Lift Up Your Hearts!

Having lived through more than seven decades of holidays, I decided it would be of interest (to me, if no one else) to consider how the various annual celebrations have changed, or not changed, as I've lived my life.

As a child, I knew that holidays were about three things: family, presents, and days off from school. Not necessarily in that order—since family was the ocean in which I swam, I didn't necessarily recognize how central it was to our observances. The only celebration from which we children were excluded was my parents' anniversary. I remember being sad about that as a child, and I admire those who celebrate anniversaries as the "family birthday." What a great idea! But "date night" was unheard of in that era, and their anniversary was one of the rare times my parents would splurge on dinner in a restaurant.

Yes, folks, basically the only time we ate out was on vacations, where Howard Johnson's—with its peppermint stick ice cream—was the highlight. Solidly middle class as we were, with an engineer's salary to support us, restaurant meals simply did not fit into our regular budget. "Not even McDonalds?" you ask. Brace yourself: I was born before the first McDonalds franchise. But even when our town did get a McDonald's, the idea of paying someone to fix a meal my mother could make better at home seemed crazy.

But back to the holidays. I'll go chronologically, which means beginning with New Year's Day, which could just as well go last, as New Year's Eve. Other people may have celebrated with big bashes and lots of champagne, but we almost always spent New Year's Eve with family friends, either at their home or ours. My parents and the Dietzes had been friends since before any children were born, and by the time each family had four we made quite a merry party all by ourselves. I think the adults usually played cards, and we kids had the basement to ourselves. Of course there was that other important feature at a party: food. Lots of good food, homemade of course.

Those who didn't fall asleep beforehand counted down to the new year, and toasted with a beverage of some sort. The adults may have had a glass of champagne. One year Mr. Dietze set off a cherry bomb in the snow, which was amazing (and illegal) in the days before spectacular fireworks became ubiquitous. I miss the awe and wonder that rarity engendered. After a little more eating and talking, we gathered up sleeping children and went home. As it was the only time of the year we were allowed to stay up to such an hour, that too was a treat. Once a year past midnight is still about right for me, though sadly it didn't stay that rare.

Valentine's Day was next. This was not the major holiday it is today, and it was mostly child-centered. In elementary school we created paper "mailboxes" for delivery of small paper Valentines to our classmates; Here's an example of what they looked like. (Click to enlarge.) Some of them may have sounded romantic, but nothing could have been further from our minds. It was just a friend thing, and we enjoyed trying to match the sentiments with the personalities of our friends. Back home, if there was anything romantic about it for my parents, I missed it, being far too concerned with chocolate, and small candy hearts with words on them. Sometimes I'd make a heart cake, formed using a square cake and a round cake cut in half, and decorated with pink frosting and cinnamon candy hearts.

There were two more February holidays that no one celebrates anymore: Abraham Lincoln's birthday on the 12th, and George Washington's on the 22nd. We would get one day or the other off from school, but not both. Nowadays they've morphed into President's Day, which is in February but I never remember when because it keeps changing.

March brought St. Patrick's Day, which was bigger in school than anywhere else, chiefly through room decorations with green shamrocks, leprechauns, and rainbows with pots of gold. In elementary school, some of our neighborhood kids had formed a small singing group—we mostly sang on the bus, but one year our teacher heard about it and persuaded us to go from classroom to classroom singing what Irish songs we knew. Back then, my family didn't know we had some Irish ancestors, so as far as I can remember, the holiday never went beyond the school door.

Easter, of variable date, was of course a big deal. Unlike Christmas, it had mostly lost its Christian significance in favor of bunnies and chicks, eggs and candy. Except for when we were with our grandparents and had to dress in our Easter finery and go to church. The going to church part was okay; the finery not so much.

We kids would put out our Easter baskets the night before, and awaken to find them filled with candy; often toys appeared also. Our baskets were sometimes bought at a store, but often homemade—I remember using a paper cutter to make strips from construction paper, and weaving them into baskets.

For me, the best part was our Easter egg hunt. None of this plastic egg business! We had dyed and decorated real hard-boiled eggs beforehand, and our parents hid them around the house, supplemented by foil-wrapped chocolate eggs, before going to bed on Easter Eve. What a blessing it was to live where it was cool enough at Easter time that eggs could safely be left overnight without fear of spoilage or melting.

Easter dinner was almost always a ham, beautiful and delicious, studded with cloves, crowned with pineapple rings, and covered with a glaze for which I wish I had the recipe. I know we did not always have a "canned ham"—for one thing, I remember the ham bone—but the experience of a canned ham was memorable, since they had to be opened with a "key" at risk of life and limb—or at least of mildly damaged fingers.

May brought Memorial Day, which was always May 30, not this Monday-holiday business. When it fell on a school day, it was a day off, which we always appreciated. There was usually a Memorial Day parade, in which we sometimes participated, with band, scout, or fire department groups. There was always something related to the real meaning of the holiday, but we kids never paid attention to the speeches. Our family was well-represented in wartime contributions, but rarely talked about them, and no one had died, so the holiday has no sad associations in my memory.

Mother's Day was in May, also; what I remember most was fixing breakfast in bed for our mother. For some reason, in those days, eating breakfast in bed was regarded as something special. I have no idea why. For me, the practice is associated with being sick, as back then children were expected to recuperate in bed for a ridiculously long time. We even had a special tray, with games imprinted on it, for sick-in-bed meals. Why a healthy adult would voluntarily eat a meal in bed is still beyond my comprehension.

We sometimes had outings on Mother's Day, and otherwise just did our best to make sure that at the end of the day Mom was in no doubt that she was a mother many times over.

Father's Day, in June, was also low-key, although it was a bit more exciting in the years when it coincided with my brother's birthday.

Independence Day was, like Memorial Day, an occasion for parades and speeches. Our neighborhood usually had its own parade, with decorated bicycles and scooters. Occasionally we would go somewhere to see a public fireworks display, which wasn't anything like the spectacular events seen these days; nor did ordinary people generally have fireworks. Sometimes we had sparklers, and the little black dots that burned into "snakes" when you lit them. One time our neighbors had imported some mild fireworks from a state where they were legal, and we enjoyed them—all but my mother, who protested by staying inside and playing the 1812 Overture loudly on our record player (which, by the way, was monophonic).

August was entirely bereft of holidays, though we kids were busy squeezing the last drops out of our summer vacation from school. Since Labor Day was always on a Monday even before the Monday holiday bill came into being, and school always started right after that, the week or two beforehand was a favorite time for family vacations. This holiday was completely divorced from what it was intended to honor; I think I was in college, or even later, before I made the connection with the labor movement and unions.

October 12 was Columbus Day, as it will always be for me. Its chief value was in being a day of vacation. I could tell you that "In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue," and that his boats were the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, but that's about it.

Now Hallowe'en, that was a children's holiday! We didn't have it off from school, unless it fell on a weekend—and if it did, our schools were certain to celebrate it anyway. Costumes—usually homemade, often very clever—a parade around the school, and no doubt some special treats were the order of the day. Parents were invited to watch the parade, which was almost always held outdoors. Most of the kids walked to school, and most had parents at home who could come. Some costumes obviously had more parental help than others, but none that I recall were store-bought, nor were there any of the outlandish, sexualized, and violent costumes I've seen today—or even 35 years ago when I watched Hallowe'en parades at our own children's elementary school. Today's society would no doubt be horrified, however, at our Indians with war paint and bows and arrows, our cowboys and soldiers with toy guns, and our knights with swords.

At night, trick-or-treating was nothing like it is today. For one thing, there wasn't nearly as much loot, since we were restricted to our own neighborhoods, and most households gave our much smaller quantities of treats than is common today. None of this business of parents driving their kids all over to increase their hauls, no trunk-or-treat, no candy distributed at businesses and malls; there was little commercial about it. But we sure had fun, and much more freedom, being turned loose to roam freely within the set bounds of our neighborhood, without regard for darkness or danger or costumes that were difficult to see out of and were not festooned with reflective tape. Younger children went trick-or-treating with their parents—who had the grace to stay in the street while the children rang the doorbells on their own—or more likely, older siblings, who tended to stick a little closer in hopes some kind neighbor would offer the chaperones some candy, too. Back home, we'd gleefully sort through our haul, occasionally trading with siblings, without any concerned parents checking it out first. And of course we ate far too much candy. Only the oldest of my brothers had the strength of will to ration his; the rest of us finished ours up within a week, but he usually had some left in the freezer until the following Hallowe'en.

Most of the time, the creation of my costume was a father- and/or mother-daughter collaboration that I looked forward to all year. Offhand, I remember being a clown, a cuckoo clock, a salt shaker (to go along with my best friend, the pepper shaker), a parking meter, and a medieval knight, among others that will not immediately come to mind. After elementary school, my Hallowe'en costume days petered out, except for one year after we moved to the Philadelphia area and a group of my friends persuaded me to make the rounds with them. That's when I discovered why they were still clinging to childish pursuits: we were in a wealthier neighborhood, where rich people gave out full-sized candy bars!

Another treasured family project was carving pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns. We used real knives to cut as soon as we were responsible enough to handle them, and always illuminated our creations with candles, even though a finger or hand was bound to be mildly burned in the lighting process. Often we kept the seeds when we hollowed out the pumpkins, salting and roasting them. It was so much fun!

But there was a worm in the apple: One year, when I was at a very tender age, our jack-o-lanterns were set outside on our porch, as usual. A gang of teenage boys came rampaging through the neighborhood and viscously smashed our creations. It was heartbreaking. I still remember the sound of their stomping feet on the porch, and their gleeful yells.

On the brighter side, with some help from my mother, I once created a Hallowe'en party for my friends, with a "haunted house" in the basement, games, a craft, food, and watching Outer Limits on our little, black and white television set. (I've set the video to show just the opening theme. If you happen to watch the whole thing, and get hooked, Part 2 is here.)

As with the best holidays, there was good food, not just candy. Apple cider—real apple cider straight from the farm, unfiltered and unpasteurized, a delight that few know today. Sometimes cold, sometimes hot and mulled, depending on the weather, which at Hallowe'en in Upstate New York could be just about anything. Apples themselves, tart and delicious, of varieties difficult to impossible to find today. My mother's homemade pumpkin cookies! And pumpkin bread! A plate of cinnamon-sugar donuts, sometimes homemade but often store-bought and nonetheless delicious. Sometimes popcorn, too.

Thanksgiving. We frequently had guests for Thanksgiving dinner. My father's parents lived 200 miles away, and while it wasn't the three-hour trip it is today, it was short enough for us to get together for Thanksgiving. If it wasn't my grandparents sharing our Thanksgiving dinner, it was friends, and sometimes both. The meal was pretty standard: typically turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, sweet potatoes, peas, creamed onions, Waldorf salad, cranberry sauce, and rolls, with pumpkin and mincemeat pies. Once we acquired a television set (which happened when I was seven years old), there were parades on TV in the morning for the kids, and football games in the afternoon for the men. The women, no doubt, were cooking!  Much later, when we lived in Pennsylvania and had grown up a bit more, the annual "Turkey Bowl" in our own backyard attracted enough friends to make an exciting touch/tag football game in the crisp November afternoon.

And finally, the best for last: Christmas.

These days, there is a Great Divide in the way Christmas is celebrated: Christian and Secular. In my youth it was not so. Christian or not, we all knew the origins and history of the occasion, and everywhere—in stores, in schools, in the public square—Santa, reindeer, snowmen, Christmas trees, presents, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, animals around the manger, shepherds, and angels mingled happily together. Even the Star and the Three Wise Men worked their way out of their proper setting of Epiphany to join the joyous throng.

I loved choosing and decorating our Christmas tree, especially the many years when we cut our own. Christmas tree farms back then were not what they are now, with their carefully-shaped trees in neatly-planted rows. Each tree had its own personality, and we often had a choice among several varieties. Finding our special tree was an adventure I looked forward to every year. The freedom of choice, and cutting the tree ourselves, were important to me. But somehow I never minded when we ended up adopting orphan trees: those chosen and cut down by other customers, then abandoned after some flaw was discovered. Our hearts went out to the poor things, often beautiful in our eyes. And our decorations easily accommodated any flaws.

Tree decorating in our household followed a standard pattern. After trimming the branches to his satisfaction, my father would set the tree in a large can (#10 comes to mind, but I can't be sure) that he filled with sand and mounted in a wooden frame that he had made. It was placed on a sheet and dressed in a homemade Christmas tree skirt. At that point, he put the light strings on. The lights were multi-colored, and much larger than the tiny lights that later became popular. Unlike the practice that continues in Switzerland today, our lights were not real, lighted candles. But burns were still possible: those incandescent bulbs could get quite hot, and Dad had to be careful with their placement.

As soon as that was done, the whole family went to town on the tree! Decorating was a joyous family affair. Each year we created anew popcorn strings, using red string and large-eyed needles. These went on first, after the lights. (Birds enjoyed the popcorn after the tree was taken down.) We had plastic ornaments that were put on the lower levels, where toddlers could reach. We had lovely glass ornaments for higher places. We had an ornament handmade by my grandmother, and several made by young children. Atop the tree was either a star with a light in it, or a glass spire, depending on our mood. The pièce de la résistance? Draping the branches with "icicles." These are hard to explain if you haven't seen them, but they were an essential part of our beautiful trees. Here's a description I found on Reddit that explains them well.

Growing up in the 50s and 60s, there were two types of "tinsel" (we called them "icicles"), the crinkly kind that was metallic, and the plastic kind that was coated with shiny silver. The crinkly kind, which I assume was the lead type, were a tad heavier so they hung straight, while the wispy plastic type was shinier and might fly around a bit. I remember once the static electricity caused them to sway when I walked right near the tree. You had to put these on one strand at a time, which was tedious. Taking them off was also an issue, you could never get all of them off. Both types seemed to fade in popularity and garland tinsel became more common by the 80s. As artificial trees became more common, "icicles" became less practical, and even garland seemed to fall out of favor. "Icicles" looked best on an open-style Balsam Fir type of tree, and not so good on fuller trees like a Scotch Pine and Douglas Fir.

Even our family became less enthusiastic about icicles when the lead kind was replaced by the plastic, which we considered a very inferior substitute. Not the same thing at all! We did (usually) wash our hands after handling the lead....

I haven't mentioned music, which was always an important part of the season. Everyone knew the standard Christmas carols back then, and just as with the displays, Silent Night, O Little Town of Bethlehem, and O Come, All Ye Faithful mingled happily with Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. We sang at home, we sang in school, we sang at community events. Instead of a solitary volunteer manning a red kettle and ringing an annoying bell, the Salvation Army band treated passersby to carols in excellent brass arrangements. And of course we played our favorite Christmas records while decorating our tree. One of my favorites was Sing We Now of Christmas, with the Harry Simeone Chorale. Although the album cover featured on this YouTube playlist is different, it has the exact songs from our record, and I was thrilled to discover it.

During my young childhood, my family went reasonably regularly to church—a small Dutch Reformed church in tiny Scotia, New York. We did not, however, go to church on Christmas. Christmas Eve and Christmas morning were strictly family time.

Christmas Eve. What do I remember about Christmas Eve? Chiefly that my father always read "A Night Before Christmas" (aka "A Visit from St. Nicholas") just before we children went to bed. My parents stayed up late wrapping and assembling gifts, but for me it was all about anticipation. Back then, Christmas was not even thought of (except by those needing to mail overseas packages) before Santa appeared at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, and the month between then and Christmas seemed to me to stretch half a year. Since then, that time period has somehow shrunk to about half a week, even though the "Christmas season" now starts before Hallowe'en.

In my earliest years, we did not have a fireplace, and hung our stockings on our bedroom doorknobs. Somehow, Santa managed without a chimney.... When we moved to a house with fireplaces, the stockings, as I recall, still didn't hang in front of them. You see, we children were allowed to wake up very early and open our stockings; there was some lower limit to the hour, but it was early enough to please us and late enough to give our parents some much-need additional sleep. But we were not allowed to peek at the Christmas tree—so our stockings were hung on an upstairs railing.

I don't know when the gift inflation started, though it is undeniable. Our stockings were rather small—I remember mine being one of my father's old hiking boot socks—and did not hold a lot, but I don't ever remember being disappointed. (Oh yes; there was one year that I was. At one point my mother, in a bit of exasperation at my never-ending Christmas wish list, exclaimed, "You want the world with a string around it!" So I put that on my list. Lo and behold, in my stocking was a small bank in the shape of a globe, and my parents had attached a string to it. Today, I recognize it as a clever joke, but at the time I was bitterly disappointed that Santa had so misunderstood my request.) In addition to small toys and candy, in the toes of our stockings were always a small coin and a tangerine.

Our own children had huge stockings, hand knit by Porter's mother; they were always stuffed full, and the stocking gifts even spilled over onto the floor. Part of this was no doubt because we always had guests with us for Christmas, and everyone wanted to be Santa. Part was because societal expectations had greatly increased. I was aware of the inflationary pressure, and knew it was dangerous, but had very limited success in fighting it.

On Christmas morning, after we children had opened our stockings and spent some time playing with the toys inside, we were allowed to invade our parents' bedroom and show them our treasures, bringing their own stockings to them.

Next on the agenda was breakfast. I don't recall anything particularly special about Christmas breakfast, only that our parents took an unconscionable long time drinking their coffee! Eventually we persuaded them to finish their drinks in the living room, where the tree was. What a wonder! If there weren't as many presents there as our own children experienced, it certainly seemed an abundance to me. Especially after the family grew to six people. One thing I think we did better with our own children was our practice of opening only one gift at a time, so that everyone could enjoy everything. When I was growing up, my father often passed out gifts to multiple people simultaneously, so sometimes we missed seeing other people opening their presents. It did keep the event from lasting all day, however.

The rest of the day was glorious, as we relaxed and enjoyed all our gifts. Except, of course, for my mother, who spent time fixing Christmas dinner. Unlike Thanksgiving and Easter, the menu wasn't fixed: sometimes turkey, sometimes ham, often roast beef, but always something special.

I didn't discover until much later the joys of being in a church that celebrates the Church Year, where Christmas is not a day but a whole season, of 12 days—until Epiphany. I had happily sung, "The Twelve Days of Christmas" all my life without ever thinking about what that meant. So in our family the Christmas tree usually came down around New Year's Day. Nonetheless, for us children the holiday lasted nearly 12 days, as any time we had off from school was a holiday to us.

And that's a look at the year's holidays as I remember them from my youth. I hope some of you have enjoyed this look into the past as much as I did recalling it.

I found the following list in in The Art of Manliness, a publication I rarely read, but have respect for, and not just because their site is hosted by our own Lime Daley, which also hosts this blog. Their article reprints The Children’s Morality Code for Elementary Schools from 1926, which is old enough that I have no qualms about reproducing it here. You're unlikely to see these rules for being a good American in any public elementary school today, more's the pity.  I believe I can heartily endorse all the precepts, except for the penultimate, XI-2:  I will be loyal to my school.  I supposed one has to expect that, given that this list was intended for school children, but I see no particular reason for loyalty to a school any more than to a favorite grocery store or brand of jeans.

As for the rest of them, I say we should bring them back, beginning with our politicians.

THE ELEMENTARY MORALITY OF CIVILIZATION

Boys and girls who are good Americans try to become strong and useful, worthy of their nation, that our country may become ever greater and better. Therefore, they obey the laws of right living which the best Americans have always obeyed.

I. THE LAW OF SELF-CONTROL

GOOD AMERICANS CONTROL THEMSELVES

Those who best control themselves can best serve their country.

1. I will control my tongue, and will not allow it to speak mean, vulgar, or profane words. I will think before I speak. I will tell the truth and nothing but the truth.

2. I will control my temper, and will not get angry when people or things displease me. Even when indignant against wrong and contradicting falsehood, I will keep my self-control.

3. I will control my thoughts, and will not allow a foolish wish to spoil a wise purpose.

4. I will control my actions. I will be careful and thrifty, and insist on doing right.

5. I will not ridicule nor defile the character of another; I will keep my self-respect, and help others to keep theirs.

II. THE LAW OF GOOD HEALTH

GOOD AMERICANS TRY TO GAIN AND KEEP GOOD HEALTH

The welfare of our country depends upon those who are physically fit for their daily work. Therefore:

1. I will try to take such food, sleep, and exercise as will keep me always in good health.

2. I will keep my clothes, my body, and my mind clean.

3. I will avoid those habits which would harm me, and will make and never break those habits which will help me.

4. I will protect the health of others, and guard their safety as well as my own.

5. I will grow strong and skillful.

III. THE LAW OF KINDNESS

GOOD AMERICANS ARE KIND

In America those who are different must live in the same communities. We are of many different sorts, but we are one great people. Every unkindness hurts the common life; every kindness helps. Therefore:

1. I will be kind in all my thoughts. I will bear no spites or grudges. I will never despise anybody.

2. I will be kind in all my speech. I will never gossip nor will I speak unkindly of any one. Words may wound or heal.

3. I will be kind in my acts. I will not selfishly insist on having my own way. I will be polite: rude people are not good Americans. I will not make unnecessary trouble for those who work for me, nor forget to be grateful. I will be careful of other people’s things. I will do my best to prevent cruelty, and will give help to those who are in need.

IV. THE LAW OF SPORTSMANSHIP

GOOD AMERICANS PLAY FAIR

Strong play increases and trains one’s strength and courage. Sportsmanship helps one to be a gentleman, a lady. Therefore:

1. I will not cheat; I will keep the rules, but I will play the game hard, for the fun of the game, to win by strength and skill. If I should not play fair, the loser would lose the fun of the game, the winner would lose his self-respect, and the game itself would become a mean and often cruel business.

2. I will treat my opponents with courtesy, and trust them if they deserve it. I will be friendly.

3. If I play in a group game, I will play, not for my own glory, but for the success of my team.

4. I will be a good loser or a generous winner.

5. And in my work as well as in my play, I will be sportsmanlike—generous, fair, honorable.

V. THE LAW OF SELF-RELIANCE

GOOD AMERICANS ARE SELF-RELIANT

Self-conceit is silly, but self-reliance is necessary to boys and girls who would be strong and useful.

1. I will gladly listen to the advice of older and wiser people; I will reverence the wishes of those who love and care for me, and who know life and me better than I. I will develop independence and wisdom to choose for myself, act for myself, according to what seems right and fair and wise.

2. I will not be afraid of being laughed at when I am right. I will not be afraid of doing right when the crowd does wrong.

3. When in danger, trouble, or pain, I will be brave. A coward does not make a good American.

VI. THE LAW OF DUTY

GOOD AMERICANS DO THEIR DUTY

The shirker and the willing idler live upon others, and burden fellow-citizens with work unfairly. They do not do their share, for their country’s good.

I will try to find out what my duty is, what I ought to do as a good American, and my duty I will do, whether it is easy or hard. What it is my duty to do I can do.

VII. THE LAW OF RELIABILITY

GOOD AMERICANS ARE RELIABLE

Our country grows great and good as her citizens are able more fully to trust each other. Therefore:

1. I will be honest in every act, and very careful with money. I will not cheat nor pretend, nor sneak.

2. I will not do wrong in the hope of not being found out. I can not hide the truth from myself. Nor will I injure the property of others.

3. I will not take without permission what does not belong to me. A thief is a menace to me and others.

4. I will do promptly what I have promised to do. If I have made a foolish promise, I will at once confess my mistake, and I will try to make good any harm which my mistake may have caused. I will speak and act that people will find it easier to trust each other.

VIII. THE LAW OF TRUTH

GOOD AMERICANS ARE TRUE

1. I will be slow to believe suspicions lest I do injustice; I will avoid hasty opinions lest I be mistaken as to facts.

2. I will stand by the truth regardless of my likes and dislikes, and scorn the temptation to lie for myself or friends: nor will I keep the truth from those who have a right to it.

3. I will hunt for proof, and be accurate as to what I see and hear; I will learn to think, that I may discover new truth.

IX. THE LAW OF GOOD WORKMANSHIP

GOOD AMERICANS TRY TO DO THE RIGHT THING IN THE RIGHT WAY

The welfare of our country depends upon those who have learned to do in the right way the work that makes civilization possible. Therefore:

1. I will get the best possible education, and learn all that I can as a preparation for the time when I am grown up and at my life work. I will invent and make things better if I can.

2. I will take real interest in work, and will not be satisfied to do slipshod, lazy, and merely passable work. I will form the habit of good work and keep alert; mistakes and blunders cause hardships, sometimes disaster, and spoil success.

3. I will make the right thing in the right way to give it value and beauty, even when no one else sees or praises me. But when I have done my best, I will not envy those who have done better, or have received larger reward. Envy spoils the work and the worker.

X. THE LAW OF TEAM-WORK

GOOD AMERICANS WORK IN FRIENDLY COOPERATION WITH FELLOW-WORKERS

One alone could not build a city or a great railroad. One alone would find it hard to build a bridge. That I may have bread, people have sowed and reaped, people have made plows and threshers, have built mills and mined coal, made stoves and kept stores. As we learn how to work together, the welfare of our country is advanced.

1. In whatever work I do with others, I will do my part and encourage others to do their part, promptly.

2. I will help to keep in order the things which we use in our work. When things are out of place, they are often in the way, and sometimes they are hard to find.

3. In all my work with others, I will be cheerful. Cheerlessness depresses all the workers and injures all the work.

4. When I have received money for my work, I will be neither a miser nor a spendthrift. I will save or spend as one of the friendly workers of America.

XI. THE LAW OF LOYALTY

GOOD AMERICANS ARE LOYAL

If our America is to become ever greater and better, her citizens must be loyal, devotedly faithful, in every relation of life; full of courage and regardful of their honor.

1. I will be loyal to my family. In loyalty I will gladly obey my parents or those who are in their place, and show them gratitude. I will do my best to help each member of my family to strength and usefulness.

2. I will be loyal to my school. In loyalty I will obey and help other pupils to obey those rules which further the good of all.

3. I will be loyal to my town, my state, my country. In loyalty I will respect and help others to respect their laws and their courts of justice.

For another of the numerous projects that overflow my cup of time, I was perusing my post of almost a decade ago, A Dickens of a Drink, in which I lament the loss of a favorite drink from the old Kay's Coach House restaurant in Daytona Beach. Although the kindly bartender responded to our family's enthusiasm and my youthful pleas by writing out the recipe, I was never able to acquire many of the ingredients. Even today, with Google and the vast resources of the Internet to help, a search for "Bartender's Coconut Mix" brings up only a sponsored handful of coconut liqueurs—and my own post. Cherry juice was not something available in grocery stores back then, and I'd never heard of grenadine.

As I have occasionally been doing recently, as part of my AI Adventures, I asked Copilot to analyze the text of my old post. As part of its response, it asked, "Would you like help modernizing the Tiny Tim recipe for today’s ingredients?" What an idea! Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and here's what it came up with (click image to enlarge):

I am looking forward to trying this out on a smaller scale. I'm sure I can find all the ingredients. A quick reflection makes me question some of the proportions, but it's a great place to start. Maybe that's what an AI tool should be all about: Begin with a well-researched base, then add the human element (experiment and taste) to make it real.

The RobWords YouTube channel is often interesting, but this one will resonate strongly with some of my readers, who have long known that babies are geniuses, and not just in language. It starts out basic, but then gets into some fascinating cutting-edge research, such as 

• Babies in the womb can tell the difference between one language and another.
• Four-month-old babies can tell different languages apart without hearing them, by watching the speaker's lips.
• Babies use a complex statistical process to figure out word boundaries.
• Children figure out grammar patterns before age two, e.g. children brought up in an English-speaking environment have by then already learned that word order is important.

Two questions this short explanation raises in my mind:

• What does the importance of lip-watching in language development mean for children born blind, and for those whose view of the speaker's lips was obscured during that critical time by a face mask? (I know a speech therapist who was exceedingly frustrated by trying to work with children who could not see her mouth thanks to COVID restrictions.)
• For babies to learn words, then phrases, then sentences may be the most common pattern, but I find fascinating that one of our grandchildren—whose speech and grasp of language is top-notch—did the process in reverse, i.e. to all appearances, he learned complete sentences first, then figured out how to break them down into smaller parts.

When I was young, stories for children about sports had one theme in common: sportsmanship. In fact, that was the main reason given for the existence and importance of sports: taming the instincts of aggression and domination into tools for the betterment of all areas of society, including the protection of women and children. A coach's job was to build a winning team, sure, but his most important job was to build boys into men. With minor modifications, that works as well for girls and women.

Today we have a win-at-any-cost mentality that poisons sports, politics, and every other area of life. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream that people would be judged by the content of their character loses its soul when character no longer matters.

I don't understand how people can live with themselves whose victory comes from not playing by the same rules as their opponents.

I hear that the CDC is recommending that anyone travelling abroad get vaccinated for measles.  No matter where they're going.

"Never had it, never will." (Are you old enough to remember that 7-Up commercial?)

If my doctor recommended testing as part of my annual blood draw, and Medicare would pay for it, I might consider checking to see if my antibody response is still robust after all this time. After all, it has been a few years since I had the measles.

As it turns out, the CDC is okay with that.  If you dig down just a little from the scary news stories and read what the CDC actually says, they acknowledge that if you've had measles in the past, you're good to go.

Florida has become the second state (after Utah) to ban the addition of fluoride to community water systems, for which I am very grateful. I prefer to have governmental decisions made at the lowest practical level, but I prefer even more not to have to choose between buying bottled water and drinking tap water with greater-than-natural levels of fluoride. I already get plenty, perhaps too much, from other sources, from toothpaste to topical fluoride to my frequent cups of tea. There may be dental benefits to consuming fluoride, but ingesting it ought to be a personal choice, not something forced upon all customers of the community water supply.

I let my opinion be known at the city level, with no success, despite the good examples of neighboring cities. So I was thrilled to learn yesterday that our legislature had passed, and Governor DeSantis signed, a bill eliminating added fluoride in our water systems.

There may have been a time when adding fluoride to the water supply was important, but with the substance so readily available in other ways, there's no excuse for forcing it on the general population.

Thanks, Florida!

Whatever you think about Facebook, there's no doubt it can be unintentionally amusing

I mostly find its "Reels" feature to be annoying, and have more than once looked without success for a way to turn it off completely. The short videos it shows are mostly reposted from Tik Tok, which I don't otherwise see. Sometimes they are interesting, sometimes they are genuinely informative and helpful, but all too often I find them infused with a negative view of life, even when they are undeniably—even addictively—entertaining.

Sometimes, however, something unexpected shows up and catches my eye.

If you don't have access to Facebook, you may not be able to watch the video, unfortunately. I spent too much time trying to find a version I could embed here, without success. I hope that link will take you to something you can see, but if not, it doesn't matter.

My readers know that one of our granddaughters plays on her high school girls' soccer team, and that the team has been wonderfully encouraging and supportive of her family during her sister's leukemia journey.

Here's another way they showed their character.

What caught my eye (more accurately, ear) in this video, and made me listen all the way through, was that it's not often when I hear mention of their tiny New Hampshire high school in nationwide media. I think this is the only time I have, actually. So it made me jump.

The short version of the story is that some of the team members did not want to play against a certain other team on their schedule, which included a boy in their lineup. First, in principle, because theirs is a girls' league, not a mixed one, and also because they found the boy physically threatening. The team's coach handled the situation extremely well: those girls who objected to playing that game were excused without any penalty, and the team played the game without any fuss. Somehow it made the news anyway, but I'm proud of the way they handled the situation calmly and fairly.

Our granddaughter? She played the game, with the support of her parents, even though they all thought it unfair for a boy to be on the opposing team. Why? I can't speak for them, but here are a few reasons that came up in our discussion:

• After all she's been through, Faith wanted to support her team, and to play soccer.
• It wasn't the other team's fault that they had a boy on the team—it was a state ruling that forced them to do so.
• Boys and girls often play successfully on the same soccer team—although that's usually at the younger levels, before males gain a significant physical advantage over females.
• They've played against other teams with girls she found more physically threatening than this boy.

The game was played successfully and without incident. I honestly don't remember which team won. In a way, they both did. Don't misunderstand me: The teams should never have been placed in this position, and the state rule that made it happen needs to be fixed.

But bad things happen in this life, and when they are met with quiet grace, that deserves to be celebrated.

Perusing our church's bulletin for this coming Sunday, I noted the announcement of a special collection to benefit the food pantry at a local elementary school. Here's the list of the most needed items:

• canned fruit
• applesauce
• pasta sauce
• macaroni and cheese
• Pop-tarts
• cereal bars
• pudding

RFK Jr. can't take charge of our government's health priorities soon enough for me!

Moving on in the 21st century, I did a little playing this morning with Microsoft's Copilot AI. This time, instead of creating images, I asked questions.

I realize that the great danger with asking questions of Automated Idiocy is the biases that are built in, either unintentionally or on purpose. Wikipedia, unfortunately, has developed the same problem, so I'm no stranger to the need to be careful with results. But even Wikipedia can be a great source of information about which there is little dissent, so I began with an inquiry about the availability of Heinz Curry Mango Sauce, which I have not been able to find in this country, despite Heinz being headquartered in Pittsburgh. Copilot quickly suggested three places where I could buy it: Walmart (but it was unavailable when I checked their site), Amazon (also unavailable), and someplace called Pantry.me, which claims to have it, but out of my price range, especially when you add the cost of shipping it to the U.S. Still, Copilot tried, and give me hope that someday Walmart may actually carry it.

Next I asked it to find "Sal's Birdland Sauce," having momentarily forgotten that the name they're using now is "Sal's Sassy Sauce." Despite the incorrect name, Copilot found the item immediately, though for a price that leaves me happy to rely on the generosity of a friend who regularly visits cities with Wegmans supermarkets, where Sal's Sauce can often be found. Or to use my own recipe, which I'm free to say is quite good.

Then I asked a more controversial question: Where can I find ivermectin? First it gave me a stern warning that ivermectin must only be used "under medical supervision"—which is actually not true, depending on where you live; our friends from Ecuador can buy it over the counter at the local pharmacy. But after that it did give me some sources.

Finally, I asked about Switzerland's recommendations with regard to the Covid-19 shots, and received this response.

As of spring and summer 2023, the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) is not recommending COVID-19 vaccines for its citizens, even for high-risk individuals.

You can still get them, if you insist. If you can convince your doctor to make the recommendation, the shots will be paid for; otherwise you can still get them as long as you pay the costs yourself.

Back to Copilot one more time, where I learned that the United States still recommends the shots for

Everyone aged 6 months and older...including women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or planning to become pregnant.

As I even now listen to the Senate confirmation hearings of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., all I can do is pray that our recommendations will change soon, especially for the children and babies.

I know nothing about any of the people or organizations involved in the following video, but the poem hit me hard when I discovered a few months ago. It expresses deeply one part of the groundswell that resulted in the election of President Trump, and seems particularly appropriate in light of President Biden's recent preemptive pardon of Dr. Anthony Fauci.

I love books. I've loved books for longer than I can remember, since my parents read to me long before I could read for myself—as naturally as a bird-parent drops food into its hatchlings' mouths.

The transition from non-reader to reader was not without its stumbles. Even at my advanced age, I still remember Charlotte's Web with both pleasure and pain. My parents had been reading the book out loud to the family. As the oldest child, the one who could now read on my own, I grew impatient with the one-chapter-at-bedtime pace, and the next day picked up the book and continued the story on my own.

Maybe that's not always a bad thing, but it meant that I was alone when I encountered Charlotte's death. If there was some of the deadly sin of Avarice in my action, it carried its own punishment with it. Ah, well—rites of passage are not meant to be easy.

The transition from non-reader to reader is one of the most significant milestones in modern life, one we don't share with our more primitive ancestors. As recently as 1900, more than 10% of the American population was illiterate. Somewhere between 1969 and 1979, that dropped to below 1%. This, of course, takes no account of how well people read, nor the more disturbing trend of can read but don't. But that's not the question that emerged recently, prompting me to write.

(Yes, this is a new post, not one pulled from my storehouse. It was supposed to be a quick and easy post to make. I should have known better.)

The question is whether or not there are other decisive milestones on the literacy journey, once one has mastered reading Of course there are significant steps in the progress of that mastery, a big one being the transition from being able to decipher words to the technique having become so automatic that it is accomplished with no conscious thought at all to the process, only the content. For example, I can read French well enough to enjoy some books, but it's nowhere near an automatic process.

(I think that there's a point still further, when conscious thought creeps back in, but I never made it through Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book, much less apply his techniques, so I can't say from personal experience.)

What I'm wondering is how significant to the reader has the advent of e-books been. It's not of the order of the act of reading itself, but the Kindle has certainly changed our lives and reading habits. I'm definitely bimodal when it comes to books: There's nothing like the pleasure of reading a physical book, but e-books have distinct advantages as well, such as being able to carry a vast library in a handheld device, and to search the text, and make notes, and highlights, and to copy excerpts via cut-and-paste rather than laborious typing. On the other hand, e-books don't really belong to us; we may like to think so, but they can be taken away from us at any point. So I will read with the physical books, and I will read with the e-books also.

After that long introduction, here's the incident that gave me pause: After reading six Kindle books in a row, I began another in physical form. (Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker, if you're curious.) I was reading along, and when it came time to turn the page, I unthinkingly swiped my finger across the lower right-hand corner of the book. That's the way I turn the page with my Kindle

Guess what? It didn't work with the physical book, and I was momentarily taken aback. Even more interesting, I still find myself repeating the motion on occasion, and I'm 143 pages into the book.

The human mind can be peculiar, sometimes.

Florida's state surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, just went up another notch in my book. He is now recommending that Florida's cities that add fluoride to their water supply reconsider that practice.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not against fluoride as an aid to dental health. And once upon a time I was pleased to have fluoridated water, considering it to be a sign of a progressive city. I now believe I was wrong. (I have been wrong on occasion. Once upon a time I even thought it was a good idea to get the COVID-19 vaccine, a decision which I now regret.)

Maybe there was a point in time when it was a good idea to mass-medicate the population, but looking back, I don't think so. In any case, there are now so many other ways to obtain fluoride for dental purposes that it seems ridiculous to impose it on all the city's water customers. I'm not against fluoride, per se, but I am 100% against government-mandated ingestion of fluoride. Let those who want it avail themselves of the many options available, but let our water be pure and safe! Here's hoping we can convince our city to follow the surgeon general's recommendation.

In this I do envy our Swiss family, whose city water comes out of the tap as it comes out of the ground: no fluoride, no chlorine, just great-tasting, pure water.

UPDATE: I wrote to our mayor and our city commissioners, and received a response from the city manager, with whom I have already clashed on the issue of recycling. It was not encouraging. He hastens to reassure me that "you will be happy to know that the levels in our water [are] far lower than the level of fluoride in the study that concerned the Surgeon General," and "we are guided by the science." Well, no, that does not make me particularly happy. Any level of added fluoride is at best outdated, as fluoride for dental purposes is readily available in many forms for those who want it. Medicating the population, en masse and often against their will, is not an acceptable function of government.

Plus, the phrase "we are guided by the science" automatically raises red flags, as all too often it translates to, "we are guided by the pronouncements of whatever authorities we choose to follow," with little regard for how the process of science actually works. This is the same city manager who, when I asked where the materials that the city collects for recycling actually end up, showed no interest in what happens to it once the city passes it on to another agency.

I guess there's more work to be done. I hate politics, but the least I can do is speak up, so they can't insist that they must be right because no one is objecting.

I certainly should have known better.

For several years I worked in a research lab at a major university medical center. True, I only did the computer work (I have exactly one published paper to my name from those days), but even back in the 1970's it was obvious that the peer-reviewed papers/government grant system was, if not totally broken, at least rigged.

Moreover, I spent much of my life learning that "the system" was not to be trusted in many fields. I think it began when my mother, following the customs and recommendations of both society and the medical experts, fed her newborn infants a mixture of diluted evaporated milk and Karo corn syrup, instead of breastfeeding.

But it didn't really hit me until I had children of my own, and observed again and again that the best course of action seemed to be to do exactly the opposite of what the experts recommended and society accepted without question. From birth and childrearing practices to educational decisions to nutritional and medical choices, life taught me that "going with the flow" was often a very bad plan.

So why, why, why did I willingly, even eagerly, accept the COVID shots? Two reasons.

One, working in medical research had provided opportunities to perhaps make a difference in the world, and one of these was being a test subject for the development of the Haemophilus Influenza B vaccine. Porter and I have been blood donors for decades. Our DNA is part of a medical research database. In other words, we've always tried to be good citizens on the medical front.

I like to think that was a good thing. But it predisposed me to being willing to try the COVID shot for the good of the world. Plus, the pressure was great back then that COVID-19 was deadly for the elderly, and our children were worried about their parents.

Still, I feel really stupid for trusting the medical establishment that this was "safe and effective and the only way to keep from killing grandmothers." I knew better. I knew, and even proclaimed at the time, that when the government and medical authorities make such broad statements they are lying. They must be, if only because nothing—especially nothing so novel—can be known to be safe without long-term trials.

By far the biggest factor, however, in our decision to get the shots was blackmail. We have family living overseas, and the only way we could visit them was to submit to the jab. Grandchildren change so fast, even in the course of a year. Even stateside family was largely cut off. We missed a big family reunion, and a nephew's wedding, and barely made the wedding of another nephew. Florida relaxed its restrictions relatively early on, but several long-planned events could not have happened without our vaccination cards, thanks to the restrictions imposed by other states. It was much worse for other people; at least we didn't miss any funerals, or lose our jobs.

Knowing what I know now, would I have willingly closed the door that the magic compliance card opened? I certainly hope so, but I can't honestly say I'd have made the sacrifice.

Nonetheless, I feel stupid, betrayed, and very, very angry.

We're all probably going to die when a more dangerous pandemic hits, because the trust is gone. At least the boy who cried wolf only got himself killed.

I know some mama bears who need to hear this message from yesterday. I don't want to send it to them individually, for a couple of reasons. One, even though I may be convinced that something about a video will resonate with a particular person, I could be wrong, and maybe even offend that person. I'd much rather make something available and let people decide for themselves. Secondly, even in a small audience like mine, I know there is someone who would benefit from it, though I have no idea who. Maybe some papa bears. Maybe some young people who are facing life with courage and joy yet are feeling old before their time. Who knows? So I put it out there. If you're not feeling overwhelmed and overstressed, feel free to skip this wisdom that is both Christian and Cherokee.

It is from the YouTube channel, Appalachia's Homestead with Patara. I've only been following it since Hurricane Helene, when I friend sent me a link to one of Patera's posts about the devastation there. News from Western North Carolina and East Tennessee was spotty at best, and those with already established communications channels (who weren't totally cut off) were a godsend. This quote is from her About section:

How a suburban family left it all behind in order to homeschool & homestead in Appalachia. Learn how to begin homesteading and to learn vital skills such as gardening, food preservation, animal husbandry, homeschooling, genealogy and more! We have chickens, turkeys, geese, quail, ducks, dairy cows, dairy goats, rabbits, 3 Great Pyrenees & the cutest farm cat around! Come along with us on our journey as we follow our Appalachian roots!

The video is 25 minutes long and does well at increased speed. I hope it is meaningful to some of you, but if not, that's okay, just move on.