Christmas Card 2022

For those of you who know me well, my Christmas Card is early this year! Some years it doesn’t make it out until March!

For those of you with whom I am more recently acquainted… Yes! I do understand that it is a very strange thing to receive a Christmas Card in February! (It doesn’t really ever go out as late as March… well, once maybe! 🙂 ) But it has become a bit of a tradition over these last few decades that it arrives in midwinter…

It is my wish to send a special gift – something from my heart – to celebrate the Joy of the Holiday Season, and to remind us to keep cognizant of the Spirit of Love and Kindness throughout the year! I am a great believer in the power of words. Since my teen years, I would collect quotes and stories about Christmas and send them out to everyone as my Christmas Card. Eventually, I began to write my own original stories. (This, as it turns out, takes even longer! 🙂 )

I am inspired by the experience of each Christmas Holiday Season and every year, I am stirred by its beautiful values. I love to celebrate and savor the time… I usually don’t get to baking until some mid-January weekend. I capture whatever bits of Christmas Magic I can throughout the winter and weave them into a story that I hope will delight you and lift your spirit whenever you may read it!

So, you may choose to dismiss this as, “Oh, that Crazy Guy is sending out Christmas Cards in February again!” or you may choose to receive it in the spirit in which it is sent: May you enjoy all of the Magic and Sparkle and Beauty of the many Gifts of Christmas (Peace on Earth! Good Will toward Everyone! Love and Kindness, Compassion, Generosity and Cheer! Wassail! Wassail!) Boy, oh Boy! Could we ever use more of those things now…

I hope that you will appreciate this years’ story: It is the story five brothers. Perhaps you have met some of them already. And it is about the importance, and sometimes the difficulties and challenges, of sharing the unique gifts we bring to the world!

So please, if you will, make yourself your favorite warm beverage – a Hot Cacao is always nice! – sit back this lovely day or evening, allow yourself a brief respite,  and have a nice read, enjoying the magic, wonder and delight of “Five Brothers’ Unique Gifts…” (more…)

Abbondanza

Abundant BeautyABUNDANCE
What does it mean to you?

One need look no further than The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans, NEAL GABLER’s profound expose’ of current economics in America, in this month’s THE ATLANTIC to see the sobering realities of economics for Most of Us.
As the byline reads, “Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency. I’m one of them.”

Earnings are low. Debt is high. The shame of financial impotence is rampant.
I am as subject to these realities as any other person who has spent their life working in American Theater since America’s 200th Birthday.
But these actualities and the harshness of their toll do not define me.
As GABLER says in his article, “We don’t make [the choices that define who we are] with our financial well-being in mind… We make them with our lives in mind. The alternative is to be another person.”

But I choose to be the person that I am.
(more…)

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  • Some Good Movies

    IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
    THE SIXTH SENSE
    SAINT RALPH
    I AM
    PRIDE
    THE GOOD LIE
    MAO'S LAST DANCER
    MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON
    CALENDAR GIRLS
    WALK ON WATER
    CINEMA PARADISO
    SLIDING DOORS
    THE LIVES OF OTHERS
    LOCAL COLOR
    BREAKING THE WAVES
    EVERYBODY'S FINE
    READY? OK
    INKHEART
    THE LIVING END
    MARRIAGE, ITALIAN STYLE
    THE BUBBLE
    BIUTIFUL
    GYPSY w/ ROSALIND RUSSELL
    and Anything by PETER HEDGES

  • Arnold J. Mungioli