Touring 19th Century Christmas

Last week, on my way back from Vidalia Georgia, I stopped at a Bookstore in Macon partly to find a book to read on the flight back and partly to rest my aching back.  After browsing for an hour I decided on, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.  It hit me that while I have seen many versions of this -- Disney, Scrooged, and others; I don't think I had ever read the original -- good 19th century prose -- centered on the principle of giving to the poor.

Shauna and I attended the Christmas Concert at the conference center at Temple Square.  It was a beautiful production with a medieval theme featuring The Choir, orchestra, dancers, baritone Nathan Gunn, and story teller Jane Seymour.  The Christmas carol "Good King Wenceslas" was performed and was moving -- the first time I'd paid attention to that poem.  Again written in the 19th century by John Mason Neale.  It is about the good king in the 10th century as he reaches out to a poor soul -- worth pondering.

While these are prose and poem that warms the heart, what could be written of our lives and times?

Touring -- Musing

Boys came over

2012. I am far from where I could have imagined I would be -- if I would have imagined it. Clarification -- imagining now how I would have imagined being at this date had I imagined it at all. But, the imaginations of youth are so… what? without the faithless wizened cynicism that only age can bring?

I saw myself standing on the small front lawn of a rambler-sized red brick house as happy and fulfilled as any man could be. It goes deeper than that but... you get the point. It was simple, it was fulfilled, it was the picture of a contentedly lived life.

I thank you for your support

Because of your overwhelming response to my pathetic plea for attention (6 comments, a record), I will include 1 photo of Vincent and myself (thank you Shauna) at our "holiday kickoff party," and 1 musing:

As I sat just a few days ago and dated a page in my journal I realized that not long from now we will be living in the year 2012.  I don’t know how anyone else has viewed this but I have not put a lot of thought into living beyond 2012.  About a month ago I was on a plane returning home from Chicago when I got into a fairly philosophical conversation with a gentleman who thought that  he would like to live until 70 years of age (useful physical age), then just disappear.  I shared my similar thoughts about living until 55 then heading off into the desert never to be heard from again – like an old dog. 

Is that what dogs do?  When I was about 8 years old my dad said that our dog Abby had just left home one day, because she was old, and wandered off into the desert.  Before I do this I better check to see if this is what dogs really do – we later found out that Abby had been hit by a car, and that dad knew it but thought that the wandering in the desert story was preferable.  Now I'm not sure what to do.