Today in History: Dec. 23

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

No one grumbles among the oyster clans,
And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer.
Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want
Heaven to be, and God to come, again.
There is no end to our grumbling; we want
Comfortable earth and sumptuous Heaven.
But the heron standing on one leg in the bog
Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.—Robert Bly, “Wanting Sumptuous Heavens

Robert Bly is 90 today.

A film, Robert Bly: A Thousand Years of Joy, was released in 2015 and is appearing on PBS stations:
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O? Christmas Tree? O, Christmas Tree!

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

How (not) to cut down your own Christmas tree.

* * * *
I am sitting in my girlfriend’s office looking at her office Christmas tree. It is white, snow white, like a snowman in a Rankin/Bass claymation cartoon. We will be trimming it in a few moments.

I think that tree trimming was my least favorite type of trimming when I was young. I still lack the eye necessary for decorating a tree correctly; in fact, I believe that almost every tree I have attempted to decorate has been quietly fixed upon my leaving.

(Two things transpired within moments of me writing the above: 1. My girlfriend credited me with expanding her notions of tree decoration—she said, “You’re the first person I’ve seen who does not put all the decorations on the ends of the branches,” which is true, I sometimes place them on the middle or sometimes closer to the trunk; and 2. We found that I had overloaded one section with the same color ornament and we needed to correct this.)
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Today in History: Dec. 22

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Last evening I walked over beyond Fifth Avenue and called at the residence of Edward H. Johnson, vice-president of Edison’s electric company. There, at the rear of the beautiful parlors, was a large Christmas tree, presenting a most picturesque and uncanny aspect. It was brilliantly lighted with many colored globes about as large as an English walnut and was turning some six times a minute on a little pine box. There were eighty lights in all encased in these dainty glass eggs, and about equally divided between white, red and blue. As the tree turned, the colors alternated, all the lamps going out and being relit at every revolution. The result was a continuous twinkling of dancing colors, red, white and blue, all evening.—William Augustus Croffut, Detroit Post and Tribune, December 1882

Just three years after Thomas Edison and his team had successfully invented a method for manufacturing electric lights, a Vice President for his company, Edward Johnson, ordered a string of lights for the Christmas tree in his home.

The New York City newspapers of the time, accustomed to the Edison Company’s frequent press release promises that were not always followed by successes, did not send any reporters to visit Mr. Johnson’s holiday display. A reporter for the Detroit Post and Tribune, William Croffut, did pay a visit. (Croffut was important to Edison: he is the writer who is credited with calling Edison the “Wizard of Menlo Park,” which is where Edison’s lab was located.)

The tree, festooned with eighty bulbs and rotating on a platform powered by an electric motor, is seen above, in a photo from December 25 of that year.
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