My mother only had one punishment that worked on me when I was a kid. If I misbehaved (in today’s parlance, “made a bad choice”) I couldn’t watch my favorite television program, the puppet show, Kukla, Fran and Ollie. Since that was unthinkable, I shaped up.

To this day, I love hand puppets. How else can you get another personality without being bipolar or in constant celebration of Halloween? I am not as big a fan of marionettes. A good basic rule in life is to avoid things with strings attached.

Kukla, Fran and Ollie was created by the amazingly gifted puppeteer, Burr Tillstrom. The show ran from 1947 to 1957 in television’s early years. Mr Tillstrom created, did the voices and operated nine puppets. Kukla was gentleness personified, Ollie was the enthusiastic one toothed dragon and Fran was Fran Allison the person who stood in front of the stage and ad libbed the entire show with Burr Tillstrom. They were all Midwesterners; the show originated in Chicago.

What began as a children’s program was soon watched by more adults than children. The characters made references to theater, opera and current events. Orson Welles and John Steinbeck were counted among its fans. And James Thurber said Burr was “helping to save the sanity of the nation and to improve, if not to invent, the quality of television.”

Many years ago, in the early 1980’s when Burr Tillstrom and Fran Allison were still alive, I dragged my husband to a rare revival of my beloved childhood program at the prestigious Goodman Theater in Chicago. I was scared to death. Could this simple, untechnical, no special effects puppetry be as good as I remembered it?

Yes, in fact, it was even better than I remembered, and my husband who never saw the program as a child became an instant fan. Our troubled world could use a giant dose of Kukla, Fran and Ollie right now.

Kukla, Fran and Ollie, like all great art, does not work well in sound bites. The viewer slowly gets to know and love the personalities of the puppets. Hopefully, this short sample will give an inkling of the show’s appeal.

http://youtu.be/kekg9g819Ks

This blog is about Las Vegas. If immediate thoughts of a million flashing lights, frenzied crowds and easy money come to mind, you’re forgiven. I want to talk about America’s other Las Vegas, the one in New Mexico.

Located  where the Great Plains and Rockies meet, Las Vegas, New Mexico, sits on high meadows, called Vegas in Spanish. The city, 65 challenging miles from Santa Fe, is 6,424 feet high and currently has 13,691 people. It’s 638 miles and light years away from the more famous Vegas.

In frontier days, Las Vegas was part of Mexico, sandwiched between America, the Comanches and the Apaches. It took the Mexicans in Santa Fe 225 years to push east and establish a village in Las Vegas in 1835. By 1850, the Americans took over and the wagon trains poured in finding an easy crossing at the Gallinas River. The town became a prosperous stop on the Santa Fe Trail. Millions of pounds of wool and hides were shipped from New Mexico via LasVegas to Missouri. In one year, 1855, the goods moved on the Santa Fe Trail were worth an estimated $5,000,000.

The  Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe arrived in 1879 and mayhem, crime and saloons soon followed. Las Vegas became a railhead for a region the size of France, and the boom and lawlessness continued full speed ahead. By 1900 the city was the largest in the region.

But the same railroad doomed Las Vegas to a quieter future when it built a flatter route through the old Comanche lands in 1908. Albuquerque became the new cross rails point and grew exponentially.

Any lover of history and architecture will relish a walk in today’s Las Vegas….it’s a town frozen in time with 900 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. Many buildings are meticulously restored; many others patiently wait to regain their glory.

Click below to see a one minute photo essay I made on a recent trip. This is my kind of Vegas.

A friend recently told us a story that begged to be shared. It is a cookie story.

Last month at our friend’s workplace, everyone was bringing delicious homemade cookies to share; treats made with real butter, eggs, vanilla, nuts and other natural ingredients.

When one of our friend’s coworkers was offered a homemade cookie, the young lady declined stating, “I’m a vegan, I can’t eat that stuff. But it’s O.K.”, she added, “I can always eat Oreos, they don’t have any animal products.”

Needless to say, our friend, a lover of delicious and nutritious foods, was flabbergasted.

This small story may explain why America is in serious decline. We have lost our minds. Someone needs to get a Michael Pollen book to the Oreo eater post haste.

Because I do make an effort to be open minded, I did check out the supposed virtue of the Vegan’s “ethical” cookie. The main ingredient is sugar. The sugar is supplemented by high fructose corn syrup for added sweetness. Palm or canola oil and a handful of other artificial ingredients are tossed in the mix.

My conclusion? No animal is harmed by an Oreo, except the animal eating the cookie.

As the year draws to an end, the list makers go into overdrive. The various media are awash with lists of the bests…….movies, TV shows, albums, books, video games, tech gadgets and restaurants to name but a few of the categories.

I would like to add a new list to the annual “best of” binge. I am calling my list “The Best Quotations I Have Stumbled Upon In 2014.”

• Define the universe and give three examples.
  Anonymous Graffiti

 

• The human mind is at its inventive best when misinterpreting data to support a specific hope.
  Randy Wayne White

 

• Though the situation is hopeless, it should not prevent us from doing our best.
  Aldo Leopold

 

• But remember, the oligarchs want us at each other’s throats. Divide and rule is the goal. Don’t fall for it.
  Jon Talton

 

• You will always be lucky if you know how to make friends with strange cats.
  Proverb

 

• Free your mind and the rest will follow.
  Seen in France on the front of a woman’s Tee shirt

 

• True religion consists in establishing the relationship of each of us to the infinite life that surrounds us, the life that unites us to the infinite, and guides us in all our acts.
  Leo Tolstoy

For any of us in search of a New Year’s resolution, the following words of Pope Francis will more than suffice.

• We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace.

Amen and Happy New Year.

For those of us riding on the top half of the planet, our annual trip back into the light has begun.

Every December for twenty-eight years I have been invited into schools and libraries to do my holiday program, Festivals of Light. Throughout these years, I have met thousands of children, parents and grandparents who come up to me after the program to share family stories and traditions. Their stories have given me more material than I can ever use in an hour long program, but I am always delighted to hear more.

Some feelings are universal, and lighting up the darkness is one of them. People all over the globe find reasons to light special lights when the days grow short and the nights long. Something in us needs to believe that at the end of the darkness there will be light.

Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, begins the season. Small clay dishes called diyas or dipas are filled with oil and a wick. Hundreds of these tiny lights outline roofs, windowsills, paths and parks.

Go to New Mexico on Christmas Eve night, and the adobe houses resemble a Diwali display. But here the lights are candles and they are anchored in sand inside of paper bags. Northern New Mexicans call these little lanterns farolitos and the bonfires they light luminarios.

Some holiday lights are ancient; others are new. Hanukkah, the Jewish celebration of lights, dates back two millennia. Candles are lighted in a menorah for eight consecutive nights. In contrast, one man, Dr. Maulana Karenga, created a new tradition of lights for African Americans in 1966. Based on harvest celebrations in Africa, Kwaanza lasts for seven nights. On each night a candle is lighted in a kinara or candle holder and a different African cultural value is discussed. Kwaanza is not a religious holiday and is not meant to replace Christmas. This year an estimated eighteen million people will be lighting Kwaanza lights.

Many of us do a bizarre thing at holiday time:  we chop down a tree and haul it into our living rooms. The tree is covered with lights and shiny decorations to celebrate Christmas. Many of us light up the outside of our houses as well.

New Year celebrations are the finales to the holiday season and the skies are lighted. The Chinese New Year fireworks are legendary, but in many other cultures pyrotechnics welcome in the new year as well.

May we all light up our hearts with love, tolerance and peace. Happy holidays to all……and I choose these words purposefully….no matter what you are celebrating.