| December 1st |
In December I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth; But like each thing, that in its season, grows. -- William Shakespeare (circa 1595) You've seen those words before; it was on this day back in 2015. And they express the truth; Shakespeare was right. But it isn't May now, it's December, and some of us desire more snow and more ice on the lakes (but of course, considering where I am now, the latter is mostly inconsequential, though not entirely). Mr Weatherman, could you please be of some assistance in this matter? Thank you in advance. |
| December 2nd | The material, the elements, of poetry are "words".......and they're free to anyone who wants to use them. Mr. Shakespeare didn't have to pay a cent for the words he used in yesterday's quotation. Anyone could have used those words or words similar to them, and expressed the same idea.......but it takes a poet to make them really “sing". |
| December 3rd |
Here's an update on the LBLR Search Facility. The web crawlers are slowly doing their job and the search is getting much better. It now appears that about 75% of the site has been crawled, or perhaps a bit more than that. Which means that when you do a search, most of the time you'll find what you're looking for. The success rate went from zero to about 75% in a little over a month, so maybe by the first of January it'll really be working well again.
PS: If you're ever looking for a specific entry and can't find it, send me an e-mail and I'll find it for you. |
| December 4th | See the September 27, 2017 Chronicles entry (it's: HERE.) Hey Stover.......Happy 73rd Birthday!!!! |
| December 5th |
Do you remember Tchotchke Hill? It was given its name by Erin Harlan back in July of 2014. But it all began three years before that (July of 2011), when a single swan mysteriously appeared in the woods beside the driveway into the south end of the resort (click HERE). The next year at roughly the same time, a second Swan and a Flamingo showed up, this time decked out in Patriotic accoutrements (click HERE). Little by little over the next few years, the items on Tchotchke Hill grew in number, appearing randomly during the resort season, until May of 2015 when it reach its maximum of at least 17 items (click HERE). I never really found out who put those things there. I have some strong suspicions for a few of them, but for some of them I have absolutely no idea. I think at least one of them was put there by a local because it appeared at a time when the resort was empty. Incidentally, Tchotchke Hill is now history. It's gone! The new owners have removed it. But to the best of my memory, it contained 2 swans, 2 flamingos, 3 garden gnomes, 3 sections of picket fence, a fish, a metal pine tree, a butterfly, a head made from a coconut, a dragonfly, 2 bears, and perhaps some things that don't immediately come to mind. Would anyone care to own up to any of the items? |
| December 6th |
There is a privacy about winter which no other season gives you. In spring, summer, and fall, people have an open season on each other; only in the winter can you have long, quiet, stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself. -- Ruth Stout (circa 1960) In my old LBLR days that was much more pronounced than it is now.......but it's still true. And by the way, Ruth, who wrote many books about gardening and who lived to be 96, was the older sister of Rex Stout, author of the Nero Wolfe mysteries. |
| December 7th |
Hey Sean H, you've changed your e-mail address??? Send me your new one (or call me), if you don't mind. I'd sure like to keep up with your resort plans. Thanks.
Today is the 77th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. Sorry about the earlier dumb mistake, and thanks for the heads-up Gary. |
| December 8th | Concerning Tchotchke Hill (see the December 5th entry, above), some people have been tight-lipped about their involvement (or lack thereof) and have indicated that they will remain so, but a few others have opened up a bit. All I'll say is that, in some cases, I was surprised. I had some things pegged wrong.......surprisingly wrong. Still, the sources for the majority of the items remain a mystery. |
| December 9th | As you know, the Detroit Lions are my favorite NFL team. I was watching them on TV when they last won a championship (in 1957). Since then, almost every year at about mid-season (sometimes earlier), I start hoping that they'll continue to lose and end up in last place so that they can get a good pick in the draft. And almost every year they do.......but it doesn't ever do them any good. One thing about the Lions: they're consistent. But I'm still a fan! How about you other Michiganians and ex-Michiganians? |
| December 10th | A two mile night-time walk with temperatures in the single digits is sure different in town than it was Up North. Walking the streets is fun, but it just isn't the same as walking on the lake. Things sure have changed. I wonder if LBLR has any cabins available for weekend rentals this winter. |
| December 11th | As a result of my dissertation on December 9th (see above), which some might call a gripe session, I received an e-mail from Gary in Tennessee. He told me about several loyal Lion/Tiger fans living in his neck of the woods, who often get together to watch games, and who seem to have feelings about the teams that are similar to mine. Many many times over the last 47 years, someone has berated me for not becoming a Viking fan because I'm now a Minnesotan. Eventually I found a reply that any fan can understand. I simply ask: "If you moved to Wisconsin, for example, would you become a Packer fan?" Their response is invariably something like "Oh, no I wouldn't; I see what you mean". |
| December 12th | At LBLR, the summers were drastically different than the winters. In fact, they were so different that they had almost nothing in common. A day at LBLR in the summer wasn't anything like a day at LBLR in the winter. Now that the LBLR days are over, summer and winter are pretty much the same, other than the weather of course. In general, a day in the summer, is not all that different than a day in the winter. Things sure have changed. |
| December 13th |
If you saw the full moon last night (actually it was full at 11:12 PM on December 11th in our time zone) you saw the last full moon of the decade. At least that's what the news media have been hyping for the last week or more. And that brings up a discussion which was common late in the year 1999. The question is: when does the next decade (like the next century) actually begin? Common usage says that the 21st century began on January 1, 2000 so, likewise, the third decade of the 21st century will begin on January 1, 2020. Okay, the 2020s will begin then, and I'm all for calling that the beginning of the 3rd decade, but let's get technical for a moment, if you don't mind. Since there is no year zero (I don't think anyone disputes that, at least not historians anyway), the year 1 BC was followed by the year 1 AD. With that as a given, the year 10 AD was the 10th (and last) year of the 1st decade AD and therefore, the 2nd decade began in the year 11. If that is carried out to current times, the 21st century actually didn't begin until January 1, 2001, and likewise, the 3rd decade of the 21st century will not begin until January 1, 2021. So technically, we'll have 13 more full moons in this decade.
That being said, I still like to think that our current century began in the year 2000, and the next decade will begin this coming January 1st. To heck with being technical (in this case anyway). PS: Even though I've seen it in the media for a whole week, I still don't see what the big deal is about the last full moon of a decade. |
| December 14th | We are currently in the Season of Advent. Back in my grade school years at Our Lady of Perpetual Help School, at the urging of the Good Sisters, we used to say 4000 Hail Marys during Advent, one for every year that the Faithful waited for the coming of the Messiah. That amounted to 1000 per week or about 150 per day. Now I buy an advent calendar consisting of 24 little bottles of different types of whiskey, and sample one of them every night between December 1st and Christmas Eve. Things sure have changed. |
| December 15th | This was almost like the old days.......strolling on the ice (click HERE). That's White Bear Lake. I got onto the ice in town (the town of White Bear Lake, that is) and walked a half mile or so to the VFW where I had a beer, and then walked back. It was very enjoyable! Many was the time I wished I could walk across the ice to a bar on Little Bass Lake. Hmmmmm.......come to think of it, there were many times that I walked across the ice on Little Bass Lake and had a few beers (for free) at the houses of some friends. That was very good too. |
| December 16th | The name, "Three Kings Public House" (click HERE) in the Saint Louis Airport, is referring to Henry VIII, Elvis, and Kong, but I don't know why. That's quite an odd collection of Kings, wouldn't you say? The reason for that statement should be obvious, but click HERE. |
| December 17th | Rule of the game: The angriest woman wins! Or click HERE. |
| December 18th |
Do you realize that the amount of daylight will start increasing on Sunday already? That's only 4 days from now; then we'll be on the upswing! But here's a question for you? Can the people in Barrow Alaska, who haven't seen the sun since November 20th, see any kind of a change? The answer is, of course, yes! During the time that the sun doesn't actually rise, they still have a period of twilight. Not twice per day (before sunrise and after sunset) as they would have in the summer, but one period of twilight spanning both sides of the time that the sun gets the highest (but still below the horizon). On the first day that the sun does not rise (November 20th), the period of twilight lasts almost 6 hours. The twilight period then gets shorter as the solstice (December 21st) nears, at which time it'll be at its minimum of 3 hours. From that time on, the length of twilight will grow until it again gets to about 6 hours on Jan 22nd. The following day, the sun will poke above the horizon at 1:15 in the afternoon, and drop below it again at about 2:00, giving them a 45 minute day. [Aside -- By the way, there are three different definitions of twilight. From the shortest to the longest they are: Civil Twilight, Nautical Twilight, and Astronomical Twilight. The numbers I used in this minor dissertation are for Civil Twilight. -- End of Aside]
In case you're interested, three years ago this month, the name of Barrow, Alaska was officially changed to Utqiaġvik, Alaska, which is its name in the native language of Iñupiaq. So there is no Barrow Alaska anymore. |
| December 19th | My first football hero (Detroit Lion Quarterback Bobby Layne) and my first Baseball hero (Detroit Tiger out fielder Al Kaline) were both born on this day, though twelve years apart. Bobby died in 1986 (age 60). Al is alive and still working for the Tigers at age 84; he has now been employed by the Tigers for 66 years. |
| December 20th |
Please ignore the listing of the Chronicles archives below. It's an experiment. If it works, it might improve the Chronicles Search Facility within a few days; if it doesn't work, it was worth a try. [Note added a few weeks later: The referenced "listing of the Chronicles archives" at the bottom of the this page has been removed.] Note added at 9:00 PM: Something has improved the Chronicles Search Facility quite suddenly. In the last 24 hours, 16 of the remaining 30 Chronicles months have been crawled, after only 2 of them being crawled in the the previous two weeks. I don't know if it had anything to do with what I've tried over the last couple of days or not, but I'm glad to see it. At the current time, 92% of the Chronicles pages have been crawled by Google, which should give one a darned good chance of finding whatever one is searching for. NEATO!!! |
| December 21st | Happy Birthday Colleen!!!! And Happy Shortest Day of the Year to all!!! |
| December 22nd | While in Hudson, Wisconsin this afternoon, we went into Big Guy's Barbeque for Lunch, and there we met Santa Don.......the best Santa EVER! First of all, he looks like the real Santa Claus (including a real beard), not like those fakie looking department store Santas. He has a perfect Santa personality; he was the main attraction in the room, but he didn't flaunt it. He's friendly and out-going, but not boisterous, or dominating. He doesn't spout out a lot of loud ho-ho-hos as many Santas do, and he's not a bit scary to the little kids. His gentle, confident, manner puts the kids at ease immediately, and turns them into all smiles. And besides that, he's also nice and accomodating to the adults; some senior citizens even sat on his lap for a picture. If you're interested, click HERE to see his website. |
| December 23rd | My Son-in-Law Jim and his buddies are somewhere ice fishing at the moment (but not on Little Bass Lake), and it would appear that, as usual, it's high-tech, comfortable ice fishing. Click HERE |
| Christmas Eve | Preparations for Deb's family coming tomorrow. No time; no Chonicles entry. |
| Christmas Day |
Ditto from yesterday, but I'll add this: Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. -- Isaiah 7:14 MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!! |
| Boxing Day | I'm not the only one who loves Boxing Day. Click HERE. |
| December 27th |
Hopefully, this is the last word on the LBLR Chronicles Search Facility: In the December 3rd entry of these Chronicles (see above), I expressed the hope that the Chronicles Search Facility would be "working well" by the first of the year. I would now like to declare that as being the case! I can't find a single Little Bass web-site page that has not been "crawled", and every word that I've searched for, on any page on the web-site, has been found (and I've tried tons and tons of them). PS: There is a small exception to the above statement. I don't really understand how these search routines work, so I don't understand why this is, but there are some "odd" situations in which not everything is found. For example, if you search for a word that will get lots and lots of hits (like a search for the word "the" for example) you'll get a long list of pages containing that word, but certainly not all of them. I don't know why the search routine works like that, but I also can't understand what good it would do anyone to search for something like that anyway. And I'll say again, as I said on December 3rd, if you're ever looking for a specific entry (or picture, or story, etc) and can't find it, send me an e-mail and I'll find it for you. |
| December 28th |
Yesterday was my family's Christmas get-together, a few weeks earlier than it is in some years. Unlike previous years, this one was held in a public place in Minneapolis, since four us live in the Metro and it's a fairly central location for the rest of them. Of course my California Daughter and North Carolina Grandson were not in attendance, but everyone else made it. It was a fun day, which began in the late morning with bowling and lasted until nearly 7:00 PM. Click HERE. We have no idea who the person on the extreme left is, he's standing to my right and a little in front of me. Nobody noticed him walk into the picture or leave. Apparently we were photo-bombed by a real pro. |
| December 29th | As of 6:00 PM today, all of our Christmas festivities and responsibilities are over. YES!!!! Now for a nice, low-key, relaxing, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day (including the annual 3-D Puzzle, of course). |
| December 30th | Two of my Dear Daughters at the Christmas get-together (see December 28th, above). The third one lives in California and therefore, didn't make it. Click HERE. |
| New Year's Eve |
Sipping cocoa by the fire, While December flurries blow, Snug and safe from winter's ire. Sipping cocoa by the fire, Watching as the flames go higher, Then burning down to embers glow. Sipping cocoa by the fire, While December flurries blow. -- Author unknown (12/30/15) -- Entered in Rob Carmack's "One of your best" contest That doesn't really sound like a verse for New Year's Eve, and the beverage isn't quite right either.......but since both December flurries outside and snug and safe inside, fit tonight's situation quite well, I like it. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! |
