Category Archives: folklore and ethnography

Let it Snow, Man – – –

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Jack misses the mark again so the Wednesday post is a day late –

As we approach Christmas we’ve had a small production line going making miniature snowmen out of empty cans. We used canned pet food so to avoid landfill filling we try to reuse the cans for household purposes: plants we give away, small holders, etc. This year, it’s snowmen.

Wendy washes and strips the labels off the dog and cat food cans then she paints them white. I glue two or three together and use a cotton bud to dab the black paint for eyes, mouth and buttons. I cut a triangle of orange card and glue that on for the carrot nose. Wendy paints small cat food pots black and stacks them three high on a yogurt tub lid, and voila there is magic in those old tin cans we found: these become the hats. Finally, she crochets a wee scarf for the snowpeople and bands for the hats to provide the finishing touch.

Wendy says it is about recycling the cans. I say it’s a seasonal version of our tactic to keep ourselves busy and occupied during the pandemic so we don’t go completely loopy.

Once the first dozen or so were made they went out onto our front steps to the sidewalk with an invitation for passersby to help themselves to one or two. The first to take one was the Fedex guy, and we were glad he got something out of working on a Sunday. He was quickly followed by our regular neighborhood dog walkers and exercisers. We do get a kick out of one older gentleman in a dayglow orange hoodie who has never seemed to notice them. Even walkers who don’t take one tend to point and smile. His hood may be providing tunnel vision, or he could be a direct descendant of Scrooge, or perhaps he’s an art teacher and is evaluating our fumbling attempts. We don’t judge his judgment.

It truly just started as a way of using up the cans, which were beginning to take over the house. Wendy and I don’t often put up a tree, so we thought we’d make a few persons of snow for decorations in the house. Then Wendy hit on the idea of giving them away in a socially distanced way, and the production line was born. About a dozen have been given out, with a dozen left to go. If I have my way, that will be quite enough. However, I suspect….

Even when someone doesn’t take one they still smile when they see them so the spirit of Christmas is alive in a cheerful way.

Oh – and the first day they were out, it snowed – – – Wendy is convinced it was the snowmen magic. Who knows; she could be right.

The Times they are – – –

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Jack fails miserably again to get his Wednesday guest post up on time – –

Wendy and I have been ‘zooming’ with a few friends weekly ever since the pandemic closed things down. The group consists of David and Susan in North Carolina, Beth and Brandon in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, ourselves in Wytheville, Virginia, and Barbara and Oliver in Edinburgh, Scotland.

We meet on Sundays at 9 am but because of the five-hour time difference that’s 2 pm in Edinburgh. Except last Sunday was an exception because the clocks in the UK had changed on Saturday night. They don’t change here until this Saturday, so for just one week the time difference is four hours! Being half American and half Scots I was vaguely aware of the anomaly so I checked on line and – yes, this was the week of the lesser hours! A hasty last minute e-mail to Barbara saved the day – and the meeting.

But it got me curious about the whole business of changing the clocks twice a year – Spring forward and Fall back. So I did a bit of research and found some fascinating stuff. Some countries simply don’t do it at all and in many that do there’s a debate about whether to continue with it. That debate is no more heated than in the UK, and the problem is that most of the population is in south or central England where they would not see much difference in winter, whereas folk in Scotland definitely would. The European Union has a plan to stop changing the clocks in a couple of years’ time, so a strange result of ‘Brexit’ is that, if the UK sticks with clock changing, then for six months there will be an hour’s difference between Northern Ireland (in the UK) and the Irish Republic (in the EU).

By now I was well and truly hooked on the history of time-keeping and how the world arrived at any notion of ‘standard’ time. It turns out that the arrival of the railroad around the world had a lot to do with it. Prior to that local areas kept their own time, often just within the sound of church bells or a day’s travel on foot or by horse. It was the arrival of trains and reliable clocks and watches, not to mention the telegraph, that brought the need for standardized time. Since Britain owned most of the world then Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in London became the default standard with all other time zones and/or clock changes measured relative to GMT. Although wasn’t it Mussolini who made the trains run on time?

Of course the arrival of the internet and the ability to speak to and see people on the other side of the world brings me back to what kicked off my interest in the first place – this Sunday we’ll be back to the usual five-hour difference!