Chanukah on Christmas Avenue: Raising a Jewish family in Winterhaven. If you don’t live in Tucson, you don’t know Winterhaven. This is a smallish neighborhood—in the middle of the Tucson desert—that looks like Iowa. It sports quiet streets, culs de sac, trees, grass, and crazy electric bills every Christmas season. For two weeks each year, the place shuts down the streets and allows walk-through traffic, horse carriage...

I’m not partial to hot buttered rum. Not because I’m a tea-totaler or anything like that, but because of a very specific and unfortunate accident that included the holiday season of 1978, my best friend Kerry, an unsupervised afternoon, and her mother’s fresh, double-batch of rub ball dough. I don’t want to get into details, but lets just leave it by saying that the smell of rum continues to make me turn a lovely shade...

Welcome to the final part of A Christmas Carol brought to you by the podcast CraftLit: A Podcast for Crafters Who Love Books. In the previous episode I promised to link to a webpage with lots of A.C.C. and Dickensian information. This is the compendium of useful links. In this episode I point you towards the CraftLit episodes that cover A Tale of Two Cities, and two other books: Amazon.com Widgets Here are the various file formats you can use...

Welcome to part two of A Christmas Carol brought to you by the podcast CraftLit: A Podcast for Crafters Who Love Books. During the course of the episode I promise a link to a webpage with lots of A.C.C. and Dickensian information. This is the compendium of useful links. Here are the various file formats you can use to listen to Dickens. a mini-video podcast you can watch here (see below) a video podcast you can put in your iTunes or on your...

Welcome to part one of A Christmas Carol. One of the many hats I wear in life is as host to the podcast CraftLit: A Podcast for Crafters Who Love Books. The idea behind the podcast is that folks who are busy with their hands—knitting, quilting, gardening, taking care of small children, vacuuming—aren’t able to hold a book and read while they’re doing all the other things they like (or have) to do. The podcast expands their literary...