Virginia Is For Families

It’s Christmas Eve and time to travel. Everyone is going somewhere for Christmas. There are some intrepid travelers who are going interstate for the holidays. And then there are some others not so adventurous who will remain at home and watch in amazement some of these travelers on television.

Right now I am looking at a passenger jet that has come to rest about ten feet from the Caribbean Sea in Kingston, Jamaica. The front part of the plane is parked at an odd angle and it is clear that the maintenance schedule will need to be moved up before it flies again.

Here’s the quote that I find interesting. Talking about the landing one passenger said “All of a sudden, when it hit the ground the plane was kind of bouncing.” It is reported that nobody was hurt too seriously although there was lots of pain and emotional suffering involved.

Amazing. These people were involved in a miracle! When your airplane crashes and you are able to talk about it the next day you have become a member of a very elite fraternity.

But let’s go back for a moment and examine this report by a passenger that the plane was “bouncing”. Clearly a passenger jet that is trying to stop on a runway needs to apply its brakes. And it is difficult to do this when the wheels are not making contact with the ground. There was another report that the flight crew gave up trying to serve drinks because of in-flight turbulence. Violent turbulence can actually cause an aircraft to crash when it is close to the ground.

Here is a brief explanation of wind shear.

There has also been a report in recent days about Amtrak passengers who were stranded along the NE corridor. And right here in Richmond at the bus terminal I recall a news report on the tube about a young woman who was stranded and ran out of her medication.

People are not getting where they want to go!!

What we really need to work on is the technology associated with the transporter. These were used in Star Trek to move people around because it would have taken too long to land the ship every time someone wanted to leave or come aboard.

Someday every home and business needs to have a transporter. Imagine being able to spend the evening on a great beach in the middle of the Pacific and be home in time to tuck the kids into bed. How great would it be to see your favorite team play their away games in person? And what would it be like to never again sit in a traffic jam and think ” I am a hostage to this transportation system”.

There is a downside to the idea of replacing our transportation system with transporters however. If someone pulls the plug while you are transporting you will probably endure a very painful death. No technology is ever going to be perfect. So the cat should be watched very carefully while it is being used.

But the upside far outweighs the downside. We could plant grass over highways and airports. We could develop communities that are not all bunched up around our cities. And they could be agrarian in nature. Local resources would be needed for electricity and water. It would be quite a challenge and there would doubtlessly be many debates over the way our new society should grow.

But let’s do ourselves a favor and use our imaginations to bring into focus some of these things. It will be tempting for some to cast a political skein over the whole idea and that means we will be shutting down much of what the future may have in store for us.

When you use your imagination you become a pioneer. And pioneers have no use for politicians.

Everything has its place and time in this world. If you have difficulty with your present situation there is always another one just over the horizon. You may not be able to imagine how you will get there. But it’s a lot like working out. Use your imagination. Strengthen it in any way you can.

Eventually you will wake up one day and find that things have changed in ways that you can appreciate. I have seen it happen. I promise you that it is so.

A Happy Holiday to everyone of you. And if you don’t have a holiday. . .

Imagine that you will have one.

A week or so ago B and I went over to Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens to see their Christmas lights. They made some interesting changes this year and I was able to take some photos. One of the major differences I noticed was the hot air balloon that hovered in the background. It was tethered securely but did manage to take some excited children and their parents up into the darkness 100 ft or so for a nice but short ride.

I thought about wandering over and untying the balloon when it was in the middle of its short ride so the children might enjoy a genuine holiday thrill. Perhaps their parents too would cast aside their everyday complaints while they silently rose over the City of Richmond.

But then I decided somebody would not be happy and I would probably end up spending the night in jail. It would only take the balloon a few seconds to lose its buoyancy and return to earth. So it wouldn’t really be worth the effort.

Besides, B would be mortified and probably not make any Christmas cookies for the next ten years. Or she would hide them in places I would never discover. The dogs wouldn’t even discover them.

And if the dogs can’t discover them you know they must be encased in lead or in a safe deposit box somewhere far, far away.

Hopefully it is going to snow in the next day or so and your intrepid photographer and blogger will have a chance to take some more photos of the Christmas season. I say “intrepid” because a certain amount of psyching up is needed at this point. We are supposed to drive up to Leesburg this weekend!!

And that is challenging enough without a foot or more of snow and ice on the ground.

Grandpa may get to play in a winter wonderland just as he did fifty years ago.

Here’s a wonderful Christmas song by Andrea Bocelli and Natalie Cole. It is a real Christmas treat listening to these two artists combine their vast talents.

And this is what Christmas is all about. . .the music. Is there anything better during this time? Our society is based on a philosophy that creates a certain space between itself and the spiritual way. But for a few days a year we relax those ideals a little bit and allow a glow to permeate our world.

Some people love it. And some don’t like it at all. I love the music, the sights and sounds most of all. And this weekend we may also have snow! This is literally frosting on the cake when it comes to the Christmas season.

The lights are enhanced by snow and it also absorbs many of the sounds around us. The darkness arrives and things become very quiet. . .

In these moments I catch my breathe and look expectantly towards the sky. Perhaps it is not Santa who will arrive tonight…

Perhaps the One who is named every time we say “Christmas” will join us!

He’s not far away you know! And he could decide to make a visit. Such an event would certainly excite the parents more than an unattached balloon ride.

And I wouldn’t have to spend the night in jail. Sounds like a win/win situation for all who are weary and need some rest.

During the past year my Wordpress.com stats have been pretty stable but they also have had a downward tilt in terms of monthly visits. This led me to believe that at some future point readers would disappear completely.

How sad it was to contemplate this! Why write and take photos if no one is going to see your work? If a bear falls down in the woods and nobody is there to hear him does he actually make a sound?

Tree! Excuse me. A tree is supposed to fall down in the woods and not make a sound. A bear does something else. Sorry. I got the two stories mixed up.

In any case I looked in the Cpanel at a completely different reader counting system called Awstats and it says I have an increased readership for the year of over fifty percent! Visits went up from 20 thousand in January to 33 thousand in November. That’s probably over a 60 percent increase . My math is not great but in any case this was good news. Lots of people say that Awstats wildly overstates visits and maybe they do. I was more concerned with the trending since we can assume that they were doing the same things all year long.

They separate their robot counts and their people counts too by the way.

My readers are not robots! They have eyes! Over sixty six thousand of them in November apparently. Of course not all of those eyes stick around long enough to even focus on the title of the blog before they are off on another journey.

But some of them did and it is encouraging to the blogger to realize that his blog is not going to sink below the surface in the future while he furiously tries to save it with the written word and the edited photo. Futility is such an unhappy state of affairs.

So thank you readers for visiting and I hope you will leave a comment or two after you have finished reading. Comments are more encouraging in general than stats. And they also give some of us ideas for future posts.

B told me that we may have snow in a couple of days. Snow before Christmas! Imagine. Santa always likes it when he has actual snow on the big night for his roof-top landings. Braking is not an issue because he comes (almost) straight down. The snow just cushions the bump when he lands.

If you have ever landed in a crowded jet with two sleeping pilots you know about the bump and why Santa tries to avoid it.

Santa likes snow in general because people tend to stay indoors when it snows at night. They like to stay warm and look out the window every once in awhile to see how deep is the snow. There is something very magical about this to small children. They will look out the window often to see if the snow is covering the bushes or the cars on the street.

It thrills them to think about being buried in the snow.

And Santa wants them to stay inside. If the children were out running around there would be a small chance that he would be discovered while flying around and landing on people’s houses.

So it’s better that the children stay indoors. And it really doesn’t matter if their parents stay inside or go outside and try to hunt Santa down. Because they can’t see him anyway. He’s invisible to adults unless they are homeless and have been sitting in the snow drinking wine for at least six hours.

Those people deserve to see Santa even though many of them do not believe he exists. Almost anyone who is going to have a really bad Christmas deserves to see Santa.

I can’t see Santa. When he hits the roof I probably won’t hear him either. Because it’s going to snow. And that will ease the bump and make Santa go “HO-Ho-Hoooo”. Generally he wakes up the whole neighborhood when he does that!

But then we just say something like “Ha! That sounded like Santa. I must be hearing things again.” And we go back to sleep. Or we go play on the computer because most of us can’t sleep. This can go on for years until one day we get a leaky roof and a technician tells us that we are going to need some expensive work done up there.

“I thought those shingles were guaranteed for thirty years!”

Not if it doesn’t snow more than a couple years in a row. The runners on Santa’s sleigh tear them up pretty bad. And insurance doesn’t cover it. Because if you work for an insurance company you can’t see Santa.

Even if you lose your job and end up in the snow drinking wine. Same with bankers and stock brokers. Lawyers too.

So if you are one of these don’t lose your job. And don’t go out in the woods on a snow night hoping to drink some wine or hear a tree fall either. Because there’s only one thing waiting for you out there.

And it’s not Santa.

Andrea Bocelli/ My Christmas

Play – Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Would you still pull me back up the hill on the sled? Sure I would! Oh the joys of Facebook. My sister, Linda, lives up in New Hampshire and I commented on a recent photo of her standing in the snow.

It has been snowing up there in New England while it has been raining down here in Virginia. And I said something about wanting to be up there with her in the White Mountain regions. But it’s so far away!

So when I read her comment it took me back more than fifty years to the small hill in front of our little house where all the neighborhood children used to sled in winter. I tried to come up with a memory of pulling her up the hill but it’s gone.

All that remains is the sound of boots on crushed snow and ice and the steam that used to emerge from us as we ran around full of excitement in anticipation of the next rush down the hill.

I am standing there looking up at the sky as a jet leaves a vapor trail through the atmosphere. Soon it will be dark and before then I must go inside and stay there until tomorrow.

Ice has found its way between my gloves and the sleeves of my jacket. It lands close to the unprotected pulse and tears at the skin. My feet and face are numb but it really doesn’t matter. Because this is living and it is so much greater than anything else in my young life.

I am alive.

In a moment I reach the top of the hill and push off down the slope as mailboxes flash past and someone jumps out of the way. The metal runners hiss as they rip through the packed snow and for a moment I achieve speeds that are probably faster than the airplane overhead.

Probably.

And then it is over and the sled has run up a short pile of snow at the end of a shoveled driveway. I fall backward for a moment and once again look up at the sky.

It is darker now and quieter too. I would love to stay here for awhile and watch the light slowly drift off into the starlit night. Would it be so bad to simply forget all the things I must do before it is time to sleep?

And stay here. Become a part of the landscape. Drift into the silent night.

Perhaps at some point I could get up and walk away from the hill and all the little houses with their solitary lamps and windows full of shadows and mystery. I could find a field with a pond of sparkling ice and a moon that casts a glow upon it. And then I could gather some sticks and build a fire while waiting for someone to come.

She will come. I know she will not leave me here. Dressed in a gown of sylvan twilight she will emerge from the darkness and smile as she touches my outstretched hand. And then we will rise above the trees and the hills. . .

Moving with increasing speed.

Until a distant star envelopes us in light and the warmth of her love brings us Home again.

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Andrea Bocelli

Play What Child Is This