It's The Swans!

From the Guardian:

The festive season has never been a cheap affair but this year anyone seeking to earn the title "True Love" by showering their partner with gifts based on The 12 Days of Christmas, will have to stump up a whopping $21,080 (£14,071).

Every year since 1984, American investment group PNC Wealth Management has compiled a Christmas Price Index (CPI - geddit?) by pricing all the items in the song from the partridge right up to 12 drummers drumming.
....

But the bulk of the dramatic rise in the Christmas version is due to the cost of the seven swans-a-swimming which have risen by 33.33% to $5,600. The scarcity of swans has always made them one of the most volatile elements of the index.


You'd have to love your true love a lot to give her/him the 12 days of Christmas gifts this year. You'd probably have to make a loan, and who would lend you money for that these days?

For a humorous take on the 12 gifts from a true love, go listen here.

Pictures from ClipArt

They Couldn't Remember....

From the Kane County Chronicle:

For her book, “Calling It Quits: Late Life Divorce and Starting Over,” Deirdre Blair:

...interviewed more than 400 ex-wives and ex-husbands who ranged in age from 50 to 83 and had ended marriages that had lasted anywhere from 20 to 60 years. She also talked to adult children of older divorced parents.
....

Blair relates the story of a couple whose marriage had been a daily battleground. After 42 years together, when both were in their 60s, they divorced.

Twenty years passed, and both individuals developed Alzheimer’s and needed supervision.

Their daughter took them into her home until she could arrange for permanent, and separate, care.

“Because they couldn’t remember being married to one another, they became the best of friends,” Blair said.

“They talk about how they wish they’d met when they were younger so they could have gotten married. They’re certain that they would have had a marriage that would have lasted forever. It’s a perfect example of how divorce later in life happens for many reasons, takes many different forms and can have surprising outcomes.”

The story seems incredible, but, if true, it's amazing and sweet.

Advent - A Season Of Hope

Jdimytai Damour, the Walmart maintenance worker who was trampled to death by a shopping mob was described by his friends as a gentle giant, who loved movies. Two men shot each other to death in a Toys 'R' Us store, Nearly 200 are dead and hundreds wounded in Mumbai, India, from bombings and shootings. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to take their toll in lives and maimings.

Here in the US, people lose their jobs, their homes, homeless numbers grow, food banks run low on supplies, family budgets stretch beyond the breaking point. Around the world adults and children go hungry and die from lack of food, die from treatable diseases, die from clashes of armed groups within their countries and invaders from outside. I could go on. There's much in the world to lament and cause us to be sad, even despondent.

And yet, and yet, the season of Advent is upon us - Advent, the time of waiting with expectant hope for the celebration of the birthday of the Babe in Bethlehem, the Christ child, who grew in wisdom and grace and changed the world and changed my world.

Advent is my favorite season of the church year. I love the readings in the Lectionary and the hymns which say, "Come! Prepare! Make way! Praise the Lord!" - the promises of blind eyes opened, prisoners set free, widows and orphans cared for, the brokenhearted and mourners comforted.

I am neither Pollyanna, playing the Glad Game, nor a cock-eyed optimist. If I lean in any direction, it's somewhat toward the depressed end of the personality spectrum, and yet the season of Advent fills me with hope. I have no explanation for my hope in these terrible times other than my faith in God, who calls us always to be children of hope.

The season is a special time to give attention to prayer and good works as a way of preparing for the celebration of the coming of the Prince of Peace. The call to prayer and good works is for all year round, but Advent is the perfect time to renew our dedication to continue the practices all through the year.

Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.

A voice cries out:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’

A voice says, ‘Cry out!’
And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’
All people are grass,
their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God will stand for ever.
Isaiah 40:1-8

Thanks to MadPriest for the inspiration for this post.

First Sunday Of Advent

From Trinity Wall Street:

Advent is a season of expectation and hope as Christians around the world anticipate the celebration of Jesus’ birth. In that spirit, Trinity Wall Street has created an original online Advent calendar that reveals a new message of hope every day during Advent.

Beginning November 30, 2008 and running through December 25, 2008, The Light Shines in the Darkness: An Advent Calendar of Hope uses music, video, photography, scripture, poetry, and more to show how everyday people are finding hope in unexpected places. Listen as a father uses song and photographs to tell how he finds hope in a morning commute with his young daughter; learn why one unique senior citizen finds hope in Star Trek; and how an inmate at Sing Sing has found direction, faith, and, most importantly, hope behind the bars of a maximum security prison. The calendar can be viewed at www.trinitywallstreet.org/advent.

The link to the Advent Calendar from Trinity Wall Street will remain on the sidebar during the season. Click on the words below the calendar to go to Trinity's website, where you will find a "message of hope" for each day.

This Is An Eye Test:

CAN YOU SPOT THE 44th PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES??



From Doug.

We Called Her Mémère

My maternal grandmother, Mémère, had 16 grandchildren. Of the 16 she had favorites, and I was one of them. My mother became very ill after I was born, and she took care of me until my mother recovered. Perhaps, that's when the close attachment began. She loved me unconditionally, I'm sure of that. The other grandchildren teased me about being her "pet", and I knew it was true, because she treated us differently, even though she was good to all her grandchildren.

She was a fine, upstanding Catholic lady who spent a good deal of time in church, however, on many a Friday evening she headed out by taxi to one of the illegal gambling establishments in Jefferson Parish, adjacent to New Orleans. On occasion, the police conducted raids on the gambling houses, but my grandmother never got caught. That would have been a hoot. I believe the mafia owned the place she patronized, and the police were well-paid for mostly staying away. It's also possible that the owners were warned of the raids when they came.

She had more than her share of alcoholics in the family, including one son and several sons-in-law, and even as she said, "I damn every drop of liquor that was made", she continued to serve wine on holidays, and she drank the occasional toddy and even gave me a light hot toddy sometimes when I had a cold and fever. She was a prime example and influence for me in living with ambiguities and being a bit of a rebel.

But it was her love for me that I remember most. She would not have refused me anything within reason, and when I'd had enough of the turmoil in my own home, I'd go to spend a few peaceful days at her house, my place of refuge. She'd cook my favorite meals and coddle and pamper me for a spell.

She spanked me only once, when I was about 6 years old. As we were walking home from church one Sunday, my wide-brimmed straw hat blew off my head as we were crossing the street. I turned and ran to get it, nearly into the path of a car. She was so frightened that when we reached her house, she gave me a good one.

Mémère was a gifted pianist and could have had a career playing concert piano, but she married and had seven children, as women were expected to do in those days. I believe that she was frustrated for the rest of her life that she was too busy to keep up with her music. We'd beg her to play, and sometimes she would, but she was so upset when she made a mistake that she wouldn't oblige us often.

She was a superb Creole cook. She spent much of her life in the kitchen, cooking three hot meals each day and having a large crowd of children and grandchildren over for Sunday dinner each week. She never cooked from recipes. Her mother taught her, and she picked up skills on her own. My mother, and my sisters, and I tried to mimic her dishes as best we could, but none of us quite reached the high peak of the best of her dishes. I don't know how she did it.

I wrote the greater part of this post at OCICBW in the comments, and then I expanded it for use here on my humble blog.

Bailout Plan Explained!

Thanks to Doug.

Oh My! Tragic Black Friday

From the New York Daily News:

A Wal-Mart worker died after being trampled when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island store Friday morning, police and witnesses said.

The 34-year-old employee, a temporary maintenance worker, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.
....

A 28-year-old pregnant woman was knocked to the floor during the mad rush. She was hospitalized for observation, police said. Early witness accounts that the woman suffered a miscarriage were unfounded, police said.

Three other shoppers suffered minor injuries, cops said.

Wal-Mart spokesman Dave Tovar called the incident a "tragic situation."

Damn right it's tragic - and preventable. This is insanity! Shop till you drop or get trampled to death?

Hilary linked to this story in the comments.

Deep Thought For The Day

Death can be an adventure, but not everyone lives to tell about it.

From the Young Adult Library Association.

300,000 Deaths From AIDS Due To Mbeki's Denial

From the Guardian:

South African president's refusal to accept medical evidence of virus was major obstacle to providing medicine, say Harvard researchers.

The Aids policies of the former South African president Thabo Mbeki's government were directly responsible for the avoidable deaths of more than a third of a million people in the country, according to research by Harvard university.

South Africa has one of the severest HIV/Aids epidemics in the world. About 5.5 million people, or 18.8% of the adult population, have HIV, according to the UN. In 2005, there were about 900 deaths a day.

But from the late 1990s Mbeki turned his back on the scientific consensus that Aids was caused by a viral infection that could be fought – though not cured – by sophisticated and expensive medical drugs. He came under the influence of a group of maverick scientists known as Aids denialists, most prominent among whom was Peter Duesberg from Berkeley, California.
....

Following Mbeki's ousting from the leadership of the African National Congress in September, South Africa is now urgently pursuing new policies to get treatment to as many people as possible under a new health minister, Barbara Hogan.

I search in vain for words to comment on this horror.

Thanks (or no thanks) to Lapin for this, too.