I've started wearing boots, which either means it's really cold out or I'm preparing to walk all the way to the Otherworld. It's really nice in the morning - the light is white and cold, and the frost crunches underneath my feet when I walk across the lawn. I have so much to do in the next three weeks, it's almost overwhelming.
On Sunday Katie and her family came over for post-Thanksgiving/ post-toxic gas poisoning revelry. We listed to some of my favorite Christmas albums, including Annie Lennox's A Christmas Cornucopia (featured in this video) and The American Girls Christmas.
The latter came out in 1999, which means I probably received it as a Christmas present that year. From that point on it became a tradition to blast "Nu Är det jul igen" at some point around Christmas and dance around the house in a line like in "Fanny and Alexander" (but with 100% less abusive Lutheran ministers!). Then in the early 2000s, my parents and I went to the local Lutheran church's Christmas celebration, which both featured "Nu Är det jul igen" with dancing and a little girl precariously done up with a wreath of lit candles like Saint Lucia.
Oh, and in the same year that the American Girls Christmas CD came out, Katie and I took a Christmas tour of Sunnyside (Washington Irving's house), which I later wrote a very famous short story about. I can't remember if it was that Christmas or another one that a bunch of Rockefellers were on the tour with us. They were very nice, and dressed impeccably.
Christmas decorations are going up in our house today. Cats are snuggling with us. Winter must be approaching. I knit a tiny pair of mittens. Oh, and I read a book about how the Irish saved civilization, which if I had wrote it would be named How the Irish Saved Some Parts of Late Antique Civilization, Such as the Illustrated Book Tradition, While Eschewing Other Parts, Like Bathing, For Many Centuries, Which I Am Allowed to Say Because I'm 1/16 Irish.
"Aunt Bay" and Violet's grandmother, Carrie Thompson Pulver
Charles Herbert Pulver
Charles Herbert Pulver
Charles Herbert Pulver, Fred Pulver, and Violet Pulver
Charles Herbert Pulver c. 1889
Charles Herbert Pulver
Violet and Fred Pulver
Marion Hamblin Pulver, Ethel Mills, and Fred and Violet Pulver
Front: Violet Pulver and Elbertine Pulver Strever
Back: Violet Pulver and Elbertine Pulver Strever
Violet Pulver
Fred Pulver
Ethel Mills and Marion, Fred, and Violet Pulver
Charles Herbert and Marion Pulver, "Mrs. Wahl" and "two sons," and James Hamblin
The Pulvers are quickly becoming my favorite cousins that I've never met. You can see other posts about them here and here. About ten years ago, Violet Pulver Riphenburgh, who didn't have children, sent her photo album to my grandmother, who was her first cousin once removed. This album is delightful. It's filled with animals, farmhouses, and great little details like the phantom parent keeping Charles Herbert Pulver in place in his two earliest photos. It's in this album that I found the photographs of Elbertine Pulver Strever that ultimately led me to the greatest photograph of all time.
Also, that caption of the photo of Elbertine and Violet. That punched me right in the gut. It doesn't help that I know Elbertine didn't live too long after the photo was taken.
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Mine was ... interesting. More on that later. The good news is that we're all going to live (probably).
Anyway, J. Crew catalogs. I try to imagine what's going on in the pictures, like "Hey guys! I'm just your average twenty-something model hanging out with a Christmas tree and my pearls in the Andes! Hey, I found a baby Siberian husky! Are ... are huskies indigenous to the Andes? Who cares, I'm going to cuddle it on my sequined skirt!"
And the guy is like, "I'm starting to wonder about this J. Crew woman. She wears sequined skirts in the Andes and cuddles with stray animals. I'm so glad that I, as a J. Crew man, never have to do anything quirky or wear anything wildly inappropriate for the environment I'm in. I just carry the Christmas tree. I'll carry it all the way back to our private plane that's parked ten feet away. That's my job."
