I read The Catcher in the Rye when I was 14 and that was the perfect age to read that book.  For everyone I went to high school with, life was perfect!  No problems, no concerns.  My life on the other hand always felt like hell.  OK, I’m exaggerating, but a guy like Holden made me feel like there was someone else out there who felt as I did, that the teenage world was full of phonies and people I generally didn’t like.

I read the book when I was 25 or so and I couldn’t get over what a sniveling snot Holden was.

But now I’m a bit older and I see Holden for what a he is.  Just a confused young man who took a sojourn around New York for a few days.

Today I had 45 minutes in New York, unfettered.  Wasn’t meeting anyone, wasn’t in a hurry, just like Holden.  So I walked around and something hit me.  Holden would have been much better off with a camera in his hand.  Life through the camera lens is a good one, I think:

Why would I ever leave the house without my camera?  If I did, I would have missed this lovely shot:

(Real dog.  Not stuffed.)

Winter is upon us, as is the Christmas season.  It is the end of a long four month stretch of work that frankly left me exhausted.  Too tired to think straight sometimes, sometimes forgetting what day of the week it was.  So, I decided to go to a friend’s house and relax.  I mean I didn’t really relax.  She has two children, but it was truly, truly exactly what I needed.  Nothing puts things into perspective like holding a baby and having him smile or putting outfits on a chipmunk with a little kid and watch his face light up.

We also visited a place called Peddler’s Village, which is this kind of quaint village with shops and such.  I was hoping to get magnificent shots of Christmas lights, but what I ended up with was actually more edgy and interesting because of the light:

Alone.  Desolate.  Empty.  My kind of places:

I saw this girl walk onto the train today and just said to her “I liked the balloons.  I wanted to snap a picture.”  She obliged:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up,
About a prophecy, which says that ‘G’
Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes…

Let’s enjoy some photos of how it isn’t the winter of my discontent:

I’d be envious too if I was standing next to such a perfect suit.

Steam:

Shadows:

I always wanted to live in a big house on a street with other people who live in equally big houses.  Kind of like this street:

For those of you who don’t know, Mr. Fezziwig was a kind man who would have a ball every year for the employees of his warehouse in the world of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  When Scrooge is visited by the ghost of Christmas past, he is taken to see the warm Christmas party of Mr. Fezziwig.

On Saturday night, I attended Mr. Fezziwig’s ball, but it wasn’t in mid 19th century England.  It was in Salem, Massachusetts.  I’ve never attended a ball.  My prom doesn’t count because that was kind of like purgatory and high school dances don’t count either.

The Fezziwig ball was very different from many dances I’ve attended in the past.  Many people were dressed in Dickens period costumes and there were big group dances.  I’d seen those dances before in the miniseries Pride and Prejudice and wanted to do them myself.  Sometimes you want to put on a gown and dance and walk through the streets of a city wearing a ball gown and sing Christmas carols.

As the readers of this blog know, I love me a good costume.  And there were plenty to choose from at this event:

My favorite part of the evening were the lovely group dances, where you have to pair off, but you dance in a big group.  Everyone could grab a partner and you’d dance these intricate steps.  My favorite was something called the “Gothic Dance” where the gents would raise their arms into arches and the ladies would step through them, turn around, then promenade down the long row of assembled couples.  It was a bit simpler than it sounds, but still fun.  A few group dances: