A wonderful Christmas season included a number of small local gatherings including a couple at our house. The sun porch decorates nicely. Christmas day was at our house with Peter and Shirley as always.  Started out with breakfast of poached eggs over crab cakes with a cranberry salsa dressing, and mimosas. Much present opening then Jana joined us for dinner (prime rib).
Pete gave me a little GPS unit, a Garmin Geko 101, which I promptly upgraded to a Geko 201 because of a key feature called WAAS which increases accuracy to within 10 feet 95% of the time. I'll use it to make maps of our trails in Unity, and for GeoCaching. We want to make geocaches on our trails and hike other peoples trails looking for caches. The new bridge over Bacon Brook would be a good spot for a cache if it is still there after the recent two rounds of flooding. Big snowfalls followed by warm days created very high water. And unfortunately in the first round we were suffering from Basement Hubris, the pride that goeth before half a foot of water in your basement. So at 4 am I was outside shoveling channels in the slush. Round two involved the Shit Don't Flow Uphill principle, when the power went off at midnight and we had to get the generator cranked up to keep the septic pump going to prevent backup into the basement. At least it forced us to deal with too much stuff in the basement, and we've cleaned out a lot.
At the Sullivan's party (Jayne has more Xmas decorations than anyone else in North America) John played the newly released album that was recorded at the theater last summer. The album title has an interesting exegesis. The quote from the psalms that I got from Bob V and use on UnityMaine.org originally said "brethren" but I improved the wording to "brothers and sisters." The musicians (Rory Block, Maria Muldaur, Eric Bibb) had a real bonding Unity experience in the week they were together in the converted barn that is our theater; they saw that quote and called the album "Sisters and Brothers." The mp3 download is a cut from that CD.
The songs are rousing gospel/blues tunes, similar to those I put on a mix of spirituals for my sisters this year. True, I am the non-believer's non-believer; I don't even believe in believing. But the music is so satisfying; I refuse to be cut off from a musical heritage I've earned just because the miniscule and superficial area of the brain devoted to Silly Systems, the Cockamamie Cosmology Lobe, differs slightly from person to person. The feelings in the music are deeper and more universal than the religious references which may safely be ignored as accidental mythological framework.
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