Crustacean Christmas Revisited

Have you ever typed “crustacean Christmas” into Google? It probably says something about the oddity of our family tradition that an Artist’s Road blog post about it is the first entry on that list. Today I’ll provide a sequel post, but first some quick background.

It started with a Christmas tree ornament my wife purchased many years ago when she lived in Baltimore–a wooden, red crab with a bow. It escalated when I took my wife and kids through one of those holiday light display park exhibits, and we saw a 10-foot-tall Christmas crab. The final kick likely was my wife’s family tradition–learned during her childhood growing up on a New Jersey beach–of cooking shellfish for Christmas Eve dinner.

In 2008 I bought a 4′x8′ sheet of plywood and a can of red spray paint, fired up the power saw, and this was the result:

A tradition was born. In 2009 we decided to take it up a notch. Why settle for just one crustacean? Why not three? In the end, a biologist would say we ended up with two crustaceans and a mollusk, but nonetheless–after a lot of painting by the four of us in a cold garage–we debuted for our perplexed neighbors the Crustacean Choir:

Now we were on to something. Obviously 2010 would have to be even more ambitious. What if, I said, we didn’t need a spotlight to illuminate this year’s display? What if we used hundreds of Christmas lights, around and in the display? What would that be? Naturally, we came up with a Christmas tree. We’d use as ornaments our crab, lobster, shrimp, and clam. It was relatively simple to cut out, and while there was a lot of painting to do, I set up the saw horses in our living room this time, allowing us to paint in welcome warmth. Here it is in the daylight:

And here it is at night:

This fall I came up with an idea to top the last three years combined. For one, I decided to introduce two new characters. Second, it would be even bigger than before, using two 4′x8′ boards, with each character having his own board. It would actually tell a story. And the antagonist would be a character familiar to readers of The Artist’s Road (although phenomenally unfamiliar to my neighbors). Here’s the sketch I drew a couple of weeks ago:

This would require a lot of work. Sketching on the plywood, cutting it out, painting all of the sections of Mr. Bacon and Mr. Scallop. And all the while I wondered if people would get the premise–that the scallop was about to be bacon-wrapped–or if they would get that and then say “But what does that have to do with Christmas?”

Of course, any reader of this blog knows I don’t usually worry about what others think when I go off on a creative tangent. But the time our family has together during the holidays does stay front of mind. And this would require a lot of time. Time spent together as a family, yes. But time that could be spent in other ways.

Last week I pushed the bright orange cart into the lumber aisle at Home Depot. I picked out the right plywood (I learned that you need at least 5/8″ in thickness; the Christmas Crab was only 1/4″, and as the temperature rose and fall he warped, looking like he was trying to curl himself into a crepe). I’d ring this up, take it home on top of my unhappy car, then head to the craft store for new paint. I walked myself through this set of activities. Then I left the orange cart in the aisle and walked back to my car.

It’s important to spend time with loved ones. And family traditions matter. But at what point does a tradition become labor?

We scaled down our Thanksgiving feast this year, with me grilling dry-rubbed game hens instead of roasting a turkey. That freed up more time for us to be together as a family, and also provided a tastier bird than the vanilla ice cream of poultry. Perhaps I could extend that concept to Christmas. After all, our children are teenagers now. Soon enough they might have other plans during the holidays.

Tomorrow was the day I was going to cut out Mr. Bacon and Mr. Scallop. Sunday was the day allotted for family painting. Now I don’t have to figure out how to fit both planks of plywood in our living room for a toasty painting party. Instead, we are going Saturday to Mount Vernon, to spend a few hours seeing what George Washington’s Christmas would have been like if he had erected twelve Christmas trees (presumably none of them cherry trees). Tomorrow we’ll put up our own tree, and the only labor I’ll do beyond that is making some chocolate cocoa in a saucepan.

I’m sure my neighbors will be disappointed that we’ve chosen this year to go with a more tasteful Christmas display. But as we gather Sunday evening by our decorated tree–my son stoking a fire in the fireplace, my daughter trying to capture a sparking flame with her camera, my wife and I taking in the scene with marshmallow-and-cocoa mustaches–I don’t anticipate any regrets.

Guest Post: Mr. Bacon Goes to the National Book Festival

Many of my readers have been demanding that Mr. Bacon have his own blog. If I were to allow him to do that I’d have few readers left, so instead I’ve allowed Mr. Bacon to write a guest post. Enjoy.

I don't see what the big deal is about writing a book. If it wasn't for these tiny fingers I'd have written dozens by now.

I time-traveled yesterday. The Washington, D.C., Metro system transported me to the National Mall and a scene right out of the 19th Century — a world filled with people who enjoy an antiquated source of amusement called a “book.”

Leave it to a bunch of librarians, in this case the U.S. Library of Congress, to organize something called the National Book Festival. This annual event features authors reading from and signing odd assortments of paper covered in ink and bound by glue.

I wanted to tell the thousands of attendees roaming from tent to tent that they need to join the 21st Century. If you want to be entertained, watch a video of a kitten stuck in a tissue box. If you want to learn something, your Twitter feed will tell you everything you need to know in 140 characters or less.

Bibliophilus Americanis is a strange species. Squirrles gather nuts but these creatures were gathering books. I think I'd rather eat an acorn.

Not surprisingly, the authors of these “books” had a different perspective. Adam Goodheart is a New York Times journalist and author of 1861: The Civil War Awakening. It’s a New York Times bestseller. (Does no one else see the irony of the dead technology of newspapers tracking the sale of the dead technology of books?) In writing his book, Goodheart chose not to spend hours every day watching viral videos. Instead he spent his days in the Library of Congress Reading Room, perusing letters and journals written by 19th Century Americans. That experience obviously did something terrible to his brain, because he had this to say about the poetic style of writing he encountered:

These people read Byron, the King James Bible. Their brains hadn’t been infected by this pop-culture styrofoam. I don’t think the tweets of today will carry the same weight.

Note how this creature, like a kangaroo and her pouch, has an additional appendage for toting the books he gathers.

That’s the kind of perspective I’d expect from someone who needed 460 pages to tell a story. I was able to write this entire post in fewer than 1,000 words, Mr. Author Man.

If I can give Goodheart one prop, it’s his sharing of a very wise quote by some dead author named Arthur Koestler. I like the quote both because it’s true and because it’s less than 140 characters:

To want to meet an author because you like his books is as ridiculous as wanting to meet the goose because you like pate de foie gras.

Like Goodheart, Joel Achenbach is confused. He also writes books and is a newspaper reporter for The Washington Post. But he should know better, because he’s been blogging since 1999. Anyhow, here’s how old-fashioned Achenbach is. When he wanted to learn more about deep-sea oil drilling while writing the book A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea: The Race to Kill the BP Oil Gusher, he said he actually went to the library (!) and checked out a 1,000 page book (!) on the subject. He’d start each day with a cup of coffee and the book, apparently forgetting that we’re supposed to start our day by catching up with our Facebook feed.

Is it just me, or does bestelling author and Washington Post reporter Joel Achenbach want to eat me?

While researching the book, Achenbach also read thousands of emails written by government officials and scientists. I’ll give him credit for at least reading written works produced in digital form, although I bet he printed them out.

Achenbach made note of the fact that the organizers had him speaking in a large tent, and compared it to another American tradition also found mostly in the past, a revival. Then he showed his true colors. “Let me tell you about newspapers!” he called out in his best preacher voice. “Books!” The audience ate it up, but of course they suffer from the same disease he does, printophilia.

I am offended. Everyone knows B is for Bacon.

At first I took comfort in the type of attendees I saw there. Thinning gray hair. Crumpled spines. Liver spots. Heck, a lot of these folks probably remember 1861. But then I saw others. Thirty-somethings. Twenty-somethings. Young parents with children. And not one kid was screaming bloody murder, demanding to be returned immediately to his X-Box. Wait, what?

Some parts of our culture never truly die. We’ve had automobiles for a century now, but somebody, somewhere, still manufactures buggy whips. But do you own a buggy whip? I sure don’t. I want to live in a world free of any narrative that takes me longer to read than it does for my Netflix stream to buffer. But I’ll never see that world if we produce a new generation of “readers.”

More than 200 people had queued for David McCullough's book signing an hour before he arrived. If the Pulitzer winner's next biography profiled me, the National Mall wouldn't be big enough for the queue.

Americans love to blame Washington, D.C., for every national ailment. And they’re almost always right to do so. But I learned during my time travel today that the real obstacle to our ideal future is not the collection of crooks we find in the U.S. Capitol, but a more shadowy and sinister cabal in the building across the street — the Library of Congress.

Heck with the “tea party.” We need a “book party.” When this eureka moment struck me, I approached a young woman wearing a blue “National Book Festival” T-shirt. She was attractive, so much so that she should have been home sleeping off last night’s clubbing, not volunteering at an information tent and handing out free (!) water. I told her we need a revolution. We need a “book party.” She smiled and said, “But we already have one. This is it!”

A Stylish Blogger

I’ve avoided having to pick my “Fave Five” friends because I’ve never had a phone from T-Mobile. Here in the United States, the mobile phone carrier advertises a service with free calls to five friends. Who would want to learn they are at best  my sixth favorite person?

What is it that makes me a stylish blogger? Is it the shades or the hat?

I face that dilemma now. Through the generosity of Cheryl Reifsnyder of Cheryl’s Musings (one of my favorite blogs), I have been given the “Stylish Blogger Award.” You can see its logo on the bottom of this blog’s right column.

There are two catches. I have to share seven random things about myself, and I have to pass on the award to five other blogs.

Yes, that’s chain mail, but I believe in our 2.0 world it’s called “viral.” And since in this blog’s first six months it’s never sniffed an award (not that I’d know where to even find a contest), I’m keeping it, just like Nixon kept Checkers.

First I’ll list seven random things, then I’ll list five blogs I’m choosing to call “stylish”:

1. I worship bacon. (No surprise to regular readers.)
2. I have an obsession with antique maps, particularly those by the 17th Century Dutch.
3. Instead of waxing eloquent with lines from James Joyce or T.S. Eliot, I quote The Blues Brothers, Spinal Tap, Animal House, Monty Python classics The Holy Grail and The Life of Brian, and just about any Coen Brothers movie.
4. I have almost no sense of smell.
5. I turned down a chance to be interviewed on camera for a segment on The Colbert Report.
6. In the mid 1990s I wrote a humor column titled Certifiably Inane.
7. Should I ever form a rock band, I’m naming it Defenestrating Taxidermists.

Different shades, same hat. Must be the hat.

Now to my “fave five” blogs. As readers of my Creativity Tweets of the Week know, I regularly peruse dozens of blogs. I’ve decided here, however, to highlight some of the first ones I came across when I went on Twitter last fall. I return to them regularly, I love their tone of sharing and support, and I feel they need more exposure than they are currently receiving. Like my blog, they address creativity and writing. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Charlotte Rains Dixon: I love the way Charlotte (@wordstrumpet), a creative writer and writing coach, treats her readers like old friends.
2. Fear of Writing, Milli Thornton: Writing coach Milli (@fearofwriting) is the author of a book by the same name. She offers helpful tips, hosts interesting guest blogs, and is joined by another sharp writer, Judy Clement Wall (@jclementwall).
3. Dose of Creativity, Melanie Sklarz: This is one of the first blogs I found when launching my @on_creativity Twitter feed. Melanie is an artist and creativity coach (she trained with Eric Maisel). Her blog posts are engaging and fun. She could post more frequently, but the links she tweets on creativity are golden.
4. Danielle Meitiv’s Barefoot Blog: Learn about the sea and follow a writer’s creative journey at the same time! Danielle (@danielle_meitiv) is an oceanographer and writer who has seamlessly combined her twin passions into one blog (and fiction as well).
5. Kate Arms-Roberts: Kate (@KateArmsRoberts and @MorePlayful) is an Interplay coach and writer who encourages play (she has another blog, A More Playful Life). Her sincerity and positivity shine through in her writing.

FYI, if anyone else wants to give me an award, I”m game, just like my daughter was when she played on a basketball team that won no games and yet was given a big trophy by her coach. She loves that trophy, and I’ll love your award, regardless of the level of merit I demonstrated in “earning” it.

Creativity Tweets of the Week 02/25/11

The winds of change are sweeping through the Middle East. That wind dissipates on the shore of The Artist’s Road, however. Our Friday tradition of providing a roundup of our best weekly tweets on creativity, inspiration and writing long predates the reigns of here-today/gone-tomorrow despots named Mubarak or Gadhafi (or Gaddafi or Khadafi or Qaddafi or any other multi-point winner in a game of Scrabble in which the proper noun rule is waived). To all of you protesters gathering outside the Road’s Alexandria, VA, compound, we say “Pound sand! It’s another Creativity Tweets of the Week!”

CREATIVITY

“Nine Ways of Being for Amplified Creativity,” Gregg Fraley, creativity and innovation: I come across a lot of lists on this topic, but Gregg’s has a bit of variety, including #7, “Don’t compare yourself to others.”

Your blogger wanders the forbidding sand dunes at Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area -- is that an oasis up ahead?

“Brian Eno’s Creative Intelligence,”  Orna Ross: The key takeaway from the English musician and record producer (including seven albums by U2) is to never lock yourself into one answer; embrace improvisation.

“there is no script — improvisation and creative living,”  Amanda Hirsch, guest post on ScoutieGirl: I think Brian Eno (above) would like this post.

“Creativity can hinder the corporate climb,”  Knowledge@Wharton: I frequently tweet and post links here on how to foster creativity in the workplace. Maybe I shouldn’t. A new study has this disturbing finding: “Those individuals who expressed more creative ideas were viewed as having less, not more, leadership potential.” Creatives, you have another challenge in front of you.

INSPIRATION

“How Your Tolerance for Risk Impacts Your Potential for Success,”  Srinirao, The Skool of Life: There is of course a difference between calculated risk and placing your mortgage on a roulette table’s #36. But here’s a key point from this post: “Your tolerance for risk will  have a profound impact on how far you can push the limits of what’s possible in your life.”

“How to: Have a Work/Life Balance,”  Melanie Spring, Sisarina: No blog post can really deliver what that headline promises, but this contains some useful suggestions on how to structure your work (the focus is nonprofit executives but the lessons are universal). This issue of balance was on my mind this week — I had to miss a DC TweetUp Melanie organized Wednesday night because of a previous commitment to my kids.

WRITING

“should you be blogging to help your writing career (or is it a big waste of time)?“  Justine Lee Musk, Tribal Writer: A critical question, with a different answer for every writer. Timely for me, because I’m working now to develop a social media strategy for an author who has a memoir coming out in August and is being pressured to start a blog. My bottom line? If you can do it well, then absolutely do it, but own that commitment to quality and value.

It is an oasis! (Of course, the blogger's rental car is only a hundred or so yards away in the parking lot.)

“Getting Your Work Out In the World: The Mechanics,”  Charlotte Rains Dixon, WordStrumpet: Five great suggestions on how to be a professional when submitting your work. Her #3, “follow directions,” is gold; I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard agents and editors share anecdotes of, say, the romance novelist who queries an agent whose website says “no romance novels.”

“I will not apologize for being a prose writer first,”  Tamara Kaye Sellman, Writer’s Rainbow: Was Tamara guilty of treachery when she put aside poetry to focus on her prose? Some poets thought so.

“10 Signs of a Typical Writer’s Day,”  Elspeth Antonelli, It’s a Mystery: This humorous post will ring true to any writer, and it also features cold coffee and unforgiving pets.

Did you notice a recurring theme in this week’s list? Some of the blog-post headlines were apparently ghostwritten by capitalization hater e.e. cummings. Glad to see the late poet is getting some work.

Our Annual Crustacean Christmas

Indulge me in a little diversion from my usual post of providing tips on creativity I’ve learned through interviews with creatives. I’d like to share a family tradition we have here of making borderline-tacky Christmas displays. We draw them onto plywood, jigsaw them out, paint them and display them.

Here’s this year’s entry, a 7′ Christmas tree with four crustacean and shellfish decorations, namely a shrimp, crab, lobster, and clam.

A Crustacean Christmas

Why the seafood theme? The origin is that my wife grew up on a barrier island on the Jersey shore and likes seafood, but the fact is it’s a tradition now and so we do it without any real logic behind it.

We started in 2008 with Crabby the Christmas Crab. As you can see, he’s not very crabby, at least not in mood. He also is not obviously a Christmas decoration; his wreath and bells aren’t too visible.

Crabby the Christmas Crab of 2008

Last year I decided to keep the crustacean theme but go for something a bit more Christmas-oriented. Thus the Crustacean Choir was born, our first appearance of a shrimp, lobster and clam, but no Crabby (he went on display again, on the other side of the driveway).

Despite what I thought was an obvious Christmas theme, a lot of folks still just saw a bunch of sea

Our 2009 Christmas Crustacean Choir

creatures, large and out of proportion to each other. Also, note that both of these displays were lit with floodlights, which made them stand out a wee bit compared to the pretty tasteful decorations of our neighbors.

This year I sought to do two new things with our Ross family project. 1) It would be an obvious Christmas theme. 2) It would not require a floodlight.

The Crustacean Christmas Tree Lit

This picture doesn’t quite capture it, but as you can see Christmas lights trim the edges of the tree (green on trees, the color of ornaments where one of the colored balls is on the edge of the tree, gold around the star). I also drilled holes in the four sea creatures and used pink bulbs for Shrimpy, red bulbs for Lobstery and Crabby, and blue lights for Clammy.

Because this tree incorporated all four sea friends, we did not put out the 2008 or 2009 decorations this year, sparing the neighborhood any floods.

The result of our light display is that at night, Shrimpy is quite visible and Clammy almost disappears, but the opposite effect is found during the day due to their relative size differences.

A Close-Up of Shrimpy

Clammy the Christmas Clam

I don’t consider myself a visual artist, so when I conceive and draw these displays, I go pretty simple with the drawings. My fifteen-year-old daughter, who is a visual artist, was assigned the presents at the bottom of the tree. She went all out, really putting to shame my tree!

My daughter's present art

These are always family projects. All four of us participate in painting, for example. But the annual project is in fact my obsession, so I usually take the lead in developing the idea and moving it forward.

A Crabby Close-Up

A happy lobster, even though being red he's already cooked

No neighbor has ever told us they find them offensive, but I’m sure some do. Many have been perplexed, which is understandable, and of course we can’t fully explain them. But we have some fans, too, who were eager to see what we produced this year. The biggest fans are the kids in the neighborhood, who don’t try to figure them out, but rather just enjoy them.

Do you have a family creative project you do during the holidays?