h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here I am, back again at 9:45 p.m., with some notes on Christmas in Venezuela, where Christmas is celebrated as almost a month long celebration. Things start on December 4th. On December 16th families put up their pesebre, an elaborate depiction of the nativity scene. Tngs peak between the 21st and the 24th.

There are nine carol services for Christmas. Venezuelans attend at leasto ne of these, worshipping at dawn.

On Christmas Eve or Nochebuena de Navidad, there is an important mass. Afterwards, families go home and eat a large meal. Presents are usually opened on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day, people attend the Misa de Gallo or Mass of the Rooster. This is at 5:00 a.m. Then people take to the streets to celebrate and visit friends.

Hallacas (also known as tamales) are only served at Christmas because they take a lot of work to make. Fillings include meat with raisins, olives, green and red peppers, capers, and pickled vegetables.

Other foods: pan de jamon, bread filled with cooked ham and raisins, dulce de lechoza, a cold dessert made from green papaya and brown sugar, and ponche crema, an eggnog drink.

Venezuela is in the tropics, so celebrating outside is a reasonable option, as well as having important masses early in the morning, before the heat gets oppressive.

My source fopr the previous post was
http://www.tripsavvy.com/a-guide-to-christmas-in-venezuela-1637568

When I was a kid in Northern Germany it was custom to put one of your shoes on the windowsill the night before 6 December. If you had been good Nikolaus might leave you a few coins or sweets. In other parts of Germany you would put your shoes outside.

Now I wonder how many shoes were stolen by desperate people during the depressing times since WW1

I hope the kids had spare shoes, then.

Today was no good for doing anything outside.

The rain was heavy in the morning, then at dusk it changed to snow, but not much has collected. I hear rain dripping now.

I took a few extra naps.

After supper, I listened to some songs by Vera Lynn on Youtube.

She lived to be 103. Granted, my country has had some centennarians -- George Burns, Irving Berlin, Bob Hope, Kirk Douglas -- but they were not as wildly popular as Vera Ellen.

Today, Sunday, December 6, I had a really good time with a friend form Dedham Choral Society. His name was Bruce, and he offered to visit me. He brought food.

I can't overstate the importance of having people visit me. It lifted my spirits tremendously.

As a child, growing u in the fifties, I was so bored I would watch old cartoons, not fulyl realizing that
they were theatrical releases from the thirties and forties. I recently began tracking some of them
done, and Mirabedictu! Some are on youtube!


I learned the musical themes for the Marx brothers form a cartoon, though. I also was introduced to Shakespeare's "Tempest" by a cartoon that featured Ariel and Caliban.

Cartoons can have high-class aspects.

That particular cartoon was called "Porky's Road race," from 1937:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E9T_mPKRDA

I've just tracked down another cartoon form those days, Krazy Kat's 1935 "Hotcha melody:"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CELZIkgGkPI

It's about tin pan alley's dusting off classical pieces to make pop tunes of them. It shows Kate Smith, among others.

Then Schumann comes back to reclaim his melody.



I also remember the Catnips of 1940:

No youtube video, but IMDB has a mentions:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0150073/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Porky's road race was

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E9T_mPKRDA

The catnips were Krazy Kat, so there are two Krazy Kat cartoons and one Porky Pig. This would all have been PG material if that rating existed then (it was invented in 1984, thank you George Orwell.

Tonight I took a trip down memory lane. I went into the H2G2 Meet archives and pulled material from 2002, 2011, and 2019. Those were the three times I traveled to meet other H2G2 researchers. Once in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and two in London.

Most important, I found photos of myself, that prove I was there, in 2002 and 2011. They also show something about how I looked at the time.

Here are the entry numbers for the reports (all written by other people)
A831881
A84816408

I wish someone had photos of the 2019 meet. Robbie may have taken photos, but I don't know how to access them. I would like to copy and paste them to rich text documents for my photos file in my computer.

I've put a lot of myself into H2G2 over the years, and travel has been an especially rich part of it.

Today, December 8, I replaced an empty bottle of LPG with a full one.

Just now I got into a thread where some other researchers were discussing librarians, particularly the villainous ones. In the real world, there are all kinds of librarians.

H2G2 has a Guild of Librarians, so I've put the reference number after my name. I also chanced upon a rather dismal description of what life is like for librarians:

"The apparent disappointment most librarians feel with their professional lives stems partly from their hidden desires to do other things, and partly with the simple fact that achieving the goals of the profession they are actually practising is in many cases impossible."

Huh? If you're lucky, you get to run book discussion groups, get hard-to-find materials for people who badly want them, and put up attractive displays in the front of the building. A lot of members of te public are really nice. How can that not be a good job>

Hi Paulh! I think librarians potentially do a great job. I have known some nasty ones though. But my mom and dad were both librarians. When I was very young my dad was at the university of Pretoria's library, the Merensky. The building is impressive, it looks like the prow of a ship. Anyways so my dad would bring me books about animals and prehistoric life from the reference section over the weekends! I loved that! I also got a book that was 'retired' because of being too damaged. Now over forty years later, it's still useable, it's a lovely book about prehistoric animals with old-school illustrations ... back then photos were not yet so ubiquitous and illustration was a high art.

My parents also knew how to repair old books ... I wish they'd taught me that ...

Anyways. My dad eventually wrote a short story, 'Coffee and Books' (translated, Afrikaans was 'Koffie en Boeke' about a young woman who was raised very traditionally and she sort of rebelled, she thought she was better than just having to carry around a coffee tray all day to, so she learnt and became a librarian and ended up having to carry around books all day.

I'm sorry I forgot to close the parenthesis. Here you go.)

Thank you, Willem.

I've carried around a lot of books in my day. I've carried other things as well.

Nowadays I read things from my computer screen, and listen/watch to some really nice Christmas concerts streaming from it at night.

It's a new computer. I got it in early October, and I've spent many hours at it. Seems like I may get my money's worth from it.

I don't think of the world in terms of one occupation being superior to another. We need *all* of them! Can you imagine not having enough doctors/nurses/lab technicians during the Covid-19 crisis?

And, I argue that singers/actors/food servers are still needed, just in different ways. Virtual concerts are getting more common. Some people have taken to recording multiple tracks in different voice parts so they can harmonize with themselves.

Don't know if I've mentioned this guy before, but he's amazing:

A88006809

And here's a link to my favorite radio station:

http://audio.wgbh.org:8004/

I've heard of dozens of performers recording remotely. It's harder than being in the same room, but people have to do what they have the ability to do.

Yes, food servers. Some restaurants sell groceries. Some supermarkets deliver prepared foods (among other things). I get grocery deliveries roughly every other day.

The people who deliver them take a bigger risk than those of us who stay at home. I tell them how much I appreciate what they do.

Are you experiencing Summer, Willem? What's it like?

I get so lonely and sad sometimes -- short days, long nights, weak nights. I have full-spectrum bulbs in my lamps, but they can only do so much.

A friend dropped in on Sunday, and it gave me a big lift.

We got sun for a while. It's 4:30, but already
dark.

I had groceries delivered today. The store got it right. I'm proud of people for coping with this weird situation. They have trouble finding my trailer, so I have to help them find it.

Maybe delivering groceries is not what they'd rather be doing, but I love them for it.

A lot of us would rather be doing other thin s.

'A lot of us would rather be doing other things.'

Yes, I think people often drift into a job and stay there, without any real enthusiasm. The pay is acceptable, the colleagues are decent and it's easier to stay than find something better.

I drifted into the UK civil service and stayed. Some of the jobs I did were interesting, others less so, but it meant that I had to commute up to London by train. I've sometimes thought I should have been a librarian, instead!

That field has changed a lot lately.