Two home renovations from recent issues of the Seattle Times’ Sunday magazine that I keep thinking about: a glorious cook’s kitchen, carefully designed, each appliance tested before selection (she actually poached a fish in the appliance store’s dishwasher). A beautifully high-ceilinged home that was formerly a chapel. Truly a sanctuary, it features radiant heating underfoot so the vast space above doesn’t need to feel so cold.

This year’s Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree is from Ridgefield, Connecticut, not too far from my home town. About eight years ago a representative from Rockefeller Center contacted Robert Kinnaird to inquire about the large Norway Spruce next to his driveway. They’ve been keeping track of his tree since then and this year its time came. The tree was bundled up and attached to a giant crane before it was cut and transported to New York. Kinnaird’s parents bought the house in 1946 and the tree was there back then, large, but not as large as it is now. The official measurement from Rockefeller Center is 88 feet high by 56 feet wide.

I love finding stories like this one. Dave Johnson, 73, makes wooden apple boxes. He’s been doing it since he was a kid, back when Washington apple growers actually used the boxes for shipping. Now he’s one of the last commercial wooden apple box makers in the U.S. (a web search turned up this other outfit in Indiana). Johnson has considered retiring but he doesn’t want his craft to die out and business is good. Since apple growers started switching over to cardboard in the late 1950s (because pine for the boxes was becoming scarce), Johnson has supplied crate slats to California vegetable growers and made specialty crates for companies who sell gourmet smoked salmon, sausage, cheese and, yes, apples. He’s currently making 3,000 display crates for the QFC grocery stores. Back in his youth he made about 2 cents per box. Fast workers could nail down the 24 nails in a box in less than a minute and Johnson says he averaged 800 boxes a day.

Among the trying-to-be-clever headlines reporting on the ABBA museum being planned in Sweden: “See that girl, watch that scene at the ABBA museum“, “ABBA museum to say Thank You for the Music” and way too many variations on “Mamma Mia, an ABBA Museum”.

It’s Elephant Polo time! Teams from Britain, India, Scotland, Sri Lanka and Nepal are competing in the 25th World Elephant Polo Tournament. The host country is Nepal. Tournaments are also typically held each year in Thailand and Sri Lanka. There are two riders on each elephant. One is the “mahout”, the trainer who directs the elephant, and the other is the player with the polo stick. The sport uses Indian elephants (African elephant ears get in the way) and their trainers claim the animals quite enjoy the sport, that in fact it can be a nice family reunion for these very social animals. But PETA is in Nepal to protest the game, particularly the use of bullhooks to train the elephants. Bullhooks are not used during the game itself.