A Little Touch of Swerdloc for Christmas
Well, at this time of the rolling year, it is deemed meet and proper in certain circles to send out a Greeting of the Season; and so even though my fair wife has happily taken on the task of composing the obligatory Christmas Letter, which may have reached you by the conventional post, I find myself moved to endite yet this additional missive, to further commemorate the events of the past year and to wish you the Blessings of the Time of the Nativity.
Just about eleven months ago, I found myself celebrating my retirement from my employ with the Federal government, and was wined and dined (so to speak) at a luncheon in my honor, where various folk made speeches containing remembrances of the past thirty years or so, and I got to sing a little song in reflection. If you look above, you will find the family group arrayed, and a very somber spectacle we presented.
It’s a bit like the Last Supper, except not so jovial. That fellow on the far right, for instance, looks decidedly suspicious. My daughter Mary, on the far left (quite politically appropriate for her, actually), is at least honestly employed in capturing the whole thing on video. I, on the other hand, am just sitting on my backside and being perplexed.
It has been a quiet year since then, marked only by the plaintive sounds of waiting for OPM to get my retirement pay (pitiful though it may be) finalized, scrounging for a bit of consultative work, doing some freebie work anyway, and thinking that I should work harder on my left hand calluses so I can go out and play my guitar on the streets like an honest man. There is also a novel stewing in the backstreets of my brain, which if it comes to fruition may be something like the unholy union of Raymond Chandler and H.P. Lovecraft. My apologies in advance to both of those fine gentlemen.
So, leaving these disturbing reminiscences, we come to contemplate the cold and bleak landscape that the coming year—and 2012 beyond—present, and say: Humbug! I have been through five-count’em-five versions of Mr Dickens’s A Christmas Carol so far this month, audio and cinematic, and may have one or two more left in me; and my heart is with the Welsh coal-miners that Scrooge visited with the Ghost of Christmas Present, my forebears, singing their hearts out on a chilly Yuletide night, and to all the dark nights that may come, and all the naysayers of the spirit that exist within and without me, I echo Tiny Tim: “God bless us, every one!”
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and God keep you safe and well.
W.J. Smith
