The Christmas spirit, amid frustration

Grannie Annie and the old guy took a leisurely drive through our fair city to enjoy people’s efforts at decorating for Christmas. It seems that there are more festive colored lights and displays than ever before. A jewel to be admired is Santa Claus Lane a far-sighted legacy of Norma Strunk aided by local sponsors. The festive light poles along Norris Avenue add to municipal pride in our City.

The Nativity scene put together by the Peace Lutheran Church was wonderful. Complete with live camels, horses, sheep, goats, a lama and even a mama cow with baby calf all speak to our western heritage. Then the Roman chariot with live actors dressed as the Centenarians that Mary and Joseph knew at the time of the Blessed Birth add to the realistic background. The stable where our Savior was born helped represent the Christmas that we all celebrate. The large inn with it “No Vacancy Sign” added to our understanding of the great miracle. All so very well done.

Then how about a lighted Christmas Parade on a beautiful night Saturday night? It all just added to the spirit of joy which is the season we all love!

You have to hand it to those people that rigged our November presidential election. It was a huge effort and sadly looks like they might have achieved their aim. Pushing the fiction that the pandemic would make in-person voting a super spreader event they enabled the creating of huge numbers of mail in ballots with little or no means of tying legal voters to those ballots. It had to have been a herculean effort.

Using a computer software system of questionable background and little oversight to count the ballots received makes it hard to trace. Scratching the local precinct counting stations and combining them together in large arenas and then keeping legal poll watchers away worked to help cover up any malfeasance. Of course, a gift of over $300 million+ from Jeff Bezos helped grease the skids to skew the results so their favored candidate is currently being projected the winner. A myriad of whistle blowers that have come forward to object but time is running short to correct the sordid effort. The main news sources helped where they could ignoring the truth as much as possible.

All the above is what I have picked up on my favorite TV channel. It will be mighty interesting to watch to see if the alleged fraud can be proven in the short time before the electoral votes are registered. Sadly it is current politics in action and why we common folk get frustrated with what is happening on the national level. In the end what will be will be and we will have four years to live with the result either way it falls.

Again I am so happy that we didn’t elect to retire in California when it came time to depart the Air Force. That state was on the list that we considered to moving having been stationed near Merced and having a good experience living in that area. The current arbitrary dictates of nearly all citizens being locked down in their homes for the duration, the destruction of small businesses and resulting high unemployment rates would now be tough to stomach. Then not having in-class public school instruction tops off the inconvenience. I personally suspect that there will soon be mass rebellion by the Californians and the whole state will be in turmoil.

Our own Nebraska governor Ricketts was on national TV this weekend telling of his faith in his own citizen’s ability to live in what we see is the most reasonable practices of taking precautions for avoiding contacting the COVID 19 disease. I so much more approve Governor Ricketts approach to life as opposed to what Governor Newsome is doing in California and a long list of other states dictating similar measures.

Recently the Gazette published a letter to the editor from a Stella Taylor from Buffalo, Missouri. Stella happens to be a distant cousin and has earned a reputation of being the well-loved matriarch of our clan. Her point is that she chooses to not live in fear being cooped up in her house wearing a mask at all times, staying away from friends and just being lonely and miserable. I agree it is our choice and appreciate Governor Ricketts helping make it so in our fair state.

I noted an ad in the Gazette to journey north of Arapahoe (?) and cut your own Christmas tree. Talk about fresh! Years ago living in Northern Michigan, courtesy of Uncle Sam, my family did the same. We found the perfect tree sticking out of deep snow. We sawed it off and carried it back to our on base home atop our Volkswagen. A word of caution and that is those hand cut trees grow in height when you try to take it in your front door. Memories of wonderful smells as it thawed as my young family happily decorated.

Then we visited neighbor Gordy, one of my pilots, who had gone out and done the same. The only problem was that Gordy misjudged the height and his tree was about three feet too tall to fit in their front room. No problem Gordy just sawed off the top and stood it up.

It looked a bit odd to see that blunt top brushing up against their ceiling and all the gaily decorated extra fullness below.

For sure he made it fit and was good for lots of laughs with his friends. All in the happy spirit of Christmas.

That is how I saw it.

Dick Trail