Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Thinking about new year's resolutions, since we'll be on a three-day with Vermont family over the year's crossing.

Other than the obvious -- quitting smoking, staying centered, raising the kids right -- much of what I've been steeping in is the possibility of reconnecting with the literate world. The blogging has become a little less frequent than I'd like; true, as well, that the backlog of unfinished drafts grows exponentially as the kids grow older.

I'd rather not give up on so much brainspark, so there's one resolution right there.

Onn a greater scale, though, I wonder if I so seldom revisit drafts because I've started to accept the oneshot shortform habit, caring more about logging life than writing it, never the intention for the blog in the first place.

The resultant brainstorm calls to mind several previously dismissed commitments which, over the three years I've been blogging, have made their memeway across the blogosphere. Under reconsideration, then:

52 books in 52 weeks

I've always dismissed this phenom as underwhelming; for years I've read a book a night, though mostly the easily-read -- mostly trash scifi, fantasy and Robert parker mysteries. In the past year, however, with the advent of kids-plural, and a job which has rearraged my schedule towards the comprehensively diurnal, I'm reading less.

If I'm going to claim the literate life, perhaps it's time to turn this accident of temporality to the good, to rejuvenate brain and time with a renewed focus on the cream of longform writing.

Aiming for quality over quantity would be worth doing well; weekly review would add new depth to that which I do read . As an added bonus, redeveloping the habit of marginalia, a subjective necessity for reviewing, would put my money where my mouth has recently been.

Added bonus, of course: though the trash would still beckon, it would be embarassing to end up reporting so often on trash fiction. The public life helps us stay honest; here, it would help me justify succumbing to the equally powerful pull of the bigger, more brain-bumper books.

Already on the list (and on the shelf): McCourt's "Teacher Man," McKibben's "The Age of Information."

NaNoWriMo

Reading, of course, is only half a true literate life. Writers write, and -- exceptions aside -- the reality of blogging is that most of us are not going to get a book deal just to repackage the archives. Though blogging is satisfying for so many reasons, the temptation to create something less ephemeral and more comprehensively substantive has been an everpresent itch.

The world's most serious global writer's prompt, (November-as-) National Novel Writing Month has been for me both terrifying and untimely. But the summer months beckon, and Darcie has offered to support us (temporally and kid-wise, since a teacher's salary spreads through summer regardless) if I want to write a book this summer.

Not sure where I'd start, or what I'd address -- not even sure if I'd rather tackle fiction or non -- but planning for the summer gives me six months to prep and narrow in; creating my own non-November nanowrimo might provide for a focused time to draft and brainstorm, if nothing else.

They say the brain slows down as you age, especially past thirty; it's probably too late to produce the great american novel, but something personally satisfying would do. Reading some great novels would help. Non-fiction, too. See above.

While the issue of recapturing the literate life is on the table, it's worth noting that I've stopped wrestling with the fleeting lines of poetfodder that cross my blanksheet brain semiregularly, other than a few poems written & "published" at Asinine Poetry for the sheer silliness.

But that's a blog for another day. So much of my text-time is spent on short forms these days, from student papers to magazines to, of course, the half-baked and oft-dialogic shortform of the blogosphere. Note to self, then: reconnect with the literate longform, both as reader and writer, before it is too late.

Took the day off from holidays and headed down to Manchester, Connecticut, to The Shoppes and Buckland Hills, mostly a) to see if it was closer than our usual Massachusetts haunts (a hands-down no-brainer at 40 minutes), and b) to spend a few hours indoors with the kids without having to clean up the mess afterwards.

Nice surprise, actually. Less busy than we expected, given the post-Boxing Day rush, and the usual assortment of middle-class finery, from Abercrombie to Victoria's Secret. Better, though, the mall was designed with parents in mind: a ubiquitous pet store with uberpuppies on display, a conveniently-placed madhouse of a Huck Finn-themed "soft play area" for the kiddies, and an honest-to-goodness circus-themed carousel -- Willow's favorite thrill -- in the food court to hold back as a reward for good behavior. No Gap, but we'll spend our gift cards another day.

Also, a novelty: few ATMS, but plenty of wall-installed "card balance readers" throughout the mallhalls. Makes sense, I guess, from a mall perspective, to keep patrons megaspending smoothly on the edge, but we didn't see any in use.

Mostly window shopping and light-ogling, then, though we did end up getting a few odds and ends too much on sale to resist: enough Hanukkah gifts to last the rest of the season, plus placemats and napkins at the Christmas Tree Shop next door for tomorrow's belated Christmas with my wife's family.

Candles lit late upon our return -- Willow loves her new tiara and shimmery fairy princess wand, the baby seems pleased with her transparent Playskool rainstick, both fell asleep early for once.

From the interfaith challenge of full-family inclusion to the complexities of other people's travel, illnesses, and the demands of an ever-growing set of significant others, Hanukkah and Christmas have become a weeklong mashup of a celebration this year. Some highlights:

Realizing that taking on the mantle of Santa Claus is actually a fulfillment of the highest form of charity in Judaism.

Hanging apples, strung popcorn, and peanut-butter-and-pine-cone ornaments from a bough of small trees in the meadow with kids, wife, and in-laws, and then singing carols for the deer and birds to come.

Discovering Overheard in New York while waiting for my family to arrive for Hanukkah.

Finally reading my brother's girlfriend's blog from her trip to India.

Meatless supper (latkes and veggie soup) with my parents and siblings.

Giving my NYC-based brother half of our garden-to-be as a Hanukkah/Birthday present, so no matter how bad the urban life gets, he can always come home to a plot of land in the suburbs.

Giving my parents a "First Tuesday Cafe", so now they have no choice but to come once a month for homecooked food.

Giving my sister hardware and a Home Depot gift card.

Getting some great stuff from them, including the entire Muppets first season on DVD, Frank McCourt's new book about teaching, great comedy on CD, this year's Best Non-Required Reading (with short foreword by Beck!), Bill McKibben's Age of Information, and a new watch.

Discovering that our new home's staircase is slinky-perfect...and learning to trust the kid at the top of the stairs.

Taking the three-year-old on a walk through the slushysnow woods so we could both clear our oversugared heads after a long, cranky Christmas afternoon cleaning house, and -- upon arriving at the banks of the stream -- kneeling with the kid on my knee, only to have her initiate the world's most rewarding conversation:

Daddy?

Yes, kid.

This is so nice. I'm so glad we're here. Thank you SO much for taking me.

Yeah. Merry Christmas, kid.

Merry Christmas, Daddy. Can we do this every year?

...and then making it home just before the rain began.

After cleaning most of the day yesterday, and hosting today, we're devoting tomorrow to people-watching in random shopping meccas as-yet-to-be-determined.

Coming Wednesday: belated Xmas with Darcie's family. And -- maybe, if we're lucky -- the rain will stop.

Is that all there is?

Baby's first Christmas!

Merry Merry, Everybloggy! Click on pix for larger sizes and more.

(Only six hours until Hanukkah...)

Last year, the very idea of Santa was too fearful for us to need to take on his mantle. Santa to the two-year was too much larger than life to be a comfort: that he might sneak furtive and fat into her own house caused no end of terror. We had him visit Grandma's, arriving afterwards to get the goods and goodies.

Santa the man still scares her, some. She still shies away from mallmen, hides her face from the Santa Train namesake. But a month or more of storybooks and preptalk has reinforced the correlation between giver and gifts; a lifetime of love for all things furry and fourlegged helps her focus on reindeer and sleighs over the man in red.

A year grown braver, and -- so long as she need not confront him; as long as his reindeer jingle on the rooftop only while she sleeps -- she awaits his stopover.

And so I eat the cookies she so carefully selected, leaving just enough crumbs to remind her in the morning. Darcie writes the note, half rebus for the preliterate, signs His name in red ink. Baby elf in hand, we fill the stockings, bag and box the few small presents we have accumulated here and there between mortgage payments.

I, too, believe Santa never dies -- that he is eternal, though he loses his iconographic symbology somewhere on the late cusp of childhood. Writ large, the generosity that he represents is first and foremost the single most important gift we can give our children.

But the gift of childhood is itself enough for now, and it is, after all, what she needs most of all from us -- for what is childhood without the imagination, the externalization of that utmost value, the personification unsullied by a thousand commercialities?

Somewhere between surrogate and embodiment, then. Bearded, oft jolly, Daddy by day, but in the dark of night, the spirit of the season, arranging these few small gifts, all we can afford, here under the twinkling tree, as eager for morning as she. In becoming Santa we give without recognition, in the name of the very idea of generosity, all ego gone, the highest form of mitzvah. In being Santa, we, too, recieve his gifts.

With work finally over for the season, it's time to begin looking to the year ahead. As a way to explore realistic yet productive goal-setting, vacation (finally) plus a nifty new laptop from the fine folks at work* gives us a moment to revisit last year's year-end resolutions. A point by point systems check:

Resolved: I will smoke slightly less, make several halfhearted attempts to quit, and feel guilty about it.

Surprisingly, I seem to have done better than expected here. I now take a single smoke-break at work, and not even that when things get hectic; gum helps me get through the day instead. Net smoking is down, and guilt is hardly present. Goal met, if not exceeded.

Resolved: I will try to put Willow to bed one night a week, as requested. However, I will put her in charge of reminding me.

Though Willow still seems to need Mommy for that last ten minutes, multiple hour-long dark-room story sessions and half-bedtimes a week counts, doesn't it? Goal met/exceeded here, too.

I will return library books on time, or at least take that crucial first step of putting them in the car when they are due.

Increased use of public libraries has made this harder, but we've only had two late fees to pay since September. Goal met/exceeded.

I will eat at least one marginally healthy food item per day.

Hmm. Milk in coffee does not make it health food, but eating school lunches 3-4 days a week has led to an increase of fruit. At home, I eat what Darcie puts on my plate, and there's veggies with almost every supper. That said, pizza night mitigates what would otherwise have been a perfect score, so far: Daily goal not met, but intention easily surpassed.

I will not get addicted to more than 5 new technologies. On second thought, better call it ten, just in case.

Easy. Lack of access to technology during the summer of homelessness followed by ultimate settlement in a job three to five years behind the times tech-wise left me bereft of new addictions save a few web-based services (gmail, flickr). No worries, mate!

I will blog a minimum of seven times a week, though it may mean overblogging on Fridays to catch up.

Our first major snag, resolution-wise: summer on the road was mostly unbloggable; change in lifestyle leaves me averaging 4-5 blogentries a week. Failed, but perhaps for the best reasons of all: time gets spent instead on sleep and family.

Similarly, I will not update my blog so many times a day that the better entries remain predominantly unread, unless I am really, really bored.

New concern instead: not blogging enough to keep readership. Are you out there, folks? Goal exceeded, unfortunately.

When the new baby is born in April, I will remain in hospital with my wife for at least half of every day.

Goal met! Thanks to in-laws ad parents, who wached the elderkid and made this easy.

I will arrive on time for work for at least the first month of my new job, when I get one.

Close call, here -- I tend to make it in with the kids, but I should be getting there beforehand. Not technically late, but we'll call this one a draw.

I will make shorter lists wherever possible.

Oops. Sigh...ten is such a nice neat number for lists, isn't it?

Final analysis? A few subtle calls, but overall, I seem to be batting well over 500. Seems realistic resolution-making makes for some easy-to-meet benchmarks, eh? Watch this space for a new set of resolutions for the coming year.

*New company laptop is shiny, but it comes with administrative functionality locked, which means no new X-mas music on the iPod until next year's season. Coming resolutions will likely include convincing the district to give me admin-level access in-building, since my work may ideally involve software- and settings-tweaking needs and, really, you don't want to spend a tech's salary trailing me at all times, do you?

Though today is short, and the night is very long, having a fire in the furnace pipe is hardly an appropriate celebration.

No fun staying up through much of the long night waiting for the low-level creosote burn at the chimney base to die down, either. Nice to meet the local fire folks, though.

Bonus: I now fully understand how our hybrid wood/oil furnace works. We'll be on oil until we can get the chimney sweep in.

The image you see here accompanies newsstory ACLU Challenges Menorah Display at Capitol, a new note in an old and already-stale seasonal issue.

Since there seems to be no laws against candelabra display (yet), I figure either someone at the Nashville City Paper is in big trouble for using the wrong stock image, or the ACLU is about to find they backed the wrong horse.

Via Fark, which has 418 comments and counting, and where the stupid seems to be happening on all sides, as it is everywhere. I'm trying to stay out of stupid this year, so I'll say this once and then move on:

As long as all are both welcome and iconographically represented to a reasonable degree in a given community's spaces overall, I see no reason why a single display should be either outlawed or somehow inclusive of all other religions.

I'm proud, by the way, to have been asked to light the hannukiah at Sunday night's holiday service and potluck at our UU church on Sunday night...and to have brought the kid up to do the actual lighting, with guidance. Now that's the way to do it, folks. Thanks to our minister, who found a way to make me feel included for who I really am...and to share mutually, with family and community, in doing so.

Can you tell what this is a photo of?

Spent three years of my life in a cage touching lightning; on alternate days, when I wasn't talking cold-blooded edutainment with a ten foot boa wrapped around my lap, I stood on stage evoking schoolgroup oooohs with the above image and a lexan overlay.

Disappointingly, it seems, once you've seen the cow, you'll always see the cow.

Still can't see it? Check back with original image source BrainBashers for an isolated view of the bovine.

Informatics guru Alex always gives excellent advice and analysis.

Today I am taking some.

O little town, we love it so -- from Halloween parade to Christmas crafts bazaar, and now a day spent on the Santa Train, with increasingly familiar faces alongside: from the droopy-mustached cop who still subs at the local high school after serving his 30 years teaching "Psych- and other -ologies" to the aged train conductor crisp in cap and uniform, and of course the increasingly known yet still unnamed peerparents and their own bundles of joy.

And what a train it was! Miles of slow-moving snow and trees and half-iced river beside the whole way to neighboring palmer and back; warm wooden chairs and wide tables for each wide-eyes family of kids and relations; sparkling decor hung from the slowly swaying carriage. Goodie bags of popcorn balls and candy canes, coloring books and crayons and Christmas pencils, passed out by a Mrs. Claus type.

And, of course, twinkly-eyes Santa wandering the aisles, letting the curious infant tug on his beard from her grandma's arms, practiced enough to know not to push too hard our three-year who retains but a smidgen of the nervousness and fear she exhibited last year.

In its first year of heat (provided by some local insurance company) the Santa Train remains a freebie, sponsored by the local supermarket et al but miraculously unadvertised -- so many folks showed last year that we suspect they decided to keep it on the down-low this time around in order not to disappoint but a single kiddie, young or old.

The line was longer at the other end, of course, where Palmer residents waited by ice sculptures and the old train depot still-standing for their ticket-time ride. But for all the bagpipes and girl scout cookie saleskids in thin mint costumes, Palmer is bigger, and can forever remain the town we rejected at the last minute with no regrets.

We're happy to be in a place where we can feel part of this little and widespread 8 thousand just a few months after arrival, where the faces grow more friendly and familiar each day; where the community need not even complain of tax-dollars spent on such wondrous community celebration. Monson, our home: where no reservations are necessary, the coffee is hot and free as we wait for the train by the redlight crossing, and event directions like "line begins where the depot used to be" are not just sensible, but feel right somehow.

There's a winter weather advisory out for tomorrow. Snow overnight, turning to sleet and freezing rain for the morning commute.

If the weather is bad, but not bad enough to cancel school, the usual mountain route becomes too treacherous to navigate. I have to take an alternate and muchlonger route to work, which means getting up earlier than usual -- say, five a.m. instead of the usual five thirty.

I should be sleeping, but am I? Of course not. I'm waiting up to see the snow.

Looks like the childheart wins out over logic again. One more great thing about teaching for a living, I suppose: for the rest of your life, you're licensed to dream of snow days.

No, I haven't seen Narnia; won't be there for King Kong; haven't been to the movies in over a year, in fact, and even then it was a solo outing, The Incredibles in an almost deserted theater while on vacation in West Palm Beach while Darcie stayed home with the kid; the next night it was my turn to stay while she went off alone.

No dates, and most days the wife doesn't even leave the house at all. We've had the rarified afternoon hour over coffee and windowshopping while one parent or another tried their darndest to keep the kids entertained, but we've never paid for a babysitter, and truly wouldn't know who to call if we needed one.

Evenings we stay in and settle ever more deeply into the still-new house. On the best nights we play together, four on the floor by the pelletstove fire; on the worst nights the kids steal our energy and our partnership like leeches, and we drop off to sleep at different times having said few true words to each other save I think she needs you and I'll take it while you help her brush her teeth.

It's not always this bad, but it has been this week especially. They're in a tough place, together and separately: both getting over vicious colds, cranky and hoarse. The tiny one cuts teeth, the older throws full-out tantrums, throws blocks at her little sister minutes after coming out of the last time-out for throwing pillows at the Christmas tree, bites hard enough to leave bruises that last for days and, when she cannot, screams I want to bite you! I want to bite you! from the relative safety of her room.

Standing in the lunchroom today handing out popcorn to promote yearbook sales I found myself explaining to yet another middle schooler that, no, we have no television reception by choice, because when I come home at the end of the day I want to talk to my family, eat supper together, keep them from the advertising universe, give them whole programming when they and I need it most from start to finish on our own terms, but mostly be together as a family, face each other instead of facing together a screen.

The kids get it, and are impressed. This newlife role modeling is harder than it was at the boarding school, but in our lightest hours we have more to show, are more the us we want to be, and it makes me proud to show them the way we wish to be, can be, have chosen to be.

I don't mention the biting, keep my sleeves buttoned to hide the bruises: this, too, shall pass, and they don't need to see it. It's enough to know that, most days, the life we try so hard to have is the life we see before us; enough to know that, some day, we will trust them enough with each other, trust ourselves enough to leave them behind; trust the universe enough to catch up on our movie theater popcorn, enough for a backlogged lifetime.

Came home yesterday to a new hardwood computer cabinet, finally delivered sans accompanying loftbed for the three-year-old, as the latter (bed, not kid) appears to be on order indefinitely.

Cabinet -- a sort of pretend-it's-a-display-case model, with doors that hide the tech away for visitors and kidfriendliness -- looks great, especially next to the tree.

Looking up, though, I was initially struck by what appeared to be two suspiciously identical scratches, one on each side of the upper panel.

Oh, don't worry, says the spouse. Like much of the furniture we've seen over the past few months, it comes pre-distressed.

Which brings up an interesting image, to say the least: it would appear that all across the cabinet-making and furniture-building industries are a series of employees whose sole purpose in life is to mark up and mar the work that their coworkers have just painstakingly finished building and staining. Carefully and with uniformity, to be sure, but still: what kind of culture is this when immediate off-the-line pre-destruction is not only desirable, but - in many cases - costs extra?

Great Wynia manifesto Lifehack Your Books: Dogear, Writing In Books, and Apologizing to Librarians via BoingBoing today. I'd paraphrase, but the original post is dense, clear, and personally resonant, so let's start with the meat of the matter:

The first taboo I think everyone should just plain get over is the taboo of writing in books. I write in most of my books. Notes about the content, things the content reminds me of, etc. When you just plain write in the margins, inside the cover, etc. there’s no way the notes for that content will get lost. They’ll forever be attached to the text they refer to.

The second is the folded over page corner (dogear). I know some of you just tuned me out as a heretic, but I dogear pages. Worse than that, I dogear for 2 different purposes. I use the top right corner of the right page as my bookmark. I also use the bottom corner of a page that contains something interesting as a marker as well. That lower dogear is often accompanied by notes written in the margin. By folding over the bottom corner of interesting pages, I can quickly look at a book of mine and see how useful I find it. It also lets me flip through a book I haven’t used in a while and easily find the bits I’m likely to want to find again...

Worth noting that Wynia makes a clean and much-needed exception for library books...the postmodernistic phenom of the dissolving relationship between book and mind thus becoming inherently in tension with the idea of the communial copy of the single text. But that's why neither downloaded text nor libraries are supposed to make the concept of book ownership moot -- because only in owned hard copy, the bottom corners fat with new discursivity and reader-value, can we truly READ as we should, an approach which practically mandates Wynia's methodology, or somthing quite like it.

Well, that, and the lovely smell of the new book.

In this model, then, for true active/dialogic readers like we intelligentsia, the library can exist as a place for first-look -- a community space where exposure occurs, that we might then make careful decisions about future purchase, however seldom.

Incidentally, I have pretty much always used the two-tiered dogear method Wynia desribes -- top of the page for placeholder, bottom as a semi-permanent flag or marker for material of relevance -- and do not think it was ever taught to me so much as evolved -- a convergent evolution not so odd when you consider that there are only two corners per page available, and few-to-no other ways to make the book from outside call to page and paragraph for later reference, revisit, and rehash.

Also worth noting: ten percent of the grade for the Modern American Culture class I taught at NMH years ago was based entirely on in-book notation, both presence and quality. In truth, this was partly to pre-empt resale, since I wanted students to think of their books as (once read) part of an ongoing and potentially permanent dialog with the world of ideas.

But the rest of the point was to engender the kind of active engagement that underlies any method such as Wynias.

In the end, it doesn't matter which comes first, habit of mind or habit of bookcare; truly, one cannot live without the other.

From the collegiate concept of active pencil-in-hand reading -- the professorial ideal too often underutilized by students, and almost always dropped by readers after college -- to the relatively new concept of the hypertextual, in which readership becomes a part of authorship via choice and commentary, much of the way our brave new world sees the word practically insists upon such tactics.

Another way of saying so: Wynia suggests this is book-respect, but as his title ("lifehack") implies, it is equally mind-respect.

Kudos to author Wynia, then...but even MORE to those who pass/are passing it along with (not so ironically) a similar kind of metanotation to that described, except in digitext version. For what else is a high-order blog for, in the end, but exactly this, save in small-byte form? Annotate below, fellow read/write/r, and dogear to your heart's content.

Now that permawinter seems to have arrived, how interesting to discover that the name of our new hometown, when turned upside-down, says NO SNOW.

Via the tall, chalk-on-black, freestanding and daily-changing sandwich board at the only gas station in town. Ah, small town life -- how sweet it is.

Also interesting: MassLive has forums for each town in our region. Most seem to be filled with the same old dozen-or-so, but it's a neat way to get at the town-meeting-equivalent heart of the townships in which we've landed. No comment about the average politico-social bent of the regulars, though -- you'll have to go see for yourself why I've decided not to weigh in. (Hint: the big topic in one such forum right now is a proposed boycott of stores that do not wish shoppers "Merry Christmas.")

When we left Falcon Ridge Folk Festival last summer, we knew, all of us, that the Brennan farm was on the block. Rumors of miracles, sure, from the festival will buy it to the vague promise of some anonymous millionaire patroness -- we even started one, just to watch the meme pass around.

But truly, we knew there was no real hope. Farmer Bob, longtime host and loving horsecarriage restorer in the 51 week a year offseason, made less profit off us that we did; despite a loving one-week-a-year community of thousands, neither festival nor farmowner could afford to continue running such a precarious existence at the whim of rain and popular performer schedule.

All the better, then, to see that arrangements have been made for a new farm, just a few miles down the road from the old.

And an interesting subsequent experiment in community, too. Want to see what happens when, given only the address of a new site, a geocommunity with the 'net at their fingertips tackles the dilemma of "will it be like before?" Even before the first semi-official announcement, the half-confidential crew-chief messages had been leaked; soon, maps from topo to satellite had been posted in the Falcon Ridge LJ community for all to see.

If nothing else, proof that an otherwise empty field can, for so many of us, be more home than home, even over months and miles.

The skeleton of a community -- from tents and tarps to signage and soundstage -- has already been moved, waits for us through the long and snowy winter. It remains to be seen if the instinct towards recreation will result in at least some attempt to reinstate neighborhoods and geographical relationships as before, as if a new face were transplanted wholesale onto this new landscape. My guess is that human layout will end up surprisingly similar, though surely the varience of land and the novelty with which we repopulate "our" new hill will have its effect.

Can't wait 'till summer, either way. Thank God I didn't have to leave teaching, and the summeroff it includes; it just wouldn't have been the same without Falcon Ridge. So glad that now, in as many ways as possible, it will be.

The following photo & caption appeared prominently on the front page of the local section of Thursday's edition of The Republican under the headline Never Too Early.

Darcie Farber is getting her daughter, Cassia, started on reading early -- at 8 months of age. The two are going through a book in the children's room at the Palmer Public Library yesterday while waiting for Farber's other daughter, Willow, 3, who was at story time in another room.

Endless thanks to the wife for her good work each day while I earn the bacon...to the libraries and community resources which offer support, space, and stability in that work...and to photographer Mark M. Murray for making us look like such good parents.

Just in time, really, and under the best possible circumstances, as snowday Fridays turn a single unexpected latesleep-and-family into a long weekend of the same.

For a while there it looked like it wouldn't happen -- it's a tough call for any district Superintendent to cancel too early, lest s/he look like an overeager mismanager when the storm turns away at the last minue, and the first flakes of this one didn't hit until 5:30 this morning, the time when the call usually gets made one way or another.

But the weather report got worse, not better, going in, and the spectre of trapped-in-school or, worse, at-fault for early dismissal slip-and-slide accidents, proved too much to resist; in the end, there was our district on the local TV station's online closure compendium; after a quick wood furnace reload, back to bed in the stilldarkness I went.

A good thing, too. By the time I finally re-awoke at 9, the fall could be measured in whippedwhite inches; by the time the three-year and I hit the sled for a quick neighborhood checkout we were slogging through eight inches of perfect fluffiness and white-out conditions. Home again after ten minutes -- I had to crawl up the slippery driveway, lugging the kid-laden sled behind me -- we were snowmen ourselves, ready for cocoa and crackers by the roaring fire.

We fired the plowguy, by the way, since it was he who had caused the iceout conditions on the driveway when he tried unsuccessfully to get his new truck up the hill. Wonderwife found another service which, for the same cost, would also shovel, salt, and sand; by the time the snow began to slow an hour ago, they had shown, cleared, smiled, and left with a check and promise of another round of salt later this afternoon, so we got that going for us.

Now the sun's come out just in time to set. We play beneath the just-decorated tree, purchased yesterday from the farm down the road and bungee-tied home with little difficulty, a strategy which the farmer himself approved of as much easier than rope, in't it? Aglow in the lights of sunset-on-snow and slowly twinkling tree, the baby practices her diphthongs ('ait? 'aight?) and the cardinal hops appreciative from feeder to feeder, the whole world bright red on white and branch like a Christmas card: The house is warm against the winterwind; the hearth is cozy as can be, and all is right with the winterworld.

I have good news and bad news, I begin today, and sure enough, they are comfortable enough here and now to respond without pause: Save a bunch on your car insurance, Mr. F?

A shock, at first, that we still share the same buzzphrases. And the oldmind, the analytical mind, says "proof that the mediaworld is evercollapsing still? Evidence of the sheer longevity of the catchphrase in our modern culture? Perhaps the trope just resonates; perhaps the new Coke slogan contains the old?"

And that is true, I suppose, though it's been a while since I swam in the deep end of the analytical mindset.

But also true, I think to myself in the shared laughter: maybe as long as most of us still spend our hours in front of the nowscreen the culture is saturated enough for me to be both mediaphile and unparticipant, both them and not-them.

If so -- and I believe all this and more to be true, a plethora of meaning in a moment -- then it is a sign that I am of them. That I fit into their worlds, and them in mine.

We have arrived, I think. Accept, and be gladdened, and on to the lesson we go.

* * * * *

It took a while for me to adapt to the middle school mind. For months, they were little, both like and not-quite-yet the overbright high school kids I've been working with as peer and patron, guide and fellow since way back before the mind kicked into adult mode.

They can't believe I don't have television. But we can chat about music, since the names have stayed the same since I was a clubhopper wannabe in my own adolescence, hitting the Esplanade for Green Day, moshing to U2 before they went pop. We share the secrets of cyberspeech, and the gamer's delight.

It feels good to have hit my stride, and theirs; good, though it makes the teetering balance between kid-cred and peer respect among the faculty harder to have reached it; good, to look back at the day at day's end, and count the high fives, the evoked giggles, and find among them a hundred epiphanies and lessons learned for all of us, as it should be.

I tell them I still watch shows in series when they come out on DVD, choose not to let on that the real test of adulthood is having them yet not even flipping the switch for weeks, what with the wood to stack and the kids to tuck and cuddle. But here, in the classroom, we laugh, and smile knowingly, as we learn from each other.

This, too, is balance. This, too, is the wandering life. This, too, is home.

The Matzo House: So hilarious we mention it twice!

What do you get the Jewnitarians in your life for the holidays? Pretty much anything from the Chrismukkah store, an ideal first-stop resource for any and all celebrants of "the merry mish-mash holiday."

The website is hilarious; browse for a while, and check it out with the sound on so you don't miss the clips -- everything from a Dick-Dale-esque version of Hava Nagilla (from this year's exclusive purchase Meshugga Beach Party: 20 Songs of the Chosen Surfers) to Hannukah Hey Ya, which is about as hilarious as it sounds.

Then, when you've had your hilarity, buy us a copy of the Chrismukkah cookbook, so we can make our own matzo house or gefilte goose balls. Or one of several merry, mad mish-mash menorahs, from a reindeer hannukiah - so lifelike, with those candles in its antlers -- to a candle-spined godzilla with radioactive shamash-lighting breath.

Chrismukkah lasts from Dec. 25th to Jan 2 this year, so don't delay -- order your tchotchkes, yarmuclaus, menorahments and snow persons today!

Much credit for the find goes to uberspouse Darcie, who bumped into the site on a sidebar while googlesearching for "Renewal Judaism". Ironically, though, when you get to the site, it invites you to check out "Universist.org, home of the new mish-mash non-religion for the mish-mash holiday!"

Snow today -- not the year's first fall, but the first of any significance, fluffy and largeflaked and constant since long before kids, spouse and I awoke together on a sleepy Sunday. Our wooded landscape turns to winter before our eyes, white-on-pine and bright enough to make indoor lighting unecessary even in relative clouds.

The neighbors we have not yet met can be seen midmorning trudging uphill through the woods we share, carrying guns; we keep the animals close, just in case, though really neither dog nor cat has any interest in more than a perfunctory romp. The cat meowls accusatory from door to door as cats do when confronted with climate change, as if somewhere there was a door into summer, and, as keepers, it is our fault for not yet finding it.

The plowman calls around noon from work: can he come plow after ten p.m.? Better so than not at all, we decide, and peek out the window, where the driveway piles up to three inches of packed powder and the whiteout continues slow and steady. I move the car to the foot of the drive in preparation for tonight's John Gorka concert down Iron Horse way, add "build a gravel pull-off at the foot of the driveway" to the longterm project list: though I know it will never happen, it feels like accomplishing something merely to write it down.

Some snow poems from years past:

Deer Tonight
How Winter Come On
Words For Snow
Winter Comes To Shadow Lake
Winter Song