Hasta La Gadget!

You’ve heard it all before: ’tis the season to be jolly. But this year we’re really, really jolly and we’re sharing our happiness. We’re all up on the best tree lightings and European Christmas markets, but we also have a real soft spot for the quirky.

Here are 9 places around the country where you can take in the festivities in sweet, intriguing style this month.

Light up the nights in Mesilla, New Mexico
Located just outside Las Cruces, this adorable town welcomes the holidays with thousands of locally-made luminaries that light the town’s plaza. There’s a Christmas Eve lighting ceremony, too, complete with caroling and free cookies.

Ride the Eastern Flyer POLAR EXPRESS Train Ride
Take an hour-long joy ride while both reading and watching this children’s favorite. Bonus: Dancing chefs serve you hot chocolate and cookies.

Pretend you’re in a European Christmas market in Baltimore at the German Christmas Village
Nestled in the Inner Harbor, take in tchotchkes galore through Christmas Eve.

Take to the water at the Newport Beach Boat Parade
About 100 boats make their way through Newport Harbor every year, all lit up and fancy. It really is a sight to behold.

Pretend it’s Christmas all year long in Santa Claus, Indiana
Because why not? It’s the only post office in the world with the Santa Claus name. The post office opened in 1856, but it wasn’t until a postmaster started answering children’s letters in 1914 that the place took off. These days nonprofit Santa’s Elves, Inc. and the Santa Claus Museum enlist volunteers to write children back. Roughly 13,000 letters are answered each year. (The address? Santa Claus Post Office, 45 North Kringle Place, Santa Claus, IN 47579)

Take in loads of lights at Dana Point’s IlluminOcean
The southern California town has 40 nights of holiday lights with 18 oversized sculptures and a light tunnel, which visitors can view beginning at sundown.

Be merry in Skaneateles, New York at Dickens Christmas
For the last 21 years, this tiny lakeside town has played home to Charles Dickens’ most famous characters from “A Christmas Carol.” Catch them on weekends for some music and horse-drawn carriage rides from noon to 4pm through Christmas Eve.

Visit The Most Festive Town In America at Snowflake Lane
Bellevue, WA has an adorable nightly performances through Christmas Day complete with faux snow, toy soldiers and a light show.

Or if overt Christmas isn’t really your thing, head to New York for the Nostalgia Train
Ride the (old) rails in train cars dating back to the 1930s on the M line on Sundays only from 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. now through December 28. If trains aren’t your thing, hop on some old buses on the M42 route Monday through Friday through December 19.

Savvy job-seekers might know how to write resumes and cover letters, but few are aware of this surprising fact: Contrary to popular belief, December is actually the best time of year to look for work!

There are two compelling reasons why this is true–

#1 Competition levels drop dramatically. The majority of job-seekers figure that the holidays are a waste of time and make only marginal efforts to search for a new position. But their unfortunate mistake can turn into your big advantage because…

#2 Hiring takes off in the New Year. Although interviewing for full-time employees takes a dip in December, the months of January and February typically generate the strongest hiring period of the year. Organizations kick-off new projects and initiatives, budgets are put into place and additional staff is required to carry out the company’s plans.

Accordingly, if you take full advantage of the opportunities that the holidays have to offer, you may well find yourself as a sought after candidate–one who’s first in line to be interviewed in early January. To ensure you are making the most of this special time of year, here are three holiday practices you will want to adopt:

Practice the art of seasonal schmoozing. The holidays are filled with parties, gatherings, and community events. These are all prime opportunities to mix, mingle and share your story. Be certain, however, that you don’t dampen the festivities by trying too hard. Resist the temptation to deliver a rehearsed elevator speech unless you are attending a formal industry event where such introductions would be commonplace. Even then, make sure you judge the mood of the merrymakers before you come across as too stiff or businesslike.

At informal gatherings, a light touch is always best. When asked what you do, you can reply with a snappy one-liner that will pique your listeners’ interest. For example, a department store buyer used this playful response when asked about her career, “I shop with other people’s money.” (You can bet ears perked up with that one!) Once the buyer had the attention of her audience, she then continued with a lengthier description of her skills, experience and job search goals.

Reconnect with old contacts. Holiday cards and folksy letters are not only welcomed, they’re expected. Done correctly, they can be a great way of securing new leads and opportunities. After sharing the latest news about your family, you can mention your job search and add a few of the companies you are targeting. Then in a low-key manner, you can let your friends know that you’d appreciate any suggestions or contacts they might have.

You can also send holiday greetings to recruiters you’ve worked with in the past, reconnect and update them on your search. Recruiters are busy people and can easily forget candidates. So your greeting may well put you at the top of their minds in a favorable light. And, if you are very lucky, they might have the ideal job cross their desk just as your greeting appears in their inbox.

Network in new and innovative ways. Volunteering, seasonal hiring, and all sorts of opportunities present themselves for moving beyond your immediate circle of contacts. Pursue as many of these as you can that will comfortably allow you time for other holiday networking activities. You never know whom you might meet and where such opportunities may lead.

Most of all, remember that your goal is to take full advantage of the serendipity and good will that abounds in December. Join in the seasonal festivities, celebrate with your career goals in mind and anticipate that success may be only weeks away. You just might find yourself ringing in 2015 with a brand new job. And that’s a pretty great way to start off the New Year… with a big thanks to the holiday spirit!

Mary Eileen Williams is a Nationally Board Certified Career Counselor with a Master’s Degree in Career Development and twenty years’ experience assisting midlife jobseekers to achieve satisfying careers. Her book, Land the Job You Love: 10 Surefire Strategies for Jobseekers Over 50, is a step-by-step guide that shows you how you can turn your age into an advantage and brand yourself for success. Updated in 2014, it’s packed with even more critical information aimed at providing mature applicants with the tools they need to gain the edge over the competition and successfully navigate the modern job market. Visit her website at Feisty Side of Fifty.com and celebrate your sassy side!

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

CLEVELAND (AP) — The uncle of a 12-year-old boy who had a pellet gun when he was shot by a Cleveland police officer told mourners at a memorial service Wednesday that they must be advocates for change through peaceful protest and civil disobedience.

Tamir Rice’s uncle also said that police need to revamp how they train officers while also looking closer at police brutality and the use of excessive force. Surveillance video released by police shows Tamir being shot within 2 seconds of a patrol car stopping near him at a park on Nov. 22. It shows the boy reaching in his waistband for what police discovered was an airsoft gun, which shoots non-lethal plastic projectiles. He died the next day.

Police said rookie officer Tim Loehmann believed the boy had a real firearm.

Loehmann joined Cleveland police in March after spending six months in 2012 with the police department in suburban Independence.

Personnel files released Wednesday showed police supervisors in Independence decided he lacked the maturity needed to work in their department. A letter in his file said there was a pattern of a lack of discretion and of not following instructions.

“In law enforcement there are times when instructions need be followed to the letter, and I am under the impression Ptl. Loehmann, under certain circumstances, will not react in the way instructed,” the letter said.

Loehmann resigned from the Independence police department in December 2012 after meeting his supervisors about their concerns.

Cleveland police said in a statement Wednesday night that the agency did not review Loehmann’s department personnel from Independence before hiring him. However, detectives talked to the human resources director in that suburb and were told there were no issues that would make him an undesirable candidate. The detectives were told Loehmann had resigned from the Independence department for personal reasons.

A grand jury will consider whether charges are merited.

Just days after the shooting, protesters marched past City Hall and temporarily blocked rush-hour traffic on a busy Cleveland freeway.

Several hundred people attended the memorial service for Tamir at Mount Sinai Baptist Church.

Family members and friends, some wearing shirts with Tamir’s picture, filed past displays of photos at the front of the church and stopped to hug his mother.

One of his former teachers said Tamir liked to draw, play basketball and the drums.

Economic inequality is a hot topic in America these days. It is the subject of hefty bestsellers, presidential addresses, and even Hollywood movies. The issue has even appeared on the radar screen of foreign policy pundits.

In this Sunday’s Washington Post, former assistant secretary of state Kurt Campbell writesabout how “income inequality undermines U.S. power.” Campbell writes about how the growing divide between rich and poor undercuts U.S. “soft power” and saps U.S. ability to compete economically with a thriving Asia.

It’s unusual for former State Department officials like Campbell to delve into ostensibly domestic issues. Perhaps income inequality has become so unavoidably grotesque that it has begun to worry even the foreign policy elite. Perhaps Campbell’s essay is a trial balloon for his mentor, Hillary Clinton, as she tests which issues might play well in the 2016 presidential campaign.

What makes the essay particularly interesting, however, is what Campbell doesn’t address. He doesn’t discuss how U.S. policies accentuate global inequalities. Nor does he appreciate how the wealth gap at home is reinforced by U.S. foreign policies on resource extraction, for instance, or global trade.

But the most glaring absence from Campbell’s essay is the word “race.” Reading his piece, you might come away with the impression that inequality is not a black-and-white issue.

But it is.

Apartheid America

Consider these two astounding facts: “The United States incarcerates a higher proportion of blacks than apartheid South Africa did. In America, the black-white wealth gap today is greater than it was in South Africa in 1970 at the peak of apartheid.”

This quote comes from Nicholas Kristof, who has been publishing a series in The New York Times under the title “When Whites Just Don’t Get It.” In an earlier column in the series, Kristof points out that whites in South Africa owned 15 times more than blacks in 1970s, while the current ratio for the United States is 18 to 1.

In the context of the last 50 years, the statistics look even starker. According to a set of charts the Washington Post published last year on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s”I Have a Dream” speech, the gap between whites and blacks has either remained the same or has gotten worse over the last half century. The gap in household income, the ratio of unemployment, and the number of children going to segregated schools have all remained roughly the same. The disparity in incarceration rates has gotten worse.

U.S. scholars have used the term “apartheid” to refer to specific historical periods (such as the era of Jim Crow), the residential segregation that existed for decades, the educational segregation that persists, and a criminal justice system that is so often criminal in its lack of justice. But can we apply the label of “apartheid” to all of American society?

South Africa got rid of apartheid. Although it remains more sharply divided economically than virtually any other major country, the end of apartheid did spur the growth of the black middle class, which expanded from 300,000 people to 3 million, with blacks rising from 11 percent to 41 percent of the overall middle class in 20 years.

But in the United States, very little has changed in five decades. The higher echelons of the African American community have done reasonably well, but not the middle class or the working poor. Since 1970, the percentage of African Americans in the middle class has actually declined. And the depression that hit the country after 2007 wiped out whatever gains this middle class might have achieved.

The media is full of pictures of Obama and Oprah, of Condoleezza and Susan Rice, of Serena Williams and Will Smith. Their omnipresence suggests that America is far from an apartheid society. And yet, for all their power and prominence, they are the outliers.

The Tragedy of Ferguson

In 1983, J.M. Coetzee published The Life and Times of Michael K, a novel about an unemployed gardener adrift in a war-torn South Africa. Michael K, whose race is never explicitly identified, is harassed by police, press-ganged into manual labor, accused of being a guerrilla. Riots and looting take place across the landscape of a country sharply divided between rich and poor. This is the future of apartheid, Coetzee suggested: a war of all against all. Six years later, apartheid fell, and the worst-case scenario was averted.

Now let’s take a look at The Life and Times of Michael B, the American sequel to Coetzee’s novel. The settings are disturbingly similar. Ferguson, Missouri looks even more like apartheid South Africa than the average American city. Ferguson is more than 60 percent African American, but only three of the 53 cops are black. The mayor is white, as is the chief of police. Nearly one-third of the African American population lives below the poverty line. And in 2013, 93 percent of the arrests involved blacks. Injustice and inequality has generated protests, riots, and police crackdowns.

The protagonist of this American sequel, Michael B, was an African American teenager who struggled to grow up in these challenging circumstances. He graduated high school on schedule, an achievement in and of itself in a town where only 78 percent of the students managed to get their degrees. He had no criminal record. He liked to play video games, smoke a little dope, hang out with friends. He listened to rap music and had just started to record some of his own songs. He planned to go to a technical college.

He was, in other words, a typical teenager.

On August 9, 2014, his death at the hands of a white policeman became an American tragedy, the circumstances of which have been much debated, dissected, and disputed. As with any tragedy that resonates in the larger world, the story of Michael Brown brings all the hopes and fears of a community to the foreground.

In Ferguson, the gross inequalities are an everyday matter. The rich lifestyles of successful rappers contrast with the reality of poorly paid jobs for those lucky enough to get them. The image of President Obama commanding the military, the Special Forces, and the National Guard is almost a grotesque reversal of the average African American experience in Ferguson facing the arbitrary–and downright racist–application of force by local whites. And the corporate self-helpism of Oprah, with its I-can-overcome-all-odds optimism, offers a dreamscape so at odds with the everyday indignities of negotiating the local power structure and the social welfare bureaucracy.

Physician: Heal Thyself

There’s certainly a foreign policy story in here, just as income inequality in general has many global dimensions.

The story of the shooting death of an unarmed African American man, the ensuing protests, the behavior of the police toward protestors, the acquittal of the police officer responsible for the killing: all of this provided foreign journalists and commentators rich fodder for storiesabout American hypocrisy. The U.S. government talks a great game about democracy, conflict resolution, nation building, and the like. But if we can’t effectively solve a problem that wasn’t even officially acknowledged until 50 years ago–and we can’t show much in the way of improvement except for a narrow slice of the African American middle class–then why on earth should any other country bother to listen to “experts” from the State Department and their bromides?

Until it puts its own house in order, the United States should adopt a more modest foreign policy. Perhaps the glare of the spotlight will force such a change. Accusations of hypocrisy can sometimes have that effect. The quintessential TV dad, Bill Cosby, stepped down from the board of Temple University because of a slew of rape allegations. Larry Craig, the anti-gay Republican senator from Idaho, left office after being accused of soliciting sex from an undercover policeman. James Watson, who shared a Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA, retreated into the shadows after making a blatantly racist–and unscientific–judgment about Africans.

Of course, Cosby has also denied the charges and continued his recent comedy tour, Craig is a lobbyist, and an unapologetic Watson is back in the news for auctioning off his Nobel. Hubris is often embarrassment-proof. And since U.S. foreign policy is nothing if not arrogant, don’t hold your breath that the State Department will suddenly redirect its “democracy promotion” efforts to building a more perfect union at home.

Call the system of racial inequality in the United States what you will: the “two nations” of black and white, the new Jim Crow, or just plain ugly. But if the term “apartheid” shames the establishment into acting–and prompts pundits like Kurt Campbell to utter the word “race” when discussing inequality–then by all means let’s use the unflattering comparison. It’s a fitting way of bearing witness to the life and times of Michael B and everyone else who has suffered under this abhorrent system.

Crossposted with Foreign Policy In Focus

The most uplifting stories I hear are often about things that never happened. This is what I keep reminding myself as I join others seeking to end rape as a weapon of war. This is what drives the work of the courageous women facing down ISIS every day.

This paradox is familiar to many women’s rights activists out there. In this vital work to combat violations of women’s human rights, the best news can be no news. A community that reported no women dying in childbirth in the past year. A girl who grows up into womanhood facing no barriers to her education and no violence.

But it’s very hard to find good news in the timeline of ISIS’ advance across Iraq and Syria. The ideology of these armed extremists depends on the subjugation of women. They have imposed iron-fisted restrictions on women’s freedoms. They have raped and sold women into sexual slavery. They have publicly beaten women who dare to take a stand.

These are the atrocities that grab headlines. But behind these headlines are the stories of things that did not happen, of women who escaped the threat of rape and found refuge beyond ISIS’ grasp. Despite the odds, grassroots women’s rights activists in Iraq and Syria are risking their safety and their lives to do what others have dismissed as impossible: to prevent rape as a weapon of war. These are the glimmers of hope that must light our way.

Local women’s rights activists are mobilizing to prevent sexual violence and protect survivors. They even operate in places governments and aid agencies cannot reach, thanks to their longtime local connections. They know the lay of the land. For instance, in Iraq, brave women are setting up safe houses and shelters, creating clandestine oases of safety even in the heart of ISIS territory. They spread the word so that women in danger know where to turn, through postings on social media or by word of mouth.

Iraqi women’s rights activists have had more than a decade of hard-won experience in preventing wartime rape and protecting survivors. They describe how the US invasion and occupation of their country brought religious fundamentalists to power and fueled the rise of brutal anti-government groups, including, eventually, ISIS. Both government-allied and rival militias have meted out terror, violence and rape against women. In the early years of the occupation, groups like the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) responded by creating shelter networks to prevent rape and protect women. When the threat of ISIS exploded, they knew exactly what women in danger would need, and they leapt into action to expand their shelters and set up emergency escape routes.

In Syria, the women’s movement was dealt a serious blow by the devastation of their civil war and by the upsurge of extremist militias. But these women have remained active, organizing to provide humanitarian aid for displaced women and families, including reproductive and maternal health care for women. They’ve also been more successful than world governments in brokering local ceasefires and prisoner exchanges and getting aid into besieged areas. They are the people who know exactly what needs to be done to prevent more atrocities by ISIS: re-start peace negotiations (seriously, this time) and make sure that women’s rights and civil society activists are represented.

Women’s rights activists in both countries know that even beyond ISIS-controlled territory, the landscape is treacherous for women. Government policies that trample women’s rights continue to put women at risk of rape, even once they’ve escaped ISIS. Consider Iraq’s pending Ja’afari draft law. This pernicious piece of legislation would lower the marrying age for girls to nine and legalize marital rape. Before the war broke out in Syria, women’s rights activists there were hard at work demanding a voice in their country’s constitutional redrafting, a process that had eroded protections against rape.

What gives them the strength to take on these monumental challenges?

One young Iraqi woman’s story is a stark reminder of what a person can be forced to endure. At 16, she was raped and had to flee her home, fearful that her family would kill her in order to erase the shame of her rape and restore their “honor.” She had turned to sex work to survive. For this, she was arrested and imprisoned. OWFI activists found out about her story, secured her release and offered her shelter.

And she began to attend activist meetings. She became an OWFI organizer, reaching out to women in danger and helping them seek shelter. As a survivor, she connected with other survivors. Her story is one of transformation and strength, and she is not alone.

The essential work of many grassroots activists in Iraq and Syria is galvanized by survivors’ activism. This helps make their leadership indispensable. Better than any outsider, they can identify and meet urgent needs for women threatened by ISIS and all sexist violence. And their voices offer crucial perspectives to ensure that any potential political resolution responds to women’s needs.

Brutal violence may make an easy headline. But women’s activism makes for powerful solutions.

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and the International Campaign to Stop Rape & Gender Violence in Conflict in conjunction with 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence. To learn more about global activism to end sexual violence in conflict, visit here. To read all posts in the series, visit here.