Hermitcraft: Quick Christmas Tea Hacks

Here are a three easy tricks to spruce up your workaday winter tea for the season:

• Oranges are an ancient part of the holidays, owing to the fact that until recently they were rare and costly in northern countries. To put some of that tradition in your pot, add about half a teaspoon of minced peel to the leaves, either with or without a chunk of cinnamon stick and one or two whole cloves.
  
  
• Peppermint candy, whether in cane or other form, is likewise a timeless Christmas treat. Just bust off about an inch of cane – or unwrap an individual candy – and drop in your cup. If serving guests, hang one of those soprano candy canes on the rim of the mug with its tail dissolving in the hot liquid.
  
  
• To upgrade a pot of ordinary black tea with heady spices, substitute a storebought herbal chai mix for half the black. (If the teas are bagged, cut the leaves out, steep them as-is, strain out while pouring, and put them back in the pot.) Not perhaps as sublime as the real thing, but a quicker route to a worthwhile end.

My very best wishes to readers and fellow travellers, and may this holiday season bring peace and warmth to all.


(Photo courtesy of Robert Gombos and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Dinner time

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Street Level Zen: Equanimity

« Tout le malheur des hommes vient de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre. »

Blaise Pascal

(English translation here.)

WW: Disciplinary petting

(I've been taking care of this kitty, and photographing her, for ten years. [First Rusty Ring appearance here.] She's always been headstrong, unwilling to follow rules, primary of which is to stay off the kitchen counter.

So from the beginning, each time she's turned up on the forbidden surface, I've imposed "disciplinary petting", that is, picking her up and cradling her upside down in my arms like a baby while petting and scolding her. Since there's nothing less acceptable to her than confinement, especially with her paws in the air and eyes turned toward the ceiling, being loved and caressed in this fashion amounts to a portable timeout that she instantly resents in the most strenuous terms.

Or she did. Now a decade later she's well into her golden years – so to speak – and as is often the case, has become notably more demonstrative in the affection and physical contact departments. To be precise, she's constantly after me to pick her up and hold her. All day, if she can get it.

If that were all, I could put it down to typical feline old age. Unfortunately, it often develops that simply being held does not in itself suffice. After several minutes in my arms she begins to twist her neck and lay her face flat against my sleeve, as if trying to roll over. This she couldn't actually do without falling, so I've learned to take the hint and turn her over myself.

Like a baby.

So it seems my brilliant disciplinary programme has backfired. In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if all these years the whole counter schtick wasn't just a scheme to get punished again.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

A Trip Home For Christmas

Back in 2014 I shared a little one-man Christmas cheer game I indulge in at this time of year, a simple Google search string that fills your screen with seasonal warmth and goodwill from the past. Now I've found another one that does much the same, except now the pictures move.

Basically, you're going to do the same thing we did then, except on YouTube. You'll load the YouTube home page, enter "Christmas" and a year in the search bar, and hit return. And your results page will fill with home movies.

Case in point: "Christmas 1963", above. Under no circumstances miss the little girl dressed to the yuletide nines, demonstrating the Twist. Nor the fact that this footage was shot a month or less after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Terrifying things had happened, yet folks were celebrating the holidays anyway, with unstinting courage.

This life passes so fast. You turn your head, and the Twist is old and tacky, and it always was.

But that's not true. For a day or two, one Christmas long ago, it was fresh and futuristic and something old people should learn about.

And the same thing is happening right now. It'll happen tomorrow too, and the day after that, and we need to pay attention to it every day.

So we can remember how new and bright it was, and we were, when we look it up on YouTube sixty years hence.

Better still, YouTube being what it is, you'll find all kinds of other jaunts home in the margins. Old TV commercials; "hip gifts for 1963" news segments; period holiday music. And you can change up that search string: "Chanukah", "holidays", "Xmas", "New Year's", "December", "winter", and every year you've lived.

If you're a native of the pre-Internet world – that place of sustained attention and short memory – you know how miraculous all of this is.

So get out there and take advantage of it. God knows this new realm is annoying enough; might as well get something out of it while we're up.

The very best of holidays from all of us here at Rusty Ring.

WW: Winter fountain

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

A Bit Too Close To Home

(A meme from Zen Twitter.)