And rest...

It’s the last day of 2015, a year that completely wore me out.

Perhaps it’s A Sign that the battery on my pedometer died yesterday, while I was 35,000 feet above middle America, and that when I get the new one today, I reset it to Eastern Standard Time. Because in the next few days I have to figure out how to reset a lot of things in my life: recharge my physical, mental and emotional batteries; reorient myself to the Metro D.C. area; and recalibrate my thought patterns for the new job, which is different from anything I’ve done before.

Ordinarily I’d wrap up the year in a few hundred trenchant words, but to tell you the truth, I just don’t have the bandwidth for that today. I can’t wrap up the job search, the death of friends, the decision to walk off a metaphoric cliff or any of the rest of it. Instead, I’m getting a pedometer battery, and then I’m going to Wegman’s, just to look around.

After that—I don’t even know. I just know that I’m ready to ring out the year.

California, here I go

As of 0915 today (Lord willing and Virgin America for once taking off on time), I have ceased to be a resident of California. For two months I shall reside in the District They Call Columbia, within spitting distance of Congressmorons and other lowlifes, while I explore the area and decide where I’d like to live on a more permanent basis.

During this time I’ll be living out of suitcases and bin bags. For a couple of weeks, I’ll even be without a car, until mine catches up with me. That’ll make me feel terribly urban, I can tell you. And very un-Californian.

But I can use that time to find my way on foot around the city, get my feet under the desk (when my employers find me one), and generally reorient myself.

What a slice.

"We deliver for you"--NOT

More than two weeks ago I submitted the very-hard-to-get hardcopy Change of Address form to the USPS, setting 22 December as the date they should stop delivering mail to my old place and begin forwarding it to my new one in D.C.

I cleared out the mailbox on the 23^rd, and hoped that that was the end of it. But no—I went by on the 27^th to find five new pieces of mail addressed to me, which had been newly delivered after my cut-off date. Since I’m turning over the keys to the property management company today, I found this frustrating and enraging. They basically just blew off the CoA. So I had to go online and re-submit, in the tenuous hope that at least the computer system will spark some action—like, maybe, automatically pull my mail out of the delivery queue for redirection.

They make the hardcopy form hard to get (it’s not out on their counter with other forms; you have to ask one of their rude and charmless humanoid staff for it) because they clearly want you to go online to submit the change. An online form puts the data immediately into their database and saves them the labor costs of paying someone to translate the postcard details to their system. I get that.

But here’s their business model: they charge you for the privilege of saving them the work and possible data entry error. Yes—you make life easier for them, and save them a few bob, and they hit you up for $1.05.

But get this: they say they have to do this to you, for your security:

Where in the hell does that come from? How does charging you $1.05 have anything to do with security? It’s just another money-sucking scheme. (And I’m sure they hired consultants who arrived at that bizarre price point as the “sweet spot” where people would just fork it over without bitching.)

So, what I wonder is—if you don’t have Internet access, or a credit card—what are you meant to do? I guess you’re just not supposed to get mail. And if you do, you better not be moving, because you’re totally stuffed. They obviously toss out the official-but-non-revenue-generating postcard forms and do whatever they please.

Oh, but here’s the other thing: that unicorn CoA postcard doesn’t come as a single piece of paper any longer. It’s buried in a packet of “moving deals”—from Lowe’s, Best Buy and I don’t know what all. And the online form has the equivalent. Once you agree to let them suck $1.05 from your credit card, here’s the “confirmation” page:

Thanks, USPS, for being a crass, incompetent, lazy-ass organization with attitudinal staff and no discernable value proposition. Because people moving any distance really appreciate the way you put obstacles in their path and add stress to their lives. You continue to set standards for underperformance and don’t-give-a-damn customer service right here in the 21^st Century.

Gratitude Monday: Friends of the year

On this final Gratitude Monday of 2015, I’m spending the day watching as everything I own (except a couple of bin bags’ worth of clothes) is loaded onto a moving truck for storage. It’ll be there for the next two months as I explore the Metro DC area and figure out where I want to live this time around.

This has been a great and terrible year, one that’s worn me out. The best part of it has been my friends, who believed in me, encouraged me, made me laugh, listened to me rant. They sent cards, they took me to performance art, they made introductions, they offered their homes and their cars.

Basically, they got me through it.

So, as I run the mop over the plastic fake hardwood floor one last time before I turn the keys over to the property management company, let me say again: I’m deeply grateful for my friends.

Sing in exultation

Ah, the Big Day at last. Let’s pull out all the stops, open our hearts and throats, and fill wherever we are with joyful sounds. What better to do it with than “Adeste Fidelis”?

I associate this one with midnight masses, the anthem that sends folks out bundling up into the cold night toward whatever their Christmas celebration entails. What is love most about it is the descant on the verse that starts out “Sing, choirs of angels.” That sucker just makes my chest tighten, whether I’m singing it or hearing it.

Here are my pals at King’s College, Cambridge, doing it for you.

Happy Christmas to us all.

Sleep in comfort, slumber deep

My, how Advent has flown past—Christmas is almost upon us. So let’s have another carol about the baby, another lullaby.

There are plenty of songs about Mary, about the shepherds, the king-magi, etc. Even one about some freaking drummer boy, which I never understood, because what the hell is some kid doing out in the middle of Judea in the middle of the night in the middle of winter (or early spring, if you’re some kind of killjoy purist) with a damn drum? Like any parents would have put up with that nonsense for a New York minute.

I like today’s because it’s from the perspective of the animals in the stable. They respond to the notion of a newborn in their midst by offering their warmth, literally. I can see their breath as they snuffle and snort around the manger in that cold night. I confess that I don’t know that much about the large animals, but having a cat next to you pushing out the KTUs (Kitty Thermal Units) at a rate of knots can make all the difference in nippy weather.

I also don’t know that much about the history of this one. “Hajej, Nynej, Jezisku” is Czech, possibly from somewhere between the 14^th and 16^th Centuries. We know it in English as “The Rocking Carol”, and it does indeed give you that quiet sense of being gently rocked. It’s very comforting musically as well as metaphorically.

I’m giving you Chanticleer’s version of it. I had the great good fortune to attend one of their Christmas concerts this week, held in the perfect venue for their voices (including their kickass countertenors)—Mission Santa Clara. I have many of their CDs, and I love how they put together a Christmas carol. Especially this one.

He come from the Glory

Today’s Christmas song is a blast from the past. Long past? No, my past. I can’t recall how the Chad Mitchell Trio came to my attention, but I remember “The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy” from the start.

It wasn’t on a Christmas album; I don’t even know if they made a Christmas album. But even if it’s not Christmas-specific, it’s about baby Jesus, so I say it’s in. It’s not quite a lullaby; well, maybe a Calypso lullaby. Belafonte has a version and he’s fine. But I prefer the Mitchell arrangement.

The kingdom of this world

You can’t have a Christmas season without a rendition of “Hallelujah Chorus”, can you? And you know what a sucker I am for flash mobs singing it. I’ve done entire Decembers with a different one every week.

For this year I’m going back to one of my favorites, at a Calgary shopping mall food court. There have been plenty of them in the five years since this one surprised unsuspecting mall rats, but I like this one right much. For one thing, the acoustics are better than a lot of the ones in multi-level atria. (There’s one from the Paris Opera Society from a couple of years ago. I wanted to share that, but it just doesn’t sound good enough, even though I’m sure it was a spectacular experience.)

And for another—they were the pioneers in “Hallelujah” flash mobbery. They set the tradition.

Gratitude Monday: On the sidelines

 Having popped in to Trader Joe’s last Friday to pick up enough milk to see me through the next week, let me devote today’s Gratitude Monday to expressing my relief and thanks that I have no call to go grocery shopping before Christmas.

Because the normally idiotic drivers of the Valley They Call Silicon have upped their game by an order of magnitude, and my own bandwidth has narrowed somewhat, so I don’t want to put it to the test.

Not needing to be anywhere that shoppers are likely to congregate frees me up to focus on other things, like observing and commenting, for which I am also grateful.

Con giubilante cor

Let’s stay around the same time period as yesterday’s piece, but move to the Mediterranean area for our Christmas music today.

Pietro Yon wrote “Gesu Bambino” in 1917. Imagine the drive to pull yourself figuratively out of the fourth year of a war that was strangling Italy (and France, and Germany, and Russia, and Britain…) to write a carol about angels and shepherds rejoicing over the birth of the Savior.

I like the way the melody ripples in a swirling pattern, like water bubbling down a hillside. As per usual, it’s about the baby Jesus (well—that is the title, after all), to whom it refers as “The Christmas Rose”, which is kind of pretty.

I love the refrain:

Osanna, osanna cantaro

Con giubilante cor

I tuoi pastori ed angeli

O re di luce e amor

Your shepherds and angels sang hosanna, hosanna with jubilant heart, O king of light and love.

And here are two of my favorite sopranos singing it at Carnegie Hall:

In the midst of the earth

My offering today is new to me, although it’s about a hundred years old. Technically, it’s not about Christmas, but it is sacred and how can something titled “Salvation Is Created” not be about Christmas?

The preponderance of Pavel Tchesnokov’s compositions were sacred, until he was forced by the Soviets to concentrate on secular music. He was a triple threat—composer, conductor and choirmaster (kind of like Bach). This one, published in 1913, was one of his final sacred works.

The words are pretty simple; in English it’s “Salvation is created, in the midst of the earth, O God, Our God. Alleluia.” So, yeah—pretty Christmasy, in my opinion.

Here’s a choir from Yale singing it in Russian:

Teach my feet to fly

We listened to a couple of Quebecoises yesterday, so today we’ll feature another Canadian songwriter. The first time I heard Joni Mitchell’s “River” (on a compilation CD) it absolutely stopped me in my tracks. Yes—that’s what Christmas is like, when you’re not aligned with your expectations, when you’ve screwed the pooch in a relationship, when you just can not get into the rhythm of the season—whatever that might mean to you.

I love the imagery of a river not as something that lets you sail, but something that you can skate away on. It captures the dislocation that a Northerner feels in an environment like Los Angeles. Even though that’s my native land, I understand fully the sense that it’s not quite real, more façade than substance, and how that adds to the alienation.

There are many covers of “River”, but I like Linda Ronstadt’s the best, so that’s what I’m sharing with you.

Mitten im kalten Winter

Michael Praetorius is one of my favorite composers; I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything of his that I don’t like. He makes the transition from medieval/Renaissance-sounding things to a more modern—or maybe a more universal—feel, that touches me every time. He was one of those court composers—like Bach or Handel or (sort of) Mozart, which perhaps gave him the freedom to set his hand to whatever struck his fancy. Masses, motets; experimenting in surround-sound (by placing mini-choirs in different areas of the space)—these days, in the Valley They Call Silicon, they’d dub him a paradigm-shifting, disruptive-tech, game-changing thought leader, and venture capitalists would throw money at him.

In those days he served a succession of German princes, ending at the court of Dresden.

“Es ist ein Ros entsprungen” is my all-time favorite Christmas carol. I first learned it in a German class and I still only know the words auf Deutsch. You probably know it as “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming”. The intricate polyphony of this piece always speaks to me of voices echoing in huge, candle-lit Gothic spaces, merging together on the final note of each verse. I love it.

Here to sing it for you is the Dresdner Kreuzchor, as seems only appropriate, it being the home team for Praetorius.

Cet heureux temps

Today’s carol dates from the 19^th Century, but across La Manche from Britain, where a lot of the other music I’ve been sharing comes from. It first appeared in a collection of carols called “Airs des Noëls lorrains”, meaning Christmas songs from Lorraine.

As with yesterday’s offering (and a whole lot of them, really) it’s about Jesus’s birth in a stable, and it has a rustic feel to me. I almost expect to see frost on the breath of the singers, and bits of straw flying about in the air.

This rendition by The Chieftains (coupled with another carol, “Ça bergers”) with Kate and Anna McGarrigle reinforces that notion for me. (This is from the same album that has Jackson Browne's "The Rebel Jesus".) The song makes mention of the bagpipes, so it seems appropriate that what’s in essence an Irish ceilidh band (with uilleann pipes) should be singing it with a couple of French Canadiennes.

And His shelter was a stable

You have to admit that the Victorians were aces at writing Christmas carols and songs. “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, “Away in a Manger”, “We Three Kings” and “It Came upon a Midnight Clear” all date from the years when that little woman reigned over the empire and set the standards for middle class stuffiness and rectitude that still pervade the Anglo-Saxon world today.

She also jump started Ye Olde Christmas Traditions (including the Christmas tree that her husband brought over from Saxe Coburg) that pretty much define what the holiday should be in a the minds of millions today. Between her and Charles Dickens, we have a lot to live up to.

“Once in David’s Royal City” dates from 1848. My pals at King’s College, Cambridge, begin their Christmas Eve service with it as their processional. The arrangement they use has a boy chorister sing the first verse solo and unaccompanied; second and third verses are the full choir; and the congregation and organ join in on the fourth. It’s truly stunning, especially the last verse with the descant.

Let the heavens sing forth

We’re going to another of the all-time heavy hitters of the music world today. As with Bach, trying to pick one thing from Mozart is almost paralyzing. The phrase “spoilt for choice” comes to mind.

“Exsultate Jubilate” is one of my favorites from him. It’s not for Christmas, but it’s religious, and it does call us to rejoice. The first part says:

Rejoice, be glad,

O you blessed souls,

Rejoice, be glad,

Singing sweet songs;

In response to your singing

Let the heavens sing forth with me.

I’ve got about a squillion recordings of different sopranos singing it. Kathleen Battle really goes to town on it, and I very much like Kiri Te Kanawa’s rendering. But no one sings it with such brio as Cecilia Bartoli, so I’m giving her the real estate today. And I’m giving you the whole motet, not just the part about the Alleluia that you usually get.

Sit back, crank up the volume and enjoy.

Gratitude Monday: Boldly going

Last week was rather hectic for me—started my new job, met a lot of new people, reconnected with some old friends, began wrapping my head around the challenges, tried some new things. It’s clear that 2016, when I permanently relocate to D.C., is going to be a time of stretching for me.

Today I’m grateful for the kindness and generosity of new friends, who (without having ever exchanged a word  with me except by social media and email) offered me their hospitality for the entire week, set me off in the right direction for the Reston Metro station the first morning (I never saw that place in the daylight, so good directions were crucial), lent me an operational sat-nav device (one that actually recognized the existence of the Commonwealth of Virginia, which mine did not), and enthusiastically received my nightly reports about the day’s events.

I’m also grateful to them for the sharing of the kittehs, mostly Worf and Kes (the downstairs felines), the revisiting of an old Herndon eatery favorite and the introduction to a new (to me) one—with wiener schnitzel. And a lovely Saturday night dinner with neighbors over delicious Szechuan food.

It was an extraordinary gift to have an actual home to go home to each night and it made a huge difference to my capacity for showing up at work each day pretty confident that whatever happened, I’d be okay. And I am deeply grateful for it.

Heal this place inside my heart

Yesterday was Gaudete Sunday, so let’s talk a little about holiday joy.

There’s such pressure for us to be joyful during this time. Savior born! Family togetherness! Bright colors, yule log, bubbles in the wine, miracles, feasting and kids on Santa’s lap. Everything meant to be perfect, sparkling, cinnamon and nutmeg, happy.

Jesus wept—it it’s enough to make you open a vein when your heart feels as hollow as a dried gourd because of grief or loss that you’ve suffered in recent times. There is nothing like mandatory merrymaking to lay a pall of darkness on your soul. We are engulfed in a relentless Christmas machine that can be more destructive than the 82^nd Airborne, and it overwhelms our lives, even when we have all the "proper" pieces in place.

My Christmas song today, from the Indigo Girls, speaks to this. I sent it to my BFF last September, because I feared (rightly) that if I waited until Christmas she wouldn’t hear it, and I wanted her to.

Listen to “There’s Still My Joy”, and if you’re in that awful place of pain, try metaphorically laying bread on the branches of whatever tree you prefer. Let the birds sing to you, and think about past joys that can return—if not this year, then in future ones.

Now sing in brightness

Today is Gaudete Sunday in the season of Advent. So what else should I give you but “Gaudete”? It’s a carol dating way, way back, and has the kind of hollow echoes that I think of as emerging from ancient holy places, where people made it their vocation to come together to create a powerhouse of prayer.

There are plenty of versions out there, but because it’s primarily about the godhead becoming human through birth by Mary (the refrain is “Rejoice, rejoice, Christ is born of Mary. Rejoice!”), I’ve always thought the best versions are by women’s voices. My favorite (so far) is by the group Mediaeval Baebes:

Glorious songs of old

“It Came upon a Midnight Clear” is one of the staples of Christmas pageants. Or it was in the days when they had Christmas pageants. I have to say that I was never that enthused about it because it, like “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, it always sounded to me like whoever was singing it was drunk.

However, it turns out that there are alternative melodies to both of them, and these, I find, are quite appealing.

In the US, “Midnight Clear” is sung to a tune called “Carol”, by Richard Storrs Willis, but in the UK it’s to one called “Noel”, adapted from something older by Arthur Sullivan (yes, that Arthur Sullivan). Here it is, performed by the choir of Winchester Cathedral (yes, that Winchester Cathedral):

If you’re interested, the alternative to the Fleet Week version of “O Little Town” uses an English hymn tune called “Forest Green”. Here it is from my pals at King’s College, Cambridge:

Turns out it’s actually not at all a bad carol.

Mother's arms are tight around you

Okay, technically today’s music isn’t specific to Christmas—it’s actually a Welsh lullaby. I first heard it at the beginning of Empire of the Sun, when it impaled me on its beauty and simplicity, and you not infrequently hear it at Christmas concerts.

“Suo Gân” probably dates from around the beginning of the 19^th Century; just your basic lullaby, which Mary might have sung to baby Jesus, if she’d been, you know, Welsh.

This rendition is from the choir of King’s College Cambridge, those folks who also bring us the festival of lessons and carols every year.

Slumber now

Today’s song is another in the lullaby style that we find throughout Christmas music. It’s based on the folk song “Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mild”, but was written in 1912 by Max Reger as an art song.

I learned it as “Maria Wiegenlied” in a German class; in English it’s known as “Mary’s Lullaby” or “The Slumber Song”. Regardless of the language, you get a strong sense of a rocking cradle from the beat and the melody. And in honor of Saint Lucia’s Day, today, let’s have it in Swedish, where it’s known as “Marias vaggsång”, and sung by Swedish mezzo Katharina Fallholm.

There’s also a beautiful duet version with Kathleen Battle and Frederica von Stade, which you can enjoy here.

Churches filled with pride and gold

You might consider today’s piece an unlikely Christmas carol, but it fits right in to the theme of pushing aside all the clamor and clutter of typical holiday activities. Written by Jackson Browne, and performed here by him with The Chieftains, I think “The Rebel Jesus” is a perfect reminder of what things are done these days in the name of saviors, prophets and gods of one stripe or another.

In the case of a baby born in a stable in the backwater of empire, the idea of churches spending millions to cover up long-term crimes against the most vulnerable of their parishes, of televangelists in $3000 suits barely visible behind the pay-by-credit-card logos and of Bible-spewing maniacs spraying innocent people with death on full-auto is just surreal.

And I say—right on, my brothers. And sisters. Right on.

The voice calls us

It’s time to bring out the heavy hitters—in this case, perhaps the heaviest hitter of all time, J.S. Bach. The man wrote cantatas, oratorios and all kinds of stuff on a weekly basis, year after year for decades. Of course there’s something suitable for Christmas from him.

I’m choosing “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme”, from Cantata 140 (out of more than 200 of them; think about that). It’s not strictly Christmas, but it’s suitable, because it’s about us being watchful, awake for the arrival of the long-awaited salvation. “Wachet auf” opens the cantata, proclaiming “Awake, we are called by the voice”. This is one of the busiest pieces I’m going to give you this season, but Bach did love his complexity, so just enjoy.

(This recording is of the entire Cantata. You’re welcome to put up your feet and stay through the whole thing.)

Gratitude Monday: Friends

Last night marked the beginning of Hanukkah, and I’ve been thinking about a friend of mine, whom I’ve known for more than 20 years. All I’m going to say right now is that he’s the kindest, most generous man I know, and he saved my life.

That’s something you don’t say very often, so seems like a good thing to bring up on Gratitude Monday.

Leading onward, beaming bright

Today’s Christmas carol comes to us from a Victorian, who wrote it on his sickbed in 1859. It’s technically for Epiphany (which is the post-Christmas season), but my house, my rules and I’m putting it here.

The melody for “As with Gladness Men of Old” may be more familiar to you from one of my favorite Thanksgiving hymns, “For the Beauty of the Earth”. It lends itself to beautiful harmonies regardless of the lyrics. As you can hear in this rendition from the Wells Cathedral Choir.

Wells Cathedral was one of my surprise discoveries when I lived in Britain. You walk into a 14^th Century building and see an example of scissors arches that you think had to date from the latter part of the 20^th Century. See what I mean?

Make the Yuletide gay

I’ve written about one of my favorite modern American Christmas songs before. It came along at a time when there were powerful forces working on our national sensibilities, and I believe it captured everything in one place—melody, lyrics, even Judy Garland, of whom I’m not a fan.

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” was the lynchpin of the 1944 Vincent Minelli film Meet Me in Saint Louis. It speaks of carrying on in the face of unsettling times, and hoping for the restoration of family and loving friends in the future, even if the present is more than a little frightening.

It was a perfect song for Americans who’d been led to believe that, following the Normandy invasion in June of that year, the world war should have been over by Christmas. Not only had that not happened, but the German Ardennes offensive—a total surprise to the Allies—engendered confusion and fear; fear as frozen and bitter as the weather around Bastogne.

We live in unsettled times now, more than 70 years later; recent events have proven that we don’t need to cross an ocean to face terror. So “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is just as timely as it was in the darkest nights of our fight against Nazi totalitarianism. Wherever you are, wherever your loved ones are, take a moment to step away from the current struggle that has enveloped us, and let your hearts be light.

(This version by Linda Ronstadt.)

La guarda ribera

“Ríu Ríu Chíu” is a Spanish carol in the villancico style popular from the 15^th to the 18^th centuries. This one was first published in 1556, in Venice, and it makes the rounds at Christmas concerts here in the Bay Area. It’s about the Immaculate Conception and the Nativity.

I’ve got it on a number of CDs (because I have about…a lot of Christmas CDs). It’s lively, with an intricate harmonic pattern, and even if you don’t understand ancient Catalan, it’s lovely to listen to. Here are the lyrics, with translation courtesy of Wikipedia:

El lobo rabioso la quiso morder

Mas Dios Poderosa la supo defender

Quíso la hacer que no pudiese pecar

Ní aun original esta virgin no tuviera

The raging wolf sought to bite her, but God Almighty knew to defend her; He chose to make her so that she could not sin; no original sin was found in that virgin

Éste que es nacido es el Gran Moncara

Cristo Patriarca de carne vestido

Ha nos redimido con se hacer chiquito

Aúnque era infinito finite se hiciera

This one that is born is the Great King, Christ the Patriarch, clothed in flesh. He redeemed us when He made himself small, though He was Infinite He would make himself finite.

Yo vi mil Garzones que andavan cantando

Por aquí volando hacienda mil sones

Diciendo a gascones Gloria sea en el Cielo

Y paz en el suelo pues Jesús nasciera.

I saw a thousand boys (angels) go singing, here making a thousand voices while flying, telling the shepherds of glory in the heavens, and peace to the world since Jesus has been born.

The chorus is the sound of a kingfisher scaring away the wolf from Mary (sparing her from Original Sin):

Ríu, ríu, chíu, la guarda ribera

Dio guardó el lobo de nuestra cordera.

The very first time I ever heard “Ríu Ríu Chíu”, it was performed on TV by a group that would not have appeared anywhere near the top of your list of interpreters of Renaissance classics. Nonetheless, they do a bang-up job.

Winds were blowing, cows were lowing

It’s the first Friday in Advent; in case you’re getting a little wound up I’ve got something to help you step away and remind you to breathe.

I don’t even know how I acquired George Winston’s December CD, but I’m glad I did, because there’s a purity in the simplicity of his interpretations of seasonal music that often can—like us—become overwrought.

Take “Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head”. The Appalachian folk carol was first brought to the world’s notice by John Jacob Niles about a hundred years ago, and I’m sure you can find pages and pages of choral renderings on YouTube. But I like this version best.

  

Telling news of great joy

Okay, from music dealing with present-day holiday overload, let’s move back a few centuries for some seasonal sounds. The British Isles, in the days when “streaming” meant processing through a church and singing.

First off,  the “Coventry Carol”, dating from the 16^th Century as part of a mystery play. Mystery plays, children, were a type of amateur theatre that gave the general public an understanding of the mysteries of faith. These days we have all-religion-all-the-time cable TV channels and, of course, the Internet, to accomplish that.

At any rate, “Coventry Carol” is from a Nativity play, and I love the the lullaby elements (plus that surprise in the Picardy third). I always think that quality is best conveyed by a women’s choir, but it’s not that easy to find one on the Webs, so here’s one from Celtic Christmas.

Second up, down to another area of England for the “Sussex Carol”. This one first started appearing around the late 17^th Century. I think the perfect way to render this is with a Church of England men-and-boys choir, so here we have the King’s College, Cambridge, performing it as part of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.

I’m not from the Anglican tradition; I first discovered this service when driving from Virginia up to New Jersey as it was broadcast on Christmas Eve from King’s College. It was magical to listen to the purity of the music, the r-r-r-round vowels of the lectors, even the flutter of the pages being turned between lessons and carols. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to participate in one of these services.

But in the meantime, let’s hop over to Ireland for the “Wexford Carol” (“Carúl Loch Garman” in Irish). This is the oldest of today’s triad, originating in what’s now County Wexford in the 12^th Century.

I must have a dozen versions of this from all my Celtic CDs, but I rather like this one from Libera. It’s slightly overproduced, but there’s an ethereal quality at the beginning that sets a good tone for me.

The long bitter nights

A lot of people find the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s difficult, myself included. So when I first heard Alison Krauss’s “Get Me Through December” it stopped me in my tracks. Have a listen for yourself and see what you think.

Rejoice

We are officially in Advent, the period before Christmas that does not involve shopping, eating, standing in lines or moaning about how you’re not ready for the holidays. Advent is the time for getting ready, for preparing for the arrival of the baby in Bethlehem.

For me, a good part of that preparation involves light and music, so this year I thought I’d share some of the latter with you. We’ll take it easy—one piece of Christmas-related music per day.

And let’s start with the ultimate Advent carol, “Veni, veni, Emmanuel”. It dates from way back, you know—before monks started cutting CDs.

I used to sing in a choir in San Diego whose director always had the men sing the first verse in unison (like monks chanting) and let the women come in on the chorus. It was glorious.

However, I can’t find any version that does that, so I’ll give you the King’s Singers. It’s pretty good.

Parallel universe

I’ve spoken before about the habit of tech companies turning English into Jaberwocky in job postings. It’s partly because they think that the cool kids with the skills they’re looking for are basically magpies, attracted by anything (and only a thing) that’s shiny and different. And it’s partly because the people who write this stuff (or copy it from competitors) are completely ignorant of the language.

By way of example, here’s a recent posting for a product manager position from Foursquare. They’re the wonderful folks who built apps that allow your friends to flood your social media with notifications every time they turn a corner or enter some place of business. That being the case, you know they want to attract top talent, so here are their requirements for the PM role:

It’s the parallelize that eats my lunch. It’s actually a computing term, to do with a program that runs functions simultaneously. It’s something machines do. Humans, on the other hand, multitask. (As it happens, recent research indicates that when we do multitask, we do none of them very well. But employers don’t care about that; they just want someone who looks like they’re basically intelligent octopi with no tentacle unoccupied.)

What’s interesting to me is the detail that follows the offending word. Eventually they get to the do-everything-at-once part. But under the rubric of “parallelize” the first prompt is “must be a self-motivated team player able to work in a small, fast-paced environment without much oversight.” That’s nothing to do with running parallel activities; what they want is someone who sees what needs to be done and does it without regard to whether it’s in his/her job description and without asking for validation for making the decision. But they don’t seem to know how to make that sound hip.

As for the requirement that the candidate write succinctly, I’m not sure Foursquare would recognize that if it leapt up and bit them on the nose.

Gratitude Monday: A lighter load

If you’ve ever moved house, you know that there’s nothing like facing packing up all your possessions to make you realize how much stuff you have. Usually, it’s an appalling realization, and the longer you’ve been in place, the worse the feeling on account of you’ve had more time to accumulate.

I’ve moved four times since 2008, and I’ve culled a lot of things every time. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still have a lot of stuff to get rid of, even though I’ve gone through a couple of rounds of decluttering in this past year.

However, since the beginning of October I’ve been applying much stricter criteria for what I really, really want to keep with me, which means that yesterday a couple of guys from a company called Remoov (no, I do not make this stuff up) took away a queen sized bed, Ikea furniture and a whole lot of bin bags of clothes, kitchenware, books and miscellanea from my third-floor-no-elevator flat.

I have to say that I feel lighter for watching that stuff go. I’m going to be camping out for a bit on an air mattress until my final move, but it’s such a relief to find a way to unburden myself—because that’s what it feels like. A burden of possessions has been lifted from me, and I’m very grateful for that.

Merci

I’m in that moving stage where the movee needs to use up comestibles. As it happens, one of the items that needs to go is a bottle of Moët et Chandon Brut Impérial, my favorite Champagne. Thanksgiving seemed the exactly right occasion to start it on its journey.

So I did.

Living under a death sentence

It’s Thanksgiving Day in America, so you know the drill. This is the Super Bowl of gratitude, the occasion on which we’re meant to take a little time—a single day out of 365—to pause and reflect on the things in our lives that essentially bring us joy.

That’s what gratitude is, right? The realization that something or someone brings us joy. It might be a momentary flicker or an all-encompassing wave of delight, but saying, “I give thanks for this” is really the conscious acknowledgement of that happiness. One day out of the year for this is just the teensiest bit paltry, in my opinion, but still—let’s make the most of it.

For the past few years I’ve made a concerted effort to practice gratitude daily. This isn’t always easy; there have been days when I only grudgingly and after much flailing about come up with three things to name out loud as being worthy of thanks. This very month, following the attacks in Paris and for the first time in years, there were two days I couldn’t find the heart to do even that.

I’ve been thinking a lot about all those lives in shards after that Friday night. No warning and no reason. Lives ended, bodies maimed, families and friends bereft and bewildered. One minute a play on the football pitch, a rock song or a bite of dinner; the next explosions, automatic fire, screams, blood, death. No one knew when they headed out that night that this was in store. They weren’t prepared to die, and they didn’t know to prepare their loved ones for their deaths.

I, on the other hand, count myself as fortunate. I had the grace, the blessing of knowing that my days with my BFF were numbered. She died last month, five years after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer, a bastard of a death sentence. Pretty much from the beginning, Leilah did a magnificent job of facing the future, and she prepared us for that every step of the way.

And this was a tremendous gift to me. After initially totally screwing the pooch for a couple of months, I did my best to be brave, supportive, encouraging, silly, honest and loving, whatever state of mind I found her in. Knowing her time was precious, we made super use of it by communicating openly and, in the end, fearlessly.

Example: last summer I asked her, “Listen—all those years when I made fruitcakes and gave them to you at Christmas: did you really like them, or were there a lot of very tipsy birds around your house? It’s okay, you can tell me the truth; I’m never going to go to the trouble of making them again.”

No, she really liked them. A slice of fruitcake and a cup of tea were just what she needed on some days.

This year, when she finally stopped the chemotherapy, we doubled down. She’d planned to hook a small rug for me in a Celtic knot pattern, but she realized she wouldn’t get to do it. So she sent me one in an Amish pattern that she’d made a couple of years ago. I told her I’d put it next to my bed so it would be the last thing my feet touch at night and the first thing they touch in the morning.  And so it is.

On my recommendation, she watched Fantastic Mr. Fox—Bill Murray as Mr. Badger was what did it. She loved it, high praise as a career children’s librarian who wasn’t all that wild about animated films.

I started jotting down memories—pie (she basically introduced me to real pie), getting so involved in our conversation while out on a hike that we ended up halfway to Baja before we realized we were lost, smuggling her cat Angela across the Oregon-California border, our respective weird cousins (mine are contenders, but hers sweep all categories), flying to Borrego Springs in their Cessna…for brunch—and scribbled them across several cards. Just reminders of shared experiences, conversations, laughs, close calls. I came nowhere near covering the depths, but I gave what we researchers might call a representative sample, and she was tickled to have card after card arrive, all those cues to fire up her own memories.

She did her own version—for my birthday last summer she sent me a carton with many small gifts, which included a pair of earrings I’d given her about 40 years ago, her mother’s pilot’s log book and two sterling serving pieces that simply beg to be used at a dinner party. It was Christmas in August.

My last conversation with Leilah was right after my job interview in DC in October; I called her the instant I walked into my hotel room and got those interview shoes off. She was so pleased to hear the enthusiasm and confidence in my voice; that came through the slight driftiness of the morphine. It was a good conversation, and it ended (as our calls have done for more than five years) with us saying, “I love you.”

A week and a half later she was dead. No more phone calls, movie recommendations, surprise packages at the door. But the legacy of a deep friendship that enriched my life and made me a better friend to others. And we were able to say how much we mattered to each other because we knew we didn’t have much time. Nothing went unsaid, nothing got put off “until next time.”

And because of that, I know that Leilah knew how much she meant to me, and I sure as hell know that she loved me. We expressed that in every conversation, every debate, every cup of tea or glass of wine. There was no room for doubt, and that is a huge comfort to me as I face my first holidays without her to share them with.

Here’s the thing, people: we’re all under a death sentence. We just don’t know when it’s going to be executed. The world we live in is not as stable or safe as we would wish—and we need to work on that. Part of that work, in my opinion, is never passing up an opportunity to express our affection in words and actions—to those close to us and those we meet on the way.

Treat everyone as though this might be the last time you see or talk with them. Be honest—be kindly honest, especially about how much you appreciate them. When you act like a jerk (come on—we all do), apologize as soon as you can bring yourself to do so. When they do something to piss you off, consider cutting them some slack; or, if you must call them on it, frame it in terms of the anomaly you know it to be. Leave a note, make a call, send an email, give a hug, pat a back, listen to a tale, share a cookie, say a prayer—whatever it is that strengthens the connections that bring joy to your life, do it.

Do not wait until you see a Paris-class catastrophe or get a phone call saying so-and-so was in a car crash to think, “But I didn’t get to say…” You still may not get to the Celtic knot hooked rug or the grand photo album with annotations and pithy remarks. But, in the end—soon or late—that won’t matter if you’ve created that tapestry of friendship one stitch at a time, making every moment count.

Trust me on this: you’ll be grateful you did.

Atmospherics

Yesterday morning we had clouds, which eventually brought a bit of much-needed rain. They also made possible a beautiful sunrise, starting with just the palest tinting of pink on the closest edges—so delicate, I couldn’t capture it on camera, just in my eyes and heart.

Then, as I approached the Apple HQ-in-process, it got fired up some:

And finally, when it died down in the East, the West gave me this:

This kind of sky show only happens when there are clouds, and they’re a rarity here. But it was a perfect time for me to be pulled out of my routine and watch the spectacular around me.

When you just can't help yourself

One of my friends on Facebook comes from Denmark, and she has interesting things coming across her timeline.

By which I mean sometimes they’re intrinsically interesting and sometimes they’re interesting because of the translation algorithm that Facebook uses.

This one’s kind of both—clearly some kind of promotion for…well, something. 

I’m sure that the 24 exciting packages are swell, and everything. But what I really got wrapped around was the big nice zinkfad.

I don’t even care what it is, I want one. Possibly several.

Gratitude Monday: A timely reminder

I’ve started full bore on the pre-moving task list. After four different moving company “consultants” surveyed my household goods, I’m rounding on making a choice, and a booking. Once that’s in place, the several, large events that are dependent on the pack and load dates will fall into place. Still work, but manageable.

Meanwhile, I’m in that frenzy of uncovering (opening closets and the garage I haven’t been in for several months; or years), sorting, culling and divesting. I’m going to end up paying someone to collect a lot of stuff and dispose of it in various ways (consign, donate, dump), because I can’t move an Ikea dresser or queen-sized bed from the third floor to the ground. Shoot—I can’t even move that dresser three inches.

Also, I’ve started the pre-move-out cleaning. This place gets right much dust and dirt because it’s near the intersection of two streets known for heavy traffic. And, as you may recall, we’ve been in a state of drought for the four years I’ve been here. I can spend an hour vacuuming every floor in the flat, and by the time I put away the machine, there’s already a new layer of dust settling. For this round I’m bring out the heavy guns—wiping down every surface with either bleach, Windex or white vinegar.

I’m really glad that it’s so warm this week I can have all the windows and the sliding door to the balcony open. Otherwise I’d have asphyxiated myself.

This process has a high potential for making you nuts, and I’m well on the way to crazy town. Plus—you know, The Holidays.

So I was startled out of my madness yesterday by a packet from a friend, congratulating me on the new job, giving me a supply of emergency chocolates and describing what’s ahead of me—past all this insanity—as a great adventure. 

Yes, it is. And I’m grateful for that, and I’m grateful for my friend for reminding me of that.