Daily Prompt

A Salute to 2016

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

First, the apologies. I am sorry that I have no preditioning talents, so I do not know what 2017 will bring. I can only hope that 2017 spares all of us any sadness that can not be understood, all pointless rage, or a further coarsening of attitudes into an blank-faced acceptance of hate.

I know that all of the above is not possible without work, and that all I can offer is some hope in my immediate neighborhood, which includes this website right here.

When I started this website in December 2013, no one on this planet was waiting to read what I had to write about anything at all. No one was holding their breath.

Thank you to more than 25,000 visitors to this website in 2016. You tallied up 43,000-plus visits this year, which strikes me as 42,999 more than I understand.
Read More

‘A Renewal’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

To have love, one must give love; to give love, one must have it to give. That may be life’s deepest catch-22—any of those logical situations whose suppositions exist only to support the logic that requires them. Love is illogical, or at least it has its own logic.

The moment love is not pursued, there it is; advice to a young lover often follows that logic. “When you stop looking for it or needing it, you will find love.” (It only took about three decades of hearing that for it to sink in for me.)
Read More

The Original Yule Log Is Back!

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The New York City television station WPIX first broadcast its yule log “show” on Christmas Eve 1966, fifty years ago tonight.

It was a brilliant idea that the president of WPIX, Fred Thrower, had that year: give New York City’s many apartment dwellers an old-timey Christmas fireplace like the one they had never had for the night on their virtual hearth, the television. The station tossed out several thousand dollars worth of advertising in order to air two continuous hours of a fire burning in a fireplace. The advertisers may have wound up the ones gnashing their teeth, though, as a few hours of a burning log in a fireplace won the city’s ratings for the night. It was an idea that was instantly loved.

Since 1969, the original recording had been believed to be lost. WPIX announced this month that the original tape was found this year, was digitally restored, and will be aired from 11:00 p.m. till Midnight Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The above pretty much describes the TV viewing in my house on Christmas Eve when I was 10 or so.
Read More