Buffalo Gal

We need a different president badly. Three years of Barack Obama and crew is more than enough.
Here are two articles from Dec 30 news sites:

1. “On a 4 million dollar vacation, Michelle asks 3 dollars from backers” Keith Koffler, Dec 30/2011

The extravagant first lady is asking backers who are too poor to make much of a contribution..to give 3.00 for her husband’s re-election. We need to replace the FLOTUS too) Multiple million + vacations are getting sickening with the Obamas (Martha’s Vineyard, South Africa, Spain, and many trips to Hawaii)

2. “Will Obama steal the 2012 election?” Jeff Kuhner, Dec 30 2011

(this is the scariest scenario of all and I have wondered about the strong possibliity of a stolen election in November 2012.)

It is time for Americans to choose a NEW president in November 2012.

I feel loss today after learning about the destructive fire at the Swany White Mill at Freeport MN.
It has been a landmark for many years when driving to St Cloud..first for many Childrens’ Literature Conferences in June many years in the past…then driving to visit our youngest son and his family in St Cloud for many years also.
Freeport is an interesting town…it had both Swany White Mill and Charlie’s Cafe…the model for Garrison Keillor’s “Chatterbox Cafe” in his rambling monologues. Apparently Keillor spent a lot of time at Charlie’s when he lived in the rural Freeport area early in his radio career which began at the St John’s College station for MPR.
I think a lot of his “characters” in his monologues were folks from the Freeport area also.
I actually bought Swany white flour at the Rollag Threshing Bee display and it was really a good bread flour.
Hopefully, according to the FORUM report today (Dec 30) the Swany White place at the Threshing Bee will still be in operation.
But I willl really miss the landmark mill along I-94.

We are also feeling so sad for our neighbors who lost two pets this week….their cat and their old dog.
They loved their pets as much as any real pet people everywhere do. I think we will take a loaf of homemade bread and a jar of our shelterbelt plum jelly over to them as a sign of our sympathy for them. I feel so sorry for all of them but especially the three kids who loved their cat and dog.

In 1954 I was a junior in high school. (you can do the math if you are curious)
I had been invited to go “julebukking” with my cousin Curt and his many teenage friends from the Rollag area. We spent an entire night and early morning out and about , dressed up in ridiculously heavy clothing (for warmth because is was a very cold and snowy year as I recall) The trick was for the boys to dress in women’s clothing and the girls to dress in men’s clothing….. the better to fool the people who would be visited that night of Julebukking. It was a clear moonlit night and the temperature was hovering at zero or below zero as we “made our rounds” of the chosen farms where the inhabitants would be roused from sleep and made to come downstairs in nightclothes to let the “Julebukks” in the house. Then began the guessing game: the householders…husbands and wives and children had to guess who every Julebukk was and when these strange folks are wearing clothing like we had on… plus nylon stockings over our faces distorting our features comletely it was not easy to guess who everyone was. Nobody expected me to be a part of this gang either because I did not live out in the rural area where the rest of them were from..so nobody guessed who I was until some very broad hints were given about my parentage et.al. and my being related to my cousin who did get identified. The first Julebukk identified was always “Big Boogan” (a nickname for a boy who was over 6 feet tall and nobody else was that big!!!) Finally with everyone guessed, the farm family had to make coffee and get out the holiday sweets. I had never had so much coffee and so many cookies. fattigmand, krumkake, or rossettes and homemade candy in my life. Although I was terribly worn out when I got home, I could not fall asleep due to the vast amounts of caffiene from all the coffee we were served at many places that long night and early morning. There was no such thing as Decaf then! Nobody served “Sanka” either. It was truly a night never to be forgotten.
Then on Dec 31 of that same week in 1954…. I went to my FIRST slumber party. Can you imagine kids NOW not going to a slumber party (or sleepover as they call them) til they were 16? Most of us had not been to a slumber party but out in the country, “Helen” had a bunch of us out for New Years’ Eve and we were determined to stay awake all night and have as much fun as possible.
We were all wearing two piece, long legged, long sleeves flannel pajamas, a’la 1954 fashion and all of us had to “put up” our hair in pincurls overnight and cover the pincurls with the requisite “Mammy” style folded scarf. We were sights for sore eyes but that is the way it was in 1954. No girl went to bed without having pincurled her hair. We did not shampoo our hair every day like girls do now; many of us shampooed on Saturdays only until times changed slightly and we went to a Saturday/Wednesday shampoo schedule!! Most of us did not have showers in our homes either so bathtub baths were the only thing.
Shampoos were usually done in the kitchen sink. Before I was a a teenager and washed my own hair, my Mom had me lie flat on my back on the ironing board with my head hanging over the sink while she shampooed my hair and used the final vinegar or lemon juice rinse to cut the soap or shampoo. I do remember getting my hair washed with Camay or Palmolive or Lux bar soap before shampoos became popular. Anyone remember the first shampoos? Halo, Lustercreme, Drene, Breck and the new one: Prell??? They sure beat washing hair with bar soap. No wonder we needed a vinegar rinse to get the bar soap out of our hair. And the advertising songs like “Dream girl, Dream girl, beautiful Lustercreme girl” or “Halo, everybody, Halo…Halo is the shampoo that glorifies your hair…”
In the early morning hours of the slumber party, a car-load of teenage boys arrived in the farmyard. We poured out the kitchen door in our pajamas with jackets or coats slung over our shoulders. We must have put on our boots too because there was a tremendous amount of snow in the yard. Shivering and giggling, we talked to the boys for several minutes until we could not stand the below zero temperatures any longer….we but did not invite them in the house..this was a HUGE Taboo in 1954. It was even too daring to go outside in pajamas in front of the boys but we did…oh, how wicked and brave we were!!!!
The remainder of the week between Christmas and New Year was pretty tame in 1954. Our family had its Christmas party on my Dad’s side that week and that meant a lot of singing of carols as that side of the family was very musical. We all had to perform some sort of song or piano music or instrumental solo and we loved it when all the men sang “We three kings of Orient are” with their lovely genetic tenor voices blending perfectly. The cousdins also sankg togehter as a group too.
We had “drawn names” so each of us got one present and we ate lavishly. We always had a potluck supper of scalloped potatoes (my mom’s contribution) home made baked beans (Auntie Mabel) and hotdish and wonderful cookies, especially the “S” shaped spritz made my Auntie Millie…our family’s last name initial. There surely must have been red jello with fruit cocktail or bananas too…no family potluck was complete without jello. Our family party was always fun even when the cousins got too old to roller skate in a basement with one skate apiece or to jump on one of the beds when the grownups were not paying attention. When we were teenagers we gathered in a bedroom, sprawled on the bed and told stories to each other about school happenings and town happenings in our own towns.
One year, one of my older cousins was confined to bed with a skull fracture and concussion from falling and hitting her head at the skating rink. That year was kind of tense because we were all worried about our cousin. Mind you…. she was NOT hospitalized but was closely supervised by the town and country Doctor in her town and nursed back to health by her own mother and sisters.
How times have changed since 1954. That age of innocence is long gone for teenagers and grownups.
But many fond and vivid memories sustain those who lived through those years.

Orion Samuelson is a nationally known writer regarding agricultural matters. I proofread one of his pieces last week….”Samuelson Sez”
In this report he warns about the United States Humane Society and giving any monetary support to that organization. Its purpose is not to set up shelters for pets or any other animals; it’s major goal (according to Samuelson) is to pursue radical animal rights agendae.
He quotes an evaluation of the USHS published by the Center for Consumer Freedom.

“The Humane Society of the United States is a radical animal rights group that inaccurately portrays itself as a mainstream animal care organization. The words “Humane Society” may appear on the letterhead but the USHS is not affiliated with your local animal shelter. While most local shelters are underfunded and unsung, HSUS has accumulated $162 million in assets, yet it doesn’t operate a single animal shelter anywhere and spends more than 5 million a year in travel expenses alone, just keeping its multi national agenda going.”

Samuelson also says (sez) that if you want to shut down all animal operations (livestock farming) and turn everyone into a vegetarian, then DO send your money to the USHS.
The op-eds put out by the USHS advocate “helping to make this a more humane society by reducing consumption of meat and egg products.” It opposes dog breeding, rodeos, circuses, horse racing, zoos, marine aquariums, and fur trapping.

Samuelson concludes that local animal shelters operated by local humane societies are worthy organizations and should be supported by local people. But Samuelson warns against sending one penny to the national humane society.
I had my own strange experience with the national organization. When New Orleans was flooded by Hurrican Katrina I was concerned about the pets left stranded and I sent a contribution to USHS. I now know that I should have found the address of the New Orleans humane society and sent my money there.
All I got out of the USHS was a two year long battle with their constant pleas for more money accompanied by lavish mailings of calendars, blankets, notepads and many gifts that I know were costing this organization a ton of money. Clearly they were not interested in protecting pets. I finally wrote a nasty BLUNT letter and told them to stop sending me things or I would immediately refuse to accept them and send them back at their expense. That did put a stop to the campaign for more money and the sending of gifts to me almost every month.
Local animal shelters SHOULD BE SUPPORTED as generously as one can afford.

The other tradition from Sweden that I wanted to write about is “Julotta” which translates: “Jul”: the Swedish word for Christmas and “otta” means the time just before dawn.
The traditional “Julotta”meant that people would rise as early as 4:30 a.m. in Sweden in times long past, and proceed to the churches for the celebration on Christmas morning.
Later, according to Swedish Church Law dated in 1686, the Julotta was to start at 6 a.m.
Today most Swedish churches began at 7 a.m. on Christmas morning.
“Mid-December is the darkest time of the year in Sweden and in the ‘old days’ people came to church carrying torches. The burning torchews were thrown in a big pile in front of the church entrance where people could warm up before entering church. {Many old churches were not heated at all or very poorly heated, at best} Even if it was important to be in church in time for the service, it was even more important not to arrive too early for the Julotta.
It was believed that the dead were performing a mass in the church on Christmas night and if you entered the church too early , the dead would rip you to pieces. {plenty of old folklore still abounded} After the service, people raced back to their houses with their horse-drawn sledges. The winner (of the race home) was thought to become the first to harvest their crops next year.”
(information from the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce, Texas)
Today the Swedish tradition of “Julotta” is kept alive in the town of New Sweden which is about 10 miles east of Austin, Texas. The Julotta service is held every Christmas morning at 7 a.m. at the Evangelical Lutheran Church which was founded by Swedish immigrants on February 23, 1876.

Another place where Julotta is observed is at a Swedish Covenant Church in Sioux Falls, SD. A friend of mine from childhood days is a member of that church and sent me an invitation to their Julotta this year. Sioux Falls is a bit too far away to drive there for the 7 a.m. Julotta service but it was fun to think about it. The people at that church also serve a festive Swedish breakfast after the Julotta service where traditional Swedish food is served to all who come for the breakfast. A picture of the set tables showed an abundance of food and many lit candles burning brightly to chase away the gloom of the late December darkness.
One of these years I want to make the trip to Sioux Falls and surprise Roger and Martha by showing up for the festive Julotta service early on Christmas Day morning.

Every country and every culture has its own traditions.
There are a lot traditions associated with Christmas— the holiday unique to Christians around the world.
The Boxing Day tradition originates in England and spread to its former colonies like South Africa and Canada. It goes back a long time when on December 26 large landowners who had estates and many servants and workers on that estate gave large boxes filled with gifts and food (often leftover food from their Christmas Day feast) to their “underlings” who worked for them in their huge manor houses and on the lands of their estates.
In Ireland December 26 is associated with a Feast Day for St. Stephen, a saint who cared for the poor and destitute. In many places December 26 is called “St. Stephen’s Day”. The origin of the day was for giving to those who were in need. There is an obscure Christmas carol titled “Good King
Wensceslas” that speaks of a King going out on the Feast of Stephen and finding a poor man out searching for firewood. It is a delightful story-carol that goes back a long time in history.
Currently it is also a Bank Holiday in Britain and countries of British origin (Canada has a Bank Holiday also). Then there is the inevitable creeping in of commercialism on Boxing Day with big sales at retail outlets with big markdowns on leftover Christmas merchandise.
We do not call it Boxing Day in the United States but there are a lot of “box” associations with gift returns (in boxes) and exhanges on Dec 26. We also have big 50% or- more- off sales on Dec. 26. I recall getting all my new coats when I was still “at home” with my parents on December 26 or 27 when the big sales happened at the big stores that had loads of coats for sale. Now I am in R and R mode on Dec. 26 from family dinners and wonderful celebrations on the 24th and 25th and I would not be very likely to go out and about on Boxing Day to get the good sales. I would have to be very very desperate…just as I do not go out on the day after Thanksgiving for the big shopping day.
I have another recent tradtion of my own invention for Dec. 26: it is called “Pajama Day” on which I do not get dressed all day unless I feel like it and I take naps and relax totally from the run-up to Dec 24 and 25 which involves a lot of cooking, baking, cleaning. (other traditions handed down to us from our parents and others)
I received as a gift two lovely fuzzy warm blanket throws and I have spent December 26 morning (since about 1:30 a.m.) cuddled in one of those blankets. I rose at that early hour due to another of my traditions: eating too much and too much of a mixture of foods yesterday. That tradition leads to being hyper-aware of your ailimentary canal which is struggling to deal with the many things you ate on Dec 25. The cozy blankets helped a lot as did a wonderful DVD (Downtown Abbey…another BBC drama that appeared on Masterpiece Theater.
Boxing Day— a very English tradition— is just right for this appreciator of things British–especially their books and dramas!!
JULOTTA will have to be dealt with in another blog. That one is Swedish in origin and has been carried on in this country by the descendants of Swedish Immigrants. I got an email from a childhood friend whose Swedish Covenant Church in Sioux Falls, SD still obsderves JULOTTA on the morning of December 25.

David P. Cohen has an essay/blog on Dec 26, 2011 which I wish Iowans would all read before their caucus takes place.

“Ron Paul Is A Bigot” by David P. Cohen, published on Dec 26 2011 as a column in the DAILY CALLER(Washington DC online newspaper)

Cohen says (and I agree) Paul’s long history of remarks about blacks and others needs to be exposed. He is not worthy of running for the office of president.

I had the opportunity to listen at 9 a.m.. to the live broadcast from Kings College Chapel in Cambridge,England…..of the live broadcast of the Christmas Eve service from Kings College Chapel of the “Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols”.
I do not always get to listen because some years on December 24 our house is full of chattering kids and grandkids but today I was all by myself in the kitchen.
Final cooking for tomorrow’s family dinner was being done…..the cooking of the “rommegrot” (r- (roll the r)–uhm-eh-gr (roll the r) uht) It means “cream mush” or cream pudding but I cheat and make the microwave recipe. It still tastes as good as the “real deal” where you have to simmer thick cream til the buttter “comes out” and then the cream is thickened with flour.
My late brother- in- law Arden used to make it that way and we all would hang over the stove watching him do it and waiting for the butter to come out of the hot cream.
Then I had to make the Norwegian rice pudding…a really festive rice pudding with meringue on top of it.
I also made the cranberry/pineapple salad.
Then there were two pans of homemade caramel sauce and hot fudge sauce for tonight’s homemade ice cream at our son’s and daughter’s in law’s home in Fargo.
Last but not least…waiting for me to do..are the cheese balls that my sons love…we have made them since they were teenagers and now all the grandkids love them as well.
Only then can I sit back and enjoy the afternoon as the sun sets early and the Dec 24 darkness settles in.
The NINE LESSONS AND CAROLS is wonderful. My favorite Carol (Once In Royal David’s City) opens the service with a boy soprano chosen at the last moment before the choir processes into the Chapel….that boy sings..unaccompanied in his clear high voice..the first verse of Once in Royal David’s City. He is joined by the choir and the people in the chapel on the next verses. Then begin the lessons starting with the first prophecy of Christ’s coming in Genesis 3: verse 15. All the Old Testament prophecies of Christ’s comings are read throughout the service with the Carols in between, sung by the all male choir of the college. The final scripture readings are from the Gospel of John, the first chapter where the prophecies come true are proclaimed in John’s Gospel….the first chapter that includes these words:
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
I also love verse 14 of John’s first chapter:
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; and we
have beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten Son from the Father.”
Listening to this broadcast on the morning of December 24 is something I have done for many years…when I can listen..and it surely makes the cooking much lighter work with the Words of scripture read and the beautiful carols being sung.
I wish everyone a most happy and blessed Christmas Eve and Day—however you celebrate. For Christian believers it is a time of gratefulness for the Gift of Grace and Truth sent from the Father—-the most important and best Gift ever given.

Izzy Lyman has written a funny funny parody of “The Night Before Christmas” about Barack and “St. Newt”
It is hilarious.

“Barack Obama’s “Twas the Newt Before Christmas”
blog/ Izzy Lyman/ 12-23-11

We are all familar with the Robin Huebner story.
Today (Dec 23) there is a short letter to the editor that says a lot in a few words about the whole kerfuffle that Management at KVLY set off when they told Huebner she was being demoted in favor of a 26-something on the ten o’clock news at that station. The letter writer said that perhaps professionalism is a lot more important for the majority of viewers than being able to giggle at the end of her gig when she turns and says “how about that weather for the weekend?”
But the in-house emails reveal a lot about how Management manages. Robin is over 50 years old now and is not quite the “eye candy” that seems to be required of newswomen on the KVLY staff.
Her “calm demeanor” was a postive factor to the writer of the letter….a clear demonstration of her professionalism even though the Management said in an email that “she lacked energy”. What do they want in a newswoman? Cartwheels on the news set????
The male viewers who are the ones most considered and apparently the male news audience would love a few cartwheels if the woman’s skirt went over her head in the process.
The emails revealed in the news story about Huebner’ federal discrimination lawsuit tell a lot about the mentality of TV managers who decide which female is worthy of reading the news at ten. The male audience is most important at that hour and the managers think that male viewers want to see a young blond who wears low cut blouses or sweaters …..and can giggle like a junior high girl…the better to make the male viewers think they are being flirted with!
I hope Huebner wins her lawsuit and socks it to the managers at KVLY.
I would be willing to guess that there are a lot of folks who agree with me, too.