First: I don’t know the story behind this
company, but I just can’t help thinking that it’s a rather unfortunate name.
Kind of unfortunate for any company outside of the Disney® family, but especially
so for a moving service.
But while considering this notion, I got behind
this car and had more to ponder:
Several possibilities here. The numeral 1 could
be just that, or a substitute for the letter I. So is this an errand-running
service? Or a traveling nurse? Or a number-one nurse?
Year-end cleaning out my desktop brought these
photos I took at Wegmans a couple of months ago. (When I run out of things to
marvel at on the road, Wegmans never lets me down.)
These containers are in a refrigerated case in
the prepared fruit-and-veg aisle. (That’s where you go if you’re too pressed
for time to slice apples, peel carrots or chop celery. It’s also the place
where you can relieve yourself of discretionary income for the convenience.)
In case you’re not sure what this is, it’s 32-ounce
bottles of water-and… lemon slices, watermelon chunks, cucumber slices and
pineapple chunks.
And here’s what you pay for water flavored
according to someone else’s specs:
Yes, $3.49 for a quart of water with a handful
of fruit or veg in it. In a container that I hope to God you’ll at least put in
the recycling.
However, here’s the part that I find
disturbing: the disclaimer on the label warns that this very expensive water “May
contain Crustacean Shellfish, Eggs, Fish, Milk, Peanuts, Soy, Tree Nuts, Wheat”
on account of the handfuls of fruit and veg being tossed into the bottles in a “shared
preparation area”.
Maybe wanna toss your own fruit-and-veg into
your own purified water?
As you know, I am easily amused, and one of my
sources of entertainment is vanity plates—what people choose to proclaim via
the semi-permanent mechanism of their vehicle’s license plates is endlessly
fascinating to me. Such things are ongoing expenses: $10 to buy the plate from
the DMV; then $10 per year for as long as you still want it.
It’s more permanent than a bumper sticker; less
permanent than a tattoo.
So here’s one I find really interesting:
First, there’s the fox-hunting plate. Here’s
someone proudly proclaiming that they’re down with a quintessentially elitist
activity that can only be engaged in by people with much too much money and
time, the practice of which is inordinately destructive of farmland all out of
proportion to the keeping down of vermin. I mean, if The Old Dominion has a fox
problem, having overbred elements in ridiculously-overpriced outfits that can
only be worn for this pursuit, riding crash around across fields on heavy
hunters would not be an efficient solution.
But then there’s the vanity part of this plate.
Some Honda owner, whose priorities have already been called into question, is driving a
stake in the ground at Oracle SQL. And is paying $10 every year to do this.
I find it interesting that so many businesses
don’t close down during the period between Christmas and New Year. Trust me:
enough folks take time off because their kids are off school and they don’t
want to pay for either babysitters or the childcare premium that nothing gets
done anyhow.
This is the case at pretty much everywhere I’ve
worked in the past 20 years. Where I am now, you could hold World War II there
this week and no one would get hurt. I’m one of the ones there, since I only
take time off when I can use it productively.
This doesn’t stop me from collecting oddities,
however. As in this thread I found some time ago on LinkedIn—the “careers
networking platform” that has long since devolved into a cacophony of “look-at-meeee”
and sales spam. Here’s how it started out:
I don’t know whether this Mark Sloan bloke was deadly
serious or taking the piss; either way he exemplifies the whole LinkedIn ethos. However, the responses were definitely in the latter category:
Our culmination of the
songs of the season for 2017 goes back to 14th Century Germany, by
way of one of my all-time favorite collector/composers, Michael
Praetorius, with some input from our pal Martin
Luther.
The text of “In Dulci
Jubilo” is what’s known as macaronic: a mashup of languages, in this case
(originally) German and Latin. I don’t know the story, but I like to think it
might have been an attempt to either dress up a vulgar (as in, not-posh, not as
in risqué) German thing with some high-toned Latin. Or to make something Latin
understandable to the masses. Or possibly it was just something resulting from
folks hitting the Glühwein and not being able to remember what language they
were supposed to be using.
It came down to us via
the 19th Century translation that swaps out the German for English,
retaining the Latin. We know it as “Good Christian Men, Rejoice”. (Fun fact:
when I was a kid I wondered why all the good Christian women were excluded.
Were they out fixing a meal? Or putting the kids to bed? I did not know.) It’s
also often sung in such a way as to make me think the choristers have been
hitting the Wassail—lotta glissando. It’s also one that I very often hear
performed by brass groups. It seems to suit those instruments particularly
well.
To give you an idea of
the macaronic thing, here are a couple of verses of the German version:
In dulci jubilo
nun singet und seid
froh!
Unsers Herzens Wonne
leit in praesepio,
und leuchtet als die
Sonne
Matris in gremio,
Alpha es et O, Alpha es
et O!
O Jesu parvule
nach dir ist mir so weh!
Tröst mir mein Gemüte,
o puer optime;
durch alle deine güte,
o princeps gloriae
trahe me post te.
Here it is, sung by the
choir of Exeter Cathedral:
The English version
(kind of mid-way between German and “Good Christian Men”) goes:
In dulci jubilo
Now sing with hearts
aglow
Our delight and pleasure
Lies in praesepio
Like sunshine is our
treasure
Patris in gremio
Alpha es et O
Alpha es et O
O Jesu parvule
For thee I sing always
Comfort my heart’s
blindness
O puer optime
With all thy loving
kindness
O princeps gloriae
Trahe me post te
Trahe me post te
And, “Good Christian Men,
Rejoice”:
Good Christian men,
rejoice
With heart and soul and
voice!
Give ye heed to what we
say
News! News
Jesus Christ is born
today!
Ox and ass before Him
bow
And He is in the manger
now
Christ is born today!
Christ is born today!
Good Christian men,
rejoice
With heart and soul and
voice
Now ye hear of endless
bliss
Joy! Joy!
Jesus Christ was born
for this
He hath ope’d the heav’nly
door
And man is blessed
evermore
Christ was born for this
Christ was born for this
And here it is sung in a
typically upbeat performance by a serviceable choir I’ve never before heard of.
On this Christmas morning—one of the Big Days
for gratitude—my wish is that you have all you need, as well as all of what you
truly wish for.
The world is not equitable, a fact down wholly
to the thoughts and actions of mankind. And I am frankly not sanguine about the
prospects for improving this condition, especially given events of the past
year. The pre-ghost Scrooges of the planet appear to be in charge, and they’re
bent on giving themselves a raise at the expense of everyone else. Moreover, I see no indication that they are capable of redemption, even by getting the tour by the Ghost of Christmas Future. This frankly frightens me; I cannot tell you
how much.
I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to
reassure myself with Christmas music. Some days it worked better than others. So
today I’m doubling down on gratitude, on counting my manifold blessings, and on
building hopes.
We’ve had music about
the visitors to the stable, but it’s getting close to the birth, so I think it’s
time to bring it back to the person critical to such events.
The mother.
Yes, Mary has been a
real trouper throughout the months that led up to the Nativity—fielding visits
from archangels, enduring all the village gossip about her pregnancy, morning
sickness, retaining water, having to pee all the time… (Look—do you think the
presumptively male celestial beings considered maybe cutting her a little slack
in this regard, tossing her a prophylaxis against the water retention or the
nausea? No, I thought not.) Then, in her final month of pregnancy, here she is,
riding an ass all the way to Bethlehem—can you imagine her misery?
Yeah, yeah—carrying the
godhead, blah, blah, blah. That don’t feed the bulldog when it comes to the discomfort
of being in your 39th week and having to make a long journey. On a
donkey. In winter.
Our Medieval and
Renaissance brothers and sisters often referred to Mary as a rose, as in today’s
pick, “There Is No Rose”, which dates from around the 15th Century.
It’s interesting to note that the “virtue” in the opening line isn’t just
purity or chastity, but strength and even power. The Latin root of “virtue” is “vir”:
man, virility. Those Romans might have thought strength and power exclusively
male characteristics, but we needn’t be bound by those limitations.
The opening line
encompasses this:
There is no rose of such
virtue
As is the rose that bore
Jesu.
Yeah—the teen-aged rose
who made the conscious choice to take on this mission, from the git-go knowing
that there was a shedload of pain involved in it for her. Who endured the
village gossip, had to explain to her fiancé that she was pregnant by the Holy
Ghost, who got on that ass and went to Bethlehem to have her baby in a stable,
graciously receive all those gawkers—both high-born and low—and then packed up
to flee to Egypt to avoid Herod’s soldiers. And who, in the end, followed him
to Calvary to witness his particularly ghastly death.
So let’s hear Benjamin
Britten’s arrangement of “There Is No Rose”, sung by the Elektra Women’s Choir,
from Vancouver, B.C. Consider the power in these voices as you listen.
Yesterday and the day before we had the
lowly visitors to Christ’s nativity, so today why don’t we go to the other end of the class system.
You know: the kings.
(I don’t want to hear
from purists sniffing that the kings didn’t arrive until twelve days after the
birth. Not my fault that they couldn’t ask for directions. Besides—if you’re going
to go full-metal realism, there are enough natural elements to make the case
for the big day not being in December, but in the Spring. The early Christians
just moved it to mid-winter to co-opt a lot of pagan holidays. So just back
off, have a glass of something and breathe deeply.)
“We Three Kings” is of
American origin. It was written by a Pennsylvania Episcopalian rector in 1857
for a Christmas pageant. And it’s been sung by kids at every Christmas pageant
in the country ever since.
When I went hunting for
an interesting rendition of “We Three Kings Are”, I came across this one, which
I believe fits the bill. Not being a fan of the X-Men franchise, I didn’t know
a lot about Hugh Jackman, and I knew nothing at all about Peter Cousens and David
Hobson. But it turns out that the latter is an operatic tenor, and the other
two have well-respected musical theatre chops. They’re all Australian, and I’m
guessing that this was for some Aussie TV Christmas special.
Warning: this is not your ordinary Christmas pageant. They're all having a bang-up time singing this; this level of fun is illegal in many states south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
But the rest of us can’t help but wonder at these stars.
So, we’ve seen the farm
girls hurrying to the stable; let’s have some of the other observers of the
Nativity. Namely: we need sheep. And shepherds.
First the sheep. Which
we’ll round up from Messiah. Yes,
they’re not real baa-baas. It’s a simile for sinners who have strayed from
righteousness. “We have turned every one to his own way.” See a lot of that
these days, don’t we? So, let’s listen to the Bratislava City Choir knock it
out.
(Fun fact: I've listened to "All We Like Sheep" for...decades. It wasn't until I started singing it, from an actual score, that I realized it wasn't "Oh, We Like Sheep". Which is a whole other thing.) But the shepherds were
out watching over their flocks, probably huddling close to the fire and taking
a well-deserved snooze. The dogs are out making sure the sheep don’t get into
trouble—why not drop off for the night?
So, picture this: they’re
drifting off (possibly after a few slurps of wine), and all of a sudden, boom!
Some angel appears and yells at them,
telling them to hot-foot it to…a stable!
In Bethlehem! How will they ever explain this one to the guys?
Well, this carol, from
Besançon, in eastern France, is all about the angel-shepherd experience. The
melody is probably from the 17th Century; the carol was first
published in 1842.
Here’s the choir of New
College, Oxford, singing “Shepherds, Shake Off Your Drowsy Sleep”:
