Contact us
Back to All Posts

My resolution for 2024? List one update for every one of the 12 days of Xmas. Or two to make for 24. And when 2025 comes around, after all 12 months of 2024 pass, like an expired meter, no one will remember any of these retorts I report, as I jump around.

We start. On my ode to the lighthearted, “Wise Men and How I could never make their journey to the manger,” which drew many comments including one from “Galilee.” In retrospect I was illustrating how epic and important this quest was. And much, much more quickly than I’d make it through that desert. In terms of years … Decades … Centuries …
And I return to, oh those omnipresent Agave Kitchen nacho-nushing signs. It says: Turn those gift cards into nachos. So (you’ll need to) create corn crumbles. Then later, Santa doesn’t want cookies, he wants nachos. Like so many of us.
I saw, on what had been my Halloween walk, as in a runner-on sentence: Many “Christmas strawberries” on a side-street otherwise bit gnarly mural, still more roofing projects and again such work (big pink houses done by orange-clad workers) at the Phipps Inn in the massive DIY spirit that got us swimmingly through the pandemic, new red and orange and a little of pinkish berries on a sprig of bushes that are like mistletoe, a Me And My Old Lady Sitting In The Shade-type scene of a winter sun shining on such a porch (a main one back-to-back then another back-to-back), and all that cool and naturalish-looking brush and bush making for a front yard that’s now chopped away with many a stone kept and bird houses too, (though not nesting season.)
On the porch of that old house just down from the pink Barbie House — where Ken lives as a senior? — there’s now a RWB flag amongst RWB poppies sitting in front of a red Santa sign.
A block away, a blue mesh fabric falling all around has in its middle a couple of even more beautiful RWB pinwheels.
And that angling fence, going up a hill, alongside which a remembrance sign with flowers was placed in autumn. It has now not fallen, but been fully straightened.
At Cornerstone Church, that line for donated food recently extended much longer, almost a block, and that was not at the offering’s opening. It should be noted that after Christmas, there was a lesser turnout, as Santa and/or God must have given.
That Christmas tree I described with sealer setting aside, along with a (prayer) book: It was there until the very end of 2023, then removed. Mistetoe remained.
When tuning in the TV news when back from the holiday, it was shown to be, as I have already written, just how much need there is everywhere in our world. A delivery guy shoots down so many lives, then guns for more. California farmers are without any water. Only now, finally, can felons reform their lives and get a college degree. Crackerbarrel donates 800 boxes of food to a shelf, but that’s only about one percent of the need.
At the cusp of the new year, the ground was sprinkled with silvery frost, much like the hair of that looking-older Ken to his Barbie.
I saw that morning the parking guy, and the Happy New Year wishes were shared, as the old year had just passed like an expired meter. Who had the worst joke? Who trumped who? “Why is Santa so jolly. He knows where all the naughty girls live.” Touche, he said. He better drop some pounds if he wants to ride their sleigh.
So, another “daylight in the swamp” joke. However, this can be quite serious. If you are a Toadie. But this is a survival story. How do they find a way to burrow in the mud and sleep silently at this time of year. Renewal in the dirt.

Share the Post:

Related Posts

  • Full metal jacket? Hey, I wasn’t exactly to the point of going Rob Halford. But tastes aside, there must be some reason why after 26 years I was shunned, like going Bob Daisley by Ozzy at his reunion? OK, I know, my style may not have fit with the packed crowd. And the last couple of times for this, I tried to do too much with ad-libbing. So yeah, I get that this time around, I was the somewhat unusual choice to be the one left off the set list, with singers clamoring to get up there. But seriously, just being analytical of strengths and weaknesses as a singer here, no hard feelings. I’m not Dio. (Or Traveling Wilburys, a when jumping inside, inside joke.)
It was clear to me at the most recent Jeff Loven music show in Hudson, for Memorial Day weekend, that there has been a changing of the guard. The sword has been passed. New blood, like Yungblud, has been brought in. And, I must say, loyalty — amongst the devotees who travel frequently and all across the two-state area to virtually all of Jeff’s shows — has been rewarded. They are the royalty, in what just makes good business sense that I can appreciate. In a significant but not unprecedented altering of course, I was not one of those asked...
Read More
  • Songs by Napalm Death? A fire swept down my very street today, where the babies were burned. (But alas, a new A/C unit is on its way up the freeway.) The Stones did not leave these themes unturned, either, or should I say unrolled. Oh wait, this all was my cooker of an apartment, and we are not talking the kitchen. But all these matters will become more pressing, a pressure point, as the new normal especially in southern climes is temp well into the triple digits. It is these people, the third world, and their heat stroke not mine, that most concern me. (Another example of hellfire temps just added. Sin after Sin.)
Trial by fire. My broiling heart in my efficiency flat still beats a bit, in concern over those boiling over in worse apartments in a Chicago tenancy, or on an ocean island instantly-burn-your-feet beach or dessert, or forced to endure ice baths just to keep cool — or simply be offered no way to maintain an ice-dripping body other than also read a non-cookbook at the library, or select not a big steak you can’t afford but a 73/27 burger from a freezer and slap it on your forehead. Just not too hard. All these things are ones where you especially today either burn or...
Read More
  • I had a dream … And out of it (re)sprouted an ancient spring fertility rite to save the world, or at least my apartment building, or at least my second story window, from a giant lizard peering in, out at T-Rex days of yore. This ritual requires copious amounts of consumption and goes from there to hobbits and lords who are not yet a-leaping, for reasons to be retold in this fanciful, twisted tale (of fiction?) Just watch the use of Why! The letter, that is. And try to catch on to the inside jokes. (Psst. Another tale inside. Or two.)
This is a truly awfuI, twisted tale of villains and heroes, powerful ale if used carefully, giant beasties and smaller hobbyts, but also renewal and redemption. I will ascrybe to an ancient rytual, back to when the tyme gyant lyzyrds peered into second story wyndows of apartment byldings and no amount of walls could keep them out of such urban non-placated places, save this practice that annually, about this tyme of three-day holiday, would save humanity for another year.  So in this spryng fertility ryte, go consume copious quantities of hunhy grhym cr’krz and jinjer biyr, deprived of its alcohol as worshippers need to be sober-headed...
Read More
  • And musings moreover —– A full list of the trios of triumph. The power of threes. A full dozen of these triads, oh make that 13 as we linger, that you will see listed as shopping promptings in three long blocks of store windows of downtown Hudson. Three’s company? Get it? Third time’s the charm. And this is a truism, the words, some of them three letters, chosen to depict their offerings show the diversity of, dare I say it, a Super WalMart.
Here goes the ultimate list of lingo, even if it languishes, in no particular long order, as we go at length into the different kinds of businesses you will find in this locale, starting the list and at its last, two of the many art galleries in our downtown: — Feminist power, love and generosity, and to double your fun, framing, art tchotchkes and earrings, all at the biggest little art and collectables gallery you will see mid-block. — Community, commerce and tourism, touted at the Hudson Area Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Bureau, in a blatant suck up to...
Read More
  • And musings moreover —– To skate or not to skate? Not on most Hudson streets and sidewalks, you don’t. Even though most users I’ve encountered have been courteous and safe — saying ‘on right’ as they go by on a fairly busy sidewalk, and not just barely edging past you — the city council in essance banned the usage last fall. I think this goes too far in what amounts to dare I say it, big brother-type stringency. I prefer a more ‘urban’ style ambiance, with a Twin Cities type of bustle. (For what of that is to be found, come Friday, ‘jump’ inside. That post now updated, for more weekend options.) I now start with a joke.
As far as, for starters, the old announcement, “passing on the right,” this was said to me just now by a beautifully tanked woman in a bikini, owning the downtown sidewalk. She was slightly gasping and moaning as she almost carressed my side going by. I ABSOLUTELY REFUSE to read anything into that … Spring has past sprung, we’ve finally had some really hotter weather, and a young man’s heart turns to thoughts of … e-cycling and skateboarders going past. In the last couple of weeks, you can see them again all around our sidewalks and byways, busy and not...
Read More
  • And musings moreover —– Shoes and shirt are welcome, to be purchased along with other keepsakes at a new shop or worn in. At least soon while dining at new downtown Hudson eating opps. You don’t need an app, read on, as doors are flipped open … There are still other options and opportunities, after the Wild opted out as flipping goalies, with Filip, only worked for so long. (Not so big shoes to fill. Just flip-flops. See below and under The Headliner for posts on such sports bar shenanigans.) So for now, in a new post, we Rally In The Valley, with eight bands.
A door on the side of a downtown conglomerate of stores, the front not back door, has a sign telling delivery drivers to deposit items in back — but the sign is flipped upside down since the tape slipped. A blipped language I don’t speak. But that’s not the only thing that’s flipped in the downtown. Lots of stores are either open as we speak, or will be soon. We’re talking still in May, maybe, and mostly earlier than later. While we wait with baited breath for the full opening of Max’s Social House. And a pub or another hub...
Read More
Scroll to Top