Kongo Buys A Tree

How about this one?
How about this one?

Kongo’s youngest son and daughter-in-law arrived from Boston yesterday and after dropping their bags the expanding troop heads off for the annual Christmas Tree Hunt at the Kiwanis lot a few miles from Kongo’s house.  The trees here are always nice and the proceeds go to a good cause.  This year Emily gets to pick out the tree because she told this mournful story about how her family has a fake tree each year and she can’t ever remember actually picking out a tree that somebody else cut down for her.  Scotch Pine or Blue Spruce?  So many decisions. Continue reading “Kongo Buys A Tree”

A-Z Photo Challenge: The Letter X

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X is for National Xmas Tree

Kongo fretted about this week’s photo challenge for over a month. I mean, what can you do with the letter X? X-ray, Xylophone, Xi, Xenophobia, or a bunch of Scrabble words that have no accepted definition other than that they are in the Scrabble dictionary? Kongo was almost reduced to taking of picture of the office Xerox machine when the holiday decorations in the cube farm outside his office inspired him. So, after work at the height of DC rush hour traffic, the monkey drives from Herndon down to the National Mall, sharks for a parking place for 30 minutes, walks a mile, and freezes his Southern California tootsie off to get these pictures of the National Xmas Tree. Now that, my gentle readers, is a real photo challenge! Continue reading “A-Z Photo Challenge: The Letter X”

Holodomor

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The Ukraine is one of those countries where unimaginable tragedies seem to wash over it on a regular basis. One of those tragedies occurred in 1932-33 when millions perished in a famine induced by Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union against the people of Ukraine. Holodomor is a Ukrainian word that literally means “extermination by hunger.”

Continue reading “Holodomor”