Christmas Around Town

Lots of activities today downtown, sales, Santa, carriage rides and street vendors, "Christmas Around Town" is the name of the event. Here is a proud reindeer with his handler, Joshua, in a pass-through between stores and a parking lot. I didn't catch the reindeer's name. The pass-through was formerly part of the Falvey clothing store chain from the 1920s. The building collapsed while being restored, and the city purchased it, filled the basement with dirt, and planted a large tree!

"Black" Friday Dawn

Just after dawn this morning, the sky shows a lot of blue, but the sun has not yet reached the buildings. The Christmas tree (center, in shadow) will not be lit until the official ceremony tomorrow, although it is already covered with decorations. Merchants will open soon; this is "Black Friday", from the expression "In the black", meaning profitable. The term comes from old hand written business ledgers, where profits were written in black and losses were written in red. In the US, retail sales are highest in the weeks before Christmas, and since the day after Thanksgiving is usually a day off work for most people, it has become an especially important sales day for retailers.

Find links to more of this week's Skywatch Friday participants at http://skyley.blogspot.com/.

Veggie Thanksgiving

Since most of our extended family are vegetarians, we had a special feast today sans the traditional roast turkey. I've spent the last few days preparing and coordinating -- Seitan roasted in barbeque sauce; acorn squash stuffed with apple and cranberry; spicy sweet potato, cooked in cocoanut milk; mashed russet potatoes (with golden fried onions to mix in); stuffing of oatmeal bread croutons with pears and leeks; mushroom gravy; roasted green beans with walnuts; corn with mint; Brussels sprouts with a mustard and maple syrup glaze; parsnip puree; and two kinds of cranberry sauce. A spinach salad with amazing little black lentils found by my sister-in-law, who also made the bread. Little Lily helped create a dessert of pears decorated to look like turkeys, and there was another dessert of cherry-apple crumble with whipped cream. No one went away hungry!

To all in the US, Happy Thanksgiving.

Manly Men with Chainsaws

About a dozen muscular manly men with hardhats and bushy beards were spotted high in the tree tops sawing away with their chainsaws. Having wrestled with a chainsaw once or twice while standing on the ground, I can't even imagine trying to use one while hanging in the top of a tree. The object seemed to be to trim the trees away from the high power wires; but the chainsaw men seemed to be having a good time.

Another Corridor

Ever deeper into Lowry's Books; every corner beckons me on, through just one more row of laden shelves...

Bookstore

Inside Lowry's Books in downtown Three Rivers there are stacks and shelves and piles of books winding through rows and rooms. " Just what you want" is in here somewhere.

See more of the world in monochrome at The Monochrome Weekly, presented by Aileni.

Art Guild

Members of the Three Rivers Artists Guild hang a sign in the storefront that will house a gallery of members' works - for sale for the upcoming Christmas season. Watercolorist Lynn Johnson and photographer Becky Hackenberg are placing the sign, which announces the gallery opening next Saturday.

Visible across the street are some of the interesting and well preserved Victorian-era buildings that have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places (previous post: Best Preserved Victorian Streetscape).