Lovely snowflakes, they fall nowhere else!
No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.
Two Zen sayings, or two translations of one saying?
When I was a little girl, taking ballet lessons at St. Mark’s, my parents would take me to see the Nutcracker around this time of year. And like most girls, I would go home pretending [...]
Yuletide carols. Yule singing. Yule log. Yule goat. Yule boar.
Yule or yuletide is a pagan Germanic winter festival later absorbed into the Christian festival of Christmas. It was originally celebrated from late December to early January on a date determined by the lunar Germanic calendar. The festival was placed on December 25 when the Christian [...]
Kiri Te Kanawa sings Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate with the Royal Opera House Orchestra, conducted by Stephen Barlow, in Greenwich.
I grew up in the joyful German Christmas Eve tradition, thanks to my mother, who brought her beliefs and practices to the US. Whatever your religion and practice, peace, joy and love to you this evening and [...]
2 little whos — ee cummings
2 little whos
(he and she)
under are this
wonderful tree
smiling stand
(all realms of where
and when beyond)
now and here
(far from a grown
-up i&you-
ful world of known)
who and who
(2 little ams
and over them this
aflame with dreams
incredible is)
Have a laugh on me: I made a Christmas quiz about what can go wrong at Christmas.
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. — Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
Here is virtuoso Itzak Perlman finding his way into Klezmer with the Klezmatics (don’t miss magic minute 7):
I did a fun Christmas exercise for Spotlight: A Great Christmas
I understand. — Empathy, part 2: an effective active-listening phrase when you don’t really want to listen to somebody (”too much information”), but don’t want to sound rude. Laughs c/o sitcom Two and a Half Men, 1st season, 7th episode.
I put together tips and a language exercise on active listening here.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” is the beginning of possibly the most beautiful love poem ever written, of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18.
Pity that there is no “Du” in English. The intimacy of “thou, thee, thine”, the “du, dich, dein” we have lost in English, is one of the things that makes German [...]
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