Timber Valley SKP Park of Oregon, Inc

by Jackie Deal

While a few Christmas lights still twinkle and the Christmas dinner pounds abound, let’s think of Christmas Past. I remember three kinds of Christmases; perhaps you’ll remember them too.  There’s the Minnesota Christmas:  COLD,Cold cold.  The Oregon Christmas: rainy, wet, foggy.  And the Arizona Christmas: cactus, palm trees and sand.

You may have known them by other names but the surroundings were probably similar. The Minnesota Christmas always meant snow, in fact after I moved from Minnesota I just couldn’t feel Christmassy until I saw some snow. However, the most snow I ever saw was in New Hampshire where I spent one winter.   In the morning, ready to go to work, you open the door and there’s nothing but white, white, white.  The snow was deeper than the door! It was nothing to walk in snow up to your waist.  One winter was enough!

Oregon, the Willamette and Umpqua River valleys, where I’ve experienced many Christmases is stingy with its snow. Rain and fog are normal.  The fog lifts and drops and the scenery changes: sometimes you’re surrounded by mountains and other times, nothing exists but your own driveway. It’s really rather enchanting.  And the rain, there are different kinds of rain. My favorite is the soft, gentle mist-like rain that makes you lift your face and say “Oh, isn’t this a lovely, nice rain.” Of course, there’s also the blasting horizontally driven downpour that makes you wonder why you don’t live in Arizona!

Christmas in Arizona?  Aw, totally different.  Twinkle lights nestled in palm trees and adorning cactus.  There’s nothing like it! Santa doesn’t come on a sleigh, maybe a hay wagon pulled by a camel.  It can get a little crispy, cold (not by Minnesota standards!) and winter jackets feel good. Once, just once, I saw snow on the desert floor and sparkling on the cactus:  what a novel sight! But if you’re waiting for snow, you‘ll miss Christmas.  Now I know, Northern Arizona in the mountains does have snow but they don’t share it with the valley and the deserts.

Whatever, wherever your Christmas, this was the year of the Covid Christmas for all of us.  So let’s look ahead:  Covid can’t last forever.  It will be contained faster if we all do our part.  You know the drill:  masks, wash hands, 6 feet apart.  This too shall pass but Christmas?  Aw, it will last forever.

By Jackie Deal

I just ate 3 baby dill pickles.  I don’t like dill pickles. I especially didn’t like these 3 dill pickles. But they have zero calories and this is important. Important because I’m in self-quarantine and that means I’m home alone with food all day.  A friend said, “Yah, you keep eating and no exercise and you could be the Thanksgiving pumpkin.” (I thought pumpkins were for Halloween?)

But while I was not enjoying my pickle I was doodling on the internet and what to my wondering eyes should appear:  “Today is National Pickle Day”.  I kid you not. So hang in there for more about pickles than you probably want to know.

Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, supposedly credited her health and good looks to her love of pickles, and Roman general Julius Caesar was said to have fed pickles to his troops in the belief that they would make them stronger. I’ll go with Cleopatra, “Please pass the pickles.” Archaeologists believe that ancient Mesopotamians were the first to start pickling in 2400 B.C.  Let’s see, what else I learned: pickles can help beat a hangover. You might remember that if we ever get out of these shut downs!

Now if you’re from Connecticut, stay tuned. In Connecticut, legend has it that state laws require that a pickle must bounce to legally be called a pickle. While the Connecticut State Library found that there are no laws that specifically state this, there are regulations in place that were started after a pair of pickle packers, Sidney Sparer and Moses Dexler, were arrested in 1948 for selling pickles that were “unfit for human consumption.”

After their arrest, Food and Drug Commissioner Frederick Holcomb told reporters that the best way to check for good pickles is too see if they bounce when dropped. Afterward, the state’s pickle-bouncing regulation went into effect. Fortunately, I’ve eaten all my pickles so I couldn’t try the bouncing test.  But the next time you buy pickles you’ll know how to be sure they’re good.

After all this higher education I decided I needed a cup of tea.  I don’t like tea.  Black or green?  It looks the same in the cup and to me tastes the same.

I like English novels and the English characters in them seem to think a cup of tea will solve all problems.“Your house burned down?”  “Come in and have a cup of tea, you’ll feel better.”  “Your husband left you?”  “Oh, you poor dear, you need a cup of tea.”  “The vicar’s teenage daughter is pregnant?”  “Have a cup of tea that will solve it.”

I might explain: the self-quarantine was because I was a “secondary exposure”.  That means I was exposed to someone who was exposed to someone with Covid. According to everything I find, secondary exposures do not need to be Covid tested.  Since I didn’t want to miss out on anything exciting I went to be tested.  My doctor’s office wouldn‘t test asymptomatic but they suggested Rite Aide drug store.  There I basically did a self-test while in my car.  I was told to put the cotton applicator “mid-way- up my nose, twirl it twice and hold it there for 15 seconds.”  Five days after exposure is the recommended time to be tested. My test was negative, which means “I ain’t got it.” All the tests can tell you is that at the moment of the test you don’t have the disease.

One last item I gleaned from NBC news,” Covid could kill as many Americans THIS WINTER as the Germans and the Japanese did during WWII.” Now that’s food for thought! And that’s a mighty sour pickle and pretty hard to swallow!