Celebrations & Holidays Archives

December 19, 2011

My Favorite Christmas Decoration

Mother is a decoratin’ fool. She loves nothing more than to drag out boxes of ornaments and mementos and scatter them all through the house.

Any holiday works: Easter, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, Groundhog Day (OK, I’m not sure about that one.)

I put in a fold-down staircase a couple of decades ago so she didn’t have to perch on a step ladder to get the stuff out of the attic. Now that the house is empty, there’s plenty of closet space, so she, thankfully, doesn’t have to climb up the ladder anymore. (I wired the attic lights to the porch light and told the neighbors if they see it on for a couple of days and they don’t see her, check the attic.)

This Santa is probably almost as old as I am. (Click on any image to make it larger.)

Nativity Scene

I can remember carefully placing these figures when I was about the age of Grandson Malcolm. Based on the number of chips, my destructive younger brothers much have been less diligent. I can just see them playing Shepherds vs. Wise Guys.

A lump in my throat

The one decoration that always brings a lump in my throat wasn’t storebought, it isn’t fancy and it’s a bit worn.

It means more to me than all the others combined.

My Grandmother made this sign and had it hanging in the stairwell the first Christmas I came back from Ohio University. When I see it, I know I’m home.

I’m typing this in Cape as the last thing I do before loading the van to head home to Florida. By the time you read this, I’ll be back with Wife Lila, Sons Matt and Adam, Daughters (we don’t need that in-law business) Sarah and Carly and Grandsons Malcolm and Graham. Here’s wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a New Year with lots of new tales.

Monday night update

Well, I made it back to Florida by Monday night, but I stopped in Lake City. Wife Lila won the pool for how late I’d be getting out of Cape Sunday. I quit just north of Monteagle Pass when my eyes got heavy.

I was going to push on to Ocala tonight, but I saw something about 200 yards north of the Florida line that made me a little cautious.

About half a mile after a fire rig passed me headed south, I saw the largest collection of police and fire vehicles I’ve seen in one place in a long time. When I crawled past them, I saw at least two van/SUV type vehicles that had rolled over and down an embankment just before they reached the Florida welcome center. I don’t know if the response was so great because it happened on the state line and Georgia and Florida folks both responded or if enough vehicles and patients were involved to require that much turnout.

I suspect that one or more of the vehicles changed lanes when they spotted the welcome center sign, resulting in the crash. They didn’t make it to the welcome center OR Florida. I hope the people were damaged less than their vehicles.

December 16, 2011November 16, 2015

Christmas Exhibit and My Calendar

My 2012 Glimpses of East Perry County calendar is available at the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum in Altenburg and at Annie Laurie’s Antiques in Cape Girardeau. I’m pleased with the way the project turned out. Despite the “East Perry County” in the title, the photos should appeal to anyone who likes scenic photos, the Mississippi River, historical landmarks and quirky stories. I tried to pick images that you could enjoy for a month.

They’ll be available both places for $14. I’ll list contact information at the end.

Tower Rock book available

Tower Rock: “A Demon that Devours Travelers” has gone into its second printing. (OK, so the first press run wasn’t all THAT big until I could be sure I wouldn’t have a shed full of them.) It’s available at the Altenburg Museum. The price is $14. They’ll mail it for an additional $5 shipping and handling.

It’s worth a drive up to Altenburg

Admission to the museum is free. It’s worth a drive up there to see this year’s themed Christmas exhibit with more than 30 trees. Here’s what the exhibit looked like last year.

Photo hint of the day

Most of the room light in the museum and the Christmas tree lights are tungsten (old-fashioned light bulbs). They produce a warm glow that your eyes and brain translates into normal shades without us thinking about it. I didn’t realize how much color plays a part in how we perceive things until I had an assignment to shoot color photos in a grocery store. When I saw the film, I discovered that the store used red-tinted bulbs in the meat aisle to make meats look more attractive; green tints in the produce cases and yellow lights in the bakery to make the breads prettier.

This is what this tree and ornament looked like with my camera’s color balance set to Automatic (which usually works fine). Notice how “warm” the colors look.

Change the color balance to Tungsten

This is what happened when I changed the color balance menu to Tungsten, meaning he camera added a bluish digital filter to the image to compensate for the overly yellowish tint imparted by the bulbs. This comes closer to being how your eye would see it. In this case, however, you may find that you are a warm dragonfly person instead of a cold butterfly person. Most of the Christmas tree photos were taken with the Tungsten color balance turned on.

Christmas exhibit photo gallery

Here are what some of the trees looked like. Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.

Sneak peek at January

I try not to be back here in January because this is how I remember the month: gray, gloomy and cloudy, with just a hint of color from time to time to keep you from going bonkers. My February photo is a bit more colorful.

Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum

P.O. Box 53
75 Church Street, Altenburg, Missouri 63732

Open daily 10:00am – 4:00pm (free admission)

Telephone: 573-824-6070 Email: info@altenburgmuseum.org

Museum Website

Annie Laurie’s Antiques

536 Broadway; Cape Girardeau, MO 63701 (at the corner of Broadway and Frederick across from Shivelbine’s)

Telephone: 573-339-1301 Email: info@capeantiqueshop.com

Annie Laurie’s website (or click on her ad on this page)

December 11, 2011December 11, 2011

Water Park Holiday Lights

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that the Family Aquatic Center at Osage Center (AKA to me as the Water Park) was all lit up for the holidays. I was already in the left lane to turn toward Kingsway, so I didn’t even slow down.

I should have stopped that night. It wasn’t 25 degrees and the grass didn’t crunch under my steps.

I had planned to do a piece on the Occupy Cape Girardeau movement, but Jim Stone and I spent most of the day roaming and visiting, so I didn’t have the energy to do it justice tonight. I was looking for something quick and easy to post. (Click on the photo to make it larger.)

How did I shoot the photo?

It was dark, so the camera autoselected an ISO (“film” speed of 1600. The high speed, plus the dark areas resulted in about half a dozen red and blue spots of “noise” that had to be edited out in Photoshop CS5 Extended.
It was darker than dark, but my fingers were too cold to fiddle with a tripod, so I grabbed my monopod to take at least a little shake out of the photo.
I was shivering and the cold made me need to pee, so I backed up against a utility pole to give me a little more stability (and to finish up as quickly as possible).
Frames that were given more light also required a slower shutter speed, which made them less sharp. Frames that were grossly underexposed showed the lights and were sharper, but lost the nice curvy lines of the empty pool. (The light color wasn’t ice; it was light reflecting off the walls of the pool.)
This compromise was a .625-second exposure @ f/4 at 26mm. I could have zoomed in tighter. When I went to edit it, I cropped in from all four sides to emphasize the lights. When I shot it, I thought I’d like the lights surrounded by more darkness, but that wasn’t the case.

December 4, 2011December 2, 2015

North County Park Christmas Display

We went to Wib’s BBQ in Jackson tonight. It gave us a chance to help Grandson Malcolm with a school project. He sent Mother “Flat Stanley,” a storybook character who was smashed “flat as a pancake” when a bookcase fell on him. He was, in fact, smashed flat enough that he can fit into an envelope and go all over the world having his photo taken in exotic locations – like in front of Wib’s. After we shot this photo, we went inside where I ordered two Brown Hots, french fries and slaw; Mother had chili (which she always complains is too spicy.)

When the server came by to see if everything was OK, I gestured for him to lean in, then said, “I think the kitchen made a terrible mistake with my order.”

He look properly concerned.

“They put meat on my sandwiches,” I replied.

Wib’s has the best sauce in town, but I think they must still be on the original pig they started the business with in 1947. There was a whole staff of young folks working there tonight and I think the cook must have a lighter thumb on the scale than the usual one.

North County Park Christmas Display

On the way back from Jackson, we stopped at North County Park to check out the Christmas displays. I’m not sure how many years they’ve been doing this, but it’s become a local must-see.

Some of the displays are very nice. Some are very imaginative. Some are, to be honest, tacky, particularly some of the commercial ones. More and more of them are memorials to family members who won’t be there for another Christmas. Those are touching.

Bumper to bumper traffic

We got there right after dark, so it wasn’t too congested. By the time we left, though, cars were streaming into the park. It’s considered good form to drive with just your parking lights on, but this car broke the rules (and I think him for giving me a little extra light on the scene).

One minivan in front of us had me perplexed. I could see through the back window that they were playing a kid’s movies on a DVD player mounted near the ceiling. Now, maybe I’m old-fashioned, but don’t you think it might have been appropriate to shut the thing off for 15 minutes and tell the kids to look out the bleeping window at the real world?