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Today in My History

2000:  Does Santa Wear Leather?
2001:  My Secret Love
2002:  Little Drummer Girl
2003:  Mmmm--Donuts
2004:  The Friendly Beasts
2005
Shades of Purple
2006 Racing with the Clock
2007:  2 Puppies, 2 Adventures
2008:  Pat Boone
2009:  Christmas Greetings in the Electronic Age
2010:  I'm Back!
2011:  Delicate Pooh Home Again
2012: My day Book
2013:  What Child Is This?
2014:
Batten Down the Hatches
2015  Changing Seasons
2016: Saturday 9
2017: Sunday Stealing
2018: Misty Water-Colored memories
2019: A Christmas Carol, Etc


2020 Christmas Letter


Theater Reviews
Updated 12/6
A Christmas Carol: the
Radio Broadcast

Books Read in 2020
 Updated 11/13
"Frontier Follies"


Personal Home Page

My family

Books Read in 2020
Books Read in 2019
Books Read in 2018

Books Read in 2017
Books Read in 2016
Books Read in 2015
Books Read in 2014
Books Read in 2013

Books Read in 2012
Books Read in 2011
Books Read in 2010


Cast (updated 7/16)

Email
(you know how to fix it)


Some Background Links:
The Philosophy of Juice & Crackers
The story of Delicate Pooh
The story of the Piñata Group
Pumpkin pies
Who IS this Gilbert person anyway?
Sold!


mail to Walt / mail to Bev  

STOCKINGS

December 10, 2020

Well, damn.  I made a nice package of cookies for the mailman and Ned saw someone steal the package and take off on her bicycle.  So no cookies for the mailman after all.  The spirit of the season.  :(



1972...before David was born

When Jeri was 2 or 3, I knitted her a Christmas stocking (I could knit in those days!), which meant that as each of her brothers approached their first Christmases, I had to knit a stocking for each of them.  I am proud of the work I did on each of those stockings.

They are big stockings.

Long stockings.

Stockings that take a lot to fill up!

When I was a kid, we didn't have Christmas stockings, we hung up our own socks and "Santa" filled them with walnuts and oranges (not sure how we got oranges in our socks, but we did).  There was never anything called a "stocking stuffer."

But my word can you spend a lot trying to fill up one of these stockings that I knitted.  And five of them?  I can't even remember what I put in them over the years, but I know that I spent a lot buying stocking stuffers, over and above the "real" Christmas gifts.


I've spent the last two days getting my Christmas letter e-mailed to people.  Every year I wonder how tacky it is to make a web site as a Christmas letter and e-mail the link to people.  But it's who I am.  I am a keyboard person.  I am a web designer and I love being able to make a page  that describes our year and shows pictures of the whole family.

When I started doing Christmas letters, they were just typed and copied.  Then I started adding photos and in order to get the quality good, I took them to a printer for many years.  That was a big expense, but I was happy with how they turned out.

When postage started going up so much -- I sent about 100 cards/letters a year -- it just got tooo expensive to buy cards, pay a printer, and buy 100 stamps, but I did want to reach out to friends, so I designed the first on-line letter in 2000, and I have now been doing it for twenty years.

The thing I like about what I do now is that I send out individual notes to people or groups of people so that I can include a personal message, not just a link to the letter.  It's like writing a note on the Christmas card, only generally longer since I'm typing it.  This year I designed a mini Christmas letter that could be printed to send to the few people I know who do not use the internet (or whose e-mail address I do not have)/  It's not as nice as the web page, but gets the information out there.

I don't know how many people get my emails and think it's all very tacky, but I do get some really nice messages back from some folks, which encourages me to continue doing what I'm doing.

I got a wonderful message from my "Brasilian brother" today.

Your letter is always expected by me in December here in São Paulo, Brasil, as a first Christmas gift and it has been like that for the last 40 years since my first homestay with your lovely family in Davis. 

I am pretty sure everyone else in this group of friends feel the same happiness likewise myself with your news in such letter every year bringing wonderful words of love, peace, friendship, family relationship, music, theatre, cultural activities and much more. 

There are some people I don't hear from and am sad about it every year.  My good friend with whom I worked for many years hasn't contacted me in years and I don't know why.  She's another person who just ghosted me (cutting off communication without any explanation).  But I include her in my annual Christmas letter anyway, hoping she is interested in learning how things are.

The saddest responses I get each year are like the one I got last year, from the husband of one of my best high school friends, who told me she had died that year.  I don't like getting those responses...and the older we get, the more of them I expect to get.

The nicest thing about these annual Christmas letters is that it makes a wonderful history of our family.  I spent this afternoon reading through them from 2000 to the present.  So much I'd forgotten that is all recorded in the Christmas letter.
 

PHOTO OF THE DAY

Ned bought lights for the tree in our front yard

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