holiday hauntings

The other night, we finally, after missing the performance last year due to a nasty traffic jam, got to see Goodman's A Christmas Carol production. It's actually just one of this particular text that we'll be catching, since Christmas Eve, we are heading to a matinee of a puppetry/projection version in the old Studebaker (the theater in the downstairs of the Fine Arts.) We initially had tickets for that night for Gaslight out in Skokie, but they wound up canceling that performance, so we'll be seeing it the night before instead. We'll also get to see White Christmas live on stage, which was my mother's holiday favorite out in Aurora next week, so its a full month of shows that will hopefully lift my spirits. 

Goodman does their rendition every year, and its always nearly sold-out shows, so we've had these tickets since I took advantage of an early bird sale back in the summer. You can tell its a standard, since he sets are far more complex than what I've seen with their other shows, which tend to be on the spare side without fully moving platforms that look like rooms in house. As such the play was very tradtional feeling and what one would expect from a yearly production they have down to a science. It also had a large-ish cast--much larger than when I saw a professional Rockford theater put it on nearly three decades ago. (back when Rockford had a professional company. )

While I am not, admittedly, a huge Dicken's fan, this particularly story has always excited me for its ghosts than for its hopeful message. It seems a particularly apt play, of course, for the moment, during a week in which the leader of the nation, instead of making changes to improve prices and everyone's lives insists instead on human trafficking, kidnappings, resource hoarding, and policy changes that are going to make health insurance unaffordable for most people, including myself. So instead, we get vague, dementia-addled comments about pencils and dolls. Instead, I remove grocery items from my cart that have just gotten too high to continue eating and sticking to the budget, like pretty much beef of all varieties, instead choosing pork and ground turkey. . I adjust and readjust the grocery budget, and not just there, because really its everything higher. 

In Dicken's world, the divides between weathy/poor and comfortable/destitute, were even more pronounced. We'd like to look at that time as primitive and barabaric, but we find ourselves in the same world (though this time without things like cholera, but give them more time and it will probably be back.)

I was watching a couple YT videos yesterday as I folded books and they were discussing how even influencers, especially those with an eye toward luxury, are stumbling and in flailing freefall on engagement because more people are struggling to buy groceries, let alone pricey skin care and designer handbags. I have up and down years, but this year's presents are sparer than other years (though admittedly, our theater tickets for Christmas Eve were intended to be our present to each other. I did manage to get a couple treats for myself, like a fuzzy blanket, a new leather satchel, and some of our favorite fancy tea., less presents or gifts than things to make the colder season bearable.

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