Catherine Bannister
LightNews LightNews
banner
cbannister.bsky.social
Catherine Bannister
@cbannister.bsky.social
1.9K followers 1.3K following 5.2K posts
Contumacious and curious, an avid follower of useless information.

To learn more about the Smithsonian Campaign for Our Shared Future, go here: oa.si.edu

To help #EndALZ please visit alz.org

To protect our beautiful National Parks, npca.org
Posts Replies Media Videos
cbannister.bsky.social
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekXForXmas
Another repeat blast from the past. Me as a toddler, finally growing some hair and wearing a white long-sleeved shirt with a red bow across the chest. I’m sitting on the floor in our old living room looking up at a wooden table on which is our Christmas tree adorned with lots of dripping silver tinsel. Maybe one reason that my mom would often call me “Cat,” I appear to be reaching up to grab at the decorations. (Apparently we often used to have small trees like this when I was very young - I have no memory of them but I do remember the wooden board with the tree stand bolted onto it that was in our garage forever!)
December 12, 2025 at 2:28 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
Just got to @bcdreyer.social ‘s favorite part!
A TV playing “Meet Me in St. Louis” just as Agnes Smith says, “Oh, Rose, you’re so stuck up!”
December 12, 2025 at 2:46 AM
cbannister.bsky.social
Cookie factory is officially closed for the holidays. (12 different types this year!)

Ted Lasso “Carol of the Bells” has been watched. Time to settle in with Esther and Tootie.
A TV is showing the “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” scene from “Meet Me in St Louis” with Judy Garland and Margaret O’Brien in front of a table with lit candles
December 12, 2025 at 1:24 AM
cbannister.bsky.social
Oh yes! The Tea! Better get to silver polishing!
Check out these beauties drying on their rack this morning:
Pink wedges of pomegranate glazed shortbread with orange zested sanding sugar atop sit on a cooking rack over a beat up cookie sheet to dry before packing for Christmas delivery
December 11, 2025 at 4:59 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekXForXmas
A white crystal light fixture in the shape of an elaborate Christmas tree hangs from the soaring ceiling above throngs of people in the Art Deco lobby of Radio City Music Hall before one of its Christmas with the Rockettes programs.
December 11, 2025 at 2:44 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
If you have to get out the ingredients anyway, why *wouldn’t* you fix yourself a Manhattan to sip while filling your “Perfect Manhattan Thumbprints”?
A cooling rack of Luxardo cherry-studded cookies being filled with a creamy mixture of powdered sugar, rye, vermouth and bitters. The closest cookie is caught being filled mid-stream from a coffee spoon. In the background is a Manhattan on the rocks next to a red bowl.
December 11, 2025 at 12:01 AM
cbannister.bsky.social
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekXForXmas
From back when I used to wear them regularly, my fancy red sparkly Christmas stilettos - crossed feet at the ankles beneath black velvet pant legs. In the blurred background, a shiny wood floor, piles of festive boxes and the underside of a lit Christmas tree. I might need to find a reason to wear these again this year!
December 10, 2025 at 2:05 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekXForXmas
OK I’m not entirely sure this was on or near Christmas, but it was in the winter and I’ve been missing both of these ladies so here you go! This is a picture of my mom (in a green plaid wool coat that I still own) holding my grey fluffy childhood dog next to a huge snowman that is taller than everyone in the picture. The snowman has on a jaunty hat over his arched black eyebrows, round brown (rock?) eyes, carrot nose and black smile. Around his neck is an orange-brown scarf and he has 4 black buttons down his front. Strangely, there seems to be a baseball bat leaning against him (probably my mom’s contribution). On the right, I’m standing in my red snow jacket with the white fur-rimmed hood up and matching red mittens. Behind me, with her gloved hands on my shoulders, is my “other mother,” Mrs. Witt (I wouldn’t call her Helen until I was well into my 30s) looking as coiffed and stylish as ever.
December 9, 2025 at 2:56 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekXForXmas
Racks and racks of cookies arranged on a wooden table. They’re all in different shades of brown (because I don’t like rolling out dough, nor have any skill for decorating cookies nor cakes). This was last Christmas’ stash - I’m just starting on this year’s!
December 8, 2025 at 3:01 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekWForWindows
Looking out from inside a dark log cabin through the bottom screen of an open window, a sheer curtain - teal with a scalloped pattern - is folded up and away from the view. Out the window, in a deep grey haze from wildfire smoke, a small white seaplane taxis on a flat lake. Along the horizon, parallel with the center of the window, a thick row of trees forms a darker line in the grayness.
December 7, 2025 at 2:50 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
Bonus entry for #Caturday #AlphabetChallenge #WeekWForWindows
A curious cat, white and lynx-y brown with a perfectly pink diamond nose, peers in through the large window of my mother’s storm door. Outside, the cat (whose name, I think, was Christopher?) is on a wide beige driveway in front of a pink wooden bench and lush greenery. Inside, where Christopher longed to visit, is the edge of an upholstered chair on a wood floor and a red and tan woven entry mat. The cat (not ours) would come peek in while my mom was home in hospice care - and once, her caregiver accidentally held the door open a second too long and Christopher was able to say hello directly to my mom!
December 6, 2025 at 2:48 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekWForWindows
Simultaneously one of my most and least favorite windows. A short stemmed clear glass of golden bubbly wine sits on a beige tray in front of an oval airplane window. Through the window, blurred, is the attached jet bridge under big fluffy white clouds.
December 6, 2025 at 2:42 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekWForWindows
Looking through a huge paned window of the lobby of the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel onto a sunlit and snow-covered mountain under clear light blue skies. A prairie style thin vertical line of stained glass - vertical lines interspersed with small red squares - runs along the outer panes. At the bottom of the window, the light pink flowers of an orchid peek up.
December 5, 2025 at 3:06 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekWForWindows
Tall, tinted, curving windows in the center of the geometric titanium and limestone Frank Gehry design of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. The sky is ominously grey and cloudy, making the building and the water in its moat appear beige. Off to the right is a blue glass skyscraper appearing at an angle (due to the camera lens, I think, not its architecture)
December 4, 2025 at 2:20 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
I bought this greeting card back in March and it still completely cracks me up. 🤣 Just sent it for the holidays to a friend with a similar sense of humor. (I mean, it does mention December 😊)
A white greeting card with black letters that reads, “Statistics show that the average person has sex 79 times a year. Looks like I’m in for a wild December.” Made by Holy Flaps for Redbackcards.com.
December 3, 2025 at 4:00 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekWForWindows
Huge arched windows, sequenced between wide and narrow, with smaller round windows centered above each wide arch high on the walls of the Zurich train station. From the undulating coved ceiling (with olive green wooden slats beneath brown wood scaffolding) and over the escalator down to the tracks hangs an abstract statue of a curvaceous royal blue angel clad in a brightly colored (yellows, oranges, mint green and red) dress with chunky gold wings.
December 3, 2025 at 2:27 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekWForWindows
Towering arched, paned windows in the Palace of Versailles show the marble railings and foggy cold landscape outside. Inside, two women are in silhouette beneath an enormous crystal chandelier hanging from the coved, muraled ceiling.
December 2, 2025 at 2:45 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
It’s snowing again and I’ve started the first puzzle of the season - and it’s 4:30 - so I think I’ve earned a 🥃
The borders of a jigsaw puzzle are laid out on a wooden table, the majority of loose pieces still in the bottom of the box and others divided by color into small blue trays. A paper version of the target picture (a plethora of decorated Christmas cookies) is lit from above
December 1, 2025 at 10:30 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekWForWindows
A cozy sunlit nook holds an armchair with a green plaid throw strewn across one arm and a book and small pillow resting against its back, a basket filled with packing tubes for rolled prints, and a small cube table with several magazines on top. The nook is in front of two four-paned windows, outlined with a gray border, that show green rolling hills dotted with pink wildflowers before a bright blue Atlantic Ocean and a large dark rock island. In Port Rexton, Newfoundland.
December 1, 2025 at 2:43 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
Patches of blue showing up in the sky finally!
Snow covered houses and trees on a Chicago street with tiny patches of subtle blue among the clouds in the sky
November 30, 2025 at 4:24 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekVForVowels
Oars
A slender young man, in light blue denim jean and a blue rain jacket with its hood pulled over his head and wearing sunglasses, leans forward from the back of a flat wooden boat, one leg bent in front of him for balance and leverage. He grips the tops of wooden oars in each hand as he rows the boat away from a dock (where another boat with a teal hull waits) across a slightly choppy, green lake. On Lake Bled, Slovenia.
November 30, 2025 at 2:41 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
This is the first time I’ve noticed how the small twiggy branches on my tree create little holders for the snow along longer branches. ❄️ ❤️
A bare maple tree with several inches of snow all along each of its outstretched branches, hugged in place by smaller upward facing twig branches
November 29, 2025 at 10:00 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
Snowscape! #Chicago
White fluffy snow covers the angular bare tree branches and vertical lines of iron fences and railings on a street in Chicago
November 29, 2025 at 7:59 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekVForVowels
Ice rink
An ice rink, bright white with clear walls topped with blue railings, is filled with skaters in the middle of the playing field of Wrigley Field. At the far end, under the illuminated green scoreboard, is a giant, brightly lit baseball.
November 29, 2025 at 2:51 PM
cbannister.bsky.social
#AlphabetChallenge #WeekVForVowels
Umbrellas
Umbrellas, one made of cloth with its white inner panels brightly lit and the rest of straw and flatter, are in two rows above casually strewn tables and chairs on a sandy beach in Marbella, Spain. In the sky above, the bright white dot of a full moon peeks through clouds and illuminates those adjacent to it.
November 28, 2025 at 2:32 PM