Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum!
Yes, it's time again once again for our Semi-Annual Christmas-Hanukkah Festival "Fun-raiser!" Bingo Marathon and Craft Fair Benefit. The "Basura Ladies", our sister non-profit organization led by Heba Weiss, Ruthie Cohn, and Yours Truly, has raised over $326 to help charities over the past 17 years since its inception. This year, we have chosen as our "neediest in need" the Sisters Of Merciless Suffering Convent & Halfway House, located off FM 34789, at the end of Beaverdale Drive (behind the abandoned Blockbuster). Seems that the Sisters are having trouble with their possums again, and without some speedy assistance, they will lose the farm, literally!
As you are aware, the Sisters have their hands full, what with growing their own food, maintaining their aqueduct, and managing the Heathen's Halfway House for Wayward Souls. The Mother Superior, Sister Rosemary Maryrose (who is just about at wit's end), "told" us about the problems with her possum last week, using a combination of mime, sign language, and charcoal sketches (each of the Sisters at the convent has taken a vow of silence), and we are 90% certain that their farm is indeed in danger. You may recall last spring when the possums had burrowed under the Sister's bushes and snatched practically every cherry from their trees. Well this time, it's their cabbage patch that's in harm's way, and I for one can't bear the thought of a summer picnic without a 2-quart mason jar of the Sister's Pickled Cole Slaw in my twig basket. Immediate repairs are needed to the chicken-wire fence surrounding their half-acre garden. Our own Roberta Richmann, sole-proprietor of 'Odd One-Woman Jobs' and dear friend of mine, has graciously offered to provide most of the muscle to make said repairs, providing we supply her with some new chicken-wire and a couple of rugged volunteers. Do we have any takers?
So as not to step on anyone in particular secular toes, we are holding the Christmas-Hanukkah Festival "Fun-raiser!" at the Allah Are Welcome Unitarian Church on FM 567930, on the outskirts of Squirrel Hill. If you haven't been to the "church" yet, you simply must come by to appreciate its architecture alone, a marvel of arches and impossible flying buttresses which somehow hold aloft the gold-tone pyramidal roof. Lordy, it's a sight!
Festivities start on the first night of Hanukkah, promptly at sunset on December 21. Heba Weiss will open the "Fun-raiser!" with the lighting of the menorah and opening of the first 3 doors of the Christmas Advent Calendar. Yours Truly will commence the 8-day Bingo Marathon with a round of Christmas Bingo, so be sure to arrive at the facility with a $1-$10 priced unisex present, wrapped and hidden in a plain brown paper bag. And remember to holler out "Merry Christmas!" and not "Bingo!" if you win a game, or else you will forfeit your prize.
After Bingo, or when you get up to stretch your legs between games, take a gander at the Craft Fair tables, which will be in the downstairs basement/study hall/Rapture shelter. For the past 2 months, Maude Hancock has been feverishly working away in the arts and crafts room at the Pleasant Journeys Convalescent Home to create a whole new batch of her famous Pillow Dolls. Each Pillow Doll is hand-did from old nylons and pieces of her late husband Larry's shirts, God rest his soul. All of her Pillow Dolls are one-of-a-kind-unique and twenty-five cents of every doll sold will go directly to the fund. Buy a bunch for Christmas and/or Hanukkah presents for your grandkids (and pick up one for yourself as well...so precious and cozy!) Among the other gifts and crafts for sale will be Paula Picket's poker chip jewelry, Arby Cullom's real wood-burned signs, 
and Inez Lopez and the Needling Neighbors' crocheted bingo bags (leftover from our Bingo Bag Fundraiser of 2006--for sale at a reduced price).In addition to Bingo, the Crafts Fair, and the Widow's League Bake Sale we will also have a Silent Auction. The Architects of Moses Men's Lodge will have on display several of the men's overstuffed baskets to bid on. Also up for auction is an authentic reproduction of an amazingly lifelike vinyl doll from Reborn-baby.com, and two front-row tickets to a musical, starring Crockett High School's drama teacher Charleton Monroe, in his one-man show of "The Women". And for all you fashionistas (aka Kiki Goldstein), my grandson Jeremy, styling genie and proud owner of the "Hello, Gorgeous! Hair Salon", is donating a full root perm and 10 French tips to the Silent Auction, so get there early and check your bid often.
Ti's the season for snowflakes and giving, and if we all pull together this season, God willing, perhaps we can give the Sisters a steaming cup of much-needed redemption. Here's wishing all my Jewish friends a Happy Hanukkah, my Christian brothers and sisters a Merry Christmas, and to all you Non-Believers, salvation from the long, dark and frosty winter nights.
Here are the names of last week's Bingo winners:
$5 prizes go to: Lucy Rains, Phyllis Rodgers
$10 prizes go to: Kitty Chesnutt, Emily Ames
$20 prizes go to: Suzy Homestead, Jesse Rudnik
And the $25 grand prize goes to, who else, Kiki Goldstein
Til next time "ladies", eyes down.
"Bingo" Betty Sanchez
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