Man of the Year: Iraqi shoe guy

Collateral damage

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "I insist on the infant hope"

Yes, more days have been eaten in the advent calendar than remain. (Figure out that syntax, Rebel Girl dares you to.) She's been grading too many papers and thus her own syntax is beginning to splinter. 

To the left hangs the gingerbread ornament that Rebel Girl and her son created yesterday, a creature that seems to sum up this stage of the holiday season.

They've been having fun baking, decorating, planning the first Christmas spent this side of the border in about 20 years as well as the 25th anniversary of Red Emma and Rebel Girl's union.

There is still much to celebrate despite what can and does go wrong.


And now, a poem for the season:

“Your Luck Is About To Change”
—by Susan Elizabeth Howe

(A fortune cookie)

Ominous inscrutable Chinese news
to get just before Christmas,
considering my reasonable health,
marriage spicy as moo-goo-gai-pan,
career running like a not-too-old Chevrolet.
Not bad, considering what can go wrong:
the bony finger of Uncle Sam
might point out my husband,
my own national guard,
and set him in Afghanistan;
my boss could take a personal interest;
the pain in my left knee could spread to my right.
Still, as the old year tips into the new,
I insist on the infant hope, gooing and kicking
his legs in the air. I won't give in
to the dark, the sub-zero weather, the fog,
or even the neighbors' Nativity.
Their four-year-old has arranged
his whole legion of dinosaurs
so they, too, worship the child,
joining the cow and sheep. Or else,
ultimate mortals, they've come to eat
ox and camel, Mary and Joseph,
then savor the newborn babe.