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Sunday, December 25, 2016

Some musings RE "BABY'S FIRST CHRISTMAS": "A Christmas filled with love!"


It's Christmas Day and the photo atop today's blog entry features me on my parent's Christmas card*and seeing it now has prompted me to recall Connie Francis singing, "Baby's First Christmas."

I became acquainted with this song because my dearly departed friend, Donna De Solis, who I knew for twenty-eight years, used to play it at her annual Christmas party. I attended Donna's event from  2002 through 2014. And who could've known that a few weeks after her December 2014 Christmas party, Donna would learn that she had Stage-Four cancer and would be dead within six months. (She ultimately died in June of 2015).

I'm truly missing Donna on this Christmas Day! I'm also missing my editor-friend Peggy Wood, who died in a hospital on the last day of December 2014. Peggy, who helped Cam and I edit the iBook version of Words In our Beak Volume One,



spent many Christmases in my home along with my dear friend Victor!

He is a man I saw nearly every night for dozens upon dozens of years, but who remains in a facility, since suffering from a mysterious illness in the summer of 2014.

In any event, I'm finding this to be a difficult Christmas! I have not feeling very well physically and have a sore throat and nausea! (Is this TMI?) I'm also not feeling mentally! My physical state has caused me to cancel plans to see my chaplain friend, DS, who was planing to come to my place.

If you've been following my blog, dear reader, I've gone to great lengths to prepare my home, as well as my rooftop garden for this day, and it's disappointing to not be able to spend time with my chaplain friend DS. I truly hope he will accept the rain check I offered, which was to celebrate next week. After, all Christmas time is a season, not just day of December 25th! In fact, on his FB Page, he stated this: "Please remember that the Christmas season lasts at least 12 days and technically until we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord. Continue the celebration throughout with joy, reflection, and prayer. It's not over when the last gift is unwrapped on the 25th and then we get all sad and say 'all of that preparation for just one day!' Enjoy each day with family and friends and most importantly in the awareness of the Lord's love."

I've never spent Christmas day with the chaplain, but we have enjoyed countless occasions together, our most recent time being when he and a mutual friend took me to The Bartow-Pell Mansion, which is a New York City (Bronx) museum that has since taken my fauna-flora-insect-themed postcards on consignment.

As I've said, I've not had the opportunity to spend Christmas with him, but then, I only met him during the last week of December 2014 soon after Peggy died. I had gone to meet with him for advise on a eulogy that Peggy's family had asked me to give. I've been grateful for the friendship that has come from our "chance" meeting, and pray we can celebrate our Christmas during the coming days!

** I wrote about this image on December 25th 2010, and you may refer to my entry by clicking this.

ADDENDUM FALL 2018: 

The non-hardcover version (or versions)  of Volume One within the Words In Our Beak book series that are mentioned in this entry may only remain available for a limited time, but hardcover versions of Volume One, Two and Three can now be found wherever books are sold. Please click here to go to my blog post that provides details as to where you can get these books.

MY BOOK SERIES

Additionally, I have rendered some images from these books into other formats and they are available via Fine Art America (FAA). Some of my other photographs (Black & White Collection, Kaleidoscopic Images and the famous Mandarin duck who visited NYC) can also be found on my FAA pages.

ADDENDUM SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER 2021:

When the third volume of the hard-cover version of Words In Our Beak was released, I withdrew from promoting my former versions of Words In Our Beak. 

The very first one is an iBook and went into Apple's book store in 2015.


This was followed by an ePub version...


... that is available on Amazon and was also published in 2015.

Subsequently, Words In Our Beak's digital versions were published as a soft-cover book (with slight variations) by MagCloud in 2017.


Its press release can be read by clicking here.  

Now with the release of BIRD TALES (which is in Apple's Bookstore and On Amazon)...


... I've been advised to make mention of my early versions of volume one of Words In Our Beak, they do vary ever so slightly in content from the hard-cover version of volume one.

As of this addendum, I do not intend to create digital or soft-cover versions of Words In Our Beak Volume Two or Words In Our Beak Volume Three.

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