Happy Christmas, part 1!

This is but part 1 of a Christmas post. We are extending the holiday in absolutely un-holy ways here in Cleveland. Daughters, parents and aunts arrive soon, so much of the celebrating (that is, present opening) will wait until we have critical mass. In the mean time, our core group of three have had a wonderful holiday so far.

I've enjoyed my annual read of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, something I've done for probably 30 years now. As we unpacked the box of Christmas books while we were decorating, my mother's copy of Delbert Lean's transcript of the version he would orate in Wooster every year (for over 50 years!) appeared. Lean was a professor of speech at Wooster for the first half of the last century. That was probably the first version I read as a young boy.

We also listened to Dylan Thomas reading A Child's Christmas in Wales, another tradition I've followed for years.

I'm also reading- for the first time- E.T.A. Hoffman's The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. It is wild and fantastic! I'm reading Maurice Sendak's illustrated translation.

Christmas Eve we spent distracting Sam from his newly-erupting tooth. One thing we did was to try out his backpack. We loaded him up and walked up to the library to return some books. Despite his look of slight unease at being loaded into the contraption, he seemed to be awfully comfortable once we started walking- enough so to fall asleep!

Christmas dinner was roast duck. I followed Julia's recipe and it was delicious. Accompanying was maple bacon Brussels sprouts and a wild rice medley. (Christmas brekkers was Svenska pannkakor, lunch was leftover homemade pizza from Xmas eve!)

The tree and presents are being guarded carefully (though the guard does nap from time to time.)

Today we visited the Cleveland Museum of Art. Sam and I have seen the Treasures of Heaven exhibit several times, but Kim hadn't. We wandered some of the galleries, then saw the new exhibit of illuminated manuscripts, "The Glory of the Painted Page", from the permanent collection- really super! This one we'll come back to.

Our traveling guests are pinned down by snow on the east coast, but we hope to see them sometime late tomorrow. Stay tuned for Christmas, part 2!

Christmas Carol Train

All Aboard!

Earlier this year I read a news article about a promotion that Disney studios had planned to publicize a new, animated version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The gimmick in this case was a train tour through the whole country with "whistle stops" at many towns where attendees could get a glimpse at the making of the film. The event was added immediately to my calendar.

On arrival in Cleveland, the train pulled up just across from the Cleveland Browns stadium, near the Port of Cleveland freight docks, the Amtrack cars fully decked in advertisements and with quite a few people waiting in line to enter the cars. They had each car filled with Dickens, Christmas Carol, and movie related paraphernalia. The first car held "portraits" of the characters in the film, as well as actual costumes which had been sewn so that the animators, using CGI technology, could render them accurately.

This car also had several glass cases with items from the Dickens House Museum in London, including some manuscript letters and early editions of the Carol and other of his works,

including a few issues of Pickwick, and a quill pen and ink bottle that had been used by the master himself.

Another car had intricate model works for the "set" of the movie- Big Ben being built, Scrooge and Marley's counting house, and nephew Fred's house.

At the end of the tour, we got to "morph" our own faces into characters from the film. Kim chose Marley, I chose Scrooge himself. Look for an interesting Christmas card from us this year! Finally, we were treated to a ten minute sneak preview of the film in 3-D. It was neat to see all of these things, particularly the treasures from the museum.

And yes, old Mr. Fezziwig was there!