Nancy Messer

I wanted to set the correct time on my computer.  I remenbered from years ago that there was a phone number to call to get the current time but had no recollection of what it was.  I started web searching for the phone number and finally found it at Wikipedia (of course) under Speaking Clock.  It listed the correct number to call and then said in Cincinnati it was Parkway 1-1700.  I got a nice chuckle from that!

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Thank you Phil! Nice touch!

David Buchholz

Perhaps the worst metaphor ever created.  We Californians have just gone through the meterological equivalent of passing a kidney stone.  After enduring thirteen days of the worst most polluted air in the world, the Bay Area was greeted by two days of the first rains we had seen in over 228 days.  After that clear skies, and a little fog.  Sunrise this morning from our front door.  Yes, I softened the image a bit and took out my rain gauge, but otherwise this is the change from all the images I posted last week of the smoky skies and the polluted air.

Richard Murdock

Dave:  

You have a very real and amazing talent for photography.  Every one is a treat to see and appreciate.  Keep 'em coming !!

Paul Simons

Thanks for the many fine entries here. Sorry to hear from Mr. Lounds that bar soap is in decline, just when it's needed to wash out the mouths of certain politicians who don't get the "Liberty and Justice FOR ALL" part. Good thing P & G still makes rakes and brooms - clearly the stone pathway in your photo Dave was swept, so there can be no fire there even if it doesn't rain for another 228 days, because heat, wind, and extremely dry fuel have nothing to do with fire. I have that on the the highest authority, from more than one of those who fancy themselves the highest authority.

Philip Spiess

Hmm.  First, Dave, your picture reminds me for some reason of a pathway in Krohn Conservatory in Eden Park, which, despite the fact that I've dallied amidst nature in much larger conservatories, still is my favorite; I always go through it in the exact order that I did as a child of five.

But Dave, don't mention kidney stones:  I passed some five in the 1970s-1980s, and it's as good a reason as I know never to keep a gun in the house.

Bar soap is not declining; I wash my bar off with soap every night as needed.

And Paul:  Remember, the Lord (the highest authority) said, "Not the flood, but the fire next time."  The Polar Ice Caps and the glaciers are shedding great sheets of ice into the seas as the world heats up; so remember the last words issued to the maitre'd in the 1st Class Bar on the Titanic in 1912:  "Hey!  Could we get some ice over here?"

Mary Benjamin

I know well what's been going on up there with the terrible air and we've had the Malibu fires very close to us. We were very fortunate that our community, Topanga, was spared.

So grateful for the rain up there and a bit down here. Your photo is exquisite. Thank You.

Philip Spiess

To Mr. Thomas Lounds, et al.:

The latest example of artifacts disappearing into the mists of time arrived at the foot of our driveway this morning.  It is a local business telephone directory, one that shows up every so often in our neighborhood.

Unintentionally, it proclaimed its own obsolescence on its cover:  "The Real Yellow Pages:  The Original Search Engine!"

And, as we enter the season of winter, another artifact that has disappeared comes to mind:  the tire chain.  Designed to provide traction for automobiles in the snow, they were my father's bugbear; I can still hear him cursing as he struggled to put them on the tires during a storm.  I never had to deal with them; snow tires had come in by the time I was driving full-time.  So my own memory of them is pure Romanticism:  as a child growing up on McAlpin Avenue in Clifton, I would lie in my bed in winter hearing the snow chains' constant clinking as the cars went up and down the hill, thinking of them as the sound of sleighbells in the winter snow.

Philip

Paul Simons

First thanks Ira for the birthday message Ira. I didn't see it until today - also a Federal holiday - a day of mourning for H.W.

Then thanks for the snow chains reference Phil and your dreaming of a white Christmas. I'm yearning for cold damp dreary grey days and nights with thick wet sludge during the Holiday weeks. I worked one Christmas season at Mabley and Carew in downtown Cincinnati and remeber that type of weather and the tremendous contrast coming inside where it was warm and cheerful. In particular I miss those downtown streets with high curbs and thus deep icy sludge that soaked through shoes, and gloves soaked and freezing from clearing windshields and shoveling rear-wheel-drive cars out of the snow they were stuck in, and then again the opposite of that on coming inside.

I've been paying some attention and we don't seem to get that anymore until February. For a numbwer of years here in Philly Christmas Eve has been shirtsleeve weather. Kinda makes one wonder if the fellow who says global warming is a hoax is being honest about that.

Ira Goldberg

Phil, in Oregon, chains are required in the mountains during snow or ice conditions. I imagine that the Rockies states all have some guidelines. I believe we will be out there during the colder months again! it gets pretty scary. However, the standard style of chain differs from those we're familiar with from our generation. Snap on more easily. But, you have to remove them once into drier roads, lest they burn up. In either case, it is a real pain to do that under freezing or sloppy conditions. That's why we have a daughter and son in law drive...

Dale Gieringer

Ira is right, snowchains are in no way obsolete here on the West Coast.  They're de rigueur if you want to drive up into the Sierras in winter storms.   On the other hand, I'm disturbed to report that spare tires may be obsolescing.  Our electric Toyota Prius doesn't have any because they take up too much room.  The company claims that spares aren't necessary anymore because tires are more reliable.   IMHO that's BS.

Philip Spiess

Yes, I can imagine that tire chains would be useful in the mountains.  And, Dale, I imagine that BS must stand for "Better Spares."  (But who drives up into the Sierras in snowstorms?)

Bonnie Altman (Templeton)

Chains are not obsolete in Colorado either. Signs go up on the highways in October stating chains are required during winter weather for trucks. All wheel drive vehicles are acceptable without chains

Chuck Cole

When you head up into the Sierras in California and chains are required beyond a certain point, there are people, referred to as chain monkeys, working the sites where folks pull off the road to put chains on.  It was $20 to have chains put on when we lived in California many years (decades) ago--does anyone know if there are still chain monekys working, and what they charge now?

We owned our own chains when we moved from California to New Haven in 1977.  In the winter of 1978, New England had one of its heaviest snowfalls on records--more than 3 feet near the coast over a 2.5 day period.  The governor of CT declared an emergency and no one was allowed on the road for 3 days except for emergency vegicles.  I had a critical need to get into my lab at Yale to take care of cell cultures, and had kept the chains we'd used in California.  So I put them on the van and was able to negotiate the covered roads with no problem.  No one ever stopped me to challenge me on why I was on the roads during the state of emergency.

As an aside, Dale and I were both at Stanford for a while in the mid-1970s, providing us a nice opportunity to renew our friendship.  We hadn't seen each other much since high school.  

Philip Spiess

Paul:  As I've said before, I ask those who don't believe in global warming, when was the last ice age?  (Hint:  when the glaciers dug out the Great Lakes, scoured the hinterlands of Ohio into flat and fertile farmland, and dumped the residue at what is now Cincinnati, creating the famed "Seven Hills," i.e., the terminal moraine, with all the many fossils you can still dig out of them.  In the process, it turned the river course we call the Ohio from a north-south flowing stream into an east-west flowing stream.  We studied this stuff in 8th Grade under Mr. Meredith.)  As to downtown Cincinnati in winter, I loved the lights on Fountain Square and in the stores at Christmas; as to gray days and slush, well, as you suggest, that only contributes to a Dickensian feeling of good cheer around a roaring fire, in cozy clothes, among good companions, and an evening replete with red wine, brandy, nog-infused eggnog, or whatever your heart desires.

Ira:  Do you know what these newer tire chains are made of, that they burn up?  (And as for the Junglings driving, my son or wife is the designated driver, because I'm the designated drinker.)

Chuck:  You remind me that, on the many, many Thanksgivings we've celebrated with my wife's relatives in Maine, many have had snow, and that the Maine snowplows and sand trucks do have tire chains, too.  (The moose, however, do not.)  And, yes, your posting, about "chain monkeys" in particular, has proven what I've said before, that, absent history's oral history record in the present era, we're (somewhat unconsciously) creating on this site, in our reminiscences, a record of our times and generation.

David Buchholz

Recognizing that the following posts might lead to my being banned from the message forum, and also being that this is the Christmas Hannukah Kwanzaa season(s), I nevertheless have chosen to share five or so Christmas greeting cards that we used to send out perhaps twenty-five years ago or so.  I made my living as a photographer and had a side business of renting hand-painted muslin backgrounds. We five chose backgrounds from our inventory, dressed appropriately, and sent out irreverent non-religious holiday wishes to our clients, friends, and family.  We're still irreverent, but alas! there are too many of us now to fit on these 8' x 16' backgrounds.  In any case, before you excommunicate me from WHHS, I'll wish everyone a happy holiday season today, just as we did a quarter of a century ago...Now excuse me as I climb into my foxhole and prepare for the War on Christmas...

Great Wall

Tropi-Cool

Space (N.B. the pancakes are falling over)

Absolute Zero (People Had to Guess Who was Who)

and perhaps the most tasteless greeting ever created for our Bourbon Street background, "Party Gras"

Linda Karpen (Nachman)

Great family fun, love them all, Dave! Thx for sharing!!

Stephanie Riger

Dave,

Thanks for giving me a big smile on a day when the news is so depressing (and frightening).

Stephanie

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Dave your pictures are great!  They get particularly better with the addition of the canine family member!  

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Paul Simons

That’s some colorful holiday cheer Dave, many thanks. Merry Happy Joyful and many more to come!!

Jerry Ochs

Dickens slipped an Easter Egg into A Christmas Carol.

Stephen (Steve) Dixon

Merry Christmas - Happy Holidays - Seasons Greetings - Namaste - 最良好的祝愿 - Maligayang Pagbati - τις καλύτερες ευχές μου - Mazel Tov - Bestu Kveðjur - ご多幸を祈る - Geriausi Linkėjimai - بهترین آرزوها - Muitas Felicidades - Наилучшие пожелания - Mejores Deseos - BÄSTA LYCKÖNSKNINGAR - En Içten Dileklerimle -

To my friends of all faiths, and of little or none. You all matter…

Philip Spiess

Dave:  I agree with Ann:  Love the dog!  And I don't think you're excommunicated -- on the contrary, you've communicated!

Dixon:  What you said!  (Oh, may I add, in true Cincinnati echt-Deutsch fashion, "Froeliche Weihnachten!)

Ochs:  Did I ever tell you about my meeting with Dickens' great-grandson, Cedric Dickens, in Philadelphia, and his giving me his great-grandfather's recipe for "Flaming Bishop"?  ("Light up a bowl, Bob Crachit!")

Paul Simons

A bit more irreverent, satirical holiday content in case anyone missed it - 

https://youtu.be/2e1lXW1QHBo

Philip Spiess

Seasoned Greetings, all:

If you gag on the saccharine amenities and sentimentalities of the season, if you cringe at the faux-hearty jollifications of the many among you at this time of year, if you're simply wracked out by the hustle and bustle of the holidays' manifold vivifications and frivolities (or if the current political climate, on either side of the proverbial "Aisle," is bumming you out), take a moment in this tide in the affairs of men (oh, golly! I better mention women, too!) to ferret out and stick your nose into John Updike's little Yuletide tome (1993), The Twelve Terrors of Christmas (as suitably illustrated by Edward Gorey).  It will rejuvenate your spirit, and you will bless him that giveth the writing and him that recommendeth the work, and your soul will magnify the coming of a new year.  Let the excessive decorations of the day fall down like mighty waters, to relieve an overburdened landscape, and, in that newly denuded world of "Tiny Trim," let us all say, "God Bless Us, Everyone!" (and the Dickens with the rest of you!).  -- Spiess