Merry Christmas to All...

We all trooped over one block to Stay Gallery at 11140 Downey Avenue where Val Flores, the executive director welcomed us and explained their cultural and artistic mission.   As he said, they are about to become highly aggressive in their fund-raising, and they are self-sustaining, and certified local.

Most of the members were visiting Stay for the first time, and enjoyed the current art exhibition on the walls.  Now that we know the way, we can join them there for their shows.  This reporter announced that  “Poetry Matters” has its new home there too, the second Thursday of every month. January 9^th will be the next.  And there are plans to partner some of our Rotary Interact events there.  Val signed the library book for us.

Wednesday night was Rotary Goes to the Movies. We nearly filled the theatre, which has to mean a nice little profit, as it was a money raiser.  Kudos to Alex Lopez.

That was a precious movie, wasn't it?  This reporter would like to have that Sven, the reindeer around, just to exchange looks, and the snowman with the independent parts, too.  How poignant, to be a snowman who always dreams of summer.  The character called Kristoff was a hunk.  He’d make a good Rotarian and his category could be the ice business-refrigeration.

Then to the Pohlens, decorated so festively, and Mike such a good host he never got out from behind the bar.  Chris played Christmas music and then Bob Flynn moved onto the piano bench and spelled her for a while.   Party was nice, but actually everyone was in such high spirits from movie that the noise level was almost too high for conversation.  Pohlen’s new Garage-Mahal is a story in itself.

In case anyone has the winter solstice blues, here’s a poem of curmudgeonly cheer from this reporter’s newest work-in-progress, Spy Guy Reports. The book consists of messages from a master spy to his handler and is constructed on an eleven syllable grid.  Get your Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring ready.

    Spy Guy reports     snow job     12.15.13

when I pull the old line   tough sledding   no snow

on my friends from Boston or up-state New York

it is more than a joke   it is a password

we knew sledding and we knew snow and we knew

both were coming   we had possession of snow

we had rights to the gallows humor salute

from one who had lived inside an unshoveled

house to one who knew how it felt to be trapped

inside a car that was sledding toward the ditch

Feathers recalls the busy silence of snow 

here a southern California winter means

one can see from the sea a powdered-sugar

confection on mountains an hour’s drive away

nice visit but who’d want to live in the stuff

or ski down this eleven-syllable grid

nevertheless I don’t begrudge offering

a cup of eggnog to one who has never

bumped his or her noggin on a patch of ice

this is the new millennium    what happened

on Mt. Cranmore stays on Mt. Cranmore   so here’s                                                               

a curmudgeonly tip of the snowman’s hat

to the easy life where shovels are only

for gardens and Frost Blossom’s the drink du jour