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At 7:30 PM, with two tickets to the movie of Liz Alexander’s choice, Liz and her husband Ed bought a large Diet Coke and some popcorn and headed into the theater at the Pequod Mall. Two hours later, they came out and headed to the rest rooms. “Meet you right here,” Liz called to him as they separated. A few minutes later Liz emerged and was surprised Ed was not there to meet her. He always took less time. She looked around the theater lobby, and not seeing him, sat down on one of the padded benches. Craning her neck, she searched around the lobby and still did not see him. After five minutes, she started to worry and walked around looking for him. Why had she left her cell phone at home? Did Ed have his? After ten minutes, she went up to the gangly teenager taking tickets and asked, “My husband left me to use the rest room. He hasn’t come back. Can you look in the rest room and make sure he isn’t sick or something? His name is Ed Alexander.” When the kid came out, he spread his hands and said. “I called for a Mr. Alexander but no one in there answered. Sorry.” “Do you have a cell phone I could use? I can call him.” “Okay, I guess,” the kid replied with an annoyed tone, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. Liz dialed Ed’s cell phone number, but it immediately went to voice mail. Damn. His phone is off. Where IS he? Liz sat down again. Where could he have gone? Maybe he’s waiting outside instead of in here. She stood up and headed out the main doors, looking around as she did. When she didn’t see him in the plaza area outside the theater, she though, Maybe he’s getting the car. I’ll go out to the drive and wait until he pulls around. After standing by the side of the drive for another ten minutes, Liz became totally panicked. I don’t even know where he parked, he dropped me off to get the tickets. What the hell do I do now? She decided to check one more time in the theater and talked her way back inside by asking for the manager. “What seems to be the problem?” he asked, with smarmy concern and a check of his comb-over with his hand. “Well, I seem to have lost my husband,” Liz answered, trying to keep her tone light and not betray her overwhelming anxiety. “I had the bathroom checked. Could you check in the other movies?” “That would be very disruptive to our customers, don’t you think? You could just wait until each movie lets out, see if he comes out with the crowd. I’m sure he’s here somewhere. Of course, it’s not allowed to attend more than one movie on a single ticket, so if he’s gone into another movie, we’ll have to charge him.” Liz exploded. “Don’t you understand? My husband has disappeared! Gone! I cannot reach him!” “Have you tried calling home?” “I don’t have my cell phone, but I borrowed one and called him. His phone is off.” “Let me call security for you. Perhaps they can straighten this out.” A caricature of an overweight mall cop finally came and took down her information and listened patiently while Liz explained one more time what had happened. By this time, she was hyperventilating and had to sit down on the theater bench again. “He didn’t say anything to you when he left for the restroom?” asked the cop. “No, nothing!” “Have you and your husband been having any difficulties lately?” “What? Why would you ask that? No, of course not. I love my husband and he loves me. There’s nothing wrong.” “Can you tell me what kind of car you drive?” “It’s a Jeep Grand Cherokee, about five years old, dark green, license plate HVN 405,” Liz answered automatically, without waiting for more specific questions. After a few more agonizing minutes of interrogation, the cop did go into each theater and ask the patrons if there was an Ed Alexander in the audience. There wasn’t. In the meantime, more security was called to search the parking lot for the car but didn’t find it. Finally, the Pequod police were called. The man who arrived introduced himself as John Smith. Liz looked him over and decided he was the most unremarkable man she’s ever seen: brown hair, brown eyes, medium height and weight, plain Jane facial features. The two things that did impress her was his voice – a deep, rich bass – and the intelligence and thoughtfulness with which he interviewed her, taking down every detail. He took Liz home, suggesting with some hope in his voice her that husband would be waiting for her when she got there. But he wasn’t. Officer Smith came in with her and made a thorough search of the house. Finding nothing suspicious, he asked Liz, “Look, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of foul play here. Is there anything missing?” Liz had already looked in the closets and drawers to see if anything obvious was missing. “No, everything seems to be fine,” she replied. “Well, you can file a missing person’s report in 24 hours if your husband doesn’t show up. I can see how much you’re worried, but he’s probably just off having a night with the boys or taking a break. It’s been my experience when this happens, the spouse always comes home.”      Haven’t had that experience, thought Liz. Ed had come into her life four years earlier, at a time when she’d been divorced for two years. Her first marriage never should have happened; she was too young and her husband became a stranger who liked alcohol better than her and beating her even more. Without a college degree, she had been stuck in part-time, menial jobs. It was nothing less than a miracle she

From a friend of mine: When four of Santa’s elves got sick, the trainee elves did not produce toys as fast as the regular ones, and Santa began to feel the Christmas pressure. Then, Mrs. Claus told Santa her mother was coming to visit, which stressed Santa even more. He went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two others had jumped the fence and were out, Heaven knows where.  The reindeer herder was on vacation When he began to load the sleigh, one of the floorboards cracked, the toy bag fell to the ground and all the toys were scattered. Frustrated, Santa went in the house for a glass of cider and a shot of rum. In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the cider jug, and it broke into hundreds of little glass pieces all over the kitchen floor. He went to get the broom and found the mice had eaten all the straw off the end of the broom. Just then the doorbell rang, and an irritated Santa marched to the door, yanked it open, and there stood a little angel with a great big Christmas tree. The angel said very cheerfully, ‘Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn’t this a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?’ And so began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree. Not a lot of people know this.   0 0

I am reposting this as part of the Deja Vu Blogfest! One of the last times my Dad applied a switch to my rear end with any degree of force happened after what my brother and I later called the lemon cookie catastrophe. My father was addicted to lemon frosting-filled cookies, and every other week my mother would bring home a package of the sweet treats with the groceries, which would go into the metal bread box on the counter. The catastrophe began with the fact that both Jay and I loved cookies and tended to sneak them when no one was looking. As a result, the number of lemon cookies in the bag would diminish rapidly in just a few days, much to my father’s displeasure. “Who ate the lemon cookies?” Dad would ask in exasperation each time. “Noelle did,” Jay would answer. “Jay did,” I would reply. Finally, Dad’s patience wore out. Tired of never knowing who was to be punished for eating his cookies, he found a solution. “The next time I find that anyone has been eating my cookies, you will both be switched.” Sure enough, the following week he went to grab a cookie after dinner and found the bag had only one. “That’s it,” he roared and asked Jay and me who ate his cookies. “I didn’t, I swear,” I vowed. “I didn’t eat your cookies this time,” answered Jay tearfully, knowing what was coming. Nevertheless, Dad cut a green switch from the back yard forsythia, returned to the kitchen and gave both Jay and me a thorough licking, energized by the fact that he was tired of our lying. I was sitting on the back steps, crying, when Mom came in from the drying area with a pile of clothes in her arms. I followed her into the kitchen, wailing about being punished for something I didn’t do. “What’s going on here, John?” Mom asked. “I’m tired of those kids lying about eating the lemon cookies,” he answered, “so this time they both got switched.” “Oh dear,” Mom sighed. “I forgot to tell you that the bridge club was here this afternoon and I served them the lemon cookies.” I remember wailing even louder about the unfairness of it all and not surprisingly, I was ordered to my room. I left, but not before I heard Dad say, “Well, shit.” Many years later, Dad said to me, “Life is inherently unfair.” I couldn’t help myself. I reminded him of the lemon cookies. 0 0

  Home for Christmas is a compendium of Christmas stories from years gone by, assembled by Margaret Jean Langstaff and the Editors at Cedar Press. These editors intended the collection to be a reminder to its readers of what Christmas really means and what every Christmas gives to the human heart. I will tell you about a few. How could you not like a book with a wonderful cover illustration of a horse-drawn buggy wending its way past snow-covered cottages of Christmas stories and then opens with O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi? That story tugged at my heart strings when I first read it in high school. In Christmas Day in the Morning by Grace S. Richmond, older parents are facing another Christmas alone because their children are too preoccupied with their own lives. But this year one of their sons decides to plan a surprise Christmas for his mother and father, an old-fashioned one with just their children and all of their old traditions. How will he pull it off? Christmas with Grandma Elsie by Martha Finley, author of the Elsie Dinsmore series, dates from before the Civil War, so the customs, attitudes and traditions are somewhat strange and clash with current norms. However, it provides a peek into our past, and even though I would say the writing is treacly and spun-candy sweet, it draws you into the innocence, simplicity and unbridled joy of the Christmas season. Uncle Noah’s Christmas Inspiration by Leona Dalrymple is set on a plantation just after the Civil War and tells the story of Uncle Noah, an elderly slave whose only friend is a turkey named Job. When his master, who has fallen on hard times, asks him to kill the turkey for Christmas dinner, Noah must find a way to save his feathered friend and at the same time give his master and mistress a traditional Christmas with plenty of food for a change. The story is touching, although the master’s demeaning references to Uncle Noah and other slaves can bring the reader up short, reminding us all how far this country has come since that time. The Mouse and the Moonbeam by Eugene Field, is a children’s story dating from Victorian times, but perfect for adults. You probably know Mr. Field, humorist and author of poetry for children, from his work Wynken, Blynken and Nod. The Mouse and the Moonbeam is populated by wonderful characters: Miss Mauve Mouse, Squeaknibble, the Old Clock, and of course the moonbeam, who relates what it saw on the night of Christ’s birth. How can you not fall in love with a story that begins “While you were sleeping, little Dear-my-soul, strange things happened…” The Christmas Angel by Abbie Farwell Brown, who co-wrote the song “On the Trail”, which became the official song of the Girl Scouts of the USA, is a story of a female Ebenezer Scrooge, who for many years has not celebrated Christmas and has refused to let her brother visit her. When she finds a box of her old toys in the attic, Miss Terry tosses the toys one by one onto her snow sidewalk and then watches to see what happens, to prove to herself that the people who find them are selfish and uncaring. But when the Christmas Angel, which graced her home for many years, is kicked aside, she rushes to rescue it. The Angel then comes to life to show her the real destiny of each toy. The results reveal the true meaning of Christmas. Each of these stories is about loss and redemption and provides a new and often different look into the heart of Christmas. I enjoyed reading them, not only from a historical perspective but because they lifted my spirit. This book is available on Amazon and GoodReads.       0 0

  A few weeks ago, I posted something a blogging sister had written from prison – Rara, who is doing hard time in California. Rara is currently struggling, and it shows in this piece from October. However, it is written in her typically beautiful prose. You can visit her blog, Rarasaur, at http://rarasaur.wordpress.com/ Originally written 10/10/2014 They say she is property.  They say the world is better without her.  She absorbs it all. Leashed by time, she makes the motions of the living, fully invested in the moment, knowing there is pain any other way.  Each step forward must be taken without a backwards glance—or the collar pulls and the seconds solidify. She wants malleable minutes.  Liquid hours. She never wanted to experience hard time. The caged shell cannot hold in her seeping, melting soul.  IT is escaping—leaving her empty, but emotionally free.  From the outside, she is. On the inside, she merely… was. 0 0

“Christmas,” the word, comes from the Old English Crīstesmæsse, or literally, “Christ’s Mass” and is festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, now observed on December 25. It closes the period of Advent and begins the 12 days of Christmastide, which end after twelfth night. The first recorded date of Christmas being celebrated on December 25th was in 336AD, during the time of the Roman emperor Constantine, the first Christian emperor. A few years later, Pope Julius I officially declared that the birth of Jesus would be celebrated on the 25th of December. Actually, Christ was probably born in the fall of the year. It has been mistakenly believed He was born around the beginning of winter, but according to the Adam Clarke Commentary, it was the Jewish custom to send out their sheep to the deserts at the time of Passover in early spring and bring them home when the first rains began, in in early-to-mid fall. Shepherds watched over them during this time. Since the shepherds had not yet brought their flocks home at the time of Christ’s birth, the event had to have happened sometime in late September. From Luke 2:8: “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.” So how did Christ’s birth come to be celebrated on December 25? This date was chosen because it roughly coincided with various Roman festivals. First there was the idolatrous festival of Saturnalia, a time of merrymaking and exchanging of gifts in early Rome. This occurred each year around the beginning of winter, or the winter solstice, when the sun takes its lowest path across the sky and the days begin to lengthen, assuring another season of growth. Saturnalia, of course, celebrated Saturn—the fire god, and also the god of sowing. Saturn was worshipped in this dead-of-winter festival so he would come back to warm the earth for spring planting. Some of the trappings of the Saturnalia parallel what so many of us do today to celebrate Christmas: decorating homes with greenery, giving gifts, singing songs, and eating special foods. Some Romans worshiped the god Mithra, first found in the Indian Vedic religion as Mitra, 3500 years before the birth of Christ. Interestingly, the Indian Mirta is also a solar deity, being the light and power behind the sun. Mithra was believed to come from a virgin birth, like Christ, and thought by many to have been born on December 25. However, there is no evidence to support this.   In fact, December 25 was considered the birth date of Sol Invictus, literally the “unconquered sun.” Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the later Roman Empire and a patron of soldiers. In 274, the emperor Aurelian made the cult of Sol Invictus one of the traditional Roman cults. For the past two hundred years, it has been generally thought December 25 was chosen for Christmas in order to correspond with the Roman festivals of Saturnalia, Sol Invictus or the birth of Mithra, in order to convince Rome’s pagan citizens to accept Christianity as the empire’s official religion and to promote the church’s identification of God’s son with the celestial sun.           0 0

I wrote a short story a while ago and decided to set it in Pequod. It involves one of the policemen in my first book, Officer John Smith. I’m sending it out as a Christmas present on December 23rd, so stay tuned! 0 0

Author Luccia Gray, she of the fabulous All Hallows at Eyre Hall, has passed on the challenge of telling my blog followers five things they probably don’t know about me. Mmmm, what to tell you? – there are so many fascinating things to relate, I’m such a movie star. Okay, so back to reality. 1. I actually am related to a movie: The Silence of the Lambs. I received a phone call from a friend of mine at the USDA in Beltsville, MD, asking me if I could provide death’s head moths for the movie. He was a beatle guy, and this was out of his comfort zone. Death’s head moths are indigenous to Europe and Asia, but the USDA frowns on the importation of non-native species. However, the animal I used for my research for over 30 years is Manduca sexta, the tobacco hornworm, and it looks pretty similar to the Death’s head moth.         Long story short, I was hired to provide the moths in all three stages – larvae, pupae and adults, for the movie. And I was paid per insect! We made a lighted and heated trunk in which they could be transported with separate compartments for each stage, and various bit part actors on the movie would fly down from Pittsburgh to pick them up. They flew back in a first class seat! I taught the insect wrangler – that’s what they called him – how to get the Manduca to perform, and he glued a clear false finger nail on the thoraces of the adults with a skull painted on to disguise the adults. Oh, and the pupae they removed from the dead girl’s throat? It was a Tootsie Role! 2. In case you didn’t read my Growing Up Pilgrim blog, I know how to card, wash, spin, dye and weave wool (I can also knit and embroider), as well as make soap, bayberry candles, and cook in a fireplace. I’m really good at making steamed black bread, from a recipe in the Plimoth Colony Cookbook. All of these have been very handy in my married life…not! If you’d like to know how to make bayberry candles, check out this video: 3. I love to sail. My first boat was what is now called a Class 10, then it was a Turnabout. It was wooden, heavy, but turned on a dime. Only one sail but later someone figured out how to add a spinnaker. My next sailing adventure was crewing on a Columbia 50 in Lake Erie, named the Res Ipsa Loquitor (lawyer lingo for the Thing Speaks for Itself.) The owner was a lawyer, and he used the boat mainly for assignations. We found lovely things below deck. There were two female crew. We were relegated to spinnaker packing and popping, but weren’t allowed on overnight races because Frank, the cook, liked to work in the nude! Those races suffered from wrapped spinnakers and a lot of cursing. In California, we were qualified to skipper a six meter open hull Shields class – basically a scaled down 12 meter America’s cup boat. No motor, you had to sail her out of the congested Newport harbor , which was an adventure in itself. We had some near misses, once practicing a spinnaker jibe, but the Dainty was fast. Today I have a nimble little 17 foot lady, fast in light wind and wild in a gale. Takes two of us to handle her.   4. My favorite foods, hands down, are lobster and pizza. I usually only eat lobster in Maine where it’s fresh. Lobsters in restaurants in the South have usually been sitting around for a while, are rank-tasting, and don’t have much meat because they’ve been living on their muscle protein. Pizza? Any kind, but I do prefer mine in Chicago – Giordano’s stuffed spinach or veggie pizza or Gino’s deep dish supreme. Heaven!   5. I had polio when I was 12. No lasting effects until I hit my 60s. Now I have some muscle weakness, which is pronounced in my left hip. Check out my post: The Disease That Never Quits. I work out pretty often in a gym and swim every day in the summer; so far I am holding the worst effects at bay.   Thanks, Luccia, for the tag. And my feet are bigger than yours! Do go and visit her blog, Rereading Jane Eyre (lucciagray.com). I’d like to pass this challenge on to Bob Byrd, Elizabeth Hein, Stepheny Houghtlin, Irene Waters, and Rosie Amber. 0 0

For me, part of summer times in Plymouth was always spent learning about and being a Pilgrim. This is taken from a post I wrote in 2014 about Thanksgiving in Plymouth, but fits nicely into my current series. Don’t forget to click on the pictures to enlarge them! Dressed as a Pilgrim girl, I walked in the Pilgrim Progress. These are held on the first four Fridays in August, and local citizens dress as Pilgrims re-creating their procession to church. The number of persons, and their sexes and ages have been matched to the small group of Pilgrims who survived the first winter in the New World. We marched up Leyden Street, to the clicks of tourists’ cameras. Leyden Street was originally called First Street, and the Pilgrims began laying out the street before Christmas in 1620, while they were still living on the Mayflower. Leyden Street is believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited street in the original thirteen British colonies, and it extends from the shore of the harbor to the base of Burial Hill at the top of the street. Leyden Street in the 1800s Rogers, C. H. – Photographer Burial Hill is where the original fort was built. The first settlers built there houses along this street; note the familiar Pilgrim names on the map = Bradford, Brewster, Winslow, Allerton. Town Brook, still bubbling along, is adjacent to the street and provided drinking water for the colonists. Leyden Street has been recreated at Plimoth Plantation. My parents enrolled me before I even hit my teens in classes taught at the Harlow House or the Old Fort House on Sandwich Street, about a half mile from the center of Plymouth. Sandwich Street is the old “heiway” connecting Plymouth with another early settlement, Sandwich, on the Cape. The house is a story and a half dwelling, clad in weathered shingles, with a gambrel roof and a large central chimney. Built in 1677, it is one of the few remaining 17th century buildings in Plymouth. It was built by William Harlow, a cooper, farmer and town official who also served as sergeant of the local militia; he was typical of the responsible, sober and hardworking men who carried on the pilgrim tradition in the second generation of the Plymouth Colony. Harlow was born in England about 1624 and first mentioned in Plymouth town records as a voter in 1646. Widowed twice and married three times, Harlow was the father of fourteen children, and it is generally considered that his house projects the Pilgrim home and way of life. Harlow or Old Fort House Harlow built the house with materials salvaged from the then-derelict fort on Burial Hill and is notable for its hand hewn beams. The interior has been restored and furnished appropriately for the time, and sitting inside with a fire in the fireplace, smelling the aroma of the house’s age, and thinking of the generations who lived there was a special experience. At the Harlow House, I learned how to wash, card and spin wool on the spinning wheel; skein, dye, and weave the wool on a loom, make bayberry candles and soap; cook over the fireplace fire (baked beans, fish cakes, chicken, corn bread.) To young girl, it was occasionally tiresome, but looking back, it was a very special experience. Of course, all of this was designed to create a group of teenagers ready to work as tour guides at various sites in the town. Which brings me to Plimoth Plantation, and recreation of the small farming and maritime community built by the Pilgrims along the shore of Plymouth Harbor as it existed in 1627, seven years after the arrival of Mayflower and just before the colonists began to disperse beyond the walled town and into other parts of what would become southeastern Massachusetts. Plimoth Plantation, another word for colony, was built on land about a quarter mile from my house, land that was very similar to that on which Leyden Street, the fort and Burial Hill were originally located. A reproduction of the Fort house was built at the top of Leyden Street When I was selected to be among the first tour guides there, it was a short ride in my Model A phaeton (my first car) to the parking lot. The first group of potential tour guides took a year-long course on all things Pilgrim before we were let loose on the public. We wore clothes that were designed for us, keeping as close as possible to the original dress. NO BUCKLES on the hats or shoes! The only thing changed was the fabric. The Pilgrims were wool at first, until linen could be woven, and so the powers that be took pity on us and we didn’t have to wear wool in the summer! You probably think the Pilgrims always wore black clothes, but this is not true. First, in the 1620s best clothes were often black, and people wore their best clothes when having their portraits painted. Second, at the time it was not easy to dye cloth a solid, long-lasting black. Thus cloth for everyday clothes was dyed in many colors such as brown, brick red, yellow and blue. Other clothes were made of undyed cloth of gray or white. Everyone wore something around their necks, normally flat collars or kerchiefs of linen, and they all also wore something on their heads – caps of knitted wool or hats of felt with wide brims for protection from the sun and rain. Women and girls pinned their hair up and wore a linen cap over their hair. They would also wear wide brimmed hats over the caps. In cold weather, the Pilgrims wore woolen cloaks or coast with mittens or gloves. Both baby boys and girls wore long, one piece gowns with long sleeves and a cap called a biggens on their heads, made of wool or linen and tied under the chin. A toddler might wear something called a