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First things

Happy new year, everyone.  It was a quiet celebration around here, marked mainly by the fact that Jamie stayed up with us past midnight for the very first time, a few hours after he’d hurtled down the “ice slide” at State College’s “First Night” festival, tumbling face first into a soft pile of straw and mud and emerging looking like something out of a detergent commercial.  He loved it.  (A few minutes later he was weirdly embarrassed to run into Nick and his friends a few blocks away at the ice sculptures.  Go figure.) The whole First Night thing was quite charming-- and watching the parade of huge papier-maché dragons, clowns, parrots, and moon-faces, Janet and I had precisely the same thought, namely, “this is so cool, and so pagan.” “They’ll come after this next, you know,” Janet said.  “Yep,” I agreed, “they’ll try to turn it into the Feast of the Holy Circumcision or something.” So in 2005, everyone, we’ll have to be ready to stand up and fight back against the Attack on New Year’s Eve.  You have been warned.

But that’s not what I came to blog about today.  Nor did I show up to say a few words about the Modern Language Association convention, which turned out to be not so bad after all (and during which I met Mr. and Mrs. Atrios).  I think I might get around to that later this week.  Today I just want to note that the tsunami death toll is rapidly exceeding anyone’s ability to comprehend it, and millions of survivors remain in grave danger-- or, as this item in today’s New York Times puts it, “Relief Delivery Lags as Deaths Pass 140,000.” So give what you can, and then a little bit more than that.  Thanks.

Posted by on 01/01 at 07:00 AM

  1. Hauoli Makahiki Hou!

    Posted by Linkmeister  on  01/01  at  08:53 AM

  2. Anyone donating in Canada should note that the Canadian government will match Canadian public donations to the tsunami crisis if made before Jan 11. I found this on the Oxfam Canada site.http://www.oxfam.ca/index.htm

    Posted by  on  01/01  at  06:02 PM

  3. Happy New Year and a lot of great things for you and your family!!!

    Posted by Clandestina  on  01/02  at  02:39 AM

  4. I think the UK govt does donation-matching, too, and some US companies will match employees’ donations. And Oxfam USA: good choice! One of my favourites, along with MSF.

    HNY all. Even with the odd catastrophic disaster hanging over our heads.

    Posted by  on  01/02  at  07:27 AM

  5. Happy New Year! Sylvia and her friend Kaydi, who came along with us on our vacation, were threatening to stay up til midnight without us, but we eventually convinced them to close eyes and mouths around 10 pm so we could do the same—it was a first sleep-over for both of them.

    Posted by Jeremy Osner  on  01/02  at  04:56 PM

  6. “they’ll try to turn it into the Feast of the Holy Circumcision or something.”

    Let them have it. Now that we have Xmas, Easter is going to become Wester. Just to piss them off.

    Posted by  on  01/03  at  08:29 AM

  7. The Feast of the Circumcision was indeed formerly observed on Jan 1.  Now it is the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.

    http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03779a.htm

    Posted by mistah charley  on  01/03  at  11:24 AM

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