and it occurred to me: What if every gift I give this holiday season is handmade? I'm not talented enough to do it alone; I'd include Etsy.com and other artisan items in the mix.

Can you imagine how awesome it'd be to:
1. Save money?
2. Save resources?
3. Save transportation costs and fuel?
4. Disconnect from the holiday mass consuming culture?
5. Support small-scale crafters and artisans?
6. Learn new crafts and improve my crafting abilities?
(7. Make my holiday blog more compelling?)

Yes, it would be VERY AWESOME INDEED.

(Fat square!)

Of course, this means I will need to get started extra early. Like, right now. But that's cool. Any excuse to tune into the Pandora Christmas station and Google the you-know-what out of craft ideas! Oh, and the idea fits in beautifully with the goodies I bake every year anyway. Maybe there'll be other food-based gifts to explore!

What do you think? Do any arts or crafts come to mind if you were going to give this a shot?

Beets for Life!

I'm glad someone else was paying attention to Tom Robbin's beet love in Jitterbug Perfume.  Aside from being in the list of my top 10 favorite novels, Robbins also used Jitterbug as a vehicle for discourse on the lowly beet.  This writer over at Saveur.com talks about the Tom Robbins/beet connection, and provides several good-looking beet recipes to try out!

First Visit to the Farmer's Market

I am so, so stupid for going to my first farmer's market of the season with only $6 in my wallet.  All I walked away with were these extraordinarily sweet and tiny strawberries:

I ate them all within 20 minutes of buying them.  I excused myself for this, knowing that these are the sort of ephemeral fruits that mold over with white fuzz within several hours of picking.  My companion, M, bought some fresh snap peas, and we traded back and forth on the car ride home.  This market, which I had never been to before, had some offerings that I've not seen at my local farmer's market.  There were various cuts of local lamb, black currant cordial (the sample was divine!), lavender-infused goat cheese, and locally-sourced maple cream.  But most exciting was the strawberry-rhubarb shaved ice, which was made to order using a large, rotary shaving device.  It was fun to watch the process, and I only hope that they'll offer it again the next time I'm there!