These lil fellas were created by English engineer John Ambrose Fleming in 1904, and used for the first transatlantic radio transmissions. My son characterizes them as “Bacteriophages, but with the personality of the Pixar lamp.” Agreed. 🦠🤖💕
(props to Project Gutenberg for the tip)
![“Three vintage vacuum tubes with various internal structures, mounted on stands with visible wiring and components.” [AI-generated description, which I love!]](https://www.davideriknelson.com/sbsb/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/URS-OURS-OND-1024x630.jpg)
The Gramma bit always cracks me up.
This is always a fraught time of year for grade-school music teachers: they wanna sing Xmas songs, most of the kids wanna sing Xmas songs. But they know that the constant wintertime Othering grinds away at the Jewish kids. (It’s even worse when teachers try to “include” you be singing the “Dreidel Song”; that song is crap, and we know it. The Xmas songs are way better.)
Back during the pandemic I eavesdropped on the most brilliant piece of classroom third-rail navigation I’ve ever seen in my life, and I wanna share it here again, for any that need help (esp. in what’s become an extremely fraught year for Jewish kids in America).
This was early in the pandemic, when our community was pretty locked down (my kids didn’t have in-person school for 400+ days). My daughter was then a third grader, and I was sitting nearby during her Zoom music class (we’ll leave for another day any discussion of the crime against humanity that was “grade-school Zoom music class”).
A few slides into the lesson, the teacher show a picture of an unremarkable middle-aged White dude, “Mitchell Parish.”
Who the heck is Mitchell Parish? Well, he was born in Lithuania, and brought here by his parents, who were Jews (my daughter immediately perked up; Jews! Like us!) looking for a better life. Mitchell Parish was a popular songwriter in New York in the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s—and he wrote the lyrics to …
*advance to next slide*
… “Sleigh Ride”!
*kids sing “Sleigh Ride”*
*EVERYONE IS A WINNER!*
My daughter felt seen, gentiles got their Christmas carol, and no one had to sing the goddamned “Dreidel Song.”
So there’s the trick to getting to sing Christmas carols in public school in what has been the worst year for Jews since 1945:
Start out with a brief bio of the Jews who wrote your Xmas song
You could do a whole Winter Concert—featuring “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer,” “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” and “Run, Run Rudolph”—on just a single bio slide: All four of those classics were written by the same Jew (the inimitable Johnny Marks, whose Jewish brother-in-law was the guy who created Rudolph to begin with).
(SPOILER ALERT 🚨: All your favorite Xmas songs were written by Jews; you’re welcome).
I’m a mixed Jew (i.e., one raised in an interfaith family, and raising my Jewish kids in one now). I’ve lived in the American Midwest for my entire life (which is kind of a double-Diaspora).
I think these songs—which I wrote and recorded nearly 20 years ago now—possibly capture that experience more purely than anything else I’ve ever written.
I write horror, SF, and DIY stuff—occasionally in book form. If you want autographed/personalized copies for your lovelies this holiday season, I can help!
Here’s the rundown on what I’ve got on hand:
‘Tis the season to hang your Xmas lights—and, for many people, to hang one strand backwards and instead of pulling it down, head to the hardware store in search of an “adapter” that is colloquially referred to as a “suicide cable.”
DO NOT DO THIS!
I’m not kidding around. If you don’t kill yourself with such a arrangment, you can easily kill some hapless person who stumbles across your work later.
I wrote this essay a few years back, as a little bonus for the folks kind enough to have subscribed to my newsletter. A good friend, Chris Salzman, was gracious enough to make something pretty of it. I relish the opportunity to reshare it each year, and I’m doing so once again. Every word here is both true and factual—which is a harder trick than you’d think.
You’ll be 15 minutes into that Lesser Family Feast in Michigan when your mother-in-law will turn to you and ask:
“What do Jews do on Thanksgiving?”
You should be prepared for this sort of thing in Michigan. But even though I’m warning you in advance, you still won’t be prepared.…
(read more: IN MICHIGAN: A PRIMER, A TRAVELOGUE)
THANKSGIVING TURKEY GIVEAWAY! (WKRP in Cincinnati) from Tony DeSanto on Vimeo.
I repost this every year, because I love this gag, and because watching this on TV—and rehashing it with my mom and sisters each year—is one of my fondest holiday memories. But it is, in my humble, a damn-near perfect gag. That’s saying something, because I find single-camera laugh-track situation comedies almost entirely unbearable to watch. If you wanna read more of my thoughts on this specific gag and what it can teach writers, you can do so here.)
I’m a child of the 1980s, so most of my nostalgic holiday memories are TV-related. 🤷♀️
I hope your T-day is good and sweet. Gobblegobble! 🦃💀
