Happy New Year!

I'm happy to have my voice back after being sick this past week! I am now able to read a little holiday poetry to you guys. I also received a new microphone for Christmas, so this will be my first time trying it out.

Chris was nice enough to send me a poem to read for Christmas. I was too sick to read it then so I saved it for this New Year's post. I think his poem still fits the holiday theme, and since there's a ghost involved, it fits with my blog year-round. I'm going to post both Chris' poem and the poem I found so you can read them along with me.

Cindy Turner's Post-Mortem Christmas Tradition
by Chris Hewson

Cindy Turner was a waifish young woman torn from the world too soon,

She loved all things festive, Christmas too, and often did she croon,

When Pneumonia took her life, her spirit somehow remained,

And every Christmas, she'd dance in the abandoned house full of candy canes,

Her home was grand and Victorian, classic and modern, with decorative vines,

And once her ethereal decorations were all over, the dwelling did shine,

Cindy's beautiful voice rang through the halls, and lasted for hours,
And made sure the empty abode was never dour,

Despite her circumstances, her happiness was untouched by death's head, 

The inhabitants of the house could have found joy in the ghostly celebrations had they not fled, 

Cindy was annoyed that her ghostly presence drove them away,

But she liked to spend time alone anyway...

 

I also searched for some Victorian New Year's poems to read. Wow, were those depressing for the most part! They were mostly dwelling on the death of the old year, and in great detail. I did find one poem that was hopeful and inspiring, but it was written a little after the Victorian era. Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote this in 1909. She's worth reading about, especially for those interested in Spiritualism, The New Thought Movement, and optimism in general. She sounds like she was a positive person, judging by many of her ideas and poetry. The poem of hers I chose may be over a century old, but the message still holds true.

The poem reads as a conversation and reminds me a bit of "The Raven" in the beginning. At least there's something better at the door here!

New Year: A Dialogue
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1909)

Mortal:

"The night is cold, the hour is late, the world is  bleak and drear; Who is it knocking at my door?"

The New Year:

"I am Good Cheer." 

Mortal:

"Your voice is strange; I know you not; in shadows dark I grope. What seek you here?" 

The New Year: 

"Friend, let me in; my name is Hope." 

Mortal: 

"And mine is Failure; you but mock the life you seek to bless. Pass on." 

The New Year: 

"Nay, open wide the door; I am Success." 

Mortal: 

"But I am ill and spent with pain; too late has come your wealth. I cannot use it." 

The New Year: 

"Listen, friend; I am Good Health." 

Mortal: 

"Now, wide I fling my door. Come in, and your fair statements prove."

The New Year: 

"But you must open, too, your heart, for I am Love."

Isn't that hopeful? My interpretation of the poem is that you can have all the good things in the world waiting for you, but you have to be open to them for anything to happen. I hope you all have these offerings at your door in 2015 and let them in!   

...and now I will read these poems to you:

Merry Christmas from The Mitchell Park Domes!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all had a fun time celebrating today. I'm going to share some photos with you from The Mitchell Park Domes. The Domes contain a warm environment where even tropical and desert plants can grow. At Christmas, some of the plants are decorated and there is a themed display. This year's theme was Hawaiian Tiki. This is what The Domes look like from outside:

We started in the tropical dome. There were all kinds of plants I wasn't familiar with in there. It was pretty fun since I haven't seen any lush, green plants for months.

I was calling this the Q-Tip plant but I think it had the word Starburst in its name.

This cool frog was peeking out of the pond in the middle of the dome.

This is a Staghorn Fern. It looks like antlers on a wall.

Next we went to the desert environment. That was my favorite dome. There were all kinds of "critters" in with the desert plants. I'm glad none of these were real.

I thought it would have been cute if they had put a little Santa hat on the snake.

An abandoned boot:

This is a close-up of a furry cactus. I wanted to reach out and touch it, but I knew better. There are some spikes hiding under that fur.

I don't know what this is, but it's awesome!

The cacti were dressed up for Christmas.

This little tree is a Jade Plant.

An Aloe Plant:

The Fan Palm Tree:

The Dragon Blood Tree:

There is a dark resin in this tree that looks very blood-like. Do an image search for it, and you too can be grossed out!

I'm not sure what this is...

This looks like a desert Poinsettia to me.

The last dome had the Hawaii themed decorations.

An old enlarged photo showing how the domes once looked.

Some cool, two-toned Poinsettias.

A Tiki figure and some Tiki Torches:

The tree had little Tikis on it. You can see what the curved glass walls look like from inside the dome.

There was a winding stream running through the room.

A bit of the curving old lamp that I'm assuming went with the original domes.

Here's more of the lamp. You guys know I love stuff like this!

Baby pineapples:

A Bird of Paradise:

I hope you guys enjoyed these photos! It was fun getting to experience some living plants at this time of year.

I was going to post a recording of myself reading some Christmas poetry, but I am unfortunately sick. I was hoping that I would somehow be better by this evening, but no. I know that no one wants to hear a congested person reading poetry, so I think I'm going to post a reading for New Year's instead. I'll save the Christmas poem I was sent and read it then along with anything New Year's themed I can find.

Have a great rest of the holiday!

Christmas card, poem, or short story exchange

I really enjoyed last year's exchange of Christmas cards/poems and finding a Christmas poem to read to all of you! I still plan on doing a reading for this Christmas. I'd also like to read any poems or extremely short stories you can suggest. I realize that we're getting close to Christmas here - it's only a week away! So if you'd like to shoot me an email with your suggestion, instead of sending it snail mail, that works too.

Of course, I love to send and receive Christmas cards, so if anyone would like to do a last minute card exchange (with or without a Christmas poem) that would be cool too!

Here's my email address for anyone who wants to send a suggestion for the Christmas reading or wants to exchange addresses for card sending purposes:

contactartgirl@gmail.com

I hope to hear from some of you! If you'd like to revisit last year's Christmas reading, here it is:

There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago!

P.S. ~ These photos are of antique ornaments on my tree. They belonged to my great-grandmother. They're over 65 years old!

Some very hoppy Christmas traditions

This past weekend was full of Christmas and beer themed activities. As some of you might remember, it's a yearly tradition for my mom and I to go on The Miller Brewery Tour and see the light show. We also visited The Pabst Mansion to see the Christmas decorations.

As you can see, there was a very dramatic sky above us during our time at the brewery. This really added something since we spent a lot of time outside walking to the light show and between buildings.

I thought I'd add a few photos of the moon. Look at those reddish tinged clouds. Does anybody know what that means? Something I like about this picture is how the smoke from the buildings is mixing with the clouds in the sky. It's all sort of the same color so it looks like the clouds are pouring down to the ground.

Something cool happened here. It looks like a spotlight is on the moon. I think I happened to take a photo just as a cloud was passing by.

A few beer themed bikes were inside the Miller visitor center:

I have to get a photo with the giant beer bottle each year.

Here's one of my favorite photos from the light show. There was a rainbow of lights passing by. A neat feature of the show is that the lights blink and move to the Christmas music that's playing.

After watching the show we walked to the historic Miller Caves. The streets were decorated nicely with snowflake lights.

The Miller Inn is this fortress-like building which holds a beautiful bar. The beer tasting at the end of the tour used to happen here.

The historic Miller Caves:

 
These caves are 60 feet underground, lined with brick, and look like tunnels. This is where Frederick Miller stored his beer to keep it cool and insulated. He'd collect ice from the surrounding lakes to help cool the beer.

This photo is a wee bit fuzzy, but it's the best I could capture of the spirit of Frederick Miller. Well, he's more of a friendly hologram that appears in the caves to tell people about his beer. He seems like a ghost anyway. This hologram moves around quite a bit, so this is as clear as I could capture him.

A beautiful stained glass portrait of "The Girl in the Moon" hangs above a door of the stables. This is where we go now for the beer samples at the end of the tour. The Girl in the Moon is a logo for Miller beer.

These Racing Sausage mascots are a familiar sight for those in the Milwaukee area. They were strolling around while people were tasting the different beers.

We had the standard Miller Lite, Redd's Apple Ale, and Frederick Miller's Classic Chocolate Lager that they just bring out at Christmas. The Chocolate Lager was OK. I'm not really into malty beers. We loved the Redd's! It seemed to get a bad rap in the online reviews, which I don't understand. I guess it's a beer/cider hybrid. Maybe the cider people didn't want the beer and the beer people didn't want the cider. I don't know. It just tasted like cider to me and not even hard cider. I wouldn't have guessed there was alcohol in it. Anyway, I like hard cider, I like beer, and I like Redd's.

Onto the historic Pabst Mansion. Captain Frederick Pabst (of the Pabst brewery) lived here around the turn of the century. Isn't this place amazing? It reminds me a little of Stately Wayne Manor (only fancier).

A few more angles:

The chapel which was used as the beer pavilion for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair to present Pabst beer:

I found a photo of what the pavilion looked like back in 1893 when it was representing Pabst beer at The World's Fair:

Anyone who has read The Devil in the White City will be interested in that!

Since I couldn't take any photos inside the Pabst Mansion, here is a video tour of the rooms:

The rooms looked somewhat different than what is in the video. Work is constantly being done on the house and there were glittery decorations everywhere for Christmas. I love touring the Pabst Mansion. It's strangely comfortable for being such a huge, fancy home. But then, I'm really into Victorian decorations, woodwork, ironwork, etc.

I wrote about The Miller Brewery Tour and The Pabst Mansion a few years back. If you'd like to revisit that blog post and read some ghost stories about Captain Pabst, here it is:

The Ghost of Christmas Pabst