MotherPie

The Scary World for Kids...

Think about Hansel and Gretl, the Big Bad Wolf, monsters and dragons in the forest and other tales that have been handed down by generations to teach children about the dangers and realities of the world.  People used to die young in much greater numbers and death was part of life.  My mother and great aunt used to sing a song about "babes in the woods" who just laid down and died.  When I was then carrying on the songs to my children, we all wondered why in the world a mother would sing such awful things to her children.  Well, our world has changed but our traditions, from the time when oral lessons were the main teaching tools, still are handed down.

Now children are taught to be scared of different types of dangers (but we don't sing about being careful about giving information away on the internet to our small children).  About the only reality we really face from the natural world is sharks.  But the comeback of the crocs and gators made me look at this photo and think of the boogie bears of years past. How gruesome.   The scary renditions when I was growing up? Atomic bomb drills - hiding under the desks at school. As if that could help.

It is a Reuters News Picture of the Year,  of a crocodile at a zoo in the southern Taiwan city of Kaohsiung.  It holds the forearm of a zoo veterinarian who had been trating it in between its teeth on April 11, 2007 and was one of the top emailed photos on Yahoo!  What Reuters doesn't show is that the man had his hand surgically reattached, according to National Geographic's tale of the photo in its Top Ten Photos from National Geographic News.

Presidential Campaign Logos...

Graphics and imagery - the art of the brand - is very important in the election process. That is my own design for Bloomberg in the middle.  Deconstructing the logos yields clues to winners and losers. 

So here goes an analysis of the marketing via the image branding of the candidates.

Holiday Fun & Entertainment...

Creative gingerbread houses from scratch -- this was part of our Christmas thanks to our two college kids. The idea of home seems special after months away burning brain cells on campus! They had been inspired by a huge display we had seen at The Grove Park Inn in Asheville, N.C. This is the first time we've had such an exhibit at the House of Pie.

We're out seeing movies these next few weeks -- Atonement and Juno earlier this week who knows what will be next. We're working off of a variety of movie lists: Roger Ebert's Top 10 films for 2007. No Country for Old Men is #2, filmed in New Mexico and I bet the director wins an Oscar as will the big bad Spaniard guy Javier Bardem, who will go down in our cultural history of villains.  Ebert has Juno as #1 and the 20 year-old star, Ellen Page, is full of talent).

USA Today's blog round-up of movies named No Country #1...  I missed the limited opening of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly at the Santa Fe Film Festival and I don't think it will open again here as it goes into limited wide-release.  More movie lists are out that I'm checking.

Other fun reads for year-end: Best Compilation of 2007 Best of lists: by Miss C. on her own blog and she also has a best list post on Mental_Floss. 

With snow continuing this week, we might just watch tivo'd movies instead or Paul McCartney's Paris concert. Again.  These Days of Christmas are my favorites, right through the 12th day.

Still...

In this quiet non-routine period that closes out one year and looks to the new, I find myself still with my thoughts, not quite to resolutions...yet.  Still... is when silence emerges and self stands clearly. Still...as I sit by the fire, I think of these things. Still...

Still Loving: My Mini

Still Not: Buying Vista

Still Glad: I bought stock in Apple

Still Enjoying: Hiking & the mountains

Still Doing: Daily Blogging

Still Proud: of my 3.95 cumulative for grad degree in Media Studies

Still Amazed: at 2007's Challenges: Juggling a daughter's wedding, a move cross-country from NYC to Santa Fe, finishing grad school, three graduations, moving two kids to new colleges, adapting to empty nest and a retired husband. 

Still Hoping.

Still Enjoying: my 3 children plus new son-in-law

Still Grateful: my  parents are in good health

Still Wanting: a convertable Mini in seafoam green (which they don't make, oh well).

Still Trying: to get an excercise routine patterned into my new schedule

Still Failing: To balance my checkbook (ha. some things never change).

Still Passionate About: Art and Reading

Still Taking up new things: docent training

Still Dating: same man I married

Still Not: sorting through storage things

Still Working: to ski with form

Still Reading: Letters

Still Thinking: Happiness, Family & Community

Still Wondering: Why that Lady in the Mirror looks older than I feel.

Still Dressing: in jeans with a basic color scheme of black, brown and white shirts

Still To Do: Find a new pair of jeans that fits a 50 year-old battooski

Still Cherishing: Time with Friends

Still Will Never: have a tattoo

Still Will Aways: Make Memories

Still, Still: Here!

So Friends, if you have a list to tell of your still-ness, please tell and link or comment!  I'd love to know what Jill, Rhea, KChristie H, SusieJ, Rhonda, Shelly, Janet, tut-tut, Janeywan, NYC Naomi, Claude, Ronni, The Atavist,  Kay, Hoss, Miss C., Jennifer, Lauri, Shrek's Mom, Magpie, Maddy, Bellezza, antropologa, Antique Mommy, Hattie, and others are still being, doing, thinking and so forth.   

Still Cheers! 

Chinese Cultural Matters: An Artist and An Author...

Time this week named Russia's Putin as Person of the Year but it was Chinese artist Yue Minjun, listed as one of the People Who Mattered, that is most interesting.

Minjun is a contemporary artist out of Shanghai, known for his absurdly smiling self-portraits that entangle and reflect the cultural miasma of a China trying to get in touch with itself.   His painting, Execution, set a record for the art genre at Sotheby's in London this year.

Minjun paints the disjointed fractures of identity that are certainly understandable when you juxtapose the historical authoritarian regime history against the (comparative) open doors of contemporary life.  I've written about the surprise rise of Contemporary  Chinese Art.

I've just finished this week Wild Swans by Jung Chang, about three generations of Chinese women.  It's a book my mother wanted me to read and it is a wonderful read to understand the cultural upheavals of the last century. 

Eyes on China will surely continue with the Summer Olympics in Beijing.  Minjun as a choice for a person who matters puts him right up on the list with American Culture Productionist Britney Spears.     

Gifts & Trends...

At the end of the Santa Fe trail, on the plaza, sits Rudolph In Ice, part of La Fonda's holiday exhibit and gift to the city that, unlike most other gifts, just melts away. With the cold weather here, it is lasting longer this year.  Christmas in Santa Fe is one big delight.  While displays with the farolitas make up traditions here along with tamales and posadas,  I was thinking of new trends I'm noticing.

Gift Cards -- this uptick trend in economic tight times was certainly part of our gifting strategy.  Gas cards were #1 at our house.  This might be the biggest story this year in consumer spending while Target and other stores saw ho-hum sales. Also a new trend: peer-to-peer lending is expected to increase 800%. 

What color trends will happen in a recession? Pantone's color is Blue Iris -- blue is a color of trust.  Kathy caught the color of the year, but with the subprime fiasco hitting hard, I wonder if the resale factor is going to swing us back to the neutrals -- beige or grey?  Blue never goes out of style and the Color Marketing Group predicts not only blue, but "green" trends such as natural fibers, hand-made and unbleached will be strong along with ethnic accents.   

Pet trends? Flexpet - for dog lovers who can't do full-time ownership (via kchristieh) might be what my Dallas daughter  could do.  Meanwhile, my mom is interested in her long-hair dauchsund breeder's new blondes. I've promised my mother I'll take her little Lili when she's gone, even though Lili isn't coming with a trust fund like Trouble. My sister-in-law says the blonde dauchsunds might be dumb. ha.  Neighbors in NYC dyed leopard spots on their golden retriever.  Actually I thought it looked pretty cool. Can you imagine a little blonde dauchsund duded up like a leopard?

Shopdropping is the newest trend to pique my interest.  This might be the way to get rid of the white elephant/fruitcake gifts you can't pass on to anyone else.  You just stick on a  note "this is free" and drop it down as you shop.  This is a tactic used by political and cultural activists.  Have you come across this?

What other trends are you noting?   

Baby...

A baby gibbon clutches its mother - an award-winning photo by Kim Botelho for National Geographic.   Penguins and kangaroos keep their little ones close for quite awhile.  Do you think monkies would ever adapt to infant carriers or high chair contraptions? 

Instead, we make things that keep kids feeling motion (swings or bouncy chairs), or use things like the Zaky pillow that gives life-like human hands to make the baby feel secure and will even smell like mom (photo, right).

Disembodied babies.  Motherly love at a distance.  A very American cultural idea, it seems to me...

Grandmother's Gingerbread Men...

Using my grandmother's recipe, we carried on the tradition. Somewhat. I wanted everyone to put the raisins on just for eyes and buttons.  But some cooks in the kitchen became creative. 

This is the first time I'd tried baking at a high altitude and it took a little experimenting with ingredients and baking temperatures and times.  As we worked, I passed on anecdotes and stories of the past because we had a new family member taking part in all of this.  So it took some 'splainin as we were molding.  Then things began to go other ways.

Altitude or too hot of an oven? Maybe the biggest takeaway from this year's activity was discovering that one gingerbread man had e.d. after getting all hot in the oven.  All of the next gen had to show and tell that story.

What is it about traditions that seem to carry on but twist and take on new meanings as they go?  The bonding and creation of community -- don't you know in your own traditional folkways how you use the "we" in the doing of them?  What traditions bring you together most?

Santa Made the Rounds: Merry Christmas

Wishing all the magical joy of the true meaning of Christmas. 

AFP photo of the Finnish Lapland Santa.

A Political Christmas Message...

John McCain's Christmas email message, talking about his POW experience and a kindly guard at Christmas who revealed his Christianity by drawing a cross in the ground was forwarded to me by my cousin yesterday.  At the bottom of the "Christmas Message" was a request for campaign donations and a link to his website. 

As I was posting this, my husband, reading emails and the newspaper on his laptop in front of the fire next to me, read aloud to our daughter and her husband a political email from his friend (sent to 48 people) about Bill Clinton's ad and the facts versus his statements (on the flip).   

Editor and Publisher reported that 60% of the corporate media's 2008 campaign stories are written from the horserace angle -- who's ahead here and there -- and mainly from only five candidates without any deeper news about where they stand on issues or what they would do once in office.  That might be corporate "news" but people are more influenced by others that they trust and know personally.

Bush's 2000 campaign used the technique of "influential others" to get campaign messages from trusted networks to exponentially impact opinions.  This is a theory that was first proposed by Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci. Email messages use "friends to influence friends".  I'm sure you're getting these, too.  Me, I get them from friends of all political persuasions.  I guess I'm being cross-influenced.

And here, chez-nous, the stockings are hung by the chimney with care, including the new one for the son-in-law.

On the flip, see the viral email of the Clinton ad deconstructed by Dick Morris.