Fired Up, Ready to Go, Wearing Christmas Red!

Whatever you may think of the 44th President of the United States, and no matter how history may ultimately come to judge his tenure as such, the above photograph is one for the ages.

According to the caption on the White House's flickr page, the President and the First Lady are greeting "Edith Childs, from Greenwood, S.C., in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, during a holiday party, Dec. 4, 2009. Childs coined the campaign slogan "fired up, ready to go."

What I like best about it is the decked-out (literally!) head-to-toe Christmas red of Child's outfit. She popping out of this photograph like a chestnut on an open fire! The First Lady looks elegantly 50's retro. And the President is caught, somewhat awkwardly, coming in for what looks to be a spirited embrace of all that red. Or he's doing a Ray Charles imitation. Behind them, serenely staring out from his framed vantage above the fireplace, is George Washington.

Lou Lou's House of Christmas

My Mom took part in the Bay Village "Homes For the Holidays" tour yesterday. The Plain Dealer, Cleveland's last daily, ran a nice story on the tour earlier this week, focusing on my parents house. That's my Mom sitting in our living room. You can read the article here.

This is our dining room. My Mom and Christmas have a long and fascinatingly complex history. Entire rooms in the basement of this house are filled with holiday decorations. I used to warn my Mom that come the following Christmas I would be discreetly placing price-tags on each of these decorations, taking out an ad in the paper and working a cash register in our kitchen as I opened the house for retail sales.

That's our house. Well, my parents house. They moved there a few months shy of my second birthday in 1973 which means they've lived there for close to 35 years now. I haven't lived there since the summer of '93 or '94.. But I love the house deeply. My interest in family folklore, in the idea of place and in first wave suburbs (built after WWI and before WWII) all stems from this house. In fact, my very idea of home, or the one I'm trying to create with Cathy and Abby, finds its roots in this home.

I'm the second caroler from the left.

Here's my favorite quote from the Plain Dealer article:

Mary Lou is not the only one with a hobby that will be evident to tour-goers. There's the little matter in the living room of the 7-foot-high, 7-foot-wide 1916 Wurlitzer band organ, acquired about 12 months ago by Art Breitenbach, a collector of such musical instruments.

Band organs most often were found in the center of carousels, providing the musical accompaniment to carnivals and amusement parks.

"There's no volume control," said Mary Lou, a tad dryly. Art, sitting near the meticulously restored organ, just smiled.

Super-8

The Breitenbach family draws names each Christmas. It works like this: around autumn somebody will be inspired to rip up several small scraps of paper, write the various names of the Breitenbach Family Singers on them, hastily fold them and finally ask a volunteer to step forward and choose names for the rest of us. You're then responsible for providing a Christmas gift for that relative. A lot of families do this. There inevitably comes a point when things like leaving home, graduating from college, moving and starting a family all conspire to make the purchasing of gifts for each member of your birth family and their progeny (to say nothing of your own offspring) completely infeasible. Us Breitenbach's have gone from 6 to 15 (soon 16!) in less then 15 years.

So one buyer, one receiver. We keep the price to what seems an appropriately modest cap of $75. My Dad drew my name this year. When he and my Mom came to visit a couple weeks ago I told him exactly what I want. About 20 years ago my Dad borrowed a film splicer, combed through his grocery bag of 30 or so reels of Super-8 family films he shot from the late 60's through the early 80's, and combined some of what he thought was the best footage into a couple larger reels. I want him to digitize those suckers! Film stock is notorious for giving itself over to the ravages of time-- it decomposes, its picture begins to fade, it threatens to crumble. Given my love of the grainy poetic texture and glimpses of family folklore Super-8 films reveal, I'm worried about the state of these reels.

Besides that, I have no idea what's on these films. We had a projector and screen. I remember my brothers, fleeting amateur Super-8 auteur's themselves, playing these films down in our basement in the late 70's. But it's been over 25 years.

Makes A Great Stocking Stuffer

I definitely need to find a can or two in my stocking come Christmas morning. Then it's organically blasted batter pancakes all around on me!