The Thin Red Line

Yes, I know that we are fully half a year away from Independence Day when a book celebrating the United States flag might be most appropriate, but I came across this lavishly illustrated, Very Over-Sized coffee table book the other day and just Had to share it. Long May She Wave is a history of Old Glory that is loaded with pictures of every depicition of the flag imagineable from actual flags to knitted and crotcheted rugs and matts to products like a cell phone and an airplance, completely wrapped in stars and stripes. At a USD 60.00 cover price I can’t really recommend buying it, but it is sure worth a visit to 929.9209 at the library to check it out. Recommended.

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Merry Christmas!   Today on Christmas Eve I feature the twelfth and final of my Twelve Books For Christmas.   Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is arguably the essential and true Christmas story in English.   Christmas Carol has been a lifelong favorite for me and re-reading it each December something of a rite of the season.

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In examining the copy right page on this book,  I confirmed that the original poem by Clement C. Moore is in the public domain and so decided to present in it’s entirety Moore’s Classic poem, The Night Before Christmas.

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Today’s post is for my blog friends who also work in libraries.   Twas’ the night before Christmas and an over-worked, under-budgeted librarian is working late into the night to mend her battered and limited collection when a bright red bookmobile descends from the sky and a portly gentleman in red and his Pages elves deliver loads of new books and other goodies.   Loaded with library terms and literary references this unique take off on Clement C. Moore’s famous poem,  Librarian’s Night Before Christmas is a brand new book and was received in our branch for the first time today.    And our head Youth Services Librarian clipped a note to it asking all branch staff to read the book and initial it.  (No way that one was going home with a patron tonight ;)   We all loved it and if you work in a library or wish you did, this one is Highly Recommended.

Tomorrow:  Clement C. Moore’s The Night Before Christmas

Monday:  Charles Dickens’  A Christmas Carol

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Today’s Christmas book is a bit unusual.  It includes a history lesson. Christmas In The Trenches by John McCutcheon with illustrations by Henri Sorensen (who was also the illustrator for The Old Shepard’s Tale, another Christmas book I reviewed) relates the tale of a grandfather and his  in England on Christmas Day.   After the presents and the meal the little girl remarks to her grandfather that this has been her favorite Christmas ever.   She asks if Grandpa has a favorite Christmas.   He does and this is the story.

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Just in case you are counting, today is my seventh of twelve Christmas book posts.   I have already picked out the remaining five books and am set to post one per day,  concluding on Christmas Eve with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.   To be perfectly honest,  I really don’t know what to make of Mary D. Lankford and Karen Dugan’s Christmas USA.   The red, white and blue star-spangled color scheme seems more suited to Independence Day on the 4th of July rather than Christmas.   And the drawing of a gingerbread house with an American flag roof is downright off-putting.

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Sometimes the holiday season makes me feel old.   Recently my friend techfun pointed out how the advent of hundreds of channels and Tivo have retired what used to be annual cultural touchstones we all shared.    Once school was back in session and the evenings became dark and cool the annual telecast of The Wizard of Oz was something that all kids looked forward to.   It would be followed in early–mid November by the Peanuts Thanksgiving Special– The Great Pumpkin and then it would be December and time for our annual rendezvous with Rudolph , Frosty, The Grinch  and of course A Charlie Brown Christmas.

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Certain cookies just mean Christmas.   For me,  buttery little balls of pecan studded dough rolled in powdered sugar (and known by all sorts of different names) are the Christmas cookie,  though I realize for others it may be gingerbread men,  sugar cookies cut in holiday shapes and sprinkled with red or green sugar.   Whatever your own personal #1 Christmas cookie is,  chances are you will find an excellent recipe for it in Lou Siebert Pappas’  The Christmas Cookie Book.

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Just in case you are keeping count, this is the fourth of my Twelve Books For Christmas.   While Christmas dinner is not quite the classic high-stakes, high-stress meal Thanksgiving so often is,  the Christmas season is often a time for many different sorts of parties.   Whether you are planning a very traditional Christmas Day dinner,  a seasonal cocktail party,  a pay-back-a-whole-years-invitations Open House or an intimate Christmas Eve supper, Williams-Sonoma’s Christmas Entertaining has a menu and copious and specific practical advice to make your soiree a success.   

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Last week I got called in to work a shift  at Sumner Library.   I had worked at that branch once before and they had been very nice to me so when they said they were really desperate for someone to come in from 5–9 pm I agreed.   Since I’d only been there once before I was not as clear as I might have been on the driving directions, and was at the point of wondering if I had made a wrong turn when I realized the library was just ahead on the left.   Since I was in the right lane, I eased over so that I would be able to turn into the driveway, quite failing to notice the big SUV already occupying the left hand lane. 

Luckily it was quite minor as collisions go.   The Jeep SUV’s rugged side panels showed no damage at all and the scuffs on my driver’s side doors will buff right out.   I did knock the side view mirror off, but re-attaching it proved easy and inexpensive.    The other driver was very nice and after re-assuring each other we were fine and that no damage needed to be reported to police or insurance,  I wandered into the staff lounge at Summer,  sat down at the table,  broke into my emergency Pop-Tarts and picked up the first book at hand to distract myself so I could calm down and work my shift.   

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Today is my second of twelve Christmas book selections. Yesterday Bev blogged about going downtown to Christmas shop and recalled how it was a major event, warranting one’s best clothes and all the trappings of an occasion. I remember as a child how exciting it was at Christmas-time to go downtown and gawk for ages at the many and spectacular window displays at the D. H. Holmes and Maison Blanche department stores on Canal Street in New Orleans. Indeed if you lived in a city of any size, you probably got nearly as excited by the spectacular displays of your department store as any of the folks who queued up in New York City to gawk at the windows of their famous stores.

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I thought briefly of signing up for Holidailies and committing to posting about Christmas books every day in December but decided that, much as I love Christmas, I would burn out on it well before thirty posts and I fear you would too. Thinking of a favorite Christmas carol I decided instead to present for your holiday reading consideration Twelve Books For Christmas. This is the first, the twelfth will be Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol featured on December 24th and the remaining ten will be surprises scattered as regular posts between now and then. Cajun Night Before Christmas, first published in 1973 is one of my oldest personal favorite Christmas books.

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Thanksgiving dinner is a notoriously difficult meal to pull off. It often involves cooking for a much larger number of people than even the most enthusiastic thrower of dinner parties is used to cooking for, and very often the planning, cooking and serving take place amidst severe emotional stress as less than amicable members of the larger clan prepare for and arrive for this annual reunion.

Whether you’re never cooked for this many people before and are in need of a life raft or are an experienced Thanksgiving host looking to upscale your menu a bit and learn the easiest ways possible for planning, preparing and serving this big deal meal, the editors and contributors of Fine Cooking magazine have got you covered with How To Cook A Turkey And All The Other Trimmings

An A to Z soup to nuts reference for the Thanksgiving dinner host or hostess. Everything you need to know about buying and cooking a turkey. Excellent recipes for easy side dishes from the traditional mashed potatoes and green beans to various flavors and variations for the turkey, gravy and stuffing to imaginative appetizers and desserts to round out the meal.

The book is well organized and clearly written. While not every recipe appealed to me, many of them did such as Garlic Roasted Green Beans with shallots and hazlenuts and the Cornbread Pecan Stuffing and the Chocolate Pecan Pie. If you will be cooking and serving Thanksgiving dinner, get a hold of a copy of this book. It will be a huge help. Highly Recommended

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This is one of Ron’s picks, and not one I myself would have selected. This fourth volume of true stories of people who have "removed themselves from the gene pool" by killing or sterilizing themselves through acts of great stupidity strikes me frankly as more than a little over the top and I am frankly uneasy at making fun of the suffering of stupid people, knowing full well that all of us behave stupidly at times.

Judging from Ron’s frequent bursts of laughter as he read the selections by Wendy Northcutt and her website community, some of these tales must be quite funny, but I was so horrified after hearing the one about the Romanian who in 2004 was infuriated by a noisy chicken that kept him awake all night that he one night rushed outside and snatched up the chicken and chopped its head off with his yard axe only to look up in horror as the un-beheaded chicken scampered away and a passing dog ate his penis, which had fallen to the ground beneath the chopping block that I didn’t read any of them.

I am thankful for each and every one of you who visit The Thin Red Line and especially to Majik, who’s meme I’m not actually going to answer. (Sorry.)

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