all the live christmas trees are sold out in this town by about the tenth, anybody who's serious gets theirs around thanksgiving or sooner, which if you think about it means there's a lot of dead needles around town by christmas, but that's another post; my problem is that our semester is just ending around the sixteenth or so, so we're pretty much doomed to going way out in the country to get one, by the time we get it together. so that's ok, i had this farm picked out, and got partway out there one day and realized i didn't have money or clear directions, and the kid was asleep, so i turned back and started out that way again a few days later. this time it was foggy and misty and actually raining, and i took the long way, through marion, because of the direction thing, so it was almost an hour drive, but once you get to know the lay of the land you find this area, around what is called lick creek, is quite beautiful, hilly, rustic, rural, way out there. i'm on this two-lane road that's winding through the back country and i've got this kind of undefinable sense of dread, which i interpret to be nervousness about the van and its ability to make it 30 miles without stranding me out in the middle of nowhere. but the van was running just fine. no real reason for the dread at all.

the other day i decided to put together all the tools i had at my disposal and make a garage-band song out of something i'd had in my head for years, namely a banjo tune with my own accompaniment. and it worked, at least well enough to make a movie out of it real quick, which i gladly and humbly share with you; it has a kind of unkempt fiddle part, not very organized, the pictures didn't quite come out right either but hey i'm pretty much brand new still with both garage band and this i-movie, which assumes you are some kind of film-world splicy-dicy professional. i'm not. i'm sure you can do all kinds of things with the program but i haven't quite figured any of them out, though i was able to delete this one horrible cough or set of coughs that i belted out at the end of one track. i've been doing the family letter, which is a little over-the-top braggy on the grandchild issue, but i gladly and humbly share that with you also, except to say, i don't know what to tell you about the pictures, i used to put them all here, but these days what starts on facebook tends to stay there, and i don't manage to get much of it over here like i used to.

so i get way way out east of lick creek, on this windy road, and i finally see what accounts for this sense of dread. there's this ruins of an old house, trees and bushes grown all round it and covering it, a whole section of it caving in diagonally with the window actually still in it, and that window reflects both the ruins around it and the life that was in it at one time, just a horrible and at the same time fascinating scene. i'm sure the locals are all used to it, even use it as a landmark since it's right on a prominent corner where i actually turned, and i'm sure the local deer and critters are also well familiar with the layout, rotten floors, basement, whatever's left of root cellar, etc., all well picked over and receding into fine mulchy earth. whenever i get that far out in the country i always wonder what it would be like to live out there, so far from town, so precarious in some ways, but when i get to the christmas tree farm i see pretty much what it's like to make it successfully and have a working, productive growing kind of situation. some of these places are truly thriving, others, just kind of receding into the dirt which they were planted on to begin with. the fog, the rain, the cold and winter, all doing their thing to make sure considerable energy is required keeping things up.

coming back is always considerably easier, this time i have a tree in the van, it's running fine, and i'm sure i know the way. the roads are so windy that you can see absolutely nothing until you are right on top of a curve, but i'm sure the folks out there are used to that also. i'm not, and i get the impression they're looking at me and knowing which christmas tree farm i just went to, on account of why else would anyone else be in such a remote locale? back at home, we put the tree up; my wife wants all the fine ornaments that we've rejected in the last few years, allowing kids to grab whatever comes to hand first and whatever is least breakable. a little late on the tree and lights situation, and there's no way we can compete with the neighbors who have way more lights here and there & all over town, it's a pretty big deal in a small town like this, so we light up a little on the inside and then be sure to do the illuminaria, the night before, lighting sacks with sand and a candle in them, to light the way, and go natural. it may be that the world is not that much worse off than it ever was, with people starving in africa and philippines, people ravaged by floods or homeless or without work here and there, this or that side of the globe, but it seems a little crass somehow to blaze too many lights all over a place where so few will actually see it; i know it's just power, just a few watts here and there. it's more the symbolic nature of it, i guess, that i respond to. i like the lights inside, soft, only here when i'm here, inside, and they can shine on me.

and with that i wish you, the reader, the best of the holiday season, i'm aware that today is the solstice, second day of hannukah, and a number of other things all rolled into one, but most of all, we come into the holiday season and i for one am going to do what i want, maybe master garage-band and i-movie, and see if i can't maybe get you something better.