CSotD: A Tree Grows in Manhattan
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Grand Avenue cites a common complaint, the over-long lead time on major holidays, such that, for instance, Halloween candy appears in the stores before Labor Day.
The big one is Christmas because, O Best Beloved, there was once a time when Santa Claus arrived in town as the guest of honor in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
But yesterday I heard on the radio that the Christmas tree is up at Rockefeller Center, and, unless they're going to leave it dark for another week and a half, well, there ya go.
It's been awhile since we had the dignity to hold off on Christmas until Thanksgiving and I guess with families scattered more than in the past, you have to reckon in the mailing and so forth, but I still think you could get the bulk of your holiday shopping done in the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Anyway, I was doing some shopping on Friday and paused at the meat section because I'm thinking of cooking a duck for Thanksgiving, but I did the dates in my head and realized it was way too early to buy a Thanksgiving bird.
However, while it's not time to start lining up your Thanksgiving dinner ingredients yet, the Christmas stuff is already on store shelves and they're already playing that insipid drivel those delightful carols on the Musak.
Duck, by the way, is a good Thanksgiving main course for one or two, because it's too rich to eat very often and a turkey would burden you with way too much meat. Which aspect always reminds me of when then-wife and I had my family out in Colorado for Christmas and decided to celebrate with a Christmas goose like in all those Victorian stories.
And discovered that in all those Victorian stories, people got a slice of goose each and a lot of other stuff, because there's not much meat on a goose. And this was back when stores closed on Christmas and besides, by the time we discovered how few people a goose feeds, it was a little late to throw something else in the oven.
Anyway, I'll confess that I heard about the tree in NYC on WCBS while I was going around the dial on my way home from Hilary Price's annual open studio, which is still on today and if you're anywhere near Northampton, Mass, is absolutely worth the drive because it's not just her modest digs but a whole four-story building full of artists and craftspersons.
And it's where I start my Christmas shopping each year, so I guess I can't be too much of a fundamentalist on the topic of when that process begins.
Unless I declare these items to be re-purposed Hannukah presents, since that holiday begins Dec 12.
Still, nobody gets a "Happy Holidays" from me until maybe next Tuesday at the earliest. We need some standards in this world.
On a related topic
Speaking of listening to the radio on I-91 North, I mentioned last week driving home from the AAEC Convention Sunday and hearing preliminary reports about the Texas church shootings over and over again, which is why today's Brevity cracked me up.
Most of the "reports" were pretty much of this level of quality and detail, though my favorite was an interview with an NPR Reporter from San Antonio who not only had no information on the shooting that someone in Chicago or Palm Beach couldn't have provided but who confessed that she'd never even heard of Sutherland Springs until that day.
As you may see on this map, if you take a liking to it and blow it up real good, Sutherland Springs is about 32 miles from downtown San Antonio, where the reporter was, and about 35 miles from New Braunfels, where the shooter came from, which I mention because one of the things they kept saying on the radio that night was how small the town was and what a percentage of its population had died.
I wondered just how remote this little town was that they could be so sure that everyone who went to church there actually lived in town.
I wondered a lot of things that evening despite the continual reporting on the apparent alleged shooting.
It kind of reminded me of when JFK was shot and my older brother was news director on his college radio station.
He took to the air and kept repeating whatever he knew, which wasn't a whole lot, the difference being that he did so knowing that he was only providing a sort of signal to anybody who tuned in to that station and heard what he was saying, so that they would immediately flip over to somebody who knew what the hell was going on.
We sure have come a long way in the past half century.
Plus this
Kevin Necessary makes a point worth making.
There have been Senators and Congresscritters throughout the years who resign because they've had enough, but, in past years, they've slipped away "for personal reasons" without saying much more than that they felt it was time.
Now we're seeing some Republicans step down with dire statements about the state of things, which is nice but, as Necessary notes, doesn't exactly put you in the running for a chapter in the next edition of "Profiles in Courage."
Might put you in the running for the next Lifelock commercial, though:
As the ads go on to say, "Why monitor a problem if you don't fix it?"
Maybe the answer is in this Stuart Carlson cartoon: Trump has assembled a constituency that worships the flag but honestly doesn't give a damn who Dear Leader pals around with or if he ever follows through with anything he's promised.
The only time Trump didn't lie is when he boasted that he could shoot someone down on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters.
Sad.
People get what they want, for Christmas and otherwise
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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