It’s that time of year again.  I recently told someone that as I get older, the more I wish we could cancel Christmas. On my more optimistic days, I wish we could go back to a time when Christmas was about getting together with family to eat a decadent meal finished off with some concoction of traditional cake with dry fruit preserved in alcohol. But let’s take away all the presents, the tree, the tinsel, the endless Christmas music, fake snow decorations, the wood-stick deer with bows around their necks, the blow-up plastic oversized lawn ornaments and most importantly the fat man in the red suit. I’m ready to fire him not because he doesn’t do a great job but because he represents everything that has commercialized Christmas into some too long-standing season of what used to be a great holiday.  Maybe its time to hire the aliens for an invasion to finally kill off the show.  Yes, somehow I have moved from Team Cindy-Lou to Team Grinch.  

I make a lot of things. I make most of them from scratch. There’s a long list of those things and I’m proud enough to bore you with that list.

But I’m kind enough to abridge it. I like you.

Yes, I make physical things from lumber, and from plastic filament. I make breads and cakes, cookies, pies and squares. I make the odd thing from textiles on my sewing machine, I’m good enough to get away with calling it sewing, but not good enough to make clothes. Mostly I make repairs.

I also make stories. I tell them in poetry, lyrics, and prose. That makes me a writer. Read more