Poet's Corner: Model-Train Display at Christmas in a Shopping Mall Food Court by James Arthur

I was searching for a Christmas poem and almost didn't read this because the title put me off, but it is a rather nice poem, I think and the new-to-me poet happens to live here in Baltimore.

Model-Train Display at Christmas in a Shopping Mall Food Court by James Arthur

These kids watching so intently
on every side of the display
must love the feeling of being gigantic:
of having a giant’s power
over this little world of snow, where buttons
lift and lower
the railway’s crossing gate, or switch the track,
or make the bent wire topped with a toy helicopter
turn and turn
like a sped-up sunflower. A steam engine
draws coal tender, passenger cars, and a gleaming caboose
out from the mountain tunnel,
through a forest of spruce and pine, over the trestle bridge,
to come down near the old silver mine.

Maybe all Christmases
are haunted by Christmases long gone:
old songs, old customs, people who loved you
and who’ve died. Within a family
sometimes even the smallest disagreements
can turn, and grow unkind.
( Read more... )

Fannish 50: 2024: Everything is Murder edition: #44: Advent calendars

I am pushing hard to get to the finish line by the end of December!!

I like Advent calendars and advent calendar-themed challenges.

Fic

Two multi-fandom comms I am participating in this month which have daily prompts and an advent calendar type graphic are.

1. adventdrabbles. There is a tree. The prompts are images (with text descriptor).
2. fffc has a Winter Calendar of text prompts

To make it murder, I had Sherlock gifted an anonymous advent calendar. Those who know me can imagine who this is from and what dark things it might contain. This is for drabblezone prompt 426: see if I care.

Title: Arrival of an advent calendar
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Rating: Gen
Length: 300
Characters: John, Sherlock, Mrs. Hudson
Summary: Just prior to John's temporary absence from 221B, Sherlock receives an interesting anonymous gift.

( Read more... )

Crafting

Also inspired by a video on the Treasure Books Youtube channel, I made an advent calendar for bethctg. This is Super Secret Craft Project #2 and she's going through it now. I used one of Minor's old binders from school and covered it and trimmed it. I made most of the envelopes and some of the things inside (little notebooks, bookmarks, Xmas tags) but a lot of the things inside are stickers collected from various places and bought on etsy. There are big envelopes for the first day, the last day (Xmas day) and yesterday (Jin's birthday because my friend is Jin-biased). So the themes were Silver and Gold (Jin and Xmas), Mocha and Ink (chocolate/coffee and books) and I tried to include a representative of each of the four categories in each day.



Links

I haven't gotten very far but luvbarryfefe posted this and I like it. It's personal care (deep breaths, drink water, etc) or social (share a recipe) tasks to do every day of December. Advent of Joy.

https://adventofjoy.com/

( The list )