Here’s what I am hoping for all of you out there.
“This Year” by the Steel Wheels.
May you and your family and your loved ones have a beautiful, prosperous and wonderful year in 2020. And may the world finally find “Peace on earth, goodwill toward all.”
And here’s another from The Steel Wheels for your enjoyment.
Merry Christmas to One and All. Another Uncle Bardie lyric:
Sing me another Christmas song
Sing me another Silent Night
Hark the herald angels sing
All is calm, all is bright.
The story so big
Wide and full of light
So sing, sing out, friends
Songs of love, hope and light.
They came from the East
Those Wise Men of old
In search of a Song
Through heat and the cold.
So sing me another Christmas song
Snow was on the ground
A chill in the air
On a misty morn
Suddenly a choir.
Heavenly creatures
Angelic singers,
A Joy to the World:
A Child in a manger.
So sing me another Christmas song
A new dawn had dawned
For a brand new day
For the wise and the fool
For the us and the they.
The song once sung
Continues to sing,
“Peace on the earth
Good will toward all things.”
So sing me another Christmas song
Sing me another Silent Night
Hark the herald angels sing
All is calm, all is bright.
For many of us, Christmas is the big WOW of the Year. It’s the Superbowl of holidays. Year after year, we’ve lived one remake of Christmas after another. Like the Batman origin remakes, we can’t seem to get enough of them. This year we visit our heroes, Mom and Dad Jones, as they go on a Christmas Hero’s Journey.
1. Ordinary World.
Thanksgiving. It’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the turkey feast and Cowboys football for Dad and the kiddies at the Joneses.
2. Call To Adventure.
Mom grabs her purse. “I’m off to Walmart,” she says, noticing none of the Jones gang pays attention.
3. Refusal Of The Call.
Mom takes in the line at Walmart and she’s already done before getting her foot in the door. Mom Jones has had a rough week. It’s like she already has ptsd and the combat hasn’t even begun. She turns to leave.
4. Meeting The Mentor.
Betty Smith, an older neighbor, calls out to Mom, “Don’t leave. I’ll show you the Black Friday tango.”
5. Crossing The Threshold.
Grabbing Mom Jones’ hand, Betty zips in and out of the crowd. Then nosedives through the front door. Before they can say, “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” Betty and Mom are honing down on the last of the Tuckees and the Whiz-Banger-oonies.
6. Tests, Allies, Enemies.
Mom gets home with all the junk…I mean, gifts she paid big time bucks for. Little does she realize they’ll all be on sale two weeks before Christmas. But she’s done her part. There’s one more test she has to survive before the day is done. She has to keep herself from killing Dad Jones. He slurped down the last slice of that pecan pie, and she’d wanted it. Bad!
Now comes Dad’s turn. It’s Monday and he’s taken the day off to fulfill his obligation to save beaucoup bucks. He’s up early for Amazon’s Monday Lalapalooza Prime Day. The Prime Day to Beat All Prime Days. He pours himself a big “World’s Greatest Dad” cup of coffee. Before you know it, he’s racking up brownie points galore.
With a smile on his face, he comes to his last challenge. It’s a must-have must-have. And there’s only one of them at half price. A Family Summer Vacation at Boony World. Let the bidding begin. Just when his finger is at the ready-to-send button, there’s a power glitch. Three hours later Boony World Vacay has sunk into the swamp.
In the days that follow, there’s tree hunting. Christmas tree lights to plug in. The nativity scene alongside Santa’s sleigh. There’s putting together the this-that-and-the-other. There’s way too much egg nog for Dad at the annual Christmas party. There’s the DUI he gets on the way home from the office Christmas party.
And for Mom, she still has nightmares from the last night before Christmas. This year there’s the Christmas cookies for the PTA Christmas party that just about poisoned half the school. There’s the Christmas letters she sent that were returned for lack of a stamp.
7. Approach To The Inmost Cave.
Christmas Eve. Mall time for Dad, that giant bit of Americana that seems to be fading into the sunset these days. He’s after a super-dooper Super Dooper for Mom. He’s gonna get one for his One-and-Only come hell or high water. Even if he has to kidnap it.
8. Ordeal.
Christmas Eve. The kiddies are tucked into bed. Mom and Dad Jones start to put the swing set together for Little Alice. Unfortunately the instructions are in Chinese. Dad being handy around the house thinks he’s got the job licked. On his first try, the darn thing comes out lopsided and upside down. Then he realizes he’s been reading the instructions backwards and they’re all Greek to him anyway. There’s three screws missing, and I’m not talking about in his brain. If he had only not thrown away that small bag of leftovers, he would’ve been a-okay.
9. Reward (Seizing The Sword)
It’s one o’clock in the morning and the parents have the swing set together and the tree ready and waiting with their goodies. They drop into bed, exhausted, knowing their ordeal is just about over. Christmas Day is only a few hours away.
10. The Road Back.
The next morning Mom and Dad are awakened by a noise downstairs. It’s Snookles, the family Saint Bernard. And it’s pretty darn sure that he’s going to wrap the tree and the presents with drool. Someone forgot to close the back door last night. Heading down the stairs, they move with the speed of light.
11. Resurrection
They are surprised to find Snookles, Junior and Little Alice waiting in the living room, with big smiles on their faces and a “Very Merry Christmas.”
12. Return With The Elixir.
It’s been a long, long journey for our family, the Joneses. The presents have been opened, the dinner has been served, the God-bless-us-everyones have been said. Christmas night, after the kiddies and Snookles are put to bed, our hero couple sit snuggled together on the sofa. For just a few moments, thoughts of joy to the world and peace on Earth good will toward all run through their heads. Then Mom reaches over and kisses Dad and says, “Next year we’re going to our parents for Thanksgiving, then take a month-long cruise.” Dad nods his agreement.
Merry Christmas one and all.
With Jesus, every day was a great day for the Disciples, and always filled with surprises. One day it was miracles, the next blesseds, healings on a third day. And no one could take on the establishment the way Jesus did.
Each day there was a story, and not just one story but story after story after story. The Disciples weren’t sure what a lot of them meant, but the they were excited to hang with Him 24/7.
Things Jesus did were so awesome that Judas wanted to make Him the main attraction of a new theme park. “When we go public, our IPO will be worth billions of denarii.”
Jesus shook his head and laughed. “You poor fellow.” Then He went on His way, the Disciples struggling to keep up.
And talk about cool. Casting out demons was really bad ass. Even the priests were afraid to take on the devil and his minions.
One day–it was a Wednesday I believe–Jesus was teaching away to what most of the Disciples thought of as a multitude. Actually it was five-thousand-and-seventeen men, women and children. We know the exact number because Judas Iscariot was selling tickets.
About three p.m. Jerusalem Standard Time, Jesus was right in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer. Peter sneaked up to Jesus’ ear and whispered, “The folks are famished.”
The Master whispered back at Peter, “Aren’t you listening?”
“Huh?”
“Didn’t I just say, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’?”
Peter was trembling in fear for what Jesus might do to him for being a bearer of bad news. Peter had seen the Lord in the Temple. Man, he’d never seen anyone throw a table the way the Master did. And He barely missed the High Priest. But Peter had gotten this far. He might as well go on. “We ran out of all the baked goods this morning. And all we’ve got is five loaves and two fishes.”
Now there wasn’t a Macdonald’s or a Chick-fil-A to cater the event. So it was going to be up to Jesus to do the catering. The Lord smiled and said, “All right. Bring them here.”
And right there Jesus took care of things. “Have the people form two lines.” And those were some awesome fish sandwiches. Everybody stuffed themselves.
Peter approached the Lord and said, “Where’s the mayonnaise?”
Jesus was the most patient of men. He’d put up with a lot from the Disciples and now this. Jesus gave Peter the kind of look you didn’t want to get from Jesus. “Get thee behind me, Satan,” He said.
As Peter stumbled away, Jesus said under His breath, “Next thing you know they’ll want Me to turn water into wine.”
And so they did.
There used to be a song that went: “Sugar in the morning, sugar in the evening, sugar at super time.” Well, at my house, it’s meow in the morning, meow in the evening, meow at suppertime.
My cat, Little Bear, turned four recently, and she has become a master meow-ologist. She has turned the call of the meows into an art form. There’s an I’m-hungry meow. A meow for attention. An I-want-out meow. And a meow just for the heck of meowing. It’s her way of saying, “I’m Special with a capital S and you’d better believe it.” Her meow-jo is a wonder to behold.
Recently she’s gotten lazy. She’s collected all these meows and recorded them and downloaded them onto my computer, then set an alarm for each meow to go off at the appropriate time. She knows she’s the queen of meow-o-thons; queens don’t make en effort. It would be beneath her.
Now I’m not complaining. When she jumps on my bed in the morning and licks my face, I can’t have a better alarm clock. When I come home at night and she lets me rub her tummy, it’s the best. When she jumps up on my lap and purrs her finest purr, she’s made my day.
After four years, Little Bear and I have become so acclimated to each other we’ve started to taking on a bit of each other’s behavior. When I go to a restaurant, I’ve taken to meowing my order instead of ordering in English. Last weekend I was over at some friends. I dozed off. When they woke me, they said I had been purring. And when I get home from work, Little Bear has been rubbing my tummy. And everybody says that I am beginning to look like her. Can you imagine that?
However there is one thing I Will Not Do. I absolutely refuse to use her litter box. Especially when she won’t clean it.
To my satisfaction.
Uncle Bardie's Stories & Such 