News at Christmas

It's my ritual to begin every day pre-dawn in the living room, on the recliner, with a wine glass of orange juice, six-cup pot of tea, a little pitcher of warm milk, the microwave (to keep re-heating tea and milk), and the newspaper.  The is my breakfast, and this is my medication and meditation, and it takes about two hours. 
Last night I went to two parties with the Club-Toruno-Martin and Bill and Tom and commented that since Jonathan had only the New York Times Book Review, I planned to put the SF Chronicle Book Review in his stocking.  This morning I found other things to roll up and let slid down into his very wide and very long Christmas stocking.  One is the SF Datebook Super Fun Christmas Activity Book showing the contest winners for the Readers' Best 'Crying/Pepper-Sprayed Baby in Santa's Lap' Photos.  Beside it are three drawings of Mayor Ed Lee with the challenge, "Hey Kids, Circle the Drawing Below That Was the REAL poster for the 2011 'Ed Lee for Mayor' Campaign."  Then it has "Run Ed Run" showing him looking normal,  "Shave Ed Shave"showing him with a long black beard,  and "Poop Ed Poop"showing him with his eyes closed the way eyes are during extreme concentration."  That last one reminded me of an other-wise very good instructor I had for my sabbatical course who tries to entertain and connect with the kids by giving "pooping" as something we should do on the floor of  a sacred place.  Apparently pooping on the floor should be reserved for profane places.  Anyway, the super fun Christams activity book was done by Bad Reporter Don Amussen, but they shoudl warn us.  We know where to look for him in the regular newspaper.  On the next page there's something I want to share with Javier, who likes to find--and ask me to find--the five differences in drawings.  This wone has "Spot the 120 Differences and win a prize."  Also on the Christmas theme, yesterday's SF Chronicle's Home & Garden featured "Holiday cards/Naught and Nice," by Alec Scott with a mention of Steve LaBadessa's special cards.  This year it was going to be "Occupy the North Pole," but he decided, after builindg an igloo, that it was t"too bleak, not festive."  I like the one of the mother looking like the Donna Reed model of the 1960s at the kitchen table with her family, all of hom are talking on the phone or texting.  The Travel Section has "The year in weird travel stories," which I haven't finished reading yet, but I did notice the paragraph "My ficus went on vacation and all I go were these aphids," which come from Madrid, where residents can send their plants to the new Hotel Para Plantas, where each plant gets its own botanist to look after it.   I'm sure the whole article is a keeper.  Also on the holiday theme, there was a Leah Garchik column on holiday leftovers on which I was very briefly quoted:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/13/DD4A1M97PO.DTL


Not exactly on the Christmas theme, but still interesting, is a beautifully written Open Forum "On Lowe's and Islam, "Un American act against Muslims" by Ted. W. Lieu., which should be required reading for both Islamophobes and people who want to cure our nation of Islmaphobia and other forms of ignorance and prejudice.  Here's another suggestion:  Take a City College course in Intro to Islam, Demystifying the Middle East, Government and Politics of the Middle East.  Having lived and taught in Algeria a Muslim nation in North Africa, for two years, I was so appalled by the attack on a proposed Islamic Center in Manhattan (the Cordoba House/51 Park Place) that I made Islam and Middle Eastern studies the focus of my sabbatical to see which courses would be comprehensible to my ESL students as wells as to adapt material to their levels.  I found City College's Comparative Religions course also useful, and even Western Cultural Values shows is applicable because it shows how the West has been unfairly maligning Islam  for centuries.  Let's get an education before there are no funds left.  (I guess I've started to editorialize.) 

There's a political cartoon showing a Gladiator labeled HUBRIs with a bloody sword stading on IRAQ:  "Weapon of Mass Descruction."  We found the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.  US.  The U.S.

Well, it's time for me to leave blog-osphere, but I want to just cite three more articles:  "Tears of joy as Bieber plays low-income Vegas school" by Michelle Rindels about Whtney Elementary, Sherrie Gahn, principal,
  "Barefoot Bandit' gets 7-year term" by Gene Johnson, and recipes for Bite-Size Pistachio cakes and Apriot-Pistachio Bars.