I am reminded by Amanda Walker that today is DEC-20 Day — it’s the date, kids — causing me to recall times working at research labs that used DEC-20s as their shared workhorse machines. This DEC-20 brought me two cartoons, the first a Zippy glancingly related to Christmas, the second a Bizarro directly about Christmas in popular culture.
Archive for the ‘Events and occasions’ Category
Two DEC-20 cartoons
December 20, 2025Thanksgiving music
November 30, 2025🐅 🐅 🐅 tiger tiger tiger for the outgoing month of November; and 🎄 for the first Sunday in Advent, so the beginning of the religious Christmas season — focused on the Christ child — that ends on Epiphany, January 6th; and 🏴 St. Andrew’s Day, 11/30, the national day of Scotland, so break out the thistles; meanwhile, 🦃 the follow-up to (US) Thanksgiving continues, on what I like to think of as Black Sunday (in the Long Black Weekend: “She walks these days in a long black veil”)
At my house, the adventures in leftover Thanksgiving food — originally, soy sauce and black vinegar roasted chicken (10-12 pieces, mostly thigh meat) on a bed of japchae (crunchy veg on Korean glass noodles, thin noodles made from sweet potato starch) — continues; the chicken has come to an end, but the japchae made the base for a fantastic herbal soup that has so far provided two meals and will give me two more. All of this done with takeout, household staples, and a microwave. I do not cook — that’s long gone — but I am a demon assembler.
Like modern American Christmas, modern American Thanksgiving is an event celebrated with food, companionable gatherings, and pageantry, but Christmas also has tons of music, in a variety of genres. Which Thanksgiving largely lacks. A fact that led Laura Whitton Bonnett to post on Facebook on the day itself:
We were trying to find Thanksgiving music to enjoy during cooking.
LWB then offered a few suggestions for appropriate Thanksgiving music, taking the search into two genres; and I ventured into two more. Suggestions that are no longer of much use this year, so save this posting for next November.
Tomorrow x 4
November 21, 2025Tomorrow is 11/22; on my calendar this brings up a set of two deeply discordant anniversaries and the birthday of an admirable colleague and friend. And this year 11/22 is the date of Stanford’s preeminent sporting event, to add a note of passionate silliness to the whole business.
Legal greens
November 4, 2025🎈 election day in my country🎈 (the first Tuesday in November) — for which I re-play this Jim Benton cartoon:
(#1) From my 3/3/25 posting “Warnings”: it’s all the fault of the Cassandras; they should have made us believe them, they shouldn’t have let us not believe them
Medicine days 2
November 1, 2025🐇 🐇 🐇 rabbit rabbit rabbit to inaugurate November; it’s a beautiful bright fall day here in Palo Alto, the day after the costumes and candy of Halloween, and also The Day of the Dead, to honor those who have died before us
This posting is a continuation of yesterday’s “Medicine Day”, a list — an alarming inventory — of the medically significant conditions of my life, very roughly in chronological order. I admitted that the list was surely incomplete, and in fact I was driven to get up in the middle of the night to construct a second list, almost as big as the first.
But I will hold that recital of afflictions off for a bit, to entertain you with a note on one of my grand-child Opal’s favorite Halloween candies and one on yellow-orange marigolds for Mexican remembrances of the beloved dead.
Medicine days
October 31, 2025🐅 🐅 🐅 tiger tiger tiger for ultimate October; and of course that very odd couple, Halloween and (Protestant) Reformation Day (put on your best witch’s hat and nail some theses to the old church door!)
Musing over the oddities of my life this morning, I recalled a series of unusual medical conditions that suddenly turned up and then passed away: otoliths with (terrible) vertigo, Bell’s palsy, a (benign but quite notable) scrotal mass, that sort of thing. So I set out to list the medically significant conditions of my life, very roughly in chronological order.
Penultimate October
October 30, 2025💀 💀 💀 three days in October: Halloween Eve, Halloween, Day of the Dead — with today’s Bob cartoon for the second of these occasions; and then the Day of the Dead is also a significant day for me personally — my (Path to) Sobriety Day, the day I took my last drink, 5 years ago now
A World Postcard
October 21, 2025In my mail yesterday, 10/20, a World Postcard Day postcard from my old friend and Stanford colleague Ryan Tamares, mailed from him (in Mountain View CA, a few miles from my place) on 9/22, to go through the World Postcard Day site in College Station TX on 10/1 (the day itself) and then wend its way to me (whether by intention or misadventure) as if had come by surface mail from the place in the card’s picture, Vienne en Isère, France (note: not the much better known Vienne en Autriche / Vienna in Austria / Wien in Österreich).
I’ll put off the occasion and its sponsoring organization to an appendix to the main posting, which is about the card itself: the town pictured in it, the shop in that town pictured in it, and its source.
78
October 18, 2025Yes, it’s Saturday 10/18, and that means NO KINGS day, with people marching by the millions to celebrate democracy over autocracy and to rebel pointedly against Our Overlord Grabpussy and his army of thugs and grifters. Meanwhile, I celebrate a much more modest and personal occasion, from 10/16:
🎈 🎂 🎈 Larry Schourup’s 78th birthday. LS and I have been loving friends since 1970; see a longer exposition of our relationships in my 3/16/24 posting “The three Larrys”. And we both have early-fall birthdays, me on 9/6, him on 10/16. For me this year, see my 9/6/25 posting “Sloths, penguins, and Buddhist joy”, the Buddhist joy (zuiki in Japanese, sounds like Zwicky) being a sweet 85th birthday gift from LS.
I got Buddhist joy (Larry grew up in SoCal, now lives in Japan). Larry got phonograph records (I grew up in Pa. Dutch country, now live in NorCal). It’s a complicated relationship.