The Hinky Pink

I was felled! It wasn't flu, but it sure felt like flu. For three days, I either shivered while burrowed under blankets and wearing a hat, or sweated something fierce. Bede had the same thing four days before I got it. What was it? I think it might have been the dreaded lurgy.

In the meantime, The Hinky Pink, by Megan McDonald arrived from the library! Read Fuse #8's review here, and be glad that even though Jeanne Hardendorf's The Bed Just So is out of print, you may read a new version that takes place in Florence and features a seamstress.

"What is a Hinky Pink?" you might ask.
"A hudgin!" I'd answer.
"What is a hudgin?" you'd retort.
"A hobbledy-gob," I'd reply.

I hope that clears up any confusion.

I enjoy telling "The Bed Just So," but even though this version is a bit long to tell in its entirety, at least for my preschool crowds, I like The Hinky Pink very much indeed. Brian Floca's illustrations are so evocative of Florence that I found myself searching for the Hotel Martelli, where Bede and I spent part of our honeymoon (though not in any of the fancy rooms pictured in the website's slideshow). As to Fuse's question about how Mag, nursemaid to Princess Isabella Caramella Gorgonzola, knows Anabel is a magnificent seamstress, even up to the very end--Anabel's skills are legendary! When I was in Florence, I asked Anabel to make me a dress that would fit my body shape no matter how much my weight fluctuated in my lifetime. She created a lovely dark blue-green gown that looked good on me even when I was 9 months pregnant. So, there you go.

Song of the Week: We Three Kings

In the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew does not say how many Magi/Wise Men/Kings visited Jesus Christ after his birth. The gifts presented in Matthew's account are gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The Magi are anonymous in Matthew's account, but they became known as Gaspar (or Caspar), Melchior and Balthazar. Sometimes the Magi are depicted as coming from the Middle-East and riding on dromedary camels. Sometimes artists envision them as coming from the Far East, where they ride bactrian camels.

The felt Nativity set from Kyrgyzstan (pictured below, with additional visitors) has an interesting provenance. The person who originally bought these Nativity sets from local artisans noted that there weren't any Wise Men in the collection. The artisans didn't know about the Wise Men, so the person explained that they were traditionally three visitors from the East who brought gifts for the baby Jesus. The artisans made three Kings with turbans, and placed blankets in their hands as gifts to keep the baby Jesus warm.


Photo taken 2 years ago. The felt angel is my addition.

"We Three Kings" is a Christmas carol written by Reverend John Henry Hopkins, Jr. It appeared in Carols, Hymns, and Song in 1863. The song is in 3/4 time, with five verses, three of which lay out the purpose of the gifts. There is one rousing chorus, which may be familiar to you even if you're a bit vague on the individual verses:

O star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect Light.

Some of you may be familiar with the parody:

We Three Kings of Orient are,
Tried to smoke a rubber cigar,
It was loaded, it exploded--
[Pause]
We two Kings of Orient are...

My favorite rendition of the parody was on A Prairie Home Companion. You can find the complete parody lyrics here and listen to it here (in Segment One, called "Wise"). You'll need Real Audio player.

I've got guitar chords for you! I've usually seen it written in E minor. If you'd like to play it in E minor, you can find the chords here. I've got chords for you in A minor. Yes, there is that pesky F, but the good news is that it sounds just fine in F7 major, and is good for the quick chord changes.


Click on the image in order to enlarge it.

MotherReader's Festivus Party

MotherReader invites you to Air Your Grievances. Grab your Festivus pole, and head on over! I'll be there with the Grumblecakes.

Hey ho, the wind and the snow (and the snow, it's snowing every day)

We've got a bit of snow, and we're supposed to prepare for more snow this weekend. I'm not worried about the snow, but I am a bit uneasy about the windstorms predicted. Two years ago, we stayed with some friends when the power went out, but temperatures weren't below freezing. This is one of the times in which I am really glad to be in the city. Yesterday, when I helped push someone's car up a hill (the driver had to turn around anyway, but at least he got moving), I remembered the times in my childhood when hunters' trucks would get stuck on our snowy, unpaved mountain road. The family would be snowbound, too, and we wouldn't know when we'd next be able to make the trip into town for groceries. Fortunately, we had a deep freezer plus canned produce.

All this is not to romanticize my childhood. Far from it! I longed for the day when I would see paved roads outside my house. This morning, those roads are covered with ice under snow. Even though many businesses had closed and I couldn't drive out for my Friday morning gig, I was prepared to walk up the hill with my guitar and felt board to our local library branch to perform this morning. Last night, I got a call from the children's librarian that the gig would have to be postponed. No matter. For a brief time, I was on the Seattle Public Library homepage, and I have the screen captures to prove it:



Metro bus service has been suspended in a number of areas. It's really frustrating for people who have to go to work. The article Metro still scrambling as riders grow frustrated, by Ruth Teichroeb, documents one driver whose approach I appreciated:

One Route 18 driver did his best to entertain passengers Friday morning, singing the children's song "The Wheels on the Bus" and referring to the storybook "The Little Engine that Could."

"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can," the driver chanted, inching up a steep stretch of Mercer Street on Lower Queen Anne.

You may think, "Well, that could get old really quickly," but consider that that driver's first priority was to keep his focus on the road. I find it challenging to come up with something original when I'm not dealing with adverse weather conditions and my daughter is demanding, "Tell me a story!" on the way to school. I won't do it, but I will sing simple songs with lots of repetition.

The Moon in Her Pajamas

Eric Herman has a new video called "The Tale of the Sun and the Moon." It's a lullaby off of Herman's last album, "Snail's Pace," with lyrics from a poem by Ken Nesbitt. You can find the complete lyrics here, and the video right here:

Third Anniversary Carnival of Children's Literature

Jen Robinson has posted the Third Anniversary Carnival of Children's Literature. It's lovely! Please go check it out.

Seattle has been hit with snow, and school was closed today because the city is expecting another bucketful around noon. Seattle has a lot of hills, and while it appears that there are more snowplows than there used to be, we still have a lot of drivers (myself included) who do not have a lot of experience driving in snow. That's okay-- I prefer walking anyway.

And now, I'm going back to reading the Third Anniversary Carnival of Children's Literature....

Our family's letters from Father Christmas

Three years ago, I wrote a post about how much I loved Letters from Father Christmas (alternate title: The Father Christmas Letters) by J.R.R. Tolkien. You may read the post here. In the post, I alluded to the letters my mom wrote for my brothers and me, and later, our little cousin as well. My mom recently sent the original letters in a package to Lucia. I thought you might enjoy reading them. I've edited the letters for publication.


This was the year that Ulric passionately admired his best friend's fire-hat with a battery-powered siren.

Well, my nerves are shot, and if you receive any presents this year, it will not be thanks to the Polar Bear! Everything was going along fine, and we were ahead of schedule—and the presents down in the cellar were piling up. Then that silly old P.B. found a present which was supposed to be for Ulric. It was a fire hat with a siren on top, and don’t you know that that wretched bear couldn’t resist putting on that hat and turning on the siren like a fool, and all the Red Elves who had come to live in the house and were helping out with the presents thought that goblins had snuck into the cellar and had started a fire among the presents.

So what a hullabaloo, or however you spell it! At least a hundred elves racing around with buckets of water and hatchets and trying to stomp out fires which didn’t ever exist. Polar Bear tried to quiet them down and then he was so nervous he couldn’t find the switch to turn off the siren on the hat so in desperation he finally grabbed one of the hatchets from the elves and broke the hat and its siren to pieces, and ultimately everyone quieted down and felt foolish.

Most all of the presents have dried out and are on their way to the rest of the world, but Ulric’s hat is smashed to smithereens. But I dare say it is just as well, for only look in how much trouble it landed poor old Polar Bear. You wouldn’t believe one hat could cause so much trouble.

Farewell until next Christmas, and I promise you a longer letter next year—unless Polar Bear really does it, God forbid!

Father N. Christmas


I think this was the year that our oil furnace broke, and we had to wait for days before the oil company could come out to fix it. Every time my parents called the company, the phone lines were busy. During the day, the whole family crowded into my bedroom because that was the warmest room in the house.

Last year I promised you a longer letter this year, but lo and behold, you are lucky to get a letter at all. Polar Bear has done it again!! You will never guess what he has done this time. Well, back in November we were really in good shape and the presents were stacking up in the cellars & the Red Elves were helping out again. Then, Polar Bear got a visit from his cousin Moshe Bear who is Jewish and from Brooklyn.



Moshe was talking about Channukah being so early compared to Christmas this year, and then good ol’ P.B. got the bright idea of building a giant Menorah in the hall and to keep the miracle of the lights going, Polar Bear drained the oil from our heating tank for the Menorah lamp. Well, on the 3rd day he got too much oil in the lamp. It slopped over and the fire got out of hand.

The smoke detector went off, and the Red Elves, who were still nervous from last year’s escapade with the fire hat & siren, went crazy with the hoses. So not only do we have water damage again this year, but Polar Bear didn’t turn off the spigot on the oil tank properly, & we have an oily cellar and a cold house. We have built fires, but of course we have to be careful & our work is slowed tremendously. My hands have been too cold to hold a pen. That is why the pictures are so bad. But at least the presents are finally off, tho’ some will arrive late due to cold weather all over the world except where it’s hot.

Better luck next year.
With love from Father Christmas at the North Pole.


This is the year that Brad the Gorilla showed up in our family, hence Father Christmas' allusion to "Fred's father." Fred was Ulric's first gorilla friend.

You may well be amazed at receiving a letter this year—the last I wrote was 1983! Polar Bear decided to take an MCC assignment at the South Pole and left me quite short-handed for several years. We were glad to see him back this year, though I must admit sometimes he causes me more work!



This year, Polar Bear was helping us pack presents the way he used to do, and he discovered an Atari. He didn’t know what it was, so one of the Red Elves, who came to us after Polar Bear had gone South, and had no idea of the mischief P.B. is capable of, foolishly showed him how to set it up. Well, Polar Bear found it hard at first to use the Joy Sticks, but he was determined to master it and was soon addicted. He says after 5 years of MCC he wants to be a Couch Potato. This enraged the Red Elves, who are very hard workers and really wanted to get the presents out this year. They had spent a lot of extra time this year tracking down Fred’s father for Ulric and were in NO MOOD for Couch Potatoes.

They tried various tactics such as pulling the plug and hiding the cartridges, but this put P.B. in a rage, or sometimes in the sulks, and he was either No Fun, or sometimes even almost dangerous. He went stomping through the storeroom of presents looking for the hidden cartridges, kicking and screeching and a whole huge pile came crashing down around him.



Needless to say it created quite a mess, and some things were broken. I’m sorry to say that it was mainly clothes that survived since toys break more easily, but thank goodness books are tough. Polar Bear himself was a bit roughed up, and his wrist got hurt, but the one elf was not at all sorry for old P.B. but said he had “Atari elbow.”

Well, none of us like sulks and hurt feelings here at the North Pole, especially directly before Christmas, so were we were all delighted when P.B.’s Aunt Mabel came by with cookies for all of us. She saw how uneasy things were and calmed everyone down. Even P.B. listened to her. She thought that forbidding Atari to P.B. would make things worse, but she helped him make a schedule so he could play after his work was done. He’ll outgrow it, she said. We hope so!

I’ll try to write a better letter next year—maybe P.B. will be up to his old tricks then.

Love to everyone in the family!
Father Christmas

Winter Nature Table and Santa Lucia Day

As promised, here is the view of our winter nature table at the House of Glee. The winter nature table had to be combined with the nativity set, so the Earth Angel, Santa Lucia and King Winter are watching over the Wise Men and their camels as they make their way across the hutch:



The Earth Angel, King Winter and the felted angel hovering above the nativity set are all made by Nushkie and Santa Lucia was made by Haddy2dogs. Etsy has been a den of temptation, I tell you....

December 13 is Santa Lucia's feast day, but today was the day the school celebrated the festival. At my daughter's request, my mom made a Santa Lucia crown from silk ivy leaves complete with candle-holder clips from Germany:



Despite several requests from our own Lucia, Bede and I refuse to light the candles. Call us spoilsports, but we are not interested in winning any Darwin Awards.

Tomorrow, I have my last gig in my fall series with Pierce County Library System at the Eatonville branch, and then Sunday is the Winter Spiral. See you next week!

Songs of the Week: Ocho Kandelikas and Ma'oz Tzur

The House of Glee attended the Dan Zanes Holiday House Party last Saturday. The show had songs in Arabic, English, Hebrew, Ladino (a Spanish-Hebrew creole developed by Sephardic Jews), Korean, Spanish, and Swahili performed by family bands that included children. We got a kick out of the "Grey Goose" shadow-puppet production and enjoyed the songs, but thought that the transitions needed to be smoother before the show would be ready for Broadway.

Even though I once attended a Yiddish-Hebrew Sunday school for 6 months, I had never before heard two of the Hanukkah songs performed. I've only ever known about "Dreydl, Dreydl" and "Hanukkah O Hanukkah" through my public school chorus class. At the concert, the first Hanukkah song was performed by Basya Schechter of Pharaoh's Daughter was a Ladino song called "Ocho Kandelikas" (Eight Little Candles), written by Flory Jagoda. Here is the chorus:

Una kandelika, dos kandelikas, tres kandelikas,
kuatro kandelikas, sintyu kandelikas, sej kandelikas, siete kandelikas,
ocho kandelas para mi.

English translation:

One candle, two candles, three candles,
four candles, five candles, six candles, seven candles,
eight candles for me.

You can hear Kenny Ellis sing it on YouTube here. Complete Ladino lyrics with the English translations are here.

The second Hanukkah song that was new to me was the Hebrew "Ma'oz Tzur" (The Strength of the Rock, one of the many names for God). The lyrics are thought to have been written in the 13th century, and the tune used most is an adaptation of a German folk song. I've heard two different versions, so I'm not sure which one is the folk song. "Ma'oz Tzur" is traditionally sung after the reciting of the blessings and lighting of the menorah candles. The first verse in phonetic Hebrew with the English translation is here. You can listen to Schechter perform it here.

This year, Hanukkah begins at sundown on Sunday, December 21.

For those searching for Hanukkah songs on the internet, here are alternate phonetic spellings to bring you to this specific post: Chanuka, Chanukah, Chanukkah, Channukah, Hanukah, Hannukah, Hanukkah, Hanuka, Hanukka, Hanaka, Haneka, Hanika, Khanukkah.

Saint Zita and her crew, plus the 'Three Explosive Virgin Martyrs'

A few days ago, Lucia drew a picture of St. Zita, finder of lost keys, St. Anthony, finder of lost objects, and God:



Bede said, "I wonder how God feels about being smaller than Zita and Anthony."

I replied, "God likes to keep a low profile."

Bede sent me an interesting blog post from Making Light about St. Barbara, whose feast day was December 4. Teresa, the author of the blog, writes,

Barbara is the most volatile of the Three Explosive Virgin Martyrs,* who form the core lineup of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.* She’s most often shown as a beautiful young woman holding a tower that has three windows. The other two EVMs are Saint Catherine of Alexandria, as in Catherine-wheel fireworks, and Saint Margaret of Antioch, who defeated a dragon that had swallowed her by blowing it up from the inside,* which is why Margaret is the patron saint of women in labor. They hang out being ahistorical and irrepressible together.

St. Barbara sounds pretty cool, but I must admit I'm intrigued with St. Margaret of Antioch. When I was pregnant with Lucia, she was two weeks overdue, and we had to go to dramatic measures to bring her into this world.

Snowdrop Baby

I have enjoyed looking at the nature tables in my daughter's school, but it was only after visiting a friend's house during a Halloween party and admiring all of the various felted dollies and accessories she'd collected over the years that I decided we needed a similar space in our own house. In lieu of a whole table, I've cleared a shelf on our hutch to celebrate the changing of the seasons. We had our Autumn setup for four weeks in which Lucia was able to enjoy the ginkgo leaf doll I stitched based on the snowdrop and crocus dolls made by Buttercupcorner. Now, Winter is coming, and we have both a King Winter and a Santa Lucia figure. I'll post a photo when the nature table is complete. In the meantime, I would like to share with you a snowdrop baby I stitched from a kit ordered from Dancing Rain Dolls:



The thimble next to the snowdrop baby is to show scale. I plan to make other flower dolls in the future based on the pattern for this one, but I've ordered cloth in different skin tones, because as we've discussed before, fairies, root children and bulb babies aren't all blonde-haired and blue-eyed. The kit I received came with blue and blonde thread for the snowdrop baby, but I wanted the doll to look more like my daughter, who has brown hair and brown eyes. (You can find the original model here.)