Holidays, Version 2016?

Wednesday, December 28, 2016 — 3.18 am — -3˚C / +27˚F clear and ‘dark’ in Atlantic Canada —

*** Post Script First —  Thursday, December 29th — -1˚C / +30˚F @ 11:11 pm —  Just to start this off with something extraordinarily positive — Wonderful Family Friend and Sister we all would have adopted if we had the choice — Lisa — got engaged to her friend Alan — & he seems to be somebody who loves and values her and will cherish her the way she deserves to be cherished. ((( Hey, the odds were tipped so far in the morbid direction in 2016 – something GOOD had to balance it out — 🙂 🙂 🙂 )))

Sunset today from the parking lot of a local Kent building supply store (kind of a Canadian version of a Home Depot clone with friendly local clerks) The sunset looked better in person than it does here. dark charcoal grey clouds along the horizon had much more detail than the camera captured— but this isn’t that bad —

— The ‘Holiday Spirit’ didn’t hit full blast until Christmas Eve, driving home from an emergency run to get a spark plug and 4 stroke oil for our non-starting snow-blower. It was raining on top of maybe six inches or more of semi-recent snow – made the snow look good – lots of houses were decorated with pretty LED lights. Neighbourhoods with a lot of kids had blow-up minions (snow minions?) in front of a couple houses. There were deer made of light (inspired by Harry Potter books?) here and there and with the rain coming down, we flipped to a rock and roll station on the car radio and got ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ to complete the inspiration. Greg Lake might have added a little with “They said it would snow for Christmas – They said there’d be Peace on Earth. But here it just kept on raining – while we wait for the Virgin Birth-” / “The Christmas you get you deserve”.

— Too many people gave up and left the planet this year. On Boxing Day (the 26th) we heard that 572 musicians died in 2016- as opposed to a more normal number, more like 50 in 2015. Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane and Greg Lake of Emerson Lake and Palmer hit me harder than most. Prince checked out when I was too rattled to totally embrace the depths of grieving. It was like you can only get hit in the head with a baseball bat so many times before you get so used to the jarring and the electric shock waves running up and down your spine that you can almost shrug off the next couple bashes with an attitude something like, “So what else is new? Hey, thou forces of Evil – Is that all ya got?”

— Sigh, and then Leonard Cohen? – ( Ouch! – Too many very personal memories of listening to his records with various people, and a friend who sang “Suzanne” in local church run coffee houses way back in the sixties – At least, that’s where my memory places it. And then the love of my life having a special thing for her country-man Leonard? And I think we tried to sing a couple things together? okay, so she sang and I croaked along? sigh. Well I have only one thing to say about Leonard checking out the way he did, “Well – Hey-ey, that’s no way-ay to say-ay goodbye”!

— And then Carrie Fisher? CBC has been pretty good about broadcasting highlights from her career. One of the other networks up here had to bash us in the soul with repetitions of how much she struggled with drug addiction issues. When you mention drug addiction three times in a two minute piece, that’s rubbing it in. I don’t remember if CBC news said anything about her struggle with her bi-polar ‘disorder’, but they did mention that she was a spokesperson for people with ‘mental health issues’.

— I’m going to quote my cousin here, “Hey, Carrie, Kick Ass in your next life!” and offer a nice friendly hug to who-ever she might be next time I see her- in whatever world, dimension, or state of being. — Ya did good, kid! —

— sigh –,

— Happy New Year, Happy New Life, Happy New Attitude —

— Hey, God, have we suffered enough yet? Can You just kind of move the bad guys into their own nasty dimension and let them believe they’re still here? And let the good ones move on up to a New Heaven, New Earth?  — Are we there yet?

~~~~~ Jim