Less than two weeks to Christmas. It could be time to start Christmas shopping. This is the time when we all of a sudden begin to know for sure that there’s no possible way to get everything done, especially with heavy traffic subtracting minutes and hours from the day. Here’s an idea or two for dealing with that holiday Stress:
Westside Story – Grim Reaper – Part I
Two thoughts motivate me to write this story. One, what I have to share could save a life, yours or someone you love. Two, if my story fails to save any lives, it is my hope my tale will be entertaining.
Publisher Ben Scair and I reviewed the oral version of my story, and we both agreed it would be better if I serialized the story in order to tell my tale in bite size pieces.
Let’s start.
Letter: A case for expanded gambling (and abortion)
December 5, 2014 is evidently the day to celebrate by lifting your glass, as it is the 81st anniversary of the end of “our nation’s failed experiment with alcohol prohibition.”
If you’d like to drink up to that, you can join in here.
Letter: To save 10 minutes, one accident per train crossing in Lakewood every 10 years
According to the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) Point Defiance Bypass Environmental Assessment (Appendix F: Traffic and Transportation Discipline Report, p.83), “None of the individual crossings are predicted to experience accidents more frequently than one in every 10 years.”
This to save an estimated 10 minutes of Amtrak travel time from Seattle to Portland, and this in spite of proposed safety upgrades.
Catch The Christmas Spirit: How to handle holiday Stress
“I think we’ve just about ruined Christmas,” said the man behind the counter. I tried not to take it personally as I pushed a huge stack of packages across the counter. “All this stuff that has nothing to do with Christmas at all. I’ve got no choice about what I do here,” he continued, “but at home I make sure that everything we do is the REAL Christmas.”
Letter: Snowmen meltdowns
We called him Frosty the Fairytale Facsimile, our token snowman.
No corncob pipe, just a stick. There were no carrots in the vegetable bin, so a stick served for the nose too. No rolling snowballs around in the yard. No snowman bigger and better than the neighbor’s. A scraped and mounded pile of snow served just as well in which to stick the obligatory twigs. No boots, no buttons, no broom.
Catch the Christmas Spirit and Keep It All Year Long
If you’ve celebrated fifty or more Christmases, chances are that you may be finding it hard to connect with the true Christmas spirit this year. Face it, we’re not exactly the demographic the toy and computer manufacturers are going for. I mean, do you really want a Princess Elsa doll or a USB backup for you Mac Air? I thought not.
What we need, you and I, is something to help us put the constant and dizzying changes in the holiday celebration into perspective. Luckily, the whole problem is put into perspective in a timely manner by one of our most gifted local writers. Who would that be? Well, as Mark Twain said, “I allude in these vague general terms to … myself,” Dorothy Wilhelm.
Letter: The tree
Of all days for our annual family outing in search for the perfect Christmas tree, it was during a blinding snowstorm.
Ok, half-an-inch of snowfall doesn’t qualify as a storm but the sun shining on the snow was indeed blinding. Though not enough to make a snowman, the snow in the winter wonderland almost-foothills of the Cascades had flocked all the U-cut Grand Firs, Douglas Firs, and Charlie Brown trees too.
Westside Story – Roanoke Inn
From time to time I attend programs sponsored by an amazing organization called National Speakers Association or NSA. Dorothy Wilhelm, my favorite post-retirement mentor, introduced me to NSA. For those of you who know Dorothy Wilhelm, if she says NSA is the place to be, you know, NSA is the place to be.