UP ON AMAZON

The book is on Amazon -- as of noon today.

Try this link: Fifty Shades of Santa.

What's Got Santa's Eyes Wide-Open?

Do you wonder what's being whispered in Santa's ear? Another couple of days when Fifty Shades of Santa becomes available on Amazon's Kindle Select, and you'll know what Santa knows.

Making a Pair for Santa

Must get awfully cold up there in that open-cockpit sleigh, I've got to get busy making a pair of anklewarmers for the jolly old gent.

I'll have to check my basket to see if I have the right color -- yep, I must have been thinking ahead, there's some bright crimson red yarn, hidden away down there in the bottom, just in time for the Christmas season.

Hummmmm, Santa's a pretty big guy, I wonder if one skein will be enough?

Christmas Give-Away Time Again

Come on, admit it.

You hate cold ankles. I have a remedy for that -- cozy anklewarmers. If you choose a dark colored pair, and wear them under the legs of your slacks, no one will know that you are a sissy.

Or, you can go where only the brave dare go. Last winter I had a request for a pair of anklewarmers in the red and gold colors of Pittsburg State University. This college girl wore her ankle warmers on the outside, and everyone knew exactly what her colors were. And you can bet she stood out even more prominently when there was snow on the ground.

If we're at the same Christmas party this year, I'll be there with my "plastic storage-bag", big as a suitcase. No pair of anklewarmers are alike -- all pairs in the same color will be a different size. You could even try them on, if you like.

Knitting in the Dark

Family lore tells of a great ?? grandmother who became blind, but still was able to knit. She did all right until she dropped a stitch, and then someone else had to help her get started again.

Didn't work for me. Tried knitting in the dark the other night, when I was waiting in the car. Wasn't totally in the dark, but neither the street lights, nor the dash light in the car provided enough illumination.

Next day I spent a good half-hour undoing the two rows of knitting I had attempted. Drat!

My Knitting Finger

Drat!

The good news is I have finally conquered my fear of cooking chestnuts. Bought some freshly-harvested chestnuts from Chestnut Charlie, not at the orchard in Lawrence, but at Whole Foods, where he and Deborah were demonstrating chestnut preparation. Came home and tried the boiling method. All cooking methods require the scoring, or cutting of the outside skin with a sharp knife, which will also cut fingers if the knife is not managed properly.

SO, the small cut on my knitting finger has slowed down my knitting, but my consolation are the chestnut nuts which are delicious eaten with chocolate, such as Nutella.

True History of Labor Day

Labor Day is not exactly what you think it is.

Labor Day was one politician’s double-sided (notice I didn’t say two-tongued) attempt to appear to be honoring the labor movement while at the same time taking some of the steam out of the movement.

May 1 has traditionally, historically, for many centuries been a day of unrest, a day of loosening of restraints, a day of riotous celebration, and after the Chicago Haymarket Affair (or Massacre or Riot) on May 4 (not May 1), 1886, a day for international workers of the entire globe to honor the memory of the American Martyrs to the labor movement. In fact, in 1889 May First was selected as a day for international celebration of the working man (yes, man, women did no recognized work in that era) by the First Congress of the Second Socialist International in Paris.

In an attempt to defuse the historical significance of that day, in 1894 President Grover Cleveland proclaimed the first Monday in September to be Labor Day. The tradition had scant precedence.

Chicago had won the right to host a World’s Fair in 1892, the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus voyage to the New World. Typically for Chicago (full disclosure here, I have a love-hate relationship with Chicago), the celebration didn’t materialize until a year later, in 1893. (History does have a way of almost repeating itself – one hundred years later Chicago won the right to host the five-hundred anniversary celebration of Columbus’ discoveries. This time Chicago was worse than one year late – all of you who attended the five-hundred anniversary World’s Fair in 1992 in Chicago please raise your hands.)

But back to the earlier century, in the early part of the decade of the 1890s recession gripped the country, peaking with the Panic of 1893. George Mortimer Pullman’s factory at the little Illinois town of Pullman, now at 111th Street and Cottage Grove, had few new orders for Pullman Palace Cars. Mr. Pullman tried to keep his work force employed by shortening everyone’s hours. He did not, however, reduce the rents for dwellings, all owned by the Pullman Company, in the town of Pullman.

The dissatisfaction built gradually, but finally erupted into the Pullman Strike, or the Great Chicago Strike of 1894, what became the first national strike in United States history. Ironically, the protest spread until it gripped the entire country, but the little village of Pullman remained relatively quiet.

On July 2 a federal injunction was issued against the leaders of the American Railway Union, a fledgling organization led by Eugene V. Debs. Amusingly, sometimes the difficulties were described as “Deb’s Rebellion”. The injunction against Debs was one of the first applications of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, passed in 1890 to curb the excesses of the sugar and match monopolies. (Go figure!)

The strike was suppressed by federal actions, the legality of some of the actions are still arguable today, and the designation of the first Monday in September as Labor Day was an attempt to ameliorate the crushing of the Pullman Strike. President Cleveland was also running for re-election that year.

He lost.