Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot - Week 137

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

I hope you all had a good New Year's Day!
Do you have any traditions for that day (that don't include getting chased by people wanting a tip, see yesterday's post)?
I mostly enjoy how quiet it usually is except for a few people using up their leftover firecrackers from the night before somewhere in the neighborhood which never fails to make either the cats or me jump which then makes the others jump 😄

Picture via pxhere

How about you? Are you ready for the weekend or are you still confused by all the holidays?

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on DIY Party Mom.

Kimberly from "DIY Party Mom" says "I love to have a good party. I love to plan a good party.
I was raised by the Queen of Party Planning herself and wish I had inherited even a little of my wonderful mother's amazing talent. But for what I do have, it is a work of joy and love. I began my business career helping that wonderful mother in her small candy business. It's hard to be a "little guy" in the business world these days, and we started making candy bouquets and wrappers to give her sweet store a personal touch.
It has bloomed from there.
I have discovered the joy of blogging as it gives me a SWEET outlet for crafting and party planning urges. Hopefully this blog will help you as you try to plan your own amazing party on a budget with a personal touch."

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Moois is sharing a museum trip with us and if you like the sea, you should really have a look!

Lynne shows us beautiful Christmas items she found during the end of season sales. There will be another tree next year after all.

Lisa reflects on her one word for the year 2025.

Look at this festive outfit, I just love black with red (and the Snoopy tie is perfect!).


Let's link up!

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Please link only blog posts you created yourself. Please link directly to the URL of your blog post and not the main address of your blog.
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Please do visit other blogs and give the gift of a comment. 

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We welcome unlimited, family friendly content. This can include opinion pieces, recipes, travel recaps, fashion ideas, crafts, thrifting, lifestyle, book reviews or discussions, photography, art, and so much more!
Thank you for linking up with us!

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Silent movies - Buon Anno!

For today I managed to find a silent film which works perfectly as "Buon Anno" means "Happy New Year".
"Buon Anno" is an Italian short from 1909.
The "plot" - you can hardly call it that - is told very quickly.

New Year's Day. A man is getting
ready to go out and looking
forward to it. He has put on some
scent, has had his coffee, and
he's in a good mood.

Not even out of the house yet, he's
offered calendars by the servant
and the mailman who on this
occasion expect a tip.

The more people push for a
New Year's tip, the more aggravated
the man gets. The concierge gets a
tip, but he throws the calendar on the
the ground. At the café, he's so annoyed
that he knocks over the table. At the
barber's he shoves the two men.

In the street, he runs into more
people trying to escape the Happy
New Year wishes and they all chase
after him (turning this into a classic
chase film), even after the police
turns up to take him away.
He starts having hallucinations
about all those people carrying
calendars ... 

... and the images even follow
him to the police station.

Finally, he's allowed to go, but not
before one last calendar pops up.

On one page it said that "obsession lurks in the symbolic places of the bourgeois social ritual" and that "time doesn't stop and chases us everywhere".
Maybe I'm too simple a person, but I don't see this short as more than a man being annoyed by the tradition of people expecting a tip at certain times. I remember one time years ago when someone rang my bell on Christmas Eve yelling "Mail" only to then "notice" that they didn't even have mail for me. It was the first time they ever rang, and although I am usually a tipper, I was stubborn in that particular case. So I kind of get that the man was overwhelmed (who was played by Ernesto Vaser, one of the first Italian film comedians).

I like what I think might be a little homage to Georges Méliès near the end with the moon winking at the man over the dancing calendar leaves (done in stop-motion).

I wish you all a very Buon Anno, Frohes Neues Jahr, Happy New Year!


Sources:

1. JEC: Buon Anno ! (1909) Happy New Year. On: A Cinema History, October 2023
2. Museo Nazionale del Cinema: Restaurations - Silent Films - Buon anno!

My December books

Another year gone by, I can hardly believe it.
What better to end the year with, though, than a list of books. Here are those I read in December.
It's an overview of what I have finished in a month (not necessarily started in the same month) and what I have read to the cats (marked with 😸)
Have you wondered, by the way, why some of the pictures in my book posts look so professional and some not? Of course, I could always find pictures on the web, but doing it like this is a way for me to remember which books I read in electronic form, either from the library - professional looks - or on The Internet Archive - screenshots of the covers digitized from physical copies - or which books I read in printed form - those pictures are taken by me just holding them up. As I usually seem to finish books at night, you get the "reading lamp colors and weird angle look".
I will be adding a short explanation why I chose a book and possibly if it's a re-read candidate, but I'm usually not going to add real reviews or ratings (the cats also refuse to give ratings 😉). Should you want a personal rating for a book you are interested in, though, or a little more information, just let me know.


1. "Peter Cushing : An Autobiography" by Peter Cushing, first published in 1986 😸

"Begin at the beginning," the King said gravely, "and go on 'til you come to the end: then stop." What better advice than Lewis Carrol[l]'s when attempting to write a life story? However, since my life how I knew and loved it ended with the passing of my belovèd wife Helen, I intend to take this narrative no farther than that fateful Thursday in 1971, January 14th."

I have to admit that to me Peter Cushing has mostly been Van Helsing and Sherlock Holmes, I hadn't even seen him as Baron Frankenstein. This book covers his rather short Hollywood career - he chose to go back to England - and about his theatrical and TV and film career back home.
He also speaks about his childhood and youth and the times before becoming an actor and thoses when he "was resting" meaning when he was without an engagement.
In fact, he had to earn his living for a while by designing head scarves.
A big part of this book is dedicated to the love story of him and his wife Helen, though, which will not surprise you after the quote above.

2. "The Last Library" by Freya Sampson, first published in 2021

June is a library assistant who lives only for her books and for the small village library where her mother worked until her death.
Only when the council discusses closing down six village libraries including hers, she finds her voice thanks to the support from her patrons for whom the library is just as important as for her.

I read Sampson's second book last month, this is her debut novel. As a librarian, I was interested in this (in a very nostalgic way) although I don't work in a public library myself.

3. "Black as He's Painted" by Ngaio Marsh, first published in 1973
(Roderick Alleyn 28)

When Ng'ombwana's (a newly independent African republic) president Opala - who happened to attend the same public school as Alleyn and was a good friend of his - is about to come to London for a state visit, the Special Branch is in uproar because "The Boomer" (Opala's nickname at school) refuses all their security measures.
At a reception at the Embassy, there's an assassination attempt, but instead of the president the Ambassador is killed. 
Hampered by the fact that the murder has been committed on "foreign soil", Alleyn and his Special Branch colleague try to solve the case.

This is still part of my vintage crime project for which I keep getting books by Marsh and Allingham.
Although the book was easy enough to read, it was also tough because some of the speech hasn't aged very well, but part of that is actually needed for the plot.
There's one character I really liked and a cat for which I had to do a quick check of the ending (not the solution, though) after a few pages, but she's not only fine, she also plays an important role.

4. "The Art Thief" by Michael Finkel, first published in 2023

Within six years, Stéphane Breitwieser stole artwork from museums and fairs in different countries while his girlfriend Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus stood watch - even in crowded museums during the day.
Unlike most art thieves, however, Breitwieser didn't sell the sculptures, paintings, weapons, etc. He stole them for "his" collection displayed in the attic bedroom in his mother's house where they lived. The value of the stolen pieces from over 200 heists is estimated at around $1.5 to 2 billion.
When he got caught, his mother threw part of the collection into a canal and burnt the other part.

Another random find on OverDrive. I like watching art documentaries and have also seen several on art forgery and theft, but surprisingly - I watch most of them on our French-German TV channel - I hadn't heard about Breitwieser yet.

5. "Antarctica" by Claire Keegan, first published in 1999

The debut collection of stories by the Irish author, each one of them gripping you in a different way.

I found it as a new entry on OverDrive.

6. "Old Christmas : from the Sketch Book of Washington Irving" by Washington Irving, first published in 1875

These five sketches around old English Christmas traditions are from Irving's "Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." from 1820.
They describe the holidays as spent on a rural estate where traditions even older than from the 19th century are still observed.

When I did some research for my blog post about ghost stories at Christmas, I came upon this book and it made a quick seasonal read. The style is very flowery, but I quite enjoyed it in connection with the illustrations.

7. "The Secret Christmas Library" by Jenny Colgan, first published in 2025
(Happy Ever After series 6)

Mirren has already found a rare book once before. Admiring it at the British Museum, she meets a Scottish laird looking for a precious book in the crumbling castle left to him by his grandfather and gets hired by him to help in his search.

I found this one as a new entry on OverDrive and hoped for another quick fun seasonal read.
Instead, it was really close to becoming a DNF. Although I finished it rather quickly, I was annoyed with it all the time - the characters, the style (how often can you use the word "vast"?), the editing, and that it wasn't very Christmassy. I guess I hoped it would become better and then I was too far in to DNF.

8. "The Library Book" by different authors, first published in 2012

The book is a collection of 23 stories by writers about libraries or including libraries, depending on their being fiction or nonfiction.

This was a recommendation on OverDrive.
I was torn. There were some excellent essays, there were some quotes that really could have come straight from my heart (mostly due to nostalgia), but there were also some that were simply boring or repetitive (for example the everlasting "print or electronic" discussion, ok, so I prefer a printed book, but these days I read e-books as well because it makes access easier for me, isn't it important people read at all?).
Some have aged well, some not so much if you watch the development in the last few years (I'm talking book bans for example).
Of course I'm aware that most stories refer to public libraries in the UK and the danger of a lot of them being shut down at that point (I don't know how the numbers mentioned have changed since then).

9. "Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon" by Matthew Norman, first published in 2025

Grace - who has two children - and Henry have both lost their spouses.
Almost a year later, with the holidays approaching, their mothers try to bring them together. They are not ready yet, though, and become "grief partners" instead, bonding over a holiday movie marathon ... and some mice.

I found this one as a new entry on OverDrive and really enjoyed it.

10. "The Brits in Hollywood: Tales from the Hollywood Raj" by Sheridan Morley, first published in 2006
(updated edition, originally published as "Tales from the Hollywood Raj" in 1983)

Many British actors and actresses - mostly men, though -  went to Hollywood (even before it was called that) to make films there. Most of them had a theatrical background. Some stayed, such as Ronald Colman or Cary Grant, some went back home, some chose to go back and forth.
A nickname for them in the Golden Age of Hollywood was "The Hollywood Raj" (hinting at the "British Raj", the time of the British Crown's rule in India).

I heard about Dean Street Press from Liz from Adventures in Reading, Running, and Working from Home. When checking out their website, I found a few titles that looked interesting to me, among them film-related books by Sheridan Morley (this was not a Dean Street Press edition, though).
The book listed a lot of names of peoples and films not all of which I knew, but it was still an interesting read.

11. "Der Hyazinthen-Mörder" = "Singing in the Shrouds" by Ngaio Marsh, first published in 1958
(Roderick Alleyn 20)

A serial killer strangles women and leaves them behind with their necklaces torn and flowers strewn over their bodies.
His third victim is found near a cruise ship. Suspecting "The Flower Killer" on board because of a torn boarding card in the victim's hand, Alleyn joyns the cruise to investigate undercover.

This is still part of my vintage crime project for which I keep getting books by Marsh and Allingham (just four of the Marshs missing now!)

12. "From the Alps to the Dales: 100 Years of Bettys" by Annie Gray, first published in 2019 😸

Founded by a Swiss baker and confectioner in 1919, Bettys is a Yorkshire based family company famous not for only for their Yorkshire tea rooms, but also their products among which tea and coffee lie in the responsibility of their sister company Taylors of Harrogate.
The book tells their history from 1919 to 2019.

I have read all of Annie Gray's books that I own so far to the cats, but haven't convinced them yet to become food historians themselves as they are more interested in what's on their plates now.

13. "The Case of the Silken Petticoat" by Christopher Bush, first published in 1953
(Ludovic Travers 43)

Private detective Ludovic Travers is witness when a young woman storms into Café Rond and kicks well-known critic Clement Foorde in the shin over a review he wrote on Robert Ashman's book "The Silken Petticoat".
Some time later, Ashman is found drowned in a river and he's not the only body in this mystery which Travers has to solve.

I had never heard of Christopher Bush before - as far as I remember - when Liz from Adventures in Reading, Running, and Working from Home reviewed one of his books for a 1952 challenge. I found a few of his books on The Internet Archive and started randomly with this one.

14. "A Child's Christmas in Wales" by Dylan Thomas, first published in 1954 (as a book, it was a recording first) 😸

The Welsh poet's story is a beautifully told nostalgic memory of the Christmas of a young boy, the family gathering, playing in the snow, going carolling.

I hadn't known the story yet, it was mentioned in an article but it certainly evoked memories of past Christmases of my own. Reading it might become a Christmas ritual.

15. "The Women on Platform Two" by Laura Anthony, first published in 2025

Saoirse doesn't want to have children, her fiancé Miles does. After a negative pregnancy test and an ensuing discussion, Saoirse leaves to do some thinking and ends up on a train where she meets an old lady, Maura, who tells her the story of her best friend Bernie and herself in the Republic of Ireland of the 70s when contraception was still forbidden.
(TW: Domestic violence/suicide)

I think I found this one as a new entry on OverDrive.
While knowing about all contraceptives being forbidden in Ireland around that time, I hadn't heard about "The Contraceptive Train" before when 47 women's rights activities took a train to Belfast to buy contraceptives there which were illegal to bring back into the Republic.

16. "The Carlyles at Home" by Thea Holme, first published in 1965

"Home" was 5 Cheyne Row in Chelsea, London where the Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher Thomas Carlyle lived from 1834 to his death in 1881.
With him lived his wife Jane until her death in 1866. She was an avid writer of letters which allow us a look into the Carlyles' life from her point of view.

I found the book through a review by Liz from Adventures in Reading, Running, and Working from Home (whose ears are probably ringing by now).
While it was very interesting to read, for example how difficult it can be to find reliable servants (there's a lot of that), I went to hug my appliances and my cats afterwards. We three are lucky in many regards to live now instead of back then (because we are a spoiled lot).

17. "The Three Investigators in The Mystery of the Moaning Cave" by William Arden (the books were published attributed to Alfred Hitchcock), first published in 1968 😸
(The Three Investigators 10)

What makes a cave moan and why has it started again after 50 years? Is the legend about "The Old One" true and what about the rebel El Diablo, can he still be alive?
This time Jupiter, Pete, and Bob are on a case trying to help out the Daltons who own the ranch next to Devil Mountain.

I read this series a long time ago and am going through it again bit by bit after writing a blog post about it. This book is the tenth in the series.

Resolutions?

You know the drill. As we head towards the end of the year, people start thinking about resolutions, about a word for the new year, about goals.
There are loads of old and new videos and articles out there telling you how to do achieve goals and make resolutions stick.

In 2014, I wrote about not being one of those people. If it works for you, that's great, but we all have to find our own ways.
For me a new year really is just learning how to write a new number, not a clean slate. I don't need New Year's Day to set goals or make resolutions, actually I feel it works better for me if I do that whenever I'm ready for it throughout the year.

Times are so hard for many people, so much is happening in the world, and as a notorious overthinker and born pessimist I often struggle with processing that without it making me fall right into a big dark hole.
So I figured that if I thought about the New Year, it would be better if I tried to make it about the things I was looking forward to (in random order and without a claim on completeness).

Supercozy naps. Who needs a weighted blanket if you can get yourself pinned down by the supernappers.
Bonus - snuggle sessions.

Books, books, books!

Picture via pxhere

Watching more silent movies (and talkies).

Doug is looking forward to it, too.

Crafting if I can.

Going down rabbit holes, learning new things, ...

Valerie Hinojosa from Washington DC, USA,
CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
"Down the Rabbit Hole"

... and blogging about them.

Smiling and laughing (yes, that's actually me in an old picture). Extra points for laughing until I cry and my stomach hurts.

Nostalgia and memories.
I don't see the past through rose-tinted glasses, but that doesn't mean it can't be nice to go back in time every, now and then.

No, I'm NOT in this picture (one of my parcel guys
once asked me if I was when he saw it in the house hallway 😂
We got it because the cat looked so much like our Dude.).

Noticing beauty and joy in the world around me.
Feeling spring in the air, listening to autumn leaves crunching under my feet, seeing dew drops in a spider web.
Exchanging a few friendly words with a stranger on the bus. Singing along to a favorite song.
Hearing a bird sing, smelling a flower, having one of my night visitors at the window.

Communicating with my favorite people. Sorry, no picture for that for privacy reasons.

Well, and of course I'm looking forward to interacting with you!
What's something you are looking forward to?

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot - Week 136

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

Happy Boxing Day!
Three years ago, I wrote about Boxing Day and how I hadn't known for the longest time what that was supposed to mean. Actually, I still don't know because like so often there are different theories about why some Commonwealth countries call the 26th that.
And strangely enough, not one of them has to do with boxing as in the sport 😉
Der Dekan thinks I should have known that because what could be better than an actual box, no matter if it contained alms for the poor or gifts for servants, as long as it's nice and cozy when empty!
He even gave me proof (although he was quite surprised that I don't have box pictures of all my cats).

So, are you ready for the weekend?

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on Momfever.

Nicole from Momfever says "When I first became a mom I loved my little girl, but I also felt quite lost, thinking: 'Now what?!' Then my husband explained: 'Now you have to raise her, so she becomes a well rounded and well adjusted grown-up.' So I set to work, and 28 years later, the first results look promising. As do her three younger brothers and sister. But it's not always easy, and I've found blogging to be a great way to retain my sanity in the day to day business of running a family. In fact, I feel it's my other job!"

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

How tempting do these cheesy stuffed mushroom caps look that Esme is sharing with us?

I'm sure you can also eat Nettie's Christmas popcorn after Christmas ...

It's hard to say what's my favorite in Soma's post, the beautiful picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, her adorable little books - or the painting of her cat Charlie!

Do you keep old clothes for sentimental reasons? Marsha has a sweet story to tell about that.


Let's link up!

You can add links to specific blog posts of yours, but not just to your blog itself. The posts can be new or older and cover any topic you can think of - books, movies, fashion, crafting, thrifting, travel, art ... but only family friendly, please!
Have a look around, visit some of the other blogs and leave a few comments. You might discover something new and exciting!
Thank you for linking up with us!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Silent movies - Foolshead's Christmas (1911)

Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it!
I come with gifts! Well, one gift. Okay, a silent movie. Christmas or not, it's Thursday.
But guess what, this movie is about gifts as well, what a coincidence (or not)!
It's "Il Natale di Cretinetti" - "Foolshead's Christmas" in English - from 1911, not to confuse with the film of the same name from 1909.

Here's the plot with spoilers.
Foolshead is going to a Christmas party. Carrying loads of gifts and a tree, he runs into a mailman with just as many parcels.

In the chaos he grabs one wrong parcel, though. It contains three bottles with "ether de peur", "ether de gaîté", and "ether de colère" which cause fear, joy, and rage.
I wonder who concocted those and how, and whom did they intend to have them and for what purpose?

When Foolshead literally falls into the apartment headfirst, the bottles break and give off a revolting smoke, so he hides the box under a table.
The family comes out to welcome him and he hands them some of the gifts, none of which make sense, like a tiny pair of shoes for the father and a rocking horse for the grown-up daughter.

When the father holds a speech which impresses everyone very much, the effects of the ethers begin to manifest, first on Foolshead, then on all the others when the smoke is spreading through the whole flat.
All the guests take turns in being afraid, overjoyed, and angry - shaking, dancing and laughing, and attacking one another, but they don't necessarily show the same reactions at the same time.
Next the smoke makes its way to the kitchen, then to a sculptor whose sculptures first become alive and then break into bits.

The policeman called in by the father is affected, the neighbors are, and the chaos ensuing makes the whole house shake and break apart in a big cloud of rubble and smoke.
Merry Christmas, Foolshead!

André Deed was a French film pioneer, actor, scriptwriter, and director.
Deed was the first silent movie star of his country. After being a singer and acrobat, he worked in film for Georges Méliès, then for the production company Pathé-Frères. During that time, he developed the character of Boireau.
In 1909, he was invited to Italy where he starred as Cretinetti in more than 90 shorts. In 1912, he went back to France making more shorts as Boireau, and three years later he returned to Italy to revive the Cretinetti series.
Due to the First World War and the American film industry taking over, his career came to an end and he was mostly forgotten.

Deed was known for camera-trick gags (influenced by the work of Méliès) and slapstick.
His Cretinetti shorts were internationally successful and other countries adapted the name to their languages, Foolshead in English, Gribouille in French, Müller in German (except for this film).

Do you remember Max Linder from one of my recent posts? In a blog I read that Linder and Deed were the "yin and yang of early film comedy", Linder charming and elegant, Deed a frantic idiot creating chaos and destruction. Foolshead certainly did that in this short, albeit involuntarily!

If you like a bit of slapstick, this is a fun little film to watch.
Oh, and I love those dresses!


Sources:

1. Anthony Balducci: Musings on André Deed. On: Anthony Balducci's Journal, November 10, 2014
2. André Deed on German Wikipedia

Christmas Eve

As you probably know, we start celebrating on Christmas Eve here in Germany and it's also the day of gift giving.
I have written about that and about the Christ Child as the gift bringer in my part of the world before.
Things may have changed in the last 50 years 😉, but in my time it was tradition in my and my friends' families to put up the tree on the morning of Christmas Eve.
Seems the Christ Child did too!

Christ Child is a Dawn doll with an outfit beaded by me.
The Christmas trees are Steiff.

Dawn was a registered trademark of the Topper Company. I am not affiliated with Topper in any way.
Steiff is a registered trademark. I am not affiliated with Steiff in any way.