Nemo, Part III

I've been out there shoveling. It's a very different experience by daylight: more cheerful, like. I did more than we need for the dipping-things-in-chocolate party that we're having later, i.e. more than enough to allow people to come and go on foot. Probably in my next bout I will make the driveway driveable and clear the sidewalk to the next driveway.

Before coming in I walked up and down the street to say hello to other shovelers, and to clear some space around the two nearest fire hydrants. I really liked the phone reminders to do that, and might have been a little disappointed if someone else had beaten me to it.

I also walked around the house, shaking snow off the poor holly bush that was bent double (and in the process inadvertently unplugging some Christmas lights so that I needed to hunt around in the snow for the other end) and making my snowman ball more visible. I was sorry to say that the snow that's falling now is not the kram kind, so there won't be a second ball. This last bit meant walking in snow higher than my boots.

I took off my snow-caked jeans right away and put something else on, but the skin of my legs still feels chilled 45 minutes later.

More Nemo

At A Bad Guide I asked whether the Norwegians had a name for that sticky snow that's good for snow balls. Trond Engen replied

A handy adjective: kram: "Snøen er kram. Vi lager snømann!". No single-morpheme noun. The noun kramsnø is formed with the adjective.

I put that into Google Translate and got "The snow is wet. We make a snowman!"

We did lose power last night, but not for very long. It's still snowing now, in the morning.

Nemo

We're having a snowstorm, the first big one of the year, much bigger than anything we had last year. I'm glad. It's exciting. It's beautiful. I feel festive. (Also just a little anxious, maybe.)

 Of course there have been warnings for days. The storm has a name, Nemo. We have learned that it is the offspring of two storm systems, one coming up the Atlantic coast and one coming from the Great Lakes and beyond. These two parent storms were nameless, as far as I know. Nemo is a "superstorm". The word "thundersnow" is in the air, too, or so I have been hearing on Facebook. Maybe if I watched more TV I would know what that word is supposed to mean. I haven't heard any thunder.

By Thursday, if not before, it was clear that things would be starting in the middle of the day Friday, with the heaviest snowfall occurring overnight. Estimates of the total amount have varied. Maybe about two feet? By Thursday night many school closures, or at least early closings, had been announced, and eventually the governor of Massachusetts declared that all towns should cancel school for the day.

Since Thursday evening I have taken several phone calls that were recorded messages from the municipal authorities. Things like "This is officer Callahan of the Watertown police department ... Please exercise common sense and avoid driving after the storm begins unless it is absolutely necessary ... Check on your neighbors ... It is illegal to move snow into the road or onto the sidewalk .. You are required to clear a passage at least 36 inches wide on any sidewalk on your property within 24 hours ..." and later "This is Officer Callahan of the Watertown police department, with a message from the Public Works Department. A snow emergency has been declared. Starting at 12:00 noon Friday on-street parking is prohibited ... Our snowplow drivers will be working very hard for many hours. Please do not try to stop a snowplow [Do people stop them? Why? To tell them how to do do their jobs? To complain about plowed snow blocking driveways?] ... We remind you to check on your neighbors, and to shovel out fire hydrants that are covered with snow ..."

At some point on Friday the governor declared that he had signed an executive order making it illegal to drive after 4pm (with a few obvious exceptions). He then went on to point out that there could be some very deep drifts, and to urge people to be cautious about playfully leaping into them because there might be something hard underneath.

Some time late Friday afternoon, when it had been snowing for about seven hours and several inches had accumulated and darkness was falling, the phone rang. This time Tesi answered, and she listened to another long recorded message. This one was from our electric company. The gist of it was "A major snowstorm is expected on Friday. You should plan ahead and make sure you have everything you might need if the power goes out. If you have a particular need of electrical power, such as for a medical device, you should consider leaving the area before the storm comes."

So I think we award high scores to the town and to the governor, and a very low score to the power company.

Then there are the TV weather news people. As I say, I don't watch that much TV, or at least I don't watch that much TV news. The cliche is that these people live for moments like this, and that when the moment arrives they milk it for all the drama it's worth, and more. Sometimes they hype a storm and it doesn't live up to the hype, and we roll our eyes. Sometimes they hype a storm and it turns out to be a whopper, and it still seems like the hype was a little bit on the nutty side, even if the forecast was factually accurate. For the most part I believe that their line is "this is going to be really bad". At the same time it's clear that for them bad is good: telling us about this bad thing that's about to happen is their favorite part of their profession. Not that I mind so much, since my main feeling about a storm like this is "Oh, boy, this is going to be fun/beautiful/something to remember".

Last night I heard one guy on TV explaining about the two storm systems coming together to create this situation. He was pointing at a map and saying "it looks like one of the systems is lagging behind the other, but that's all right". What did he mean? It sounded like he meant "I know it looks like this won't be quite the superstorm that we have been predicting, but don't worry: this is going be a hell of a bad storm".

One thing about this snow: it's the good sticky kind, perfect for making snowballs and snowmen, or other snow sculptures. I don't have anybody to have a snowball fight with these days, really (and I'm not sure I ever really enjoyed that sort of thing as a kid), but I'd love to make a snowman. Before it got dark tonight, when there were still two or three inches on the ground, I was in the yard with Amadi, and I had the pleasure of rolling a snowball around in the back yard until it was a respectable size, suitable for stage one of a classic snowman. I lifted it onto an outdoor table (it was not quite too heavy for that), ostensibly to prevent it from disappearing overnight when the rest of the snow has fallen. In the morning, after laboriously shoveling out all that snow from the driveway, or maybe during a break from that, I will finish the job. Asa has reminded me of the snow kangaroo that we made a few years ago. I also remember the snow caterpillar that we made many years ago. That one was easy, in a way--just keep making more big balls of snow, and line them all up--but, as I've just been reminded, each ball is a nontrivial amount of work. I think I'll stick with one three-ball snowman this year, and shoveling one driveway, our sidewalk, maybe a neighbor's sidewalk, clearing one fire hydrant ...

Time

A new chapter begins: Asa has gone to college. That's just as it should be, of course, but there is this big downside, which is that he's not here with us any more. Of course we saw this separation coming a long time ago, but that doesn't seem to do much to cushion the shock.

Tesi and I drove him out to Amherst on Saturday, helped him move his stuff into his dorm room on Sunday morning and stayed around the rest of the day for various welcoming activities.

On Monday morning we got together one more time before heading home. The three of us strolled around the campus for half an hour, talking of this and that and finally coming to rest on a bench where there is a view of far-away wooded hills. A little more dawdling, and then it really was time to cut loose and let him go to Freshman Orientation. We stood up. We hugged. We said some kind of parting words. Tesi briefly broke into sobs. A few more words, and then he walked away. We stood watching the back of that dear familiar figure, the big hairy head on the tall thin frame, ambling down a path to somewhere. Then it was time to go to the car.

It was a perfect late-summer day. A classic collegiate quadrangle stretched out all green before us. Above us there were tall pines against a clear blue sky. All around us were hundreds of young people--so young!--some buzzing in animated bunches--others solitary--all making their way to somewhere as they began their own new chapters.

As we reached the other end of the quad we saw a young father with a baby swaddled on his chest. He, too, was walking dreamily along in the bright morning. Presumably the dream he was wrapped in was the new parent's cocoon of "Here we are, me and my baby, the two of us in our happy little world". Nothing was said, but afterwards it turned out that both Tesi and I had had a strong impulse to speak to this stranger, had been wanting to say something like "I hope you savor every moment of the next eighteen years, because then they grow up and go to college."

Bats - Part 2

(continued from Part 1)

Maybe they were mates and one had called to the other. Anyway, I stepped back inside, closed the doors, and stood for some time observing their behavior and wondering what to do about it. When they left the room and headed upstairs I raced after them. After securing the doors of the rooms where Tesi and Amadi were sleeping, I went into Asa's room and found him and his friend watching just one bat flying in circles. The three of us sat there for a while, admiring the bat, trading animal stories, and discussing possible strategies. At one point the bat did come to rest on the woodwork of a window frame. (It's quite striking how small they get when the wings are folded up--suddenly more like a mouse than a bird.) I made one attempt at capture it as it hung there, using a modification of the box method (#1), but the attempt failed because the thing was not sound asleep and saw me coming. Eventually Asa's friend's mother showed up and asked us why we didn't just open a window. I had a ready answer for that, of course, but in the end we gave it a try; and in fact it wasn't long before the bat found its way out. We never did know what happened to the other one, but it stands to reason that whatever secret route they have for getting into the house would also serve for getting out.

Asa's Bat: Sometimes Method #4 works just fine: you open a door and it has the desired effect of making the inside and outside bat population densities as nearly equal as possible. Asa once found a ground-floor lap-flying bat when the rest of the family had retired for the night, and when he opened a sliding door (staying low to the ground and looking anxiously over his shoulder, he says) it worked like a charm.

To return to the other night: When I had finished reminding Tesi and myself that I was not so very much afraid of bats, I stuck my head into the room and verified that indeed there was a bat flying in circles. I stepped inside, crouching a bit, and closed the door behind me. My plan was to open that other door leading to the balcony, already mentioned in the Broomstick episode. Nika was in the room, and I was surprised that she wasn't paying more attention to the bat. My first step was to simplify my life by getting her out of there; not only did I not relish playing Josh to her Magick, but I didn't want to have to think about her sneaking out on the balcony or getting underfoot. I caught her without difficulty and put her out in the hall, then opened the outside door and sat down in a corner to watch. The bat continued circling. My inner monologue went something like this:

"It keeps almost finding the way out. One of these times ... Hey, watch where you're going, buddy! ... Of course, I know it would never blunder into me--it has echolocation, right? ... Wow, that time it almost it found the door ... People always think a bat's gonna get tangled in your hair; that's a myth ... You can hear their wings, can't you? Not like owls, with those special stealth feathers ... Hey, you're nowhere near the Jesus, watch where you're going! ... Just remember, Tom, that little thing is much more afraid of you than you are of it ... Bats aren't even blind, either; that's another myth ... No way would it bump into me ... "

I got cautiously to my feet and opened the other half of the double doors, then returned to my corner.
"Oh, man, you were halfway out the door that time, what's the matter with you?! ... All right, I can wait. Just have to wait. Just a matter of time ... Not here, you fool, the door's over there! ... Oh, unbelievable, here comes another one."

Yes, now there were two bats circling. There didn't seem to be much to do except watch and wait. I was losing patience, talking out loud, whining, pleading. The most excruciating moment was when one of them went out and then came right back in. But eventually, one at a time, they found their way out.

The end.

Bats - Part 1

The other night Tesi called to me from the top of the stairs, quietly so as not to wake Amadi. "There's a bat in our room." I went to the stairs. "Did you say a bat?" "Yes, a bat." "OK, I'm coming." "I don't do well with bats," she said a little plaintively.* I remarked that I do well with them in the sense of being brave but not always in the sense of being effective. "Is it flying or sleeping?" "It's flying." "Well then I guess I'll just have to open some doors or windows and hope it goes better than that other time."

In fact there have been several other times. Here are some of the visiting bats that I remember best:
The Show and Tell Bat: This was about fifteen years ago, in a different house. I found it one morning asleep on the wall of a ground-floor room, clinging somehow to an apparently sheer vertical surface. Method #1: I got an open cardboard box, pressed it against the wall to enclose the bat, slid the box gently down to nudge the poor thing off the wall, and quickly popped a cover on before it could gather its wits and fly away. It was a cover that you could see through--a square of window screen material. Moved by an urge to share it with more than the immediate family, I decided to carry it down the street to Asa's preschool and show it to all the kids there. The teacher did not seem pleased with this highly educational idea of mine, but I assured her that I would keep the lid on. One interesting surprise: on the way to school the bat began loudly yelling at me. This was not echolocation; the sounds were well within the range of human hearing. I suppose it was expressing annoyance about the confinement or the bumpy ride, or both.

Last week, in a waiting room, I made the acquaintance of one of those children who love facts. He was asking Amadi "Do you know how many insects a bat can catch in an hour?" She made no effort to hold up her end of the conversation, so I cheerfully took up the slack. "I don't know. It must be a lot." "It's between 100 and 1000." "Wow, that is a lot!" I said. "Guess how many!" he pressed. "Oh, I thought we were done. It's a specific number?" "It's 6oo." He then moved on to "Do you know what animal can jump the highest?" Several of us started guessing: a kangaroo? some kind of bug? We were getting nowhere. He clarified that he meant jumping straight up in the air, and then he gave us a big hint: it's a kind of cat. More wrong guesses: leopard? snow leopard? We gave up. He said it was a tie between two African cats: the cerval and the caracol. I forget how high he said--something like fifteen feet, maybe. I asked why they jump in the air. He said it was to catch birds--guinea fowl. I told him that I'm sure our cat Nika would love to be able to jump that high, especially when a bat gets in the house.

The Wastebasket Bat: This was in our current house, maybe five years ago. I was alone on the ground floor of the house, working. Out of the corner of my eye I was getting glimpses of something moving in a darker room nearby, but it didn't really get my attention until I noticed that it had Nika's attention. We watched it travel the length of the house a number of times, Nika making the occasional spring at it as it went by, but neither of us had any really constructive ideas. After a while the bat flew upstairs and started doing more laps up there. Method #2: I managed to close a key door at the right moment, thus isolating the problem, and went to bed. In the morning I cautiously entered the room, closed the door behind me, and searched until I found the sleeping bat. It was in a wastebasket rather than on a wall, so I just moved it to the back garden, telling it that I was in no hurry for the wastebasket and it could sleep as long as it liked.

A cat that I used to know caught a bat once. Her name was Magick, and she had a haughty and regal bearing, and she belonged (although she would never have put it that way) to my ex-wife, before I did. The incident occurred before the beginning of our acquaintance, so I have the story second- or third-hand. When a bat showed up one day in the big house where Magick was living with several humans, she caught it (Method: Unknown). No doubt she would have loved to show it to Karen, but she couldn't find Karen, so she took it to Josh. Josh was not someone who did well with cats, let alone bats. Finding him sitting on the floor of his room surrounded by household papers, she proudly laid her prize, bleeding and still flapping feebly, right on top of his Accounts Payable. I believe that he screamed--again well within the audible frequency range.

The Broomstick Bat: This one was found sleeping directly above our bed one morning, holding on to a sort of high rafter. So the bat was not pre-packed for transport this time, nor would it be easy to adapt the box trick without a big flat surface behind the bat. Also it was going to be too high for me to reach unless I did something crazy like putting a stepladder on the bed. Method #3: I decided to prod it with a stick and see if it might be persuaded to hold on to the other end. The bare end of a broomstick only caused it to shuffle sideways in its sleep, so I tried the other end. When poked with broomstraws the bat became seriously annoyed. It turned its beady eyes on me. Horrible chittering imprecations issued from a tiny open mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. After a brief retreat to calm my nerves, I returned to the task. The bat was still angry, but this time it grasped the straws and let go of the rafter. Moving slowly, I opened the door to the balcony and stepped out, holding the bat before me on the broom like a pizza on a wooden paddle. I gave it a little shake, thinking it would fly away; it fell like a stone to the paved surface below, never even unfolding its wings. Sick with the thought of tiny broken bones, I hurried through the house and out to the driveway. Apparently it was uninjured: it took hold of a twig that I offered it and then consented to transfer itself to a nearby sapling in a quiet out-of-the way spot, where it hung itself up and went back to sleep.

That Other Time: This was a couple of years ago, I think. It began, like the Wastebasket story, with a bat flying laps on the ground floor. Remembering a previous success, I tried closing doors to reduce the range of flight, but there was no way to seal off the area. The bat flew great loops in the big front room while I watched. It occurred to me that if I were to (Method #4) open the French doors it would be bound to find its way out sooner or later. Of course, a few bugs might fly in in the meantime, but that's a small price to pay, right? Or--here's a funny thought--more bats might fly in. Yeah, that would be funny. I crossed the room, ducking and flinching as appropriate. I think I may have even crawled on elbows and knees, like a soldier moving from trench to trench in an old war movie. I opened the doors. I stepped outside under the wistaria/wisteria arbor and stood waiting and watching. A minute later, sure enough, a second bat flew right past me and started circling the room with the first one.

(to be continued)

* I would like to point out that this is the same brave woman who once wrapped an osprey in a towel to help it get out of a screen porch, a thing I could not have imagined doing myself.

Irene

I am sitting here looking out the window at hurricane Irene. We are on vacation in Westport, Massachusetts. Depending which weather website you look at, we are due for either "tropical storm conditions" or "hurricane conditions" here today. I would guess that we have now is called the former. One site says that the wind speed is predicted to get up to 70 mph about 5 hours from now, and that is predicted to be about 25 mph now. I can't believe it isn't a lot more than 25 now, but what do I know? Incidentally, the sites all give 0 mph as the current local wind speed, but it's clear that that's because an instrument is broken somewhere, probably at the local airport in New Bedford.

Was it silly to stay here? The questions most on my mind are

(1) How high will the water rise today? We are protected from ocean waves, but the muddy little cove of the beloved tidal river that charmingly comes right up to our yard/lawn/garden is expected to rise, with the rest of the river, several feet higher than usual at tonight's high tide. It is extremely unlikely that it will rise as far as the ground floor of the house, but in the morning we will surely be picking up mounds of seaweed from the grass.

(2) Will these windows hold up? It seems very unlikely that any large objects will come flying at the house, but is there a chance that the wind itself will smash the two large windows? I kind of wish we had done what many people do and cover them with plywood. We told ourselves that the dense stand of juniper woods just south of us would screen the house from the worst of the wind, but it turns out that the wind is coming from the SE and is likely to continue that way.

(3) Will the power go out?

Blizzard

Yesterday morning we awoke to a blizzard. Wet snow had been falling for hours and was still coming. In addition to piling up on the ground (about 9 inches so far), it had been sticking to the trees in a big way. I went out to make a start on shoveling the driveway and sidewalk, but I soon became more interested in all the fallen branches. As I wandered around dragging big pine boughs to more suitable locations, from time to time a sharp crack high up in the trees would get my attention, and I'd look up anxiously to make sure that the next big one was not actually going to land on my head.

Then I saw the dangling wires. They were still attached to the pole across the street, and they were still attached to our house, but they had gone slack: they were hanging so low that any person passing by on the sidewalk would have to duck, and any large vehicle on the street would have to keep to the other side. In fact, as a single swerving lane of cleared roadway showed, the last snowplow to go by had had to make its way past multiple obstacles: besides our wire situation, there was a big fragment of pine tree lying on the far half of the street diagonally across from us. It was clear that the wire had been dragged down by something (probably a big branch, but I couldn't identify one as the culprit), and that the added weight had caused a three-foot-long piece of trim to break off the house. The broken board was hanging from the wires, within my reach. I didn't want to risk electrocution, but I could see that the higher-up wire that brings power to the house was unaffected. Summoning up some courage, I tugged at the piece of wood, but to no effect.

I knew that the house had power -- or at least that it had had it a while ago. I went indoors to see if we also had phone and internet. Somewhat amazingly, we did. I called the electric company. They were very polite, but when I admitted that we still had power they of course put our address on a low-priority list for repairs. Tesi then called the company that provides phone and internet service, not to mention cable TV. They said they could probably come in three days. She also called the local police, just to let them know about the wires. Meanwhile I laboriously maneuvered the giant piece of tree out of the street, and then went back to shoveling.

Pretty soon three jovial firefighters pulled up in a big red truck. They looked around and asked me a question or two, and then their leader admitted, with some show of sympathy, that they were going to have to cut the wires. I registered incredulity and disappointment, but kept it light. These guys are just doing their job, right? Out came the big shears and the big rubber gloves, and bang: no telephone, no internet, no TV. When the guy asked for our house address for the third time, for their records -- he kept forgetting the number -- I said "Maybe I should phone it in. No, wait, my phone doesn't work!" in my best mock-angry manner. He replied that we'd be all right with no phone as long as we had a supply of booze. In hindsight we almost wished that we had somehow temporarily propped up the wires to get them out of the way for the time being.

The rest of the day was mostly tame. I shoveled, I rested, I shoveled, I rested, and eventually Asa woke up and helped me finish the job. The only really exciting moment was when Tesi and Amadi, headed to a neighbors house, just missed being clobbered by one of the larger fallen pine chunks. It could have been really bad.

(Here the story gets a bit anticlimactic. We have cell phones, of course, and electricity to charge them with. We even have internet; Tesi discovered a neighbor who has a home wireless network that we can tap in to from here, and who is willing to share her password in the emergency. We just have to go to a certain corner of the house to do it. Total snow on the ground was only about 14 inches.)

Silly creatures

At no small risk to himself* a "senior rescue technician" of the Animal Rescue League rescued a Canada goose from the icy surface of a pond. The bird had been frozen in place for days. Oh, at the time of rescue the weather had changed and the bird was not frozen in place; its problem was that it couldn't fly because that would have meant first having to stand up on slippery ice.

*he wore an emersion suit [sic], in case the ice broke

The Video

So, yes, most of the show got recorded, and -- what the heck -- we have put our family's act on YouTube. Here it is. Tesi, Amadi, and Tom singing. Asa on guitar. Our friends Michael and Guy on bass and keyboard.

Big night

Tonight is our church's Annual Potluck Dinner and Talent Show, a high point of the year for some of us.

Asa will perform "Three Hours" (see previous post). He will also play electric guitar in a band assembled for the occasion. Tesi, Amadi, and I, backed by part of that same band, will sing "We Are Family" (which is possibly Amadi's favorite song ever to listen to, and which always reminds Tesi and me of the final scene of the wonderful movie "The Birdcage" -- the remake of "La Cage aux Folles" with Robin Williams). Oh, and with my 11-year-old friend Elijah I will be performing a version of the Abbott and Costello routine "Who's on First". Can't wait.

Our son the musician

Students at Asa's school put on a hastily organized concert to raise money for relief work in Haiti (Partners in Health). My wife videotaped the show, and Asa chopped up the recording into appropriate pieces and posted them on YouTube.

Here he is.

Father and son

My son heard the word "aggressiveness" on TV; I think it was in an ad for a prescription drug. He grumbled that the word should be "aggression". I argued that the two words have slightly different meanings. He still maintained that when that kind of thing happens -- a noun derived from an adjective derived from (or at least related to) another noun -- or the other way round -- it means that something went wrong. I said no, it means that something went right. I don't think I can change his mind, but I did come up with a good line: I told him that, while he may think he is being rigorous, he's just being rigid.

Brake FAIL, or Puffett lives

From an article in yesterday's Boston Globe about Toyota's plans to resolve some safety (and PR) issues:

[...] There have been about 200 complaints in Japan and the U.S. about a delay when the brakes in the Prius were pressed in cold conditions and on some bumpy roads. The delay doesn't indicate a brake failure. The company says the problem can be fixed in 40 minutes with new software that oversees the controls of the antilock brakes [...] U.S. safety officials are investigating the brake problem. It is suspected in four crashes [...]

I'm not sure why it would not be called a brake failure. A car crashes into something because the brakes don't function properly.

I am reminded of Mr. Puffett, the character in Dorothy L Sayers's Busman's Honeymoon who is employed to get the fireplace working. Every time anyone uses the word "chimney" in mentioning the problem, he gets defensive, saying that there's nothing wrong with this here chimney, the problem is the soot, or words to that effect.

When you least expect it

I was looking at the university web page that displays a list of the students registered for a course that I am teaching. Thinking that there might be something to find out about how to download or print this list, I clicked where it said "Help". A little box opened, and here is what it said:

_________________________________

Summary Class List

This list provides instructors with a detailed list of students who are registered for a specified course and term. The students can be ordered by registration sequence number (the order by which they registered for the course) or alphabetical order, depending on whether or not a registration process has been run by your Registrar's Office. If a student is deceased, the word Deceased will display next to the name. Choose CRN Selection to view information about a different course. Select Term Selection to view information about a different term. Choose a link to navigate to other pages.

Exit Help

Nika

Our cat finds bags entertaining. We find her entertaining.

The edge of surfeit

In past years I used to occasionally interrupt my attempts at Christmas shopping by going into a record store and picking up a new seasonal tape or CD. You know: "Oh look, so-and-so has a Christmas album, I wonder if it's any good, it'd be nice to have some more of that stuff to listen to at this time of year." These years I do it at the iTunes store. One advantage is that you can hear a little sample first.

Most of it disappoints. You understand, all I ask for is a few good songs per album, but even so it's a crap shoot. There was the Roches' collection We Three Kings: They sounded like they were making fun of both the music and themselves in every song. Forget it.* And Linda Ronstadt's A Merry Little Christmas: Well, maybe I should have seen that one coming; she's got a way of coating a song in sugary sentiment anyway, and then you put that on top of Christmas and it crosses some horrible threshold ... It's like holiday food. You take for granted that you'll be eating more sugar and more fat than usual, but even so there are moments when it's just too much, even for a guy like me.

That line between "What a delicious holiday treat!" and "Help, I can't stand it! Get this away from me!" is a fine line, and of course it depends on the beholder and on the beholder's mood. Bette Midler made an album called Cool Yule. I have had it for a few years. I had been remembering it as almost in the Ronstadt category, but I listened to it right through yesterday and almost none of it had seriously ill effects. There are a couple of songs there that I'm not sure I would ever want to hear again. And I'm not saying I want to hear her special Christmas version of Nanci Griffith's From a Distance more than, say, three or four times in the season; it resembles an apple pie covered with butter frosting, and it's got incongruous bits of other songs stuck in it like sugarplums. But I'm glad it's there. Her Mele Kalikimaka is perfectly fine, although I can't help hearing it as a slightly pale imitation of the Bing Crosby version. In the case of that song, if you're not going to depart further than that from the canonical version, what's the point? The same applies to I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm; in this case it's the Dean Martin version that is the reindeer in the room. But I'm really liking her I'll be Home for Christmas and What Are You Doing New Year's Eve? They're neither better nor worse than, respectively, Bing's and Ella's: a bit heavily frosted, but yummy.

In the course of singing a duet with Johnny Mathis, a medley of Winter Wonderland and Let it Snow, Bette calls Mathis "The King of Christmas". Which led me to check out his Christmas stuff. Well, it may be too soon to say, but so far I'm disappointed. Maybe I need to get used to the pace, which is slow, and to that weird way he has of sliding up or down on a note as he modulates to a new key. In any case, it's not a total loss. For one thing, his Sleigh Ride is a keeper. For another, he includes (between two verses!) that intro to WW. At last I have the tune! Oh, and I'm putting his Chestnuts in with all those others (and taking out a couple -- the Crosby/Sinatra and the Brubeck).

* One bright spot: They sing the intro of Winter Wonderland ("Over the ground lies a blanket of white, ... Two hearts are thrilling, in spite of the chilling weather  ..."), which I never knew before. I was happy to find it, but frustrated by the fact that they do it in a kind of three-part harmony that leaves me wondering which of the three parts is the melody.

All chestnuts, all the time

Well, I did it. I listened to all thirteen renditions of Chestnuts. No regrets, but possibly there are one or two that I never need to hear again.

You wouldn't think that a chorus could really do justice to this song, and you'd probably be right. But it's not that simple: the Mitch Miller version and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir version are really very different. I prefer the latter, though I'll use it sparingly.

It occurs to me that it is not possible to record a version of this song without making implicit reference to the Nat King Cole version. (I am thinking of Borges' "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote".) For example, if you don't sing "Merry Christ-ma-has" at the end, that's a statement in itself.

Carols

In  The Oxford Book of Carols  there is a footnote to "Good King Wenceslas". It begins

This rather confused narrative owes its popularity to the delightful tune, which is that of a Spring carol, "Tempus adest floridum", No. 99. Unfortunately Neale in 1853 substituted for the Spring carol this 'Good King Wenceslas', one of his less happy pieces, which E. Duncan goes so far as to call 'doggerel', and Bullen condemns as 'poor and commonplace to the last degree'.

Bing

Bing Crosby's album "White Christmas" has twelve songs. These years only about four of them get on my short list of seasonal music.

My favorite thing about Bing's style is the way he dances around the beat: a phrase will have an out-of-rhythm experience to the point where it seems to be getting lost, and then the next thing you know it's home safe and sound, like a ghost returning to its body or a plane to its aircraft carrier.

The second- and third-worst songs, in some order, are "Adeste Fideles" -- Latin with unapologetically American vowels ("A-des-tay Fee-day-lace") -- and the deeply hokey "Christmas in Killarney".

The absolute worst is "Faith of Our Fathers", the only one where Crosby's deliberate rhythmic looseness seems misplaced. He's doing it against a background of choral singing -- and in my opinion pretty lame choral singing and badly recorded at that.

Three of the best are those in which Bing is joined by the Andrews Sisters: "Jingle Bells", "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", and "Mele Kalikimaka"*. The sisters' tightly rhythmic self-contained harmonizing is just what Bing's loosey-goosey crooning needs, and vice versa. Each style enhances the other.

My other favorite is his heartfelt version of "I'll be home for Christmas". (Incidentally, this is what is playing in Nathaniel Fisher's new hearse at the big bad moment in the pilot episode of Six Feet Under.) This season I've been listening to Tony Bennett's cool and breezy version of the same song, but at this point I'm about ready to go back to Bing.

* This is deeply hokey, too, but in a good way.