When I moved back to Ohio a year ago, I spent a weekend in Cleveland, where I grew up and where “A Christmas Story” was filmed. I made the rounds of places from my childhood in the 50s, including the house where this movie was filmed. In case you’ve somehow managed to never see it, the movie tells the story of nine-year-old Ralphie Parker in the 1940s. He needs to convince his parents, teacher, and […]
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A Wonderful Life?
We have three men to thank for the classic Christmas movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Philip Van Doren Stern, author of the short story that inspired the movie; Frank Capra, the immigrant who produced the film; Jimmy Stewart, aka George Bailey. Before the release of this perennial favorite, none of them were having a wonderful life. The 1930s and 1940s, the decades in which the short story and the movie first appeared in public, were challenging […]
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Christmas Carol
It’s hard to imagine a Christmas season without Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol making an appearance. This Christmas/Holiday season finds me giving copious quantities of cash to assorted home supply shops as I organize my new apartment. My daughter and her daughter are celebrating all of us being together this year by helping me bake cookies for a church fundraiser to support a local charity. I hope you’ll enjoy this rerun from 2018. May the transformed Ebenezer […]
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Christmas Non-Shopping List
Does your list of things to do include Christmas shopping for people you care about but are out of ideas for what to give them? I suspect so. Most of us really don’t need more things. What many of us long for is more time. We crave more time for activities that add meaning to our lives or help us relax and calm down. Many people crave more quality time with their friends and family. […]
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Happy Holidays
I suppose it’d be asking too much to finish the relentless political publicity before we start in on the how-many-days-‘til-Christmas hype. It’s already started in my hometown of Houston where the Christmas lights are already coming on and the TV commercials are appearing for the annual consumer over-drive advertising campaigns. If anyone near and dear to you is about to run this gauntlet of relentless holiday over-functioning as a first time single-again adult, I urge […]
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