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Krampus, Shmutzli, and St. Nick
November 26, 2012
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The 6 of December is St Nicholas Day. In Europe the popular Krampus, also known as Shmutzli in Switzerland, is St. Nick’s full time side kick. In Austria Krampus is much more popular than the saint, representing old time winter. I have been in Vienna on Krampus night, when people dressed more or less like gorillas run around with big sticks frightening pedestrians. I also saw 6 Krampuses on Austrian television creating a hexagon with the big sticks and circle dancing. The Euros are not afraid to link the ancient religions to the present day. In fact, that is what makes them Euros. They may not know the enitre history of traditional local customs, but they have an strong affinity with preservation of provincial attitudes and ancient practices. The ancestors make them do it.
In Switzerland Santa is paid by neighbors to come to your house and scare you on Dec. 6. Your parents give him alcohol and tell him all about your worst behavior. Shmutzli is with him carrying a sack of ashes. My friend Edith lived at the end of Santa’s route in her village, so he was pretty schnockered on schnapps by the time he arrived at her home. She remembers he smelled like alcohol and pretended to put her in his sack to haul her away from home for bad behavior, of which he knew every detail. She was really scared of St. Nick. During the three weeks between 6 Dec. and 25 Dec. the kids conspicuously make efforts to amend the problem disobedience chastised by St Nick that frightening night. On Dec. 25 the baby Jesus will fly through the window to leave oranges and walnuts to well reformed children. The customs vary from place to place, with the Swiss love of regional tradition and language. What is the same about all the places I have visited during the dead of winter in Europe is a community effort to scare away the winter blues and share light. They still have plenty of real fires on the streets roasting real chestnuts and warming up the spiced hot wine they serve in seasonal huts set up for the purpose. These pop up specialty bars often sell a regional specialty they make each year at the time. There is a big effort to create warmth outdoors with food, alcohol, festivals, fires and lights. These efforts are less personal and more spread across the community, with less focus on the large material haul (or obligation if you are the parent), more on the party atmosphere shared with neighbors.
We Americans may be overlooking some important lessons about stress, greed, and balance that Krampus represents. By teaching kids that a never ending stream of new material objects flowing steadily, but gushing and flooding the world in December, is the key to satisfaction and fulfillment we may be creating a new kind of Christmas monster. I am in favor of importing Shmutzli to the US, as a new superhero action figure and video game.
Greeting the Season
November 25, 2012
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The feasting of Thanksgiving behind us, we are hurdling down the holiday barrel of laughs toward either a cheery/jolly time or a close encounter with debt and depression. Which do you have at holiday time? Since much of the shared consciousness of holidays takes place on screens now, rather than in person, we can more easily show a public facade of festive fantasy while freaking out in deep desperate disorientation. I personally am neutral. I don’t drive much any time of year, but for the next 5 weeks I will be in my car even less. I do not like all the high anxiety and consumer madness in the streets. There is more distraction than I would like on the road, so I stay home.
My parents used to send out letters in Christmas cards to establish a contact with people they knew around the world and basically mislead them about how happy they were. This copying and addressing by hand, then stamping and sending the revised versions of their lives was an important way they stayed tribal with all the accepted norms they wanted to keep. They lived in a time when the exterior show was of the utmost importance. Not sending Christmas cards would have made them uncivilized. I still have a couple of cards printed with my name on them that I sent to people when I was in elementary school. They are kind of non sectarian, with a picture of a fawn and Happy Holidays. I have never felt the need to send cards or give gifts as a social imperative. The big build up, the relatives crashing at the house, the decorate and mandatory clean up was not my style.
I like to cook special treats that remind me of winter to give to friends and neighbors at this time. I make some spaghetti squash latkes for Chanukah, and all kinds of ginger concoctions. This year I am featuring nuts and everything that I can buy at the Caravan Market. This specialty foods shop right down the street from my home has all manner of goodies and spices from the middle east and north Africa. I can bike there and bring back exotic extreme foods and spices in minutes. They have pistachio baklava, halvah, and Swiss chocolate for sweets. My own version of holiday cheer is a little extra money and effort spent on food and drink. Shopping local for me is fun and easy. I prefer supporting my neighbors in business to trying to find my car in the parking lot at the mall.
Newton’s Third Law Goes Shopping
November 24, 2012
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In case you need to refresh Sir Isaac Newton gave us some basic concepts that we use today. He broke down movement and energy to define inertia. The third law of motion states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This may be easy to imagine in terms of tug boats or bumper cars, but how does this law pertaining to matter have significance we can use to make smarter purchases? When we play billiards we consider the angle, the trajectory, the speed of the ball as we direct it on its way. Do we ever think about the economic repercussions we create with our spending decisions?
Today is shop local, Small Business Saturday. At the same time the mega retailers are bringing in customers with loss leaders to hunt for extreme bargains. Santa is in business all over the country promoting the concept that a big spending binge is healthy, cheery, and designates the participants as Christians. Giant light displays and seasonal music beckon to those who are attracted to all that. Office parties with cocktails and perhaps secret Santa designate this month as Slack for Seasonal Cheer time. Monday while employees are paid to be working, a day to shop on line will be granted by workers to workers. Only a Grinch or a Scrooge would interfere with Cyber Monday. Culturally this is the time to allow employees to take it easy around the office as a reward for doing their jobs for 11 months. What equal and opposite harm can come from that?
Meanwhile over at Zappo’s every single employee is brushing up skills, checking them twice, because it does not matter if you are naughty or nice….you will be answering the phone and delivering happiness to customers during this busiest shopping season. The core values that run the best retail experience on earth include full collaboration from all staff all the time. When needs of the customers’ shift, they shift to accommodate. They do not carry the myth that by giving them a party in December the company fulfills the promise to make employees happy. The Zappsters know that an overall commitment to serve the happiness of both customers and staff is in place and being improved constantly. Their benefits, their work environment, and their personal satisfaction are at the very foundation of the success enjoyed by the company. I do enjoy on line shopping, in spite of the fact that it does not support my local economy. Since I am a speed shopper, I am not so much into the comparison of prices as I am into a superior selection and customer service. The happy Zappsters deliver, so much more than shoes. I like the idea that my purchase contributes to a happy healthy workplace if not to my micro economy.
Hip Shopping and Sugar Plums
November 23, 2012
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By definition, a purchase at a small business is an act of individuation. The effort to save small business, slow food, craft quality, and organic farming is valid from an economic standpoint. The local business keeps currency flowing in the local stream. Home Depot takes as much profit as possible home to the stockholders, as is their mandate. This does not make Home Depot evil, but it does mean that it is impossible to purchase anything hip at that Depot. The interaction with the customer is done to scale, as in, ‘What do we need to order from China for next season?”, or “How do we create a new line of seasonal treats our customers have requested?” The hip gift giver looks for the unique match, which is not to be found in the massive crush of deep discount mall shopping.
My mom just loved being swept away by merchandise. She shopped all over the world and stocked up on gifts for unknown future receivers. These ghost recipients were just taking up some of the slack in her giant shopping disorder. She was good anywhere, from the street market in Asia to Wal-Mart. She loved acquisition for no apparent reason. I spent way too much time in my childhood shopping for my taste. I believe this experience shaped me into the psychic speed shopper that I am today. First of all, like many traits we reverse (only to end at the same place), my goal is always to spend as little time as possible. Exactly like my mother I start with no need to shop, owning already more stuff than I could ever possibly use in this lifetime. If I buy something I need to feel that I have been guided, like the Star of Bethlehem, to that object. I want to feel like shopping commando, in and out without even being detected in the marketplace. Ruby (my mom) wanted to hang out and try on everything, being stimulated and thrilled by dressing rooms and the hollow compliments of commissioned sales people. She burned me out long before I was 9 on that situation. I never go to malls, and would simply die if I had to go to one on Black Friday.
Today for Green Friday I have no particular need to buy anything. It is the perfect day, however to take the public bus to Fourth Avenue to buy pecans and pistachios at the Food Conspiracy. There is a local party with live music, discount shopping and dining, and a chance to see the streetcar tracks they have been building for what seems like forever. By taking the bus right in front of home I will avoid all traffic/parking/road construction issues. I like to create gifts I decide to give, to make it a personal deal. The recipient will never be thrilled as in wow the expensive brand name thingy everyone else has!!!!!!!, but maybe years later will be able to remember how the sugar plums tasted. I freestyle my own sugar plums from nuts and fruit I find or have. This year I dried some awesome pears in September that are delicious. I want to try mixing them with pistachios and pecans, both of which are grown in Arizona. I encourage you to do your own, since it is almost impossible to make them taste bad. I think Alton is way off base with the fennel seed, and would never do that in mine, but that is why the creation is an individual gift. The ones in The Night Before Christmas were sugar-coated coriander …..drastic flavor if you ask me. I goes to show that your flavor will be savored by individuals, so take some time to do something tailored to them. Thoughtful and personal is the new mindless overconsumption.
Underage Drinking on the Mayflower
November 22, 2012
There was no drinking water on the Mayflower voyage. Every man woman and child was issued beer to drink. This gave new meaning to the word sloshed. It also gives a new reason for the Pilgrims to be seriously thankful to end the trip. Ironically it is the Brits who are celebrating Alcohol Awareness Week while Americans prepare to guzzle all weekend in the name of thankfulness/football. The British are suggesting that the use of an alcohol unit calculator will shock most people. I am sure this is like the food list for eating awareness. Addictive eating and drinking is by definition kept unconscious. Much energy is spent giving holidays the power to force overeating and drunken excess. This illustrates the general state of mental decay we promote. A holiday honestly does not have the power to make you do anything. Turkeys and cocktails are not a force, they are symbols.
How much change can you create by choosing Thanksgiving as the day to begin knowing how much you really drink? This holiday has special meaning to me because it was at Thanksgiving that my dad got so publicly drunk that I was able to convince him to go to Betty Ford. He was 81, and the treatment did not work because he went right back to Texas to his supportive drunken environment. My parents had to be removed entirely from the state to begin to address the issue. This year while you do your holiday bar tending, filling your home with extra cheer, don’t kid yourself. Calculate.
Pilgrim Will
November 21, 2012
Plymouth Colony Seal
This is the will of my 10th great grandfather who arrived on the Mayflower. It is interesting to note how much they had and did not have. Bless the Plymouth colony for keeping good records:
The Plymouth Colony Archive Project[Go to Biographical Profiles • Wills • Probates • Search • Archive] James Bursell October 11, 1676Plymouth Colony Wills 3(2):61#P281The Inventory of James Bursell
An Inventory of the estate of James Bursell of yarmouth who departed this life on the third of October 1676, and this Inventory taken the 11th of October 1676
L s d
Item in Meate Chattle 25 08 00
Item a Cart & wheeles & yoakes & Chaines 01 09 00
Item in barrells & other wooden ware 02 02 00
Item in pailes and seiues 00 10 00
Item in pewter 01 13 00
Item in 1 morter and pestell 00 02 00
Item 1 pott of butter 00 04 00
Item in earthenware 00 02 00
Item in Iron kettles & 2 potts 01 04 00
Item in brasse kettles & other brasse 01 16 00
Item in one warming pan 00 08 00
Item in seuerall sorts of Iron tooles 01 16 00
Item in old brasse and one spitt 00 03 06
Item in tining ware 00 01 06
Item in Cheires tables and trenchers 00 10 00
Item in armes and amunition 01 00 00
Item in a paire of tonggs and old Iron 00 15 00
Item in Corne and meale sackes 01 00 00
Item 1 feather bed & furniture to it 06 06 00
Item in wheels and Cords 00 12 00
Item in flax and linnine yarne and a baskett 02 00 00
Item 1 feather bed and furniture to it 06 05 00
Item more 1 feather bed and furniture to it 05 15 00
Item in Table linnine 01 03 06
Item in pillow Coates 01 16 00
Item in a remnant of Cloth 01 04 00
Item 17 paire of sheets 18 12 00
Item more in bolster Cases and linnine 01 10 00
Item in Cours linnine Cloth 00 11 00
Item in a parsell of linnie Cloth 00 10 00
Item in wearing apparrell and linine 12 18 00
Item a bible 00 03 00
Item in sickells 00 05 00
Item in Cushens and penistone 2 yards 00 11 06
Item in Glasses and a lanthorne 00 02 06
Item 2 Chests & a Case with bottles 00 16 06
Item 1 bull 02 00 00
Item in Mony 09 04 00
Item in debs due to the estate 16 02 06
Item the estate is debtor about 10 00 00
Item in old lumber 00 06 00
Item in an house and land 25 00 00
Item due to estate for laying 02 10 00
[156 17 06]
Iohn Hiller
Ieremiah houes
This 15 of Nouember 1676 Emett Bursell the relict of Iamos Bursell late deceased made her appeerance and Gaue oath to the truth of this Inventory before Iohn Freeman Assistant
James Bursell (1600 – 1676)
is my 10th great grandfather
Daughter of James
Son of Anna
Daughter of Silas
Daughter of Sarah
Daughter of Sarah
Daughter of Mercy
Son of Martha
Son of Abner
Son of Daniel Rowland
Son of Jason A
Son of Ernest Abner
I am the daughter of Richard Arden
He is not a famous Pilgrim. In fact, we do not know who his parents or his wife’s parents are…yet. We do know, however, what he owned when he died in 1676. 17 pairs of sheets seems like the most extravagant thing they had.
Best Beach Bar
November 19, 2012
There is no other place like the Kraken, in Cardiff by the Sea, CA. This live music venue is loved by surfers, bikers, and all kinds of folks. Step inside and it is always in another time zone ( about 1976). On Sundays the Brokers play from the late afternoon until 9 pm. This is my favorite time to go because it is before my bedtime. The crowd is always classic California and the music always rocking. The lagoon is out back and the beach right across the street. Meeting my friends Jodina and Beth there last night for a dancing good time reminded me why I love North County and the old surfer culture..still alive and rocking the Coast Hiway.
World of Creation
November 18, 2012
Mollie’s prayer shawl
I was in temple yesterday much longer than I might have liked. This time, however, Rabbi Frank rocked the universe with his profound statements about Shabbat. The need to rest and restore is a universal requirement for anyone who wants to attain a spiritually inspired life. The Jewish practice of turning away from the worldly work and habits for 24 hours a week is a basic way to tune in to divine guidance regularly. If this is never done, people become convinced that they are completely at cause for everything that happens, and must work harder to control outcomes. Nothing could be more delusional.
The phrases he used were poetic and charged with symbolism. This is the kind of wording that sticks in the mind of listeners. I paraphrase his message here: For 6 days we live in the world of time, one day we step out of time and live in space. For 6 days we deal with all the creations of the world. For one day we deal with the world of creation. For me, this was a stellar explanation of the need to reverse the flow of that everyday grind to find inner guidance. If you think of God the creator in heaven, or believe you are a creative part of the universe, always guided by eternal grace, the concept is still powerful. Be still and know. Go Rabbi Frank.
Jon Thomas
November 17, 2012
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Jon at Carlsbad
I was introduced to Jon Thomas by my friend Cathy Murakami, generally considered to be the pickiest woman on the earth. I, for one, will go try something based on her recommendations because I hardly ever meet anyone with standards as high as my own. Jon practices his healing arts at Cat’s studio in Encinitas, Synergy Systems. I really enjoyed my session last month. It left me feeling super balanced and energized. I learned his style of Tui Na is distinct because he learned it from his father in law, a famous Tai Chi master from Shanghai. It is a very funny combination because Jon’s soft West Virginia accent and his very unassuming calm presence reveal neither the recently retired Marine, nor the Asian powerhouse of healing he really is. Once you get to know him it all makes sense. He is fully embedded in his wife’s family as a regular kind of Chinese guy.
My treatment yesterday was in my room right on the beach, which was not too shabby. I also was able to tune in better to the way the system works by talking while he worked. Ligaments are the focus of this work. To balance and restore life energy ( aka chi) to the body, the ligaments are carefully worked and compared to each other. During the time he worked I was able to feel amazing changes by noticing where he was touching me. This time at the end of the session I felt super great, and woke up today feeling wonderful too. He works on people to cure problems, but in my own case feeling good to feeling incredibly good also can be his cup of tea. I am already wondering if I can fit one more treatment into my weekend visit. If I lived out here I would see him regularly. He, in my opinion, rules, and I haven’t even gotten to the Tai Chi master part yet.
Ishvara-Pranidhana
November 16, 2012
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PSO at Heinz Hall
Last year I was very lucky to see the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra perform Handel’s Messiah as a fully staged opera. Everything about it was remarkable, even the serendipity of finding an excellent seat the day of the performance by just noticing the box office while I was on a walk. I grew up in Pittsburgh, but the Heinz Hall was new to me. Syria Mosque where I saw them in the 1960’s was gone like Forbes Field. In the lobby there was a great display about the life of Handel and the composition of the Messiah. He signed it SDG, in other words, he gave full credit to God for the music. I had seen this phrase before. It was written in German (those incredibly fancy letters you can’t read) on the outside of the school in Langweis, Switzerland, a small alpine village where my friend Steffi Burger lives. I love all that writing on the outside of old Swiss buildings, including hex signs to protect the contents of the buildings. They declare their faith and ask for protection in bold ( but hard to read) statements. I had some trouble with the reading, but was sure God was involved (most of them are about God and work) so I asked my friend, who also could not read it. We asked Walter Engle, whose family had crossed the Davos pass with their cows to settle the area centuries ago. He informed us that it said all glory to God (SDG).
School in Langweis
The protestant reformation was very into this idea and that is why it landed on the wall of the school. I relate it to the Niyama, or internal practice, of surrender to God as it is written in Sanskrit, Ishvara-Pranidhana. Apparently Handel went into a kind of trance and did speed composition under the heavy influence of spirit when he wrote the Messiah, signed it SDG and everyone knew what he meant. Bach was into this also. In yoga practice Ishvara is about trusting the divine flow, not so different from thy will be done. I wonder if by being a big student of linguistics I have stumbled upon the lowest common denominator of all religions. Surrender to God.
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