Merry Christmas to all! (another golden oldie from the blog archives)
On Christmas Day—blog?
I’d rather have grog,
Or maybe eggnog,
Then go walk the dog.
Or watch a Yule Log,
And eat like a hog,
Then go for a jog.
Blogging’s a bog.
My mind’s in a fog,
Or maybe agog
From much dialogue.
I’ll return to the slog
Tomorrow, and blog.
[NOTE: On the words “the dog,” that’s a picture of the dog we had when my son was little.]
Thank you, Neo.
To you and to all the commenters, Merry Christmas!
And a very merry Christmas to you too Neo. May you and your family be truly blessed.
This isn’t Christmas music (maybe it should be), but seems to fit the mood anyway, for anyone who wants a few minutes of something soothing and beautiful.
https://youtu.be/efdswXXjnBA?t=241
Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year to Neo and all her followers.
Thank you, Patrick. That was lovely.
Spent the morning watching grandkids open presents.
So nice to see their thrill and excitement, even when they sorta know what they were getting, some of it was still a surprise.
We are more blase now, as adults.
AesopSpouse and I bought the treadmill, shopvac, and outdoor pizza oven together, and left them boxed in the garage, with nary a bow nor ribbon.
But the tree is up and shining (not quite so scintillating as Neo’s!), and it’s time for the traditional nap before the next round of festivities tonight.
Merry Christmas to all and may the joy of the season drive out the despair of the headlines, for just a little while.
The story of Longfellow’s poem “Christmas Day” is especially poignant, and inspired the hymn “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.”
A selection of versions: first a recording by Johnny Cash & June Carter, then a choral rendition, followed by a video montage of Civil War photographs using a contemporary musical setting of the poem.
https://amgreatness.com/2017/12/24/i-heard-the-bells-on-christmas-day/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOGz9WqNQoI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZtNlZmnEMU
Merry Christmas, everyone. Peace on Earth.
Merry Merry Christmas, Neo. I am unconvinced that no time was put into your posting today; and I highly approve of the fact that it not only rhymes, it scans! Also, I must thank you for including the photo of your once-little boy’s dog, which I know you included just to make my own Christmas day super-special … as I am an unreconstructed dog-lover. :>)))
And Merry, Merry Christmas to all who come by today.
Thank you all for your links to your favorite music of the season. Along with dogs (and cats too), I love good music. :>)
So here are my favorites — top favorites among many. :>) I still think the classic Robert Shaw Chorale Christmas carols are the gold standard, to which no others — not even the Mormon Tabernacle Choir — can attain. I love the entire album (but I see there are several, and I know not which I have played every Christmas for at least the last 50 years), but these are my absolute favorites.
The Coventry Carol:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s_n_ycNvP8&list=PLcJ95g4vRE7j3_IxbDa8GR6RyUrWiDh4a
Next: The Carol of the Bells
Later: O Come, O Come Emmanuel
Earlier: Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella
All in the playlist next to The Coventry Carol.
Julie says, “these are my absolute favorites”
I knew there was a reason that I agree with your comments so often!
Our HS choir sang many Shaw arrangements and I really enjoyed them (the MoTab’s tend to be a bit more difficult, though I have sung some of them as an adult), but I would hate to be the judge on “Singing with the Stars” to choose between the two choirs.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas to Neo and all who come here!
Aesop,
Two ears that hear as one? I too am a fan of the “MoTab.” It’s one of their recordings of the Hallelujah Chorus that we always listened to at Christmastime. (The one I found tonight on the UT was way too fast, though, I thought.)
Are you a musician? My folks were an organist-pianist (mother), and a tenor, both classically trained, so I grew up with music. I desperately wanted to be a concert pianist, but at seven I figured out I was never going to be Horowitz, so in the end I went for math instead. But I also had a good soprano voice, and my parents thought I should pursue a career in opera. (To tell the truth –ssshhhh!– if I’d been a singer I’d have wanted to be a lounge or nightclub singer. Julie London f’rinstance.)
I like your comments too, AesopFan; and thank you. And, of course, Merry Christmas!
Julie: My fingers didn’t like the piano, so I sang to my sister’s playing, and in church and school choirs. I thought about making a career of it, but really was not that good, and got interested in programming computers instead.
I am still an active amateur singer and choir director.
The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square (aka MoTab) did a new recording of The Messiah in 2016 that you might try; I don’t recall noticing the tempo of the Hallelujah Chorus one way or the other.
Their 2018 performance was broadcast to our chapels for a community sing-a-long, which was fun but challenging when you last sang the oratorio (a) decades ago, (b) on a different part (one’s voice, apparently, can change its range over the years).
https://www.lds.org/church/events/2018-handels-messiah-by-the-mormon-tabernacle-choir?lang=eng
PS I will repost this as one math geek to another, ICYMI
https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2018/12/IMG_1087.jpg?w=640&ssl=1
I say, Aesop, you do have a pretty sophisticated mathematical expression of the Christmas Wish for all there. Thank goodness I have the idea of the log and exp functions filed away in some hole that the dust bunnies somehow overlooked!
And may I say, the same to you. :>)
Also, another interesting connection: In one way and another, my Ph.D. work got sidetracked, and I ended up feeding the Honey & offspring by means of programming IBM mainframes (if you remember what those are!) If you got a problem with your 7070 Autocoder or 7094 Fortran IV-G or S/370 Assembler program, I’m your girl. And leaving office politics and whatnot out of it, I really did enjoy programming; and especially debugging, in the days when you didn’t have all these debugging tools, but had to find the logic errors and write necessary subroutines and so forth yourself. Those were the days! :>)))
Cherish your ongoing life in music. I’ve had to give up my piano, and nowadays I can barely carry a tune, and I miss them both badly. But the memories are there, and the piano’s on indefinite loan to the local performing arts society. I’m glad of that.
We used to have t-shirts in college that said:
FORTRAN Jock – I speak in GO-TOs
Also learned Algol (who uses that anymore?),PL/I, COBOL, BASIC, and RPG II.
Taught for a couple of years in a small college, did some commercial work.
Our university replaced its Burroughs 5500 machine with a brand new IBM 360/370 over the summer one year.
(IIRC, the numbers might be wrong after 40 years!)
When we got to the first programming class in the fall, the professor announced that we would no longer by working in Algol, but in PL/I.
“I don’t know PL/I,” he continued. “Your labbies don’t know PL/I. Your first assignment is due on Friday.”
It was a really good year!