Today's song is Sleigh Ride by The Ronettes, released in 1963.

This months holidays will soon be here. It's time to start thinking about those gifts to exchange with those you are close with in one way or another. Even in these lean times, a small token of appreciation sends the right message.

Soon I will start watching my annual list of holiday movies. This is a tradition of mine for a very long time now. This is the month to kick back and slow down, noticing more of what goes on around me. My messages usually are shorter in this time of year too as part of that pattern emerges within me.

A picture was sent to me I was in from my friends, Lenny and Nancy Clark's wedding reception back on July 10, 1976. I extracted my image from that photo to show below.

I published the following story, Elderly Women of Christmas on one of my previous websites back on December 6, 1999:

On Sunday, December 5, 1999, Sherry and I took a short drive to Lawrence Welk Village. We had passed this location many times on I-15 going north from San Marcos.

There is a small shopping mall there and we went in to look around.

In one of the larger specialty stores, there were at least 50 elderly retired women in there shopping. I stood there for about 10 minutes watching these ladies and thinking about what they must have been through in their lives.

Some of them reminded me of my mother who at 83 is in a nursing home and can never leave there. A few made me think of my Grandmother, Edna Wilson, long gone but not forgotten.

I felt caught up in the moment watching these women go about their business, imagining how they raised their families, attended children's weddings, enjoying grandchildren. I also considered the hardships some of them surely faced: deaths, illness, loss of friends through a variety of means.

Here they were, strangers to me, living before my eyes and making me reflect on the older women I know and have known in my life. I'm glad to have experienced the "Elderly Women of Christmas."

I voted for my Facebook friend, Karen's International Opera Theater, Inc. organization. They get funding if they get enough votes.

The previously secret negotiations denying your digital rights are being debated in Europe.

My good friend and mentor, Gene Weed, suggests the pressure is increasingly building on the earthquake faults in Southern California. Check out the animation on that page.

Need to print like the Scribe of the Declaration Of Independence?

Found on the web links for December 3, 2009

Don