New skills: Santas brush up on their sign language during a Santa School held recently at Royal City Centre. The Santas return to school each fall to fine-tune their skills for the holidays.
omg this makes me so happy.
New skills: Santas brush up on their sign language during a Santa School held recently at Royal City Centre. The Santas return to school each fall to fine-tune their skills for the holidays.
omg this makes me so happy.
Who wants a Christmas tree?
One of the things many people don’t know about FDR is that he considered himself to be a tree farmer and this included growing and selling Christmas trees from his property in Hyde Park. In 1943 he shipped a Christmas tree to Winston Churchill via the U.S. Army.
FDR was basically the tree-Santa of the White House. Trees for everyone! -Ariel
Pretty neat!
WASHINGTON (AP) — For her family’s final Christmas in the White House, Michelle Obama used the holiday decor to highlight her core initiatives as first lady: military service, education and health.
The familiar crowd-pleasers are still part of the annual show:
Downstairs in the library, education is the theme. Ornaments on two trees are written with the word “girls” in 12 languages, honoring the first lady’s “Let Girls Learn” initiative to help countries educate tens of millions of adolescent girls around the world. Other trees in the library are made out of crayons or pencils.
Mrs. Obama’s “Let’s Move” anti-childhood obesity is represented by a variety of fruit, to symbolize healthy eating, laid out in the Green and Red Rooms upstairs on the State Floor. Wreaths made of lemons and garlands made of limes decorate Green Room walls; clove-studded oranges, apples and pomegranates are mixed with greens to create wreaths for the Red Room.
“This year’s holiday theme is 'The Gift of the Holidays,’” the first lady said Tuesday afternoon after unveiling the decorations for military families. “We’re going to be celebrating our country’s greatest gifts, with special decorations celebrating our military families.” The theme is also meant to encourage people to reflect on “the true gifts of life,” such as service, friends and family, education and good health, her office said in a statement describing the decorations.
More than 90 volunteer decorators from 33 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico began arriving on Thanksgiving to begin the monumental task of decorating the White House, doing everything from hauling boxes and making bows to hanging lights and wreaths and trimming trees. The 19-foot Blue Room tree arrived on Friday, and it took four days to get it ready, said volunteer decorator Patricia Ochan, of Arlington, Virginia.
The tree features mirrored ornaments and garland with the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Besides the Blue Room tree, a second tree downstairs is decorated with gold ornaments in honor of service members who gave their lives for the country.
Ochan, a military spouse originally from Uganda, said it was “most exciting” to help decorate the Blue Room tree.
“I know how it feels not to have your loved one home with you for the holidays,” she said.
Another highlight? Fifty-six Lego gingerbread houses, one for each state and U.S. territory, that are nestled in the branches of the trees in the State Dining Room. A team of Lego builders at the company’s Connecticut offices crafted the houses from more than 200,000 Lego pieces, the White House said.
Most of the 70,000 ornaments and other decorations were reused, the White House said. Just 10 percent were new.
.@FLOTUS welcomes military families to the White House to view the holiday decorations pic.twitter.com/LKZ15GBCTN
— POLITICO (@politico)November 29, 2016
Photos by M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO
The day after Christmas I took the day off of work to spend with my son. We spent the day working on the guitar kits we got for Christmas. I had planned on cooking up some steaks on the grill for dinner but time got away from me, so we decided to order a pizza for dinner.
I place the order and the pizza was supposed to be there an hour later. The pizza did not arrive at the appointed time, it did not arrive at 15 minutes past the appointed time. It arrived 90 minutes after the time I ordered it. I was going to take it out on the delivery guy’s tip. Then he appeared on my doorstep. He had to be in his late 70s or early 80s. He wore a “Korean War Veteran” ball cap—instead of cutting his tip, I tipped more than I normally do.

Seniors rely on the U.S. postal service significantly more than other private citizens. But President Trump’s Postmaster General helped slow down mail service during the election and the Christmas rush — turning in a dismal performance. It’s time for him to go, writes LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-02-09/louis-dejoy-still-postmaster

Seniors rely on the U.S. postal service significantly more than other private citizens. But President Trump’s Postmaster General helped slow down mail service during the election and the Christmas rush — turning in a dismal performance. @johnsonjakep https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/02/14/fire-dejoy-he-burns-down-usps-postmaster-general-pushes-plan-slower-mail-higher
Series: Photographs of American Military Activities, ca. 1918 - ca. 1981. Record Group 111: Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, 1860 - 1985.
Uncover more World War I Centennial Resources at the National Archives.

75 years ago, from August 17-September 24, 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt undertook a 25,000 mile trip to the South Pacific as a representative of the American Red Cross. During her trip she made 17 stops in Australia, New Zealand and a number of small Pacific Islands, including Guadalcanal, Bora Bora, Samoa, Fiji, New Caledonia and Christmas Island.
Eleanor spent most of the trip visiting about 400,000 servicemen at military bases, hospitals, nursing homes and American Red Cross recreation clubs. She chronicled her experiences in her “My Day” columns, the proceeds from which she donated to the Red Cross.




Photo IDs: NPx 57-496(1)a, NPx 51-115:169(165), NPx 51-115:169(157), NPx 51-115:169(255).
One expects politicians to conceal their intentions behind a obfuscating scrim. The problem is that news organizations become complicit in their underhanded efforts to cut social program benefits by employing the benefit-cutters’ terminology.
Just after Christmas, for example, Politico achieved a multi-fecta in an article about disagreements between House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) over Medicaid and Medicare.
Reading from the top down, the article referred to “overhauling” the programs, to “reform,” “welfare and entitlement changes” and “policy modifications.” These are Republican terms for benefit cuts. There’s no excuse for journalists repeating them without defining them. But one has to drill pretty deeply into the Politico piece to find the first mention of benefit “cuts” (to paragraph 12, actually).
Other weasel words often found creeping into what purport to be objective reports about social programs are “reshape,” “revamp,” “modernize” and especially “fix.” As we’ve observed in the past, Republican plans for Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps and other such programs are “fixes” in the same sense that one “fixes” a cat or the Mafia “fixes” an informer.
via Los Angeles Times.
Related Reading:
We have been keeping track of Congress’ actions on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and health care.
December 21, 1968 – It’s not everyday that an Apollo launch photo actually gets a shot of the Moon into the frame. Appropriate on a mythic level, if a bit “on the nose” as they like to say in certain circles. Anyway, this is Apollo 8 roaring toward space for its famous Christmas-time mission around the Moon and back.
(NASA)