Monthly Archives: December 2010

Wonder in Winterland

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One of the few things I dislike about living in the Bay Area is that Christmas time never really seems to have quite the same punch and magic here as is described by non-classical Christmas songs. Perhaps it is the preponderance of Godless heathens clustered together or maybe it’s just age and an accompanying cynicism puncturing the delight of innocent, youthful greed but honestly I think it boils down to the lack of relatively inclement weather. With the relatively mild winter of coastal California, there seems to be less of an obvious requirement to stay indoors, avoid roads and thus dedicate time to cozy firesides and spiked nogs and craft projects.

Or whatever that means. I don’t know why craft projects remind me of Christmas spirit, but there you are. The point is it seems like the—at worst—inconvenient annoyance of Bay Area December weather isn’t sufficient to prevent the season from descending into commercialized excess of gaudy strip malls and Black Friday sales. So I was feeling kind of glum about the season in general, wishing impotently that I could demonstrate to my 16-month old daughter that Christmas was more than just counting boxes under the tree.

Then Nik somehow heard about this event in downtown San Jose called Christmas in the Park, held in the small public space between the Tech Museum, the Art Museum and tons of high-rise office buildings and even higher-priced restaurants. The plan was to pick me up from work and grab some dinner before we took Callie over there. As I tend to do when Nik suggests family activities I shrugged and said, “Sure, sounds fun.” I’m trying to make these words mean something other than “Okay: I probably won’t hate it,” although I do better some days with that than others.

We actually tried to go earlier when a work issue resulted in me having to stay later than usual and miss my shuttle so Nik drove out to pick me up and we thought we might go after that, but by the time I was done and Nik had a chance to make it to my office and we fought through rush hour traffic on 101 South it was approaching 6:30. Given an hour for dinner and we’d be arriving when Callie’s bedtime routine typically begins and it seemed like less than responsible parenting to keep her up hours just to take advantage of an unexpected car trip. So we made arrangements to do as we originally intended and went on Thursday after I got off work (at the normal time). We had dinner at a retro themed diner which I thought was excellent but Nik was quite unimpressed by and then crossed the street again to check out the spread which we had only seen in passing on our way in.

The marvelous thing about Christmas in the Park is that it’s donation-run so admission is completely free. The bulk of the set up is a series of donated Christmas trees decorated by local groups. As you might predict a huge number of these end up being Boy and Girl Scout troops, but that’s actually fine and many of them were very cleverly put together. Around the perimeter of the park are a series of dioramas, some fairly elaborate with mechanical bits and musical accompaniment, which depict whimsical scenes that are very kid-friendly: Silly elves, friendly looking woodland creatures and so forth.  Because Nik didn’t care for dinner she stopped and got a snack to munch on while we perused the aisles of trees and displays.

Throughout this initial sequence Calliope seemed a little overwhelmed: Her eyes were as big and round as saucers but she didn’t seem to react much to anything. I’m not sure if the lights were too much or if it was packed too tightly into the space for her little mind to process, but while I wouldn’t describe her as having anything but a good time it was as if she didn’t quite know what to make of it all.

By the time we reached the center of the park where they had erected a huge display tree out of light strings Callie seemed to be appreciating what was going on a little more. She got excited about a teddy bear statue that was under the tree and offered to share bites of her gummy churro with passing strangers. Just to one side of the big tree they has set up a gazeebo and stage with some benches in front and a horn ensemble was playing brassy renditions of popular Christmas tunes. For the first time that I can recall, despite being exposed almost daily to a variety of musical stylings via iPod and radio, she lit up about the band and got this huge grin on her face as they bleated their way through “Frosty the Snowman” and “Carol of the Bells” and others. We sat and watched them play through three or four songs and then moved on to keep Callie from getting bored.

Just behind the stage they had set up a snow-maker using soap bubbles and Nik bravely carried Callie into the shower where she laughed and squealed while the shower of suds swirled through the night sky. They were both fairly covered in soap by the time the shower stopped (it seemed to be set to “snow” in about three minute intervals) and Callie was so delighted she made Nik stand through another storm. It was very cool to see her getting so excited, enough that Nik and I wondered afterward if she might enjoy a trip to the actual snow.

In the center of the park was a sort of gift shop/visitor’s center, and Nik poked her head in to see if there was a map or a listing perhaps of all the groups that had donated a tree (she seemed to get into her head that the San Jose Sharks should have made a tree and was fairly convinced there was a Sharks tree we just weren’t able to find). I guess they didn’t have anything like that but she did emerge with a set of jingle bells that had been a display. Apparently she’d had to talk the cashiers into selling it to her. To understand why she went to extremes to buy some bells, I should mention that we had tried the previous week to take Calliope to get her picture taken with Santa in the mall. We did it last year and the pictures came out pretty well (in spite of a diaper incident that resulted in a last minute outfit change) so we figured it would be a kind of tradition. But this year when Nik went to hand Callie to Santa she flipped out and wouldn’t relax until Nik agreed to hold her in the pictures. Needless to say none of them came out well and we didn’t really want to fight her on it so we left empty-handed excepting a little jingle bell on a red string.

I can’t explain why but Callie absolutely fell in love with that cheesy little bell and held it and jingled it and played with it until it basically disintegrated. I guess the free bell was worth the waste of time standing in the line but Nik felt bad that it hadn’t held up so she was willing to really make it happen with this new set of bells. I velcroed the new bells onto Callie’s arm and she shook them enthusiastically for the remainder of our visit to the park, boldly announcing her presence, though at least in a very seasonally appropriate manner.

At the far end of the park they do in fact have a structure set up with your typical Santa/picture ordeal and I think this was ultimately Nik’s aim, to get a re-try on the Santa thing. I confess I don’t really have the Santa-picture nostalgia she does and there is something rather unnerving to me about what amounts to having our child pose with a disguised stranger so I wasn’t really all that thrilled about the notion of another epic line which ended at best with an expensive and poorly compressed digital photo printout and at worst another meltdown so I may have steered us toward skipping the Santa house. Fortunately while our winter is nothing like the ones depicted in song and verse, it was pretty cold for this old California native and I hadn’t really prepared with sufficient layers so I suggested we check out the Nutcracker display and then start making our way home. Fortunately for me it was already well past the little one’s bedtime and Nik was tired and hungry enough not to put up a fight.

As we drove home I marveled at the joy that was etched onto my daughter’s face the whole night. It occurred to me that she didn’t really need to have the marvel of Christmas explained in great detail to her, she felt the magic simply by viewing the spectacle through fresh eyes: The sweet refrains of carols heralding Jesus’ arrival on Earth, the festive glow of brightly colored lights everywhere, the focused attention on whimsical fairy tales like elves and flying sleighs. To her it seemed so vibrant and exciting, just by its nature. Sure, she’ll probably be beside herself when Christmas morning comes as well, buried under a mound of loot and the thrill of getting will begin the slow descent into and/or lifelong struggle against consumerism and greed, but for now she’s just as likely to be enchanted by the bright paper, silky bows and fort-friendly boxes as any amount of toys within, a testament to the innocence of her delight with the whole charade.

Reflecting on this I realized that maybe at some point I just outgrew Christmas, but for me the vicarious experience of watching the season work its way into my daughter’s heart was softening this crusty old shell of angst and… what was that I felt there for a moment? The thirst for egg nog and a refrain from the Nutcracker buzzing in a hum in the back of my throat; it felt suspiciously like Christmas spirit again. I guess I didn’t need postcard-friendly winter landscapes or manufactured nostalgia after all, just the perspective of a receptive little girl who seems to be teaching her daddy more than he’s taught her.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

When Other Worlds You Enter

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As with most every non-essential facet of my life, I’m pretty cyclical when it comes to reading. I suppose that reading is like watching movies moreso than, say, playing video games or drawing: I’m almost always reading something and don’t know if I can think of a time when I didn’t do much reading for pleasure at all but I certainly slow way down at times.

Lately I’ve been on something of an upswing, probably brought about by the proximity of our current apartment to the local branch library: It’s no more than a ten minute walk. Combined with the county library’s website feature that allows you to search the catalog and put a hold on any item with a destination branch of your choosing, this has allowed me to have ready access within about a week to mostly any book I’m inclined to read. I also think that Goodreads has had a lot to do with my increased reading because I’m such a stats junkie when it comes to every aspect of my life (I also credit Last.fm with making me listen to more music and Netflix for making me watch more movies as I can track my activity for the respective media on those sites).

But as I’ve been checking all these books out of the library I keep having this twinge of guilt as I walk through my living room with another stack of borrowed items, past the bookshelf that houses what I know are at least a couple dozen books that I picked up over the years and either meant to read but didn’t, started but couldn’t finish or read but wanted to re-visit and it’s like they taunt me mockingly. “What’s that? Another pile of books? Another chance to rack up some late fees? Another set of tomes to renew four or five times while you struggle to read them? You know what doesn’t cost late fees? You know what you don’t have to renew? Books you already own, jerk!”

My books are kind of mean. I’m not sure why.

In any case I keep having all these reasons why the unread books are sitting on my shelf and finally I got sick of it. So after the most recent round of checkouts went back (completed in this case), I did some organizing and arranged all the books I owned but needed to attend to into the same shelves. I expected there to be like I said maybe 15-25. There were 41. So I did the only thing that I could think of: I made a game out of it. I call it my Reading Project (I guess I should take “Good at coming up with clever names for stuff” off my resume) and my intent is to either read or get rid of every book on the list by the end of 2011.

Now, this is an ambitious goal. For reference 2010 was an “up” year for reading and I tracked 22 books I finished on Goodreads this past year. However, I don’t really expect to actually read through 41 books as will become evident in a minute. The point is not to read every book, but to determine once and for all if the book will be read so I can stop feeling like I have no business borrowing or buying any more books until I get through the ones I already have. Some of the books on the list I’ve actually read already, but they are included because I intend to read them again. For example I read Watership Down back in high school. At least, I think I did. I’ve picked it up a few times since and flipped to random pages and it all sounds very familiar to me. I have fond memories of the story but for whatever reason I can’t remember beyond the back cover copy what it’s really about. So it’s on the list because I want to not just say I read it and think I read it but know I read it and determine if I actually enjoyed it as much as I think I did.

Others, like the first three books of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, I’ve read and remember but it took so long for King to get from Book 3 to Book 4 that when I tried to read Wizard and Glass, I couldn’t remember enough details about the previous books to get into it. I’ve meant (and actually attempted) to re-read the first three but I’ve never seemed to be able to make it through. So they’re all on the list because I want to try one last time to read 1-3 and then continue on the series but if I can’t do the re-reading thing I may try Book 4 alone once more to see if I can power through. If not, I’m at a point in my life where I’m comfortable declaring that I just don’t have to finish every single thing I start (my experience with the Wheel of Time series did a lot to get me to that place).

Some, like Lies My Teacher Told Me, I mostly skimmed and skipped around in the first time through. I read enough of it to feel comfortable saying, “Yeah I read that” and rating it on Goodreads but now I’d like to actually go through it cover to cover. A few of them like The Lovely Bones and Bookends are Nik’s books by authors she enjoys that I’m interested in trying out because I like to take steps to not box myself into any particular corner (of any media, not just literature). I may end up swapping the actual titles of these at some point because I didn’t consult with Nik on which she would recommend but I read some Christopher Pike young adult thrillers on her recommendation this summer and enjoyed them, plus it was fun to be able to talk about them with her so I figure they count as “books I’ve been telling myself I’ll try one of these days” and thus belong in the Project. Maybe I should rename the project to “Today Is One Of These Days.”

Finally there are a handful of titles on the list that I either hated but slogged through anyway, hated and therefore gave up on or read because I had to for school and therefore was prejudiced against (I dislike being told what I must read). These include The Good Earth, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Fountainhead and Life Work. I’m giving them all another chance because I’ve been slowly working my way through Crime and Punishment via DailyLit and finding that it’s much more interesting this time around than it was Sophomore year so I wonder if voluntarily approaching some of these bad reading experiences with a fresh perspective will change my tune on some of them.

The Rules

I wanted to keep it simple but I needed some criteria to determine if I was going to take a book off the list without actually finishing it and just write it off as a book I wasn’t meant to read. So here they are:

  1. I must read only one book at a time. Historically I’ve been “halfway through” as many as ten or eleven books simultaneously. But in order for me to work through the list, I need to focus (the case could even be made that I’m already halfway through a lot of these). Therefore when I set a book in Goodreads to my “currently-reading” list, it’s the only one that I can have on there. I’m not counting stuff I read on DailyLit because it’s not on the list to begin with and it by design gets read over time.
  2. I have to finish at least 20% of the book. The amount is kind of arbitrary but I figure one-fifth of a book is sufficient to give a pretty good idea whether you can stand to read the remaining 80%. My percentage will be based on page count, minus any appendices or notes. As an example my first book is Lies My Teacher Told Me which is 318 pages, so I have to read at least 64 pages before I can give up on it.
  3. I have to cycle books that don’t hit the 20% mark within five days. With just over a year to read 41 books, I need to be on pace for about a book (the average page count for the books on the list is 396) every nine to ten days. Realistically that means if I’m not making progress enough to decide if I want to keep reading or not in about a work week I need to move on to something else. Ideally I’m either reading a book at a pretty comfortable pace for a book I’m enjoying (roughly 62 pages a week) or I’m deciding it’s not for me in that same time period. If I’m getting toward the end of the week and still haven’t met the base criteria for crossing it off the list, I’ll need to save it for later in the year when hopefully I’ll have banked some time on some of the easier reads to make up lost ground.

So that’s my project. You can follow along on my Goodreads page or wager on how many books I’ll actually cross off the list through before the end of next year in the comments. If you want to go for super bragging rights I’m also accepting predictions for how many of the books will be fully read as opposed to being discarded and what the ratio of completed to rejected books will be. And of course if you’re a reader and not already on Goodreads, I can’t recommend the site enough; sign up and add me as a friend.