Advent and Prep

We're clearly entering the season of Advent. Today, I found this from St. Casserole -- a lovely link to an artist's studio, complete with a display of Advent stoles. There is one stole that features the Jesse Tree and designer Jenny Gallo of the Carrot Top Studio wrote briefly about the use of the Jesse Tree tradition as an educational tool.

The author of Dewey's Treehouse takes her Advent preparation very seriously as well. Her first post this year was about finding the basis for a Jesse Tree calendar via the Mennonite Central Committee. Then today's lengthier entry discussed how she'd embellished it for her own family's celebration.

Then I was over looking at Stainless Steel Droppings and Carl V. has posted a lovely Christmas idea. I already have two Christmas stories to share by way of participation.

But I think today Diaphanous published the best entry with regard to the spirit of the season. She starts out describing herself as a little grumpy, but then you get to the part about the package for the little girl and your heart just melts. What nice people there are in this world!

I'm not that nice at the moment. I have work to my eyebrows and I did nothing on Black Friday by way of seasonal preparation. I have a book talk tomorrow night and I figured on posting about the title we're discussing as a casual addition to my list for the From The Stacks Challenge. Then I have to still write up the second title on my list for that challenge (A Splendor of Letters but you should know that Nicholas Basbanes just really irritated me!) I want to get both of those posted by the weekend because the first Sunday of Advent is December 3. My private tradition in past years has always been to start the new year's reading journal in conjunction with the beginning of Advent so I want to be ready to start the third title on my list - The Battle for Middle Earth by Episcopal priest and preacher, Fleming Rutledge. It's absolutely appropriate to the season and it will take me the whole time frame of Advent.

Stay well, folks. (Back on Friday). Oops, forgot something. For those of you who enjoyed the picture of the ships a day or two ago, the artist's name is Rob Gonsalves. Didi of Minute Marginalia who has a great store of knowledge about picture books, emailed to let me know that he has two books of similar pictures (a) Imagine A Day and (b) Imagine a Night. Perhaps someone out there needs an idea for a Christmas gift....