Merry Christmas 2025!

Christmas lights through the front door. Christmas Day, 2025.

“Oh my! I don’t usually have more than one, but it is the holidays….” [cue hysterical laughter]

Merry Christmas, y’all! I wish you all the meaning of the day. For the Catholics, and the similarly aligned, we look forward to the 12 Days of Christmas beginning today. To our fellow Christians, we celebrate fraternally, the incarnation of God, the Creator of the Universe. To the rest of America and those who choose to throw in with us, this represents a time vaguely associated with the Solstice that causes the Northern Hemisphere to contemplate the brightening of days, the eventual advent of spring, and a time where we think about love of our fellow humans, the idea we may achieve peace on Earth, and that individuals will find the emotional connection we all seek. (I’m sorry, Southern Hemisphere. I haven’t got anything for you on this one. The days will grow shorter. The warmth will fade away. And in your coldest times you will not have the bright spot of Christmas to look forward to. I’m feeling your pain.)

Our personal Christmas has been especially meaningful to me. My best friend in the choir, a bass like me, died 18 days ago. An ordained priest who left the clergy to pursue a ‘worldly life’, he never stopped being what priests aspire to be (if they are true priests): the lowly shepherds who gather the sheep who stray and return them to the fold. I suppose he never will be venerated, beatified, or sanctified, but he established a spiritual North Star for me, and his death so close to Christmas has rocked me emotionally and spiritually. That I say this day’s mass proved especially moving to me makes me think that the last time I felt this way occurred in 2019 exactly two months after my mother died (and I retired). It’s funny how we imbue meaning into the same annual ritual liturgy.

I approach my faith through music and musical ministry. Thus, the Midnight Mass this year meant I dwelt in the choir loft yet again despite thinking, “How much longer can I stay up until 2 or 3 a.m.?” I reference my comment to my recently departed friend from the bass section who last year at 84 found it a requirement to be in the loft on Christmas Eve, preparing for the first hour of the birth of Jesus. He could not stand for more than 10-15 minutes. He exerted himself to climb the steps to the top riser where the basses reside. Contrary to offering complaint, he climbed with a smile on his face. I kept thinking about him, about my slight musical retreat from participating in what my vocal gift allows me to do, and about how this night above most others enriches the spiritual experience for those who attend but Christmas and Easter.

We presented 45 minutes of music from a brass quintet (plus tympani), two organists using our CB Fisk Opus 147 pipe organ, and the two dozen voices of our choir. I invite you to follow that link to the page describing the organ. It inferentially mentions our cathedral space which remains one of the largest Roman Catholic cathedrals in America, providing space for about 2,000 worshippers.

Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, Raleigh, NC, preparing for Midnight Mass 2025. Two transepts exist to both sides of the altar area. The choir loft, foreground, shows the camera which will transmit a YouTube livestream, the seats and stands for the brass quintet, and is taken from the top riser where the basses sit. Christmas Day 2025.

Not unusually at Christmas, parishioners packed our cathedral.

Here’s a not-unusual detail for folks like me:

Spend Christmas Eve morning planning the logistics for the next 48 hours.
Align meal times with reality
Take a nap for 1-2 hours sometime during the 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. timeframe
Shower a second time…perform necessary personal grooming functions
Continue day to its normal concluding time (for seniors), but have dinner just a bit later
About the time one would prepare for bed, prepare to go to church instead
Get to church at 10:45 p.m.
Participate in pre-mass musical program from 11:15-midnight
Support the mass with musical ministray/leadership
When mass ends at 1:30 a.m., engage in social chat, drive home
Arriving home about 2 a.m. or later, and realizing you are far too jazzed to go to sleep, crack a bottle of “Christmas cheer” and calm in the alcoholic-existentialist manner until approximately 3:30 a.m.
Go to bed
Wake on Christmas Day about 8:30-9:00 a.m. Absolutely beat, and with no more than 6.5 hours’ sleep (usually more like 5.0), stumble through a few hours before saying, “Screw it, I’m having a beer, dear.”

There you have it: a raw, day-after download of what this (and many other) Christmas has meant to me. I wish you and yours the merriest of the day. Here on the east coast of the United States, about eight hours remain on Christmas Day. I hope however many you have (or had), they will be/were meaningful.

three coins

perhaps a three-week hiatus demands a post about Three

Every morning after I’ve got pants and shoes on, I grab “stuff for my pockets” which varies depending on whether I anticipate going out and needing a wallet. Sometimes I don’t think I’ll need American coinage either, but I always grab a lip balm stick and three coins:

Top to bottom: Eisenhower dollar, Mary Queen of the Universe, and a guardian angel coin. Oblique angle, right, shows the etching better. December 2025.

This ritual, this grabbing of physical reminders, has existed from before the morning prayer time I started recently. Because I am who I am, I consider the smallest coin first. For a period of time when people held postal mail in higher regard than now, and the Internet hadn’t become the ubiquitous realm where we encounter one another, I received a regular marketing mailer from some religious publishing house. Or maybe it was a charity looking for donors. Regardless, every mailer had affixed to its mail-in card a cheap metal coin with an angel embossed on it. “This is your Guardian Angel! Take this gift as a token of our appreciation!” the card said. And one day when yet another of these things showed up, I did. I don’t pretend to understand the exact nature of a guardian angel, but I can say with certainty there have been many times when something bad should have happened to me or when I for some reason refrained from saying something incredibly stupid, and I think a higher power might have influenced things. The coin reminds me there are forces greater than me at play in the universe, and I would do well to give them a few seconds each day to stop and appreciate them.

I picked up the middle coin in February 2013 when we visited Kissimmee, FL, spur-of-the-moment. I had a suddenly empty work calendar in my new line as contract-professional-for-hire, and Florida promised to be warmer than Raleigh. In most ways that count, it remains one of the two best times I’ve had in my half dozen or so visits. Due to the sudden nature of it, I planned little. We just schlepped around and on our final day discovered The Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe:

Interior, shrine to Mary, Queen of the Universe. Kissimmee, FL. February 2013.

Moved, I sought a small reminder of my experience there; hence the coin. In Roman Catholicism, the Marian tradition provides an important link for humans with God. As Mother of the Son of Man, God Incarnate, Mary becomes our symbolic mother just as Jesus is our brother. Thus our reverence for our mother, just as we revere our earthly mothers (hopefully). The coin reminds me of this link, of the powerful Family of God of which I am a wayward son, and of my brother-and-God, Jesus. Powerful stuff…and all in a few seconds!

My final coin (because it’s biggest) reminds of something far less religious, but no less meaningful. My father had an eclectic collection of coins he kept in a small metal box shaped and decorated as a 1940’s suitcase complete with travel stickers on it. He popped the occasional coin into it which he thought would be “worth something someday” or just out of curiosity. The U.S. Mint first struck an Eisenhower dollar in 1971 which likely explains why my father set this one aside. It also happened to be the first dollar coin minted since 1935. To me, however, it stands in for my father. I grab that coin and think about the oddity of putting 15-20 coins in a little kid’s bank and then doing nothing with it: he never took them out and looked at them, he never spoke about them, nothing. Only when he allowed my brother and me to dig around in his chest of drawers would we get to see what this little metal box held. In a larger sense, I see that profile of a bald president and think about my father in his final 20 years. I say a little prayer that he has found peace in the afterlife, a peace which eluded him here.

These few seconds…the little things we do which ground us.

Hold-outs

I seem to be on a leaf and garden kick. Though two short cold snaps have sent 99% of the plants into dormancy (unless they’re evergreen), a few brave stalwarts instead focus on the above-average warm weather to pop one last bloom out. November 3-9 ranged 65-75F with just a dash of rain the final two days. And then the 12th through 16th blessed us with sunny days of 64-73F. Look at these little troupers:

The blue mistflower who refused to die. All of its nearby compatriots are brown. Interestingly, the broad leaf or two at the top are from a purple coneflower, also still green. November 2025.

Another purple coneflower with living on its mind. All of the originals have gone to see on the right, but no matter. Let’s make more! A nascent bloom can be seen to its immediate left (the little white spiky one). November 2025.

Black-eyed Susan: you can see dead plant everywhere but it decided to come up again when the weather warranted. November 2025.

I keep falling for you

I took a walk this morning as the newly risen sun filtered through the tops of trees. The ethereal lighting isn’t quite captured here, sadly. Nice to see the natives doing well.

American beech, a.k.a., Carolina beech. November 2025.

White oak…maybe…looks different than our white oak. November 2025.

Falling, indeed

Unlike most years here in central North Carolina, temperatures have been colder than normal and our first hard frost occurred this morning. The above photo from November 24th last year, shows the glory of our lone non-native tree to survive The Culling, a.k.a., the landscaping project of 2024-25. This year it still retains red leaves but they are dulling. Dogwood, which in years past held onto their dusky maroon-colored leaves, now stand bare, attesting to the weather with a solitary leaf here and there. Plants closer to the ground now are yellowing and soon will follow the trees.

On the personal front, fall seems an apt term the past two years. At this time last year we were winning our battle against Covid, entering our third week in its grip. This year a Covid-like virus laid me low all of October 26th through November 2nd, and its nasty little cousin showed up yesterday, an intestinal thing. (“Detestinal” thing?)

Dry, sunny weather accompanies these low temperatures, providing a yin to the biting yang of it. Our bird world changes almost overnight: the year-rounders come back to the feeders to start bulking up, others disappear, and soon birds of prey will become more prominent on their leafless perches. Last week a raven lingered in front of the house, a surprising sight.

This year brought an unusual amount of treework in our near neighborhood. Trees and large limbs fell frequently during unusually rainy weather this summer. Fearful homeowners culled trees simply because they stood near the owners’ houses. A red oak ‘shared’ with our neighbor—it has managed to grow across the property line—dropped a limb the size of a small tree onto the neighbor’s driveway in a spot which had held a car until a week or two before the limb fell. Our good friends around the corner were not so lucky, losing a vehicle when a limb fell on a minivan about six weeks ago.

NC weather continues its wonderfully contrarian ways, at least to born, bred, and experienced Northerners (a.k.a. “Yankees!” as the Southern epithet is uttered). Temperatures promise to level out and this coming weekend will rise as high as 76. Any day after Halloween which promises temperatures in the 70’s (let alone the 60’s) seems to be a gift, even after living here nearly 20 years. And the most anticipated weather event for the coming months? The knowledge that someday in our near, winter-weary future, a singular weather pattern will convince a 70+ degree day to appear in late December or January. Always a welcome respite, even if its appearance always remains a cameo.

In milder years (2021), our trees still held green leaves on Nov 10th, let alone yellow. November 2021.

Rüdesheim

River cruising resembles train travel: you journey from Here to There but don’t have to do the driving yourself. One thus experiences the journey. (Flying lacks this: one experiences only the point of departure and the destination. The experience of travel disappears, lost in abstract non-motion at 30,000+ feet.) Our afternoon cruising capped our morning in Speyer, just right for my still-recovering wife. Once moored at Rüdesheim, we chatted with the local ducks and enjoyed fine beverages. For me, that included this delightful Schwarzbier from Köstritzer.

Speyer,…

…or Spires if you want the English name, presented a much-needed comfort level after the unanticipated end to our “Strasbourg Buildup” of expectations. Only 50,000 folks live in this city on the west bank of the Rhine. Yes, we now saw Germany on both sides of the Rhine. Midway through the night’s cruise to Speyer our ship had passed the point where the pentagonal border of France had turned to the northwest and left the Rhine behind. For the first time since Basel, we docked on the west bank of the river. We had the worst guide of the trip there, but a lovely time nonetheless—we simply ignored him and tried to stay within shouting distance of the group. (“Worst guide ever” equates to having him leave a third of our group at a crosswalk where the light had turned against us. He continued with the tour, and then admonished us when we saw a break in the traffic, crossed against the light, and ran to keep up with his idea of pacing a tour!)

Speyer’s cathedral dominated the city both in its placement on the edge of the bluff overlooking the river, and simply because its size completely outstripped any other building around it. I need two photographs to show all of it:

Speyer Cathedral, east end, with extensive renovations occurring. August 2025.

Speyer Cathedral, west end. I normally avoid wide-angle shots on buildings like this, but it proved necessary. The abutment on the right edge is visible in the previous photo behind the tree on the left. August 2025.

Parishioners built the cathedral in several distinct phases. Though our guide dryly and boringly explained it to us, I concentrated on photographs to his exclusion. I therefore can’t give you much history about the building’s timeline. I do remember that like all “touristy” cathedrals you will ever see, this one was the biggest in some category or other—I think “biggest at the time it was built.” If I remember correctly, the middle part of the building (seen in the second photograph) predated either end. Part of it had to be rebuilt after WWII, also. Look on the tower in the second photograph and you’ll see stones laid much more hodge-podge on the lower right of it. The rest gets a more uniform, geometric treatment.

Our guide left us no time to go inside the church. Instead, he took us into the center of the city, a small area of just a few blocks which extend westward from the church. As we turned westward from the cathedral, he noted (for our safety) an oddity I’ve not seen anywhere but Speyer: a city street routed through the plaza, marked only by regularly spaced concrete posts. It struck me simultaneously as beautifully quaint and dangerous.

Speyer cathedral throws a shadow on the historical building across the plaza from it. In the foreground runs a city street, marked by the posts visible in front of the building. I don’t remember if the lighter paving stones represent ‘sidewalk’ or not, but I think ‘not’ is the operative word. I believe the building pictured served at one time as quarters for the bishop, but now might be a private residence. Speyer, Germany, August 2025.

Our guided trip into town proved blessedly short, after which we broke free and wandered at will. We quickly encountered a beautiful Orthodox church…I think.

As far as we could get into this beautiful sanctuary—a locked glass door prevented entry but facilitated photography. Speyer, Germany, August 2025.

We struck off from the main street through the city center and found little plazas tucked behind several other buildings. One hid a strikingly designed school of drama, if I read the German correctly. The streets off of the main drag lived up to my fantasies of narrow, old, and quaint. A sign informed us that many of these buildings were associated with the Jewish community. Speyer and the nearby cities of Worms and Mainz have been recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Near the photo on the right (below) we passed an old synagogue.

Yes, they allow cars down this street. Note center-of-street gutter. Speyer, Germany, August 2025.

It’s true, all streets curved to the left! (Unless you turn around.) Speyer, Germany, August 2020.

Walking back toward the cathedral to meet up with our group for the walk back to our buses, we finally had time to enter the cathedral. We made a good decision to allow time for that.

Much older than other churches we encountered on our trip, Speyer’s looks much smaller in this photo than it is. This is due to the large supporting columns which frame this shot. Speyer Cathedral, August 2025.

Speyer’s cathedral offered a delightful blend of modern furnishings contrasting with the centuries old structure. The minimalist lines of its furnishings complement the austerity of the stonework. It had several altars. I surmised different ones get used depending on the size of the congregation at that particular service. Perhaps at least one stands there for historical reasons. The most modern one sits far forward. The candles flanking it, both those on stands and the votives to the side, were displayed on modern metalwork which evoke the baroque in a minimalist way. The bishop’s chair sat halfway back in the sanctuary (altar area), to the right in the photo below. The next photo gives a sense of the depth of the sanctuary/chancel.

The first altar of the Speyer Cathedral. Note the organ in background. Speyer Cathedral, August 2025.

Bishop’s chair and back portion of the sanctuary. Speyer Cathedral, August 2025.

Detail of the suspended cross just rear of the “bishop’s altar” in the middle of the chancel. August 2025.

When looking at the photo above, you’ll remember the bishop’s chair is to the right of the first altar. In the lower right corner, note the raised floor. This is for the second altar. Light shone into the cathedral from many angles. At the top of the photo is the lowest tip of a suspended cross, caught in sunlight which casts a shadow on the back wall. See detail, left.

Our several tour groups boarded buses for a short trip to Worms where the good ship Hlin had tied up after getting a head start on the afternoon voyage to Rüdesheim. We couldn’t seem to take enough photos as the historical buildings glided past us. That evening we stayed aboard. Others had purchased one of two different dinner packages (one at a fort high atop an overlooking bluff).

From the starboard side, first you photograph the building on the right. Then you see the next one to the left…then its vineyards…then the little red stone building down by the railroad tracks which run along the Rhine. Then there’s another building…it never ends. And you’re sitting in the lounge where the next cool beverage is only steps away. August 2025.

I need a new song…

Blue-eyed grass and blue mistflower. October 2025.

With all apologies to Huey Lewis & and The News, I need a new song. Its lyrics will borrow from the Rolling Stones: “You can’t always do what you want,….but if you try sometimes, you just might find—you do what you need.” Yeah. That. We were told once to pay attention to our Inner Child, and I’ve done that far, far too much in my life. That little pouty bastard gets everything he wants to my usual detriment. I’m going to start listening to my Inner Parent. Maybe I’ll graduate to Inner Adult. (transactional analysis—I can’t escape the cultural references.)

Anyway, it’s fall y’all. The dusky red of the dogwood illumines in direct sunlight and dances a colored jig with the wind-bestirred poplar leaves behind them.

Celebration thwarted: Strasbourg, Kehl, and true love

I planned our cruise on the Rhine River to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary, and redeem the ruination of our 25th. I purposefully reserved a cruise which docked at Strasbourg on our anniversary, looking forward to all it promised. The Year 2020 had teamed up with my back to scuttle our (limited) plans for our 25th. As that day dawned, I experienced a spasm in my back which necessitated taking an emergency muscle relaxant I keep on hand for these occasional problems. A fine dinner which we had planned to cook for each other became a take-out pizza, and for my wife, some wine. I crawled into bed early. Therefore, 2025 promised to atone for all of that. The pandemic had subsided, we had our health, and, well, what could go wrong? The trip had far exceeded our expectations for four days.

The day promised much: Strasbourg with its cathedral and its amazing clock where I planned to walk inside of it and marvel. Then my wife croaked from bed, “I don’t feel well.” We traded our anniversary cards, and she dragged herself out to breakfast. I chose to forego the group tour of Strasbourg on the French side of the river. “I can catch the afternoon shuttle back into the city,” I told myself. “At least I can see the cathedral and that famous clock.” I tucked my wife into a deck chaise to soak up some sunshine and spent a few minutes observing the begging swans and a heron across the river…

Swan at Kehl’s riverfront park. August 2025.

Finally I decided to go wandering. I stopped first to admire the mooring strategy of our ship, the Hlin, wondering still why the woman at the guest services desk couldn’t explain to me why our ship’s bow pointed southward when we were cruising northward. Later I learned from our “hotel manager” that the captain turns the ship around when docking so that the bow points upstream whenever the river runs high and the current proves strong.

The good ship *Hlin* pointing south as I photographed it looking to the north. Note the pedestrian bridge supports in the background. They figure into my afternoon adventure. August 2025.

I watched river ships carrying freight along the Rhine. Gases, coal, cars, and livestock all sailed past me. As I walked south, the river to my right and the park to my left, I saw a strange tree not far ahead. It proved to be a manmade thing, demonstrating the Germans’ ingenuity while reinforcing stereotypes about their precision and exactitude. The ‘tree’ looked real enough, and the whimsy of opening a neighborhood for sociable birds seemed admirable, but I couldn’t help noticing how the houses spiraled around the trunk in a near-perfect corkscrew. Other pedestrians paid it no mind, apparently inured to its presence.

I reversed course and headed north. The children’s waterpark to my left had become a bit too boisterous for me.

Bird treehouse. Kehl, Germany, August 2025.

I soon encountered a small marker in the ground, its painted message cracked from the sun’s rays and the weather, modestly announced, “Biblischer Garten/Jardin bibliqu” the remainder of the French title cut off by the sign’s erosion. I intuited it announced a Bible Garden and intrigued, set off on the graveled path. I learned at the end of the path its plan had been for residents to approach the river from land not vice versa; I had walked it backward. It made little difference. Each stop along the path—there were 17—announced an important aspect of the Judeo-Christian Bible, and not entirely the ones I expected. Yes, The Resurrection received a marker, and so too Pentecost but The Field of the Dead? And some I didn’t understand until I could translate them. (I didn’t think to use my smartphone.) Here are a few:

Das Totenfeld / Les ossements desséchés or in English, The Fields of the Dead. Biblischer Garten, Kehl, Germany, August 2025.

I especially like how The Last Supper rose up out of the shadows in my photo and how wheat had been planted in support of the marker.

Das Letzte Abendmahl / La Sainte Cène i.e., The Last Supper rising out of a field of wheat. Biblischer Garten, Kehl, Germany, August 2025.

Crossing the Red Sea, Biblischer Garten, Kehl, Germany. August 2025.

The marker for Paradise evoked humankind’s ignorance of what is to come: it consisted only of a shiny cylinder rising out of a simple terra cotta marker similar to the others. A separate, hexagonal marker had the names of six different churches on it of varying denominations. I realized they had paid for the installation and marveled how such a thing could be placed in what seemed to be a public park, given the “separation of church and state” we have in America.

I returned to the Hlin and my wife, took her to lunch on board, and then tucked her into bed because she felt even worse than before. For my part, I planned to catch the 2 p.m. shuttle to Strasbourg. One learns to be prompt on board, so I gathered in the ‘lobby’ of the ship at 1:55 to walk with the other guests to the bus which we had been told would take 15 minutes. Remember that pedestrian bridge in the background of the photo above? That was the first bridge. The bus would be parked at the next bridge downriver. When I arrived at the gathering point, I surmised something might be amiss when I found myself alone with the guest services representative. She informed me the bus left at 2 p.m., not the group of guests walking to it. “But you still might be able to make it,” said the chipper (and overly optimistic) young lady. Google Maps tells me the hike should take twelve minutes; I had five. The distance (900 meters) equates to more than a half mile. I tried, really I did, but I simply can’t walk six miles per hour, and at my age and physical shape running isn’t an option. I missed the bus. I watched it/them drive across the bridge when I still needed about two more minutes.

Dejected, I attempted to see the upside. Yes, I had just force-marched myself through 92+ degree weather (Fahrenheit), but my wife might appreciate some medicines, right? And the steward for our deck had mentioned a pharmacy very close to the ship. I walked toward the center of Kehl. Along the way, I encountered a very, very strange sign:

Yes, just STOP. I do not think Beethoven would approve. Kehl, Germany, August 2025.

I located the pharmacy. Kehl is charmingly small (38,000), similar to so many small cities in America. Its downtown proved easily negotiable, and my first encounter with a European pharmacy enlightening. The ability to get a physician’s assistant-grade consult from the clerk impressed me. I returned with aspirin and throat lozenges. As I walked back to the ship, not sure exactly where I needed to go, I realized I would need to drop off the meds, turn around, and immediately march my way back across the park again to catch the final bus shuttle at 3 p.m. My first exercise session in mid-90’s weather had caused my shirt to stick to my back and chest. I realized some things are not to be. My wife and I would need to return, together, to experience Strasbourg as we had intended. Meds delivered, I grabbed my tablet, retired to the lounge for my first beer, and fired up an eBook. Later, the setting sun seemed to say, “You did alright today, sir.”

Category: photography