On the Seventh Day of Christmas

 The Zoomlians bring to you Minions!

 

On the Sixth Day of Christmas

 ...the Zoomlians bring to you: Radio Garden!

This is a website which streams live radio broadcasts from around the world!

Doesn't sound too exciting?  Try it!  Spin the globe and click on whatever little green dot catches your eye. It's addictive! 

You should be able to get to their website by clicking on the picture, but if I haven't gotten the tech right, you can use this link: Radio Garden.

On the Fifth Day of Christmas

 The Zoomlians give to you: the ability to make beautiful paper snowflakes!

 

On the Fourth Day of Christmas

 ...the Zoomlians bring to you: a Christmas poem!

The Burning Babe

By Robert Southwell, SJ

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,

Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,

A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;

Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed

As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.

“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;

The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,

The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,

For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,

      So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”

      With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,

      And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

HT: Poetry Foundation

Two things about this poem: firstly, the writer was a priest in England during Elizabethan times who was later martyred for his faith, and secondly, it was set to music and sung by Sting. I'm not sure what's with that since I also heard his version of The Angel Gabriel to Mary Came for the first time ever this Advent.

On the Third Day of Christmas

The Zoomlians bring to you: a Christmas carol!

 

On the Second Day of Christmas

 The Zoomlians give to you: The Lego Christmas Story!

 

Merry Christmas!

 

Merry Christmas Eve!

 

Wordless Wednesday: Almost Christmas

 

12 Days of Christmas, Coming Up!

 Just a reminder that our Christmas gift to you is on it's way!  As usual, we will have a little something special for you posted each of the 12 days of Christmas.

Extra special this year, we are going to have a bonus post for Christmas Eve!  Enjoy!

Poem of the Week: The Wicked Fairy at the Manger

 

The Wicked Fairy at the Manger

My gift for the child:
No wife, kids, home;
No money sense. Unemployable.
Friends, yes. But the wrong sort -
The workshy, women, wogs,
Petty infringers of the law, persons
With notifiable diseases,
Poll tax collectors, tarts;
The bottom rung.

........His end?
I think we'll make it
Public, prolonged, painful.

Right, said the baby. That was roughly
What we had in mind.

U. A. Fanthorpe ('Christmas Poems - BC:AD', Peterloo Poets) 

HT: ReSource

O Christmas Tree

 

I can't understand why this Advent is so busy!

You would think with staying home all the time, things would be quieter than normal, but, with ten people, I think the opposite is true!

But we had our own little Christmas party with eggnog, music, and cookies while we decorated the tree on Gaudete Sunday.

We like to do it today, when we start the O Antiphons, but between doctor visits, college stuff, and Christmas preparations, it's been too crazy.

And I don't mind enjoying the tree a little extra!

Guest Blog by Mxyl: Fact Checking the Future Part 2 - The Great Outdoors and Beyond!

Fig 1. Our priorities, apparently.

 It's been a bit, but we're heading on a field trip from the virtual home of 2020 to the book's other predictions, some specific to this year and some beyond! Without further ado, let's get to the elephant in the room:

Population: We're actually pretty much on track for the book's population numbers (hard to say as it doesn't give numbers for our specific year), although while different articles disagree on the topic, its overpopulation worries feel pretty dated. Many suspect that what's starting in Japan now is liable to happen in other areas (decreasing but eventually stabilizing), to say nothing of moon bases and whatever other projects lie in store.

Anyway, with that out of the way, it's time for the fun parts:

Space Hotels: "By the year 2020, there will be space hotels as well as space stations orbiting the Earth, 280 miles [up]... A special shuttle service will carry guests to and from Earth as well as on sightseeing tours to the Moon (p.23)... In the 21st century, there will be bases on the moon, probably with lunar hotels (p.56).

...Did Elon Musk just read the same book I did and get incredibly disappointed that we're not there yet? Because it feels like that's what he's going for. 

Miniaturization: The book shows off that computers have gotten small enough to fit into one's hand... like the Psion Series 3c, complete with its 1 megabyte of RAM. (For what it's worth, given another 20 years an iPhone 8's ~2,000 megabytes of RAM will probably sound just as laughable.) However, we're not here to measure the late '90s, just what it thinks the future will be! They propose an Internet-connected laptop successor, an "Office on the Arm" (a 1996 prototype shown at a wearable machines exhibition) that works as a phone, calculator and alarm clock, complete with a laptop-style touch pad! Again, though, this is one of those instances where the future's out-performed the past's predictions: we can do all that and more from an Apple Watch. Still, the concept of charging it via "a special vest worn by the user, which will convert body heat into energy" still isn't in mainstream use to my knowledge.

Virtual Reality Advancements: Granted, I referenced that this came true in the last post, and it isn't really outdoors-y, but I'll just say it's simulated outdoors. Anyway, the book also mentions "virtual sensory suits" that essentially mimic the feeling of, for instance, a ride or a sport. The Teslasuit does exactly this, bringing "full body haptic feedback" and climate control to the table, while also allowing the potential for motion capture and biometrics, making it a scientific and health tool as well as a media/gaming device. Can't find a price on it, but I'm getting the impression that developer kits are being sold for around $13,000. Well, at least it's nice to know the technology exists. It's worth noting that we're still fairly into the broad "21st century" listed in the book's description, so this could definitely become commonplace within the next eighty years. 

Nonetheless, it's interesting to note that Augmented Reality didn't seem to exist as a concept by this point. I suppose it makes sense--if one's working on technology to enter a virtual world, why would it occur to people to go for only part-virtual?

In-Car Navigation: According to the book, all-new cars will use CD-ROM maps and things called global positioning satellites to calculate the best route to take, complete with a digital voice. This is another one of the cases in which we've out-performed predictions, with zero need for CD-ROMs for maps, to say nothing of phone-based GPS systems. 

Automatic Cars and Highways: Honestly, this is probably one of the more exciting items in that we're right on the cusp on it. Automatic cars have been a thing for a while, but are only starting to enter the mainstream market--mostly in the limited form of cars that, say, guide parking work and keep drivers from drifting outside their lane (I once had the opportunity to travel in one). Whether highways will be electrified or magnetized to keep such cars in their lanes is another question; we seem to have moved past the need for that, relying more on AI recognition technology. 

Calendar of the Future: The book's listed a long-term calendar (up to 2035); there's way too much there to cover in total, but here are its predictions on 2020 (be warned, though--it places electronic shopping as becoming dominant quite accurately in 2014, but it puts the first human landing on Mars at the same year):

• 3D video conferencing: Well... does basically just enhanced VRChat for businesses count? If not, I don't think we're there yet, at least not on a widespread basis.
  
• Artificial lungs, kidneys, and brain cells: prototype artificial lungs have actually been made successfully in 2018; artificial kidneys haven't been made yet, although the University of California reports that The Kidney Project, a project dedicated to just this, was recently given a $1,000,000 grant to continue research on it. Artificial organic brain cells don't seem to be here yet either; the closest I could immediately find were machines that might reasonably fulfill a brain cell's functions.
• Cars that drive themselves on smart highways: (See above: Automatic Cars and Highways)
  
• Genetic links of all diseases identified: Uuh... heh... wouldn't that have been nice.

Interestingly, in their Could Happen at Any Time segment, they list "worldwide epidemic" right between "human mutation" and "time travel invented." Huh.

Last but not least: some relevant factoids from the book's Fascinating Facts page! 

• Scientists aim for plastic made from plants: Plant-based plastic has actually come true!
• The James Webb Space Telescope will turn its eye to galaxies' birth, launching 2011: Well... they were actually off by a bit. Like, ten years. The plan's still around, but according to the Space Telescope's Official NASA Website, the latest delay, due to a guessable health concern, has pushed the launch back to Halloween of 2021. 
• By 2020, four out of ten people could be working from home: Huh. I guess we've noticed a good chunk of that. What is it with the weirdly relevant stuff?
  
• The first manned Mars mission will be in 2019: Missed by a mile... which, since Mars is so far away, actually adds up to a whole lot. (And yes, it did mention it'd be 2014 elsewhere; maybe an update went uncaught in the revision?) On the other hand, Elon Musk (who I'm now all but convinced has read the same book I have) is aiming for the book to only be off by a mere four years. 

Overall, it's pretty easy to laugh at what they've gotten wrong, but some of its predictions are stunningly accurate. I suppose it shows the difference between an educated guess and a wild, out-in-the-dark one--you can still be wrong with either one, but knowing the data from the past and present allows one to extrapolating something far closer to the truth than going from nothing.

Poem of the Week: Advent

ADVENT
(On A Theme by Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
By Pamela Cranston

Look how long
the weary world waited,
locked in its lonely cell,
guilty as a prisoner.

As you can imagine,
it sang and whistled in the dark.
It hoped. It paced and puttered about,
tidying its little piles of inconsequence.

It wept from the weight of ennui,
draped like shackles on its wrists.
It raged and wailed against the walls
of its own plight.

But there was nothing
the world could do
to find its own freedom.
The door was shut tight.

It could only be opened from the outside.


Who could believe the latch
would be turned by a pink flower —
the tiny hand
of a newborn baby?
© by Pamela Cranston, 2011

HT: Journey With Jesus

Wordless Wednesday: Christmas Cooking!

 

Feast of St. Nicholas

 

Happy Feast of St. Nicholas!

We love the good bishop: patron of children, puncher of heretics, and gold slinging saver of girls.

We all put out our shoes, which at this point, gives St. Nicholas quite a bit of work!

We had made custom hot chocolate mixes for everyone, and we had planned to put them in the stockings (which we usually open Christmas Eve).

But we realized there wasn't enough room in the sock, so we put them with the shoe for St. Nicholas Day.

Poem of the Week: Gabriel's Annunciation

Gabriel’s Annunciation

By Jan Richardson

For a moment I hesitated
on the threshold.
For the space
of a breath
I paused,
unwilling to disturb
her last ordinary moment,
knowing that the next step
would cleave her life:
that this day
would slice her story
in two,
dividing all the days before
from all the ones
to come.

The artists would later
depict the scene:
Mary dazzled
by the archangel,
her head bowed
in humble assent,
awed by the messenger
who condescended
to leave paradise
to bestow such an honor
upon a woman, and mortal.
Yet I tell you
it was I who was dazzled,
I who found myself agape
when I came upon her—
reading, at the loom, in the kitchen,
I cannot now recall;
only that the woman before me—
blessed and full of grace
long before I called her so—
shimmered with how completely
she inhabited herself,
inhabited the space around her,
inhabited the moment
that hung between us.
I wanted to save her
from what I had been sent
to say.
Yet when the time came,
when I had stammered
the invitation
(history would not record
the sweat on my brow,
the pounding of my heart;
would not note
that I said
Do not be afraid
to myself as much as
to her)
it was she
who saved me—
her first deliverance—
her Let it be
not just declaration
to the Divine
but a word of solace,
of soothing,
of benediction
for the angel
in the doorway
who would hesitate
one last time—
just for the space
of a breath
torn from his chest—
before wrenching himself away
from her radiant consent,
her beautiful and
awful yes.

HT: Journey with Jesus 
 

Wordless Wednesday: Advent Posters and Wreath

 

Advent!

Shamelessly cribbing from last year, it's farewell to The Glorious Turkey and all the gourds and pumpkins, and hello to all the Advent stuff!

The thing to keep in mind is that we have now been doing the Advent thing with kids for 20 years.  In the beginning, I was looking for Advent stuff to do that would be meaningful, helpful, and fun.


Now we have the weight of Tradition, as well as the "need" to have 6 small things to do each day so each kid can do an Advent thing each day. Also, I've done it so long, it's easy for me.

Do what I did: if it looks like fun, and not too much work, try it.  If it doesn't, smile and nod.

This is what it looks like for us.


Kid 1: Open a door on the Advent House.  Inside, there are 6 pieces of candy, and a Playmobil Advent piece to put in the stable.

Yeah, the sheep is in the attic.  The kid decides where to put it.





Kid 2: Find and place the Jesse Tree ornament while I read the scripture passages.

You can find all sorts of sources for Jesse Tree scripture and ornaments.  My set are from an ornament swap organized years ago by my friend Jolene - this means I have a set of cool and creative ornaments while only having had to come up with one good idea.

As they've broken or gotten lost, we've been replacing them with shrinky dinks.  Not as cool, but doable.




Kid 3: The velcro calendar!

This was something I thought would fall by the wayside, but it has the weight of Tradition, so on it goes.


Kid 4: Lights and blows out the Advent candles and does the felt calendar.

Back in the day, it was just blowing out the candles, you know, before we trusted the kids with producing fire!




Kid 5: Chooses a book to unwrap.

We have way to many Advent and Christmas books, so I just wrap 25 of our favorites in tissue paper.  The rest are loose in the other box.

Most are religious, but some are secular, and you never quite know what you are picking!

I've found it's a good way to make sure we actually get to all of them.  As an extra bonus, it's good training for how to politely receive and unwrap gifts, as well as what to do with the paper afterwards...
Kid 6: Chooses and places an ornament.

This is one of the favorite Advent tasks!

They aren't tree ornaments, they are decorations.  It's a lovely, no stress way to decorate, and I love it that the house gets slowly more decorated as Advent goes on!



Kid 7: Well, there is no 7 to do another task, but we all do little acts of love and kindness to soften our hearts for Baby Jesus' arrival.

That's our crib: we put a piece of hay in every time we pray, sacrifice, or make  little act of love.

Extra bonus: If you don't have time for a complicated Advent, here's yesterday's Easy Advent Prep:
A Christmas Kit

Poem of the Week: People Look East

Happy Advent!

 

 

Words and Music: Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965), 1928
MIDI / Noteworthy Composer

1. People, look east. The time is near 
Of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the guest, is on the way.

2. Furrows, be glad. Though earth is bare,
One more seed is planted there:
Give up your strength the seed to nourish,
That in course the flower may flourish.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the rose, is on the way.

3. Birds, though you long have ceased to build,
Guard the nest that must be filled.
Even the hour when wings are frozen
God for fledging time has chosen.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the bird, is on the way.

4. Stars, keep the watch. When night is dim
One more light the bowl shall brim,
Shining beyond the frosty weather,
Bright as sun and moon together.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the star, is on the way.

5. Angels, announce with shouts of mirth
Christ who brings new life to earth.
Set every peak and valley humming
With the word, the Lord is coming.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the Lord, is on the way.

 

HT: Hymns and Carols of Christmas

Poem of the Week: Christ the King

 

Pamela Cranston

A POEM FOR THE FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING

See how this infant boy
lifted himself down
into his humble crècheand 

laid his tender glove of skin
against splintered wood—
found refuge in a rack
of straw—home
that chilly dawn,
in sweetest silage,
those shriven stalks.

This outcast king lifted
himself high upon his savage cross,
extended the regal banner
of his bones, draping himself
upon his throne—his battered feet,
his wounded hands not fastened
there by nails but sewn
by the strictest thorn of love.

HT : Journey With Jesus

Image by Klenda

Gone Fishing

We recently replenished our fish tanks with some beautiful new fish!

Choclo restarted a ten gallon tank with a betta, some corys, and a few neon tetras.

He named his crown tail betta Hamlet, "because he's such a drama king."

As you can see, he is challenging his lovely reflection!

He also got a pair of these panda corydora catfish.

They are a fun little cleanup crew: where ever one is, the other is sure to be sniffing along so as not to miss out on anything.
 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, in Oob's tank, his enormously old (and extremely large) cory continues on happily with some new tankmates.

 

He has four or five very vibrant male guppies.  It's a good amount: they like to chase each other around, but there are enough fish that no one fish gets stressed.

 Lastly, in the big community tank, I added a dwarf gourami.  I love these fish- they are so vibrant!

Wordless Wednesday: First Frost

 

Thankfulness Chain

Every November we try to focus on thankfulness, writing down God's gifts on feathers, leaves, eels, or chains.

This year we went with strips that we stapled into a chain.

We leave a little basket of paper strips on the table and people fill them in on and off all month.  

We have over a hundred links in our chain so far!

 

Poem of the Week: Autumn Psalm

This one is a bit longer than I usually do, but I think it's just delightful!

Autumn Psalm

By Jacqueline Osherow

 

A full year passed (the seasons keep me honest)

since I last noticed this same commotion.

Who knew God was an abstract expressionist?

I’m asking myself—the very question

I asked last year, staring out at this array

of racing colors, then set in motion

by the chance invasion of a Steller’s jay.

Is this what people mean by speed of light?

My usually levelheaded mulberry tree

hurling arrows everywhere in sight—

its bow: the out-of-control Virginia creeper

my friends say I should do something about,

whose vermilion went at least a full shade deeper

at the provocation of the upstart blue,

the leaves (half green, half gold) suddenly hyper

in savage competition with that red and blue—

tohubohu returned, in living color.

Kandinsky: where were you when I needed you?

My attempted poem would lie fallow a year;

I was so busy focusing on the desert’s

stinginess with everything but rumor.

No place even for the spectrum’s introverts—

rose, olive, gray—no pigment at all—

and certainly no room for shameless braggarts

like the ones that barge in here every fall

and make me feel like an unredeemed failure

even more emphatically than usual.

And here they are again, their fleet allure

still more urgent this time—the desert’s gone;

I’m through with it, want something fuller—

why shouldn’t a person have a little fun,

some utterly unnecessary extravagance?

Which was—at least I think it was—God’s plan

when He set up (such things are never left to chance)

that one split-second assignation

with genuine, no-kidding-around omnipotence

what, for lack of better words, I’m calling vision.

You breathe in, and, for once, there’s something there.

Just when you thought you’d learned some resignation,

there’s real resistance in the nearby air

until the entire universe is swayed.

Even that desert of yours isn’t quite so bare

and God’s not nonexistent; He’s just been waylaid

by a host of what no one could’ve foreseen.

He’s got plans for you: this red-gold-green parade

is actually a fairly detailed outline.

David never needed one, but he’s long dead

and God could use a little recognition.

He promises. It won’t go to His head

and if you praise Him properly (an autumn psalm!

Why didn’t I think of that?) you’ll have it made.

But while it’s true that my Virginia creeper praises Him,

its palms and fingers crimson with applause,

that the local breeze is weaving Him a diadem,

inspecting my tree’s uncut gold for flaws,

I came to talk about the way that violet-blue

sprang the greens and reds and yellows

into action: actual motion. I swear it’s true

though I’m not sure I ever took it in.

Now I’d be prepared, if some magician flew

into my field of vision, to realign

that dazzle out my window yet again.

It’s not likely, but I’m keeping my eyes open

though I still wouldn’t be able to explain

precisely what happened to these vines, these trees.

It isn’t available in my tradition.

For this, I would have to be Chinese,

Wang Wei, to be precise, on a mountain,

autumn rain converging on the trees,

a cassia flower nearby, a cloud, a pine,

washerwomen heading home for the day,

my senses and the mountain so entirely in tune

that when my stroke of blue arrives, I’m ready.

Though there is no rain here: the air’s shot through

with gold on golden leaves. Wang Wei’s so giddy

he’s calling back the dead: Li Bai! Du Fu!

Guys! You’ve got to see this—autumn sun!

They’re suddenly hell-bent on learning Hebrew

in order to get inside the celebration,

which explains how they wound up where they are

in my university library’s squashed domain.

Poor guys, it was Hebrew they were looking for,

but they ended up across the aisle from Yiddish—

some Library of Congress cataloger’s sense of humor:

the world’s calmest characters and its most skittish

squinting at each other, head to head,

all silently intoning some version of kaddish

for their nonexistent readers, one side’s dead

(the twentieth century’s lasting contribution)

and the other’s insufficiently learned

to understand a fraction of what they mean.

The writings in the world’s most spoken language

across from one that can barely get a minyan.

Sick of lanzmen, the yidden are trying to engage

the guys across the aisle in some conversation:

How, for example, do you squeeze an image

into so few words, respectfully asks Glatstein.

Wang Wei, at first, doesn’t understand the problem

but then he shrugs his shoulders, mumbles Zen

... but, please, I, myself, overheard a poem,

in the autumn rain, once, on a mountain.

How do you do it? I believe it’s called a psalm?

Glatstein’s cronies all crack up in unison.

Okay, groise macher, give him an answer.

But Glatstein dons his yarmulke (who knew he had one?)

and starts the introduction to the morning prayer,

Pisukei di zimrah, psalm by psalm.

Wang Wei is spellbound, the stacks’ stale air

suddenly a veritable balm

and I’m so touched by these amazing goings-on

that I’ve forgotten all about the autumn

staring straight at me: still alive, still golden.

What’s gold, anyway, compared to poetry?

a trick of chlorophyll, a trick of sun.

True. It was something, my changing tree

with its perfect complement: a crimson vine,

both thrown into panic by a Steller’s jay,

but it’s hard to shake the habit of digression.

Wandering has always been my people’s way

whether we’re in a desert or narration.

It’s too late to emulate Wang Wei

and his solitary years on that one mountain

though I’d love to say what I set out to say

just once. Next autumn, maybe. What’s the occasion?

Glatstein will shout over to me from the bookcase

(that is, if he’s paying any attention)

and, finally, I’ll look him in the face.

Quick. Out the window, Yankev. It’s here again.

HT: Poetry Foundation