Boxing Day.
There’s this guy in Canada who insists that the perfect gift for Jenn would be for me to announce that I am giving up pornography. Instead, I think I’ll share some of my meager traffic with her, by pointing out that now that she’s got Movable Type up and running, I can link to her wonderful post about the last time she went to a strip club. (It was coincidentally enough my first. I got to find out what’s the cruellest song for anyone—male or female—to strip to: “Eleanor Rigby.” Ouch.)
In other Boxing Day news—but I should maybe first tell you about an email my mother sent me, several years ago. Back about ’95 or ’96, I think, when we had one email account for an entire household of college drop-outs (and a couple of graduates, yes yes) and I still remembered how to use Tin and Pine and whatnot. It was a simple email message: a hyperlink, and the words, “Oh really?” or something to that effect. The link was to an entry in the archive Oberlin had maintained of posts made to its intramural bulletin board, a limited Usenet-like forum called Infosys. Some bright young thing had put the archive on the web in those heady, early days, so that by clicking on this simple hyperlink, one was taken almost instantaneously to a post I’d made in—what, 1988? Thereabouts, anyway—about the best places on campus to have sex.
My mother, ladies and gentlemen. —The archive has since (thank God) vanished, a victim of limited bandwidth, perhaps, but the peculiar mixture of embarrassment (aw, geeze, Mom, close the door!) and sudden joy (she read something! That I wrote!) has stayed with me. (By the way: mostly braggadoccio and hearsay. In case you were wondering. Honest! It was!)
Now, we have our differences politically and otherwise that probably are not as great as we imagine (and our similarities, ditto) and we maybe don’t talk about them as much as we ought. Family. You know. So while I knew she knew about this blogthing (the link’s in my email sig, after all, shameless self-promoter that I am), I didn’t really know what she thought of it. Or even if she read it. Until I opened one of my packages from The Folks: The Tipping Point. And said to myself, “Aw, geeze, Mom, you read that mawkish thing?” and “She reads it! Wow!” all at once.
My father—you know, I think I will have some Utah Phillips waiting for him when he gets back from Spain. (See above re: differences, as well as similarities.)
And: I now have a lovely example of Arabic calligraphy (the alphabet, cunningly matted and framed) to add to my astrolabe, thanks to the Spouse; also, my mother-in-law (the lovely and talented Kathy Lee—take a bow) got me a cashmere sweater. “It’s the in thing, apparently,” she said. “Snuggly and comforting, since it was such a hard year for everyone.” She got Jenn one, too. —It’s the first cashmere sweater I’ve ever worn: it’s at once the lightest and the warmest sweater I have, and from now on I insist that all my winter garments be woven of the stuff.
Assuming, of course, that 2003 turns out somewhat less hard than 2002.
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My Christmas present to myself was a cashmere scarf. It was a pretty extravagant present, as I have limited disposable income, but I'm so glad I bought it. It is, as you say, light as a cloud, and warm, and wonderfully soft. It drapes beautifully. And cashmere is incredibly durable. I have a cashmere cardigan that is two years old and looks like new, after having gone through some extremely heavy wear. No fuzzing, no pilling, and no unravelling.
Happy New Year!
Good news. I can be rough on clothes.
every time i see the word astrolabe, i can't help remembering the governess at the beginning of *sword in the stone* who was "always getting muddled in her astrolabe."