Belated Season's Greetings

Before we went home for Christmas, Mary and I made some cards. Here's this one.

And this one.

Frosty the Snowman

The most recent post on my friend's blog reminded me of something I wrote a while back. I like his better...

Frosty the Snowman is arrested during a goodwill mission to the USSR. Government officials board his train outside of Moscow while he sleeps in his private compartment. As faceless trench coats search the luggage a small man in an ill-fitting suit examines the visas and stamps of a creased passport through round horn-rimmed spectacles. “Mr. Niveus,” pronounce thin lips, “your visit to our country has been cancelled. You will come with us.” A black Volga idles at the far end of the station. Smoke from the driver’s cigarette swirls and dances and imperceptibly blends with that of the train’s coal heaters.

Hours later the steely pre-dawn silence is rent by screeching tires, and a blur, thrown from a passenger side window, scatters and finds focus on the stones of a public square. The Anatolian sun rises on a corncob pipe, an old top hat, a pair of wet gloves and a placard that reads ‘Shpion’.