Grandpop’s Putz

Personal 2 Minutes

Note: None of these pictures are Grandpop’s putz–I have none of those. These are from Roadside America in Shartlesville, PA. Roadside America is a miniature model town.

One of my favorite traditions of Christmases past, was my Grandpop’s putz.  (A Christmas putz refers to a miniature village usually surrounding the Nativity scene.)The day after Thanksgiving, Grandpop commandeered their sitting room and began the building.  Whenever we visited before Christmas, it would be covered in tarps—shrouded in secrecy—which of course helped the excitement build till Christmas Day.  We couldn’t wait to see it! 

Grandpop started with a large wooden slab covered with green felt.  From there he built mountains, tunnels, and forests on several different levels.  And from there, he simply created an entire town!  He painstakingly made buildings—stores, churches, and homes—and they had lights inside!  There were street lights and street signs, stop signs and bus stops.  And he hand-carved the people in the town too.  There were little gardens, bushes and even a creek or two.  And the TRAINS!!!  He had at least 6 different train sets on the putz and on the uppermost level was a small cable car—which circled their Christmas tree…the most gosh awful aluminum thing I’d ever seen…but Grandma loved it. And in it’s place of honor was a hand carved Nativity set, brought by Grandpop’s parents from Austria.

Everything was electrically connected to a large control box that only Grandpop could operate.  We’d spend hours walking around the putz, trying to see everything!  The people, the details on the buildings…it was all meticulous!  I don’t think I ever appreciated just how much time and effort he put into his putz.

When our family moved into a larger home, my dad created his own putz.  Dad’s lacked the handcrafted elements that his dad’s had and he purchased the figurines and trees.  But his buildings were spectacular!  Our putz was in our basement—mom refused to surrender our living room—so no Christmas tree on ours.  And Mom refused to allow the Nativity set into the basement. My little brother helped –mostly with the trains—while he and Dad sampled the egg nog Mom kept in the basement fridge.

When my Grandpop passed, my dad and my uncle split the train sets and my aunt took the rest.  Then when my father passed, my brother took it all.  He has never set up a putz. Sigh…

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Published by pat frederick

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168 thoughts on “Grandpop’s Putz”

  1. “What Is Crimson Contagion?”
    BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER, DECEMBER 22, 2022

    EXCERPTS: “The lockdowns of March 2020 shocked the American people and most public health agencies, not to mention infectious disease doctors. The idea of school shutdowns, business closures, plus mandatory remote work and other restrictions have previously seemed inconceivable. It was especially remarkable to have such an “all-of-government” response to a virus that we already knew posed a threat mainly to the elderly and infirm.

    Issues like public-health precedent, American legal tradition, and medical knowledge about dealing with respiratory viruses, not to mention natural immunity and collateral damage of lockdowns, were all thrown out the window.

    Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s book The Real Anthony Fauci mentions a tabletop exercise called Crimson Contagion that ran from January through August, 2019. I had not previously heard of it and I found the mention remarkable, simply because it proves that not everyone was shocked by lockdowns. They were not part of official planning documents of either the CDC or WHO but they were clearly in the plans of someone.

    I’ve only followed up on this report in light of growing focus on the person who coordinated Crimson Contagion: Robert Kadlec, who served in the Trump administration as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, Preparedness and Response. It was he who also ran the Covid response between HHS and the Department of Homeland Security.

    Kadec’s lifetime government service (and, yes, he is said to be CIA) extends all the way back to the G.W. Bush administration when in 2007 he took the position of Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Biodefense Policy on the Homeland Security Council from 2007 to 2009. The very notion of lockdowns originated in that administration.
    —————-
    Also participating were former Trump administration officials Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State, 2017-2018) and John F. Kelly, who was White House chief of staff from 2017 to 2019. The NYT even ran a picture of the two of them at the event.
    —————-
    The participating private sector organizations and businesses:

    This exercise took place entirely out of the public eye but had strangely prescient foretelling of events only 5 months later. Kadlec, who had organized the entire tabletop exercise, was also later the author of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions report: An Analysis of the Origins of the COVID-19 Pandemic, which came out earlier this year.

    Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., reports: “second only to his longtime crony and comrade in arms Anthony Fauci, Robert Kadlec played a historic leadership role in fomenting the contagious logic that infectious disease posed a national security threat requiring a militarized response.”
    —————-
    What does it all mean? Perhaps it is all just a series of coincidental data points, that what is called the worst pandemic in 100 years came only a few months after an elaborate multi-agency trial run of the same in which former high officials of the Trump administration participated. And perhaps the best person to run the Covid response also happened to be the very person who organized and managed the trial run in the previous season.

    Many people will surely say there is nothing to see here. There is so much not to see these days.:”

    More w/Audio: https://brownstone.org/articles/what-is-crimson-contagion/

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  2. so not a quorum present, but nanzi’s rules prevailed.
    omnibus headed to ultra maggot’s desk

    Sherri Young
    December 23, 2022 2:08 pm
    Reply to Sherri Young

    Chip Roy just spoke and pointed out that the bill passed with 226 votes cast by proxy. There was not a physical quorum present, but Nanzi’s rules prevailed and the omnibus moves to Biden’s desk.

    What a hoax of a congress.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Alrighty then…I had to refill all of the feeders so I did it in stages. First the seed, then the corn….then I warmed up inside while I refilled the suet feeders. Of course, the chain came apart on the big one as I was trying to hang it…..gave me a chance to warm up completely before going back out to hang it. All done! LM has finally gotten enough water that he isn’t frantic every time I bring it, and I gave him some loving time. He’s learning not to make a dash to get in but I had to thump him on his nose once….LOL

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  9. no mention of Ray Epps’s transcript
    FTA
    January 6th committee to adjourn without fulfilling year old promise to release Epps transcript.

    The one person on film telling people to go into the Capitol (multiple times) disappears from FBI list and is not even mentioned in the 845 page final report.https://t.co/ozUv7hJYxy

    — Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) December 23, 2022

    https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2022/12/23/rep-thomas-massie-cant-help-but-notice-something-missing-from-the-j6-committees-final-report/

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  10. Issue: December 22, 2022
    “Lawmakers push back against FBI facial recognition tech — For violating civil liberties.”
    By Cindy Harper
    Posted 6:15 pm

    ENTIRE ARTICLE: “This week, Reps. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and Ted Lieu (D-CA), and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) sent a letter to the FBI inquiring about its facial recognition policies and what it is doing to respect the freedoms and privacy expectations of Americans under the First and Fourth Amendments. We obtained a copy of the letter for you here👇👇👇.

    In September Reps. Lieu and Clarke, as well as Reps. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) introduced the Facial Recognition Act of 2020, which aims to limit law enforcement’s use of facial recognition technology. The legislation would place prohibitions on law enforcement’s use of the facial recognition technology, provide transparency to those harmed by it, and ensure annual reporting and assessments of law enforcement’s use of it.

    The letter sent by the lawmakers this week asks the FBI for more information on how it uses facial recognition, warning about the potential for the technology to violate the constitutional rights of Americans. “Among our principal concerns are First Amendment issues related to the use of facial recognition,” the lawmakers wrote. “The information requested by this letter will help the American people’s lawful representatives better understand how the FBI – and law enforcement agencies using the FBI’s tools – are employing facial recognition technology.”

    “Congress needs full visibility into the use of facial recognition technology in domestic investigations given the significant privacy, national security, and First Amendment implications,” Sen. Ossoff said in a statement.

    Rep. Lieu’s statement said: “Facial recognition technology opens a wormhole of civil liberty concerns, and it’s imperative that law enforcement use this technology sparingly and judiciously. Law enforcement should not deploy this technology to identify peaceful protestors, investigate minor offenses and arrest people without additional evidence. This technology is error prone and the likelihood of misidentification by FRT is higher for people of color. As the body that oversees the Federal Government, Congress has a duty to ensure that the FBI is not misusing this flawed technology. That is why Senator Ossoff, Representative Clarke and I are calling for the FBI to be transparent with Congress about how it uses FRT.”

    Rep. Clarke expressed similar sentiments, saying: “Our nation is far too familiar with the flaws and built-in biases of facial recognition as the technology currently stands. In my own district, FRT has already been responsible for denying tenants entrance to their own homes, misidentifying suspects of crimes they did not commit, and far more unjust abuses than any of its victims care to remember.”

    Letter: https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/FRT-Letter-to-the-FBI.pdf

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Issue: December 23, 2022
    DHS won’t hand over full details about “anti-disinformation” practices — Redacted.
    By Didi Rankovic
    Posted 12:20 pm

    ENTIRE ARTICLE: “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is not giving the US Congress information necessary to put in place proper oversight of the agency regarding its “counter disinformation” activities, which have recently been gaining an ever more prominent role. That is one of the key points conveyed in a letter to DHS head Alejandro Mayorkas by senators Charles Grassley and Josh Hawley.

    We obtained a copy of the letter for you here👇👇👇. Grassley, who is ranking member of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and Hawley first addressed the DHS expressing serious concerns in June by asking for answers to ten questions, but say that the response they received the same month fell short by either ignoring or downplaying those concerns, and in general, failing to actually answer any of the questions.

    Instead, they received documents that were either already publicly available, or heavily redacted, as was the case with a batch of 500 pages of information. “Based on our review of this material, it appears that many of the redactions are applied to pre-decisional and deliberative process material,” Grassley’s and Hawley’s December letter states. The senators are taking issue with the plans the DHS is not hiding, and that is increasingly deeper involvement in “monitoring and mediating MDM” – that is, whatever’s labeled as misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation on social media. “Monitoring and mediating” here reportedly also means “directly engaging with social media companies to flag MDM.”

    And the agency wants to cover a broad range of topics, such as Covid, race, all the way to the sudden US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Disinformation Governance Board, slammed in the letter as a “seriously misguided effort,” may have been bad enough, but the senators are concerned that these plans now go far beyond that “effort.” The DHS is accused of ignoring not only the outright questions, but also the fundamentals of the US political system, where executive, legislative and judicial branches have “the separate and co-equal character.”

    Therefore, the agency cannot get away with trying to work around requests from Congress members, the senators say.

    Grassley and Hawley, however, seem determined not to let the DHS off the hook easily as it attempts to evade clarifying its role and intentions in this realm, and note that their letter was not sent as a Freedom of Information request, nor under DHS’ own procedures, based on which the DHS would be able to respond with redacted documents. And they continue to await “full and complete” answers.”

    Document: https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/Dec-15-Grassley-Hawley-DHS-Letter.pdf

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I have one set of chimes on the patio – I’m surprised it has lasted this long without breaking. It is white pieces of glass shaped like butterflies – when the wind does catch it, it’s lovely!

      Liked by 1 person

            1. I like the silver with the wood accents….but when I hear metal blowing in the wind, I worry….LOL – I have a set of fireplace tools that are strictly decorative and had them on the front porch next to the wood stove. Sitting at my table, I kept hearing this faint clanging of metal….took me about 15 minutes to figure out it was those tools swinging in the wind.

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      1. if the power goes, the water might freeze…it doesn’t work without power…so that’s a concern…

        i posted everything I normally do before i get off, so if I just disappear …

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  14. I am adding a short daily prayer to the board. I would invite each of you, if you wish, to also add one or maybe two of your own liking. I do not want to stifle anyone but please limit yourself to one or two religious postings. here’s one I found that I liked.

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