Yesterday, Steve from Royal Oak immediately picked up on the same thoughts I was having as I dug up this old series, specifically how difficult it was, in my youth, to get to know a girl over the phone. Or at least how difficult it seemed! I think I launch far too many old-fogey threads as it is, but I think it’s a worthwhile subject: what is it like for kids today, who are connected, individually and collectively, to one another on a constant basis? You want to talk about a societal ground-shift. Or maybe it’s just as difficult today to cold text that cute young thing in third period algebra.
181 responses to “The Christmas Caller II”
Jackie: The Lesser or Red Panda, Ailurus fulgens, seems to be more closely related to raccoons than bears, but its classification is still argued. Some put it in its own family, Ailuridae [-idae is the standard family ending in zoology], others in the subfamily Ailurinae within the raccoon family, Procyonidae [-inae = standard subfamily ending]. To see items on classification and natural history of A. fulgens, + lots of photos, type Ailurus fulgens into a search engine. Thanks for the chance to update my panda knowledge.
NB: zoologists never capitalize the specific modifier [here fulgens] even if it is derived from a proper noun [e.g., the Canada Warbler, Wilsonia canadensis.
Peace, emb
Lots of trips to zoos and museums with children and now a grandchild sometimes gives nebulous animal information in your mind. I was thinking they were raccoons but you must remember my youngest child is 40 now, so classification may have changed!
Fascinating isn’t it, that things change along with our knowledge of them? And it can be living things, not just technology.
Me, I hope to never stop learning and changing even if I had to grow up. What is it the other Buffet says, “Growing older but not up?”
Love, Jackie
Ghost Sweetie, thanks for the YouTube link! The choir did a really good job with Boston Charlie.
Did you know, Villagers, that if you do a Google search for Boston Charlie you can read “the amazing gay origins” of the song, or “the amazing Prison slang origins” of it! There’s probably more, but my brain sort of seized up and I quit reading.
And as I doubt I’ll ever get anywhere near Houma I’m not going to worry much about missing the sushi. 😉 I’ve never tried fried gator tail bites, and I’d be suspicious of gator tail sushi, too.
Jean, you can come visit me and we can go have some Cajun blackened bolognaise. Which was offered to me as a lunch special at a “trendy” restaurant that had opened down in the mountains alongside the Arkansas border but on Oklahoma side.
I told the waitress I had never heard of that despite being a Ragin’ Cajun graduate and married to one? I asked what type of meat or seafood it was done with? She said “Well, honey it is done with bologna! You know, they cut it into thick slices and fry it up!”
Love, Jackie
To think, children may spring from this marriage.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30462825
Hmmmmm… both Ludwig AND Mary Lou made their debut in 1993… the same year that the amazing films “Tombstone” and “Gettysburg” premiered. Coincidence? I think not! 🙂
The stars and heavens aligned in a perfect universe and wondrous things happened that year.
Luddie is more miraculous than Mary Lou of course. He talks on Christmas, which I am really looking forward to.
Ghost and Jackie try this Pogo site
Hope the link works.
http://whirledofkelly.blogspot.com
Much as I love the old Mary Lou cartoons (and Ruth too for that matter), I wanted to comment on today’s new strip (in The Boston Globe, JJ 🙂 Thank you for setting me straight on the sunset vs solstice thing, Jimmy! I had always (well for years anyway) thought it was the other way around. I even figured out why (mine rational was based on sidereal time moving faster as the earth approaches perihelion). But hats off: Jimmy is of course right! Here is one explanation
http://earthsky.org/tonight/earliest-sunset-today-but-not-shortest-day
Being up here in NH, I’m thrilled to be wrong! Later sunset is just as good as longer day to me!
This is what happened when I tried to work on Christmas cards.
https://scontent-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/t31.0-8/10624048_10155025021725454_7379860150707885794_o.jpg
Here is something really good, speaking of time. This morning around ten o’clock, I heard the radio announcer tell us that today is 12 – 13 – 14, and is the last sequential date to happen in the 21st Century. And she continued that since it was then eleven minutes past ten, at that very moment it was 10 – 11 – 12 – 13 – 14. I felt this was really special, memorable and enjoyable. And if we can remember tonight, this moment can be enjoyed again at ten eleven, so watch for it!
Mindy from Indy, such a cute picture. Your cat is so comfy and fluffy — is that Blacklight? Good reason to postpone the Xmas card sending.
Yes Charlotte, That is the four-footed anti-card pest. She’s cute and fluffy, but obnoxious. She even steals the pillow!
REALLY beautiful cat.
Did everyone know that New Hampshire was one of the nine top travel spots in America named today by a large group of travel writers who voted on it? New Orleans was there too.
Will try to refind the article!
I don’t even remember what *I* was doing in 1993.
Lady Mindy, if Blacklight gets too obnoxious, you could always put a stamp on her and mail her. Probably to just about anyone in the Village.
Debating whether it would be worth it to devise a recipe for bologna bolognaise…
sand, if that Dutch couple marries, and the marriage doesn’t work out, I shudder to think how he might ask for a divorce.
Debbe 😉 After “Boston Charlie”, you knew I’d have to include this one…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEHzYjuf5NA
GR6, good point. He has already lowered the boom!
Here’s the top travel destinations for 2015 according to Lonely Planet: 1) Queens, NY 2) Western South Dakota (think Sturgis)
3) New Orleans, LA 4) Colorado River 5) North Conway, NH 6) Indianapolis, IN 7) Greenville, SC 8) Oakland, CA and last but not least 9) Duluth, MN
Truthfully, I have been to all nine but I am not sure I saw them as the travel writers did!
I loved South Dakota and all of the far north western states. Have not been in New Hampshire for about 50 years but remember it as beautiful.
Always interesting to see what the travel writers recommend as they are seldom the “big destination” places you might expect.
Love, Jackie
Sandcastler, did you just sneak an emoticon into that post?
sandcastlerâ„¢ (little “s”) has not been emoticoning.
January issues of Sky & Telescope come with a separate two p. sheet called Skygazer’s Almanac, for 40 N. lat. We’re over 45 here, but it will do. The 2013 and earlier ones are taped to the inside of my office door. Unfortunately, I mislaid the 2014 one about a year ago, but the 2015 SGA is up there now. It has evening dates down the left side, morning dates down the right side, and is an hourglass-shaped diagram of the night sky from 1 Jan-31 Dec. Traces all 5 naked eye planets’ times of rising, setting, and crossing the zenith, same for several prominent stars and other distant objects [Pleiades, Orion Nebula, etc.], ‘sun fast and sun slow’ line top to bottom, winding around the midnight axis, that being the result of the different speeds of Earth when we are farther and closer to Sol. See sidereal vs. solar day, above. Twice, when I’ve mislaid [geezerhood again] the current issue of Sky & Telescope, I’ve put together my monthly star column entirely or mostly from that chart. I think you can buy it separately from S&T, and also get it in a larger size.
There are two others, I think, one for approx. 0 degrees, and one for 30 degrees S. Since they also run from 1 Jan-31 Dec, they are less graceful, the one for 30 S. being roughly barrel-shaped.
At least three of those destinations are places I’d not go if offered an all expense-paid trip. But whatever blows your skirt up, Travel Writer.