Editorial: Bouquets of roses (Dec. 24)

HAPPY HOLIDAYS, EVERYONE!

Editor's note: Because Christmas falls on Friday this year, and we traditionally assembled a traditional and special editorial page for that day, we're running the Roses and Raspberries column today. But in appreciation of the season, we're holding off on the raspberries.

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• ROSES to help when you need it. This time, it was help from the Oregon State Police troopers assigned to the Oregon State University campus. No call is routine for them.

So when a 64-year-old woman who was serving as an usher at the First Church of Christ, Science, reported that her purse went missing the Sunday morning of Dec. 6, the troopers went to the church at 310 N.W. 16th St. to check it out. Within half an hour, they'd searched for and found the woman's driver's license and debit and credit cards. Roses to them for doing even the small things well.

We're sorry the woman was the victim of a theft, but the biggest hassle is worrying about ID theft. Let's hope the cash-seeking thief gets some help in the new year.

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• ROSES to a delightful sight, well suited to the season: A handmade 1910 dollhouse, the pride and joy of Jill Jackson for decades, is back on display in the window of Janis Larson's store, Furniture Restoration Center of Oregon, at 1321 Main St. in Philomath.

We featured the house in an article last Christmas. It's a work of art. Jackson was a youngster when she borrowed $600 to buy the house back in the early 1970s. She's never regretted it.

A Chicago craftsman used walnut and brass nails to make the dollhouse for his daughter. It is a one-foot-to-one-inch scale model of their real house. It has two bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, bathroom, a back porch off the kitchen and front porch off the living room. It weighs 100 pounds, empty.

Its walnut doors work, each with a brass doorknob. Lace curtains hang in the windows, and the house number - 710 - is visible on the copper placard above the mailbox on the front porch. It's worth a look.

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• ROSES to one tough hitchhiking fluff-o. We're talking here about a 12-week-old kitten who crawled up into a wheel well of an SUV in Olympia, Wash., and rode all the way to Oregon in freezing weather.

Marc Lichty said he left Olympia, Wash. on Dec. 9 after working a full day. He stopped at a rest area on his way home to Tualatin and thought he heard a kitten but couldn't find one. At home - 120 miles later - he again heard the faint mewling.

He grabbed a flashlight and found the kitten tucked up underneath the spare tire spot of his SUV.

Lichty's daughter, Jenna, helped to coax the kitten out with salmon. (No fool, this cat). Lichty told the Associated Press that he couldn't image making that trip at 70 miles an hour in what was then subfreezing temperatures.

The Lichtys have adopted the kitten. They deserve ROSES and catnip.

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• ROSES to winter. The Winter Solstice arrived Monday, which was the longest night of the year. From now on, here comes the sun.

It was this time of darkness that prompted the ancients to include a celebration of the day the light began to return a little each day.

But already, we can see early signs of spring to sustain us: a few hardy violets poke their tiny purple faces through the soggy lawn. A few lambs already trot after their moms in the fields.

We're for sure not done with the ice and cold. (We haven't yet seen any snow like the kind that closed PDX last year), but it's nice to see that winter's arrival in the mid-valley also coincides with signs of its inevitable departure.

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• ROSES to how the depths of our winter are comparatively shallow, if you take advantage of all of the spring-like events. We speak of the Corvallis Winter Indoor Market, which starts Saturday, Jan. 16 - just a little more than three weeks from now.

If you've never been to this market at the Benton County Fairgrounds, you're missing a local re-enactment of the scene from the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy steps out of her sepia-toned world and into the Technicolor realm of the Munchkins.

The gray wooden buildings at the fairgrounds play host to a space overflowing with color, scents and flavors.

From winter vegetables and apple cider to an explosion of forced bulb flowers such as tulips, daffodils and hyacinths, it's a preview of coming attractions that are weeks away on the idle winter landscape.

This year, the market will continue through March, meaning it will finish with the arrival of spring.