Morning all:

” Chanukah is that special time of year between Christmas and Misgiving when all the bestest holiday shows are on TV.” — Rugrats

Before I sip my morning coffee, happy Hanukah Cathy, enjoy the Festival of Lights for these eight days. For my part, I have added the Hanukah rap song “If you’re A Maccabee (Then you’re A Hammer)” by MC Maccabee to my play list. Yes I really did and it’s pretty good.

While on the topic of music, Dustin Hoffman in the movie Rain Man said, “97X–Bam!–The Future of Rock & Roll.” In 1983 in a small college town outside of Cincinnati, OH a tiny FM station with a cutting edge format started up. ‘Alternative’ stations have always struggled and WOXY FM97 was no different. It was forced to close in January 2004 only to be re-born as an “internet only” station. Now catering to a world-wide audience WOXY.com is one of the oldest and most successful stations in what probably will be the future trend of radio.

Every so often, when I need an Alternative Music fix, WOXY is my listening choice – this was one such week. Have a listen to the “WOXY Holiday Music Mixer” for something a bit more effervescent than what you’ll hear at the Mall.

Similar to probably every newspaper in the country ours uses this time of year to load up on “wish List” stories for people with special situations. Most are very worthwhile some I question. The bottom line is that there are many folk who have their ‘hand out’ these few weeks. It was therefore a joy to read a small article about one of my close-in neighbors who gives and has given.

The lady just retired; aside from the fact that she is an African American who grew up during the Jim Crow era when “separate-but-equal” was the norm, she, and all of her 9 siblings, graduated from college. She then spent a professional career founding and running an in-school social agency that helps students succeed. Now that is the type of story newspapers need to give more space to.

Shhhh, Marin can’t hear about this. Last Saturday was the office party and we took Marin since it had a family theme. Of course Santa made an appearance. Now Marin has been advised that Santa is really a wonderful character, but only just a character. However, get up close and personal and a 4-year old starts to do a lot of thinking in that little brain.

Finally he said, “Opa, I think I’ll just skip visiting with Santa.”

No problem with me, I wasn’t going to push it, and off we were to the crafts table. Then, several minutes later, “Opa, I think I am ready to visit with Santa.”

See where this has started to take on the air of a Catholic confessional? “But Opa, I want you to tell Santa what I want!” I answered that my name was not Santa and I had not a clue what he wanted. “A train Opa.”

We made it back to the semi-circle of bright eyed youngsters around the big chair with Santa sitting in front of the fireplace. Santa nodded at Marin.

Now, to get to Santa, Marin had to go to his right and around several kids. The place was noisy, full of laughter and the normal hub-bub. In those couple of noisy seconds I managed to make eye contact with Santa and while leaning slightly to my left, over top of a couple of little girls, whispered softly; “his name is Marin and he loves trains”. Santa gave a barely noticeable nod.

Marin hopped on Santa’s lap and immediately the deep voice boomed; “well, hello Marin, you look like a boy who just loves trains!”

I could see a pair of 4-year old eyes grow very large.

Make it a great week. As I said last week, “’tis the Season”, and it’s magical.

Cheers,

Dirk