john henry faulk | he was carrying an orange

 

The day after Christmas a number of years ago, I was driving down a country road in Texas. It was a bitter cold, cold morning. And walking ahead of me on the gravel road was a little bare-footed boy with nondescript ragged overalls and a makeshift sleeved sweater tied around his little ears. I stopped and picked him up. Looked like he was about 12 years old, and his little feet were blue with the cold. He was carrying an orange....

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ghost light radio | the ghosts of christmas presence past

Image
Our longtime Christmas Presence host is Ron Reed, the former Artistic Director of Pacific Theatre. Since abandoning his post, Ron has created three seasons of a podcast that goes by the moniker Soul Food Ghost Light (AKA Ghost Light Radio). It's a late night pirate radio show where the DJ spins records and stories, whatever he wants to play. Like Christmas Presence, but without the Christmas part. And, on the radio. Or, podcast. Whatever. ANYhow... Last year Ron did an episode featuring music and readings from Christmas Presence and its predecessors going right back to 1984. Here's a link... Soul Food Ghost Light: Ghosts of Christmas Presence Past Friday Dec 20, 2024 This week on Ghost Light Radio, bits and pieces from forty years worth of Christmas shows at Pacific Theatre. First Christmas: An Entertainment, Cotton Patch Gospel, Dreams Of Kings And Carpenters, and of course Christmas Presence itself. From Lawrence Ferlinghetti to Bone Man Slim, seasonal selections with a theat...
Read more

christmas presence | set lists

Image
A standard feature of Christmas Presence performances is people wanting to track down their favourite pieces after the show, or to follow up with the musicians they've heard. Because we make up our set list new every night, there's no program listing or anything like that, so unless you catch somebody after the show, these remarkable pieces and artists can easily slip by. So we've taken to posting our set lists after the show. Here are links to the specific posts for various dates right here (between Garrison Keillor and Annie Dillard, below).   2024 sun, dec 15 mon dec 16 tue, dec 17 2013 sun, dec 8 wed, dec 11 thu, dec 12 fri, dec 13 sat, dec 14 | all-request matinee sat, dec 14 | eve sun, dec 15 | north shore wed, dec 18 thu, dec 19 fri, dec 20 sat, dec 21 | matinee sat, dec 21 | eve sun, dec 22 - valley "And you ought to have seen all the things that was in that wagon. Apples 'n' real oranges y'know, and stripe-itty candy, and nuts. And mama, she was ho...
Read more

Garrison Keillor, "The Seven Principles of a Successful Christmas"

Two years ago forty-one people came to my house for Christmas dinner, some merchants and bishops and poets and about sixteen barbarians, mostly Goths and Visigoths and several Huns, hairy savages who hunkered down at the table and ate like wild swine, belching and shrieking, and spent the evening pillaging and plundering and left the place in ruins. We were picking food off the chandelier for weeks. And after I swept up the refuse and offal and sluiced out the dining room, I said to myself, "No more hairy savages for Christmas." So last year, I invited only civilized people, and in case the barbarians showed up, I had a catapult installed on the roof that would hurl boulders at them and pots of boiling oil.  It was a pleasant and civilized Christmas, but as the bishops and poets and merchants sat and drowsed over dessert, one poet piped up and said, "Oh, by the way, what happened to those little pig-eyed fellows who came for Christmas last year, the ones who wiped their ...
Read more