Tag: quiz

That damn end-of-year quiz

South Africa

I’m doing that damn end-of-year quiz because I always do it. Or because Kelly does it. Or because it is useful.

Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Well, no. And probably not.

Did anyone close to you give birth?

I don’t believe so.

Did anyone close to you die?

Christy D’Ambrosio, Lillian Bakic, and Don Ingram, who actually died at the very end of 2024 but didn’t learn about it right away. Holly Pennock died on December 27; we sang together in the Trinity UMC choir from 1984 to 2000, and we’d keep in touch occasionally, especially (unfortunately) at Trinity funerals. Judy Mark, with whom I was on Session at my current church, died in October. 

What countries did you visit?

None, though we seriously considered going to South Africa at the very end of our daughter’s semester at the University of Cape Town. Part of it was financial; her non-tuition expenses exceeded our expectations.

What would you like to have in 2026 that you lacked in 2025?

Democracy.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

No doubt: helping the Daughter get to South Africa.

What was your biggest failure?

Any number of projects remain undone.

What was the best thing you bought?

A laptop for $80. It’s a backup in case this one dies.

Yay!

Whose behavior merited celebration?

Several entities helped me through the siege, including cartoonist Robert Waldo Brunelle Jr. (Mr. Brunelle), satirist Andy Borowitz, and This Modern World cartoonist Tom Tomorrow.

Citizens, including those working through the various Indivisible groups across the country, stood up against authoritarianism; many had never been activists before.

The CBS News reporters, mostly from 60 Minutes, publicly, and occasionally on-air, were critical of Paramount’s capitulation, especially Scott Pelley, Sharyn Alfonsi,  John Dickerson, Lesley Stahl, and alumnus Dan Rather.  BTW, I’m going to miss Dickerson and Maurice DuBois on the CBS Evening News.

The Daily Show, not just John Stewart; the Legal Eagle (Devin Stone and especially Liz Dye); Seth Meyers; and particularly Jon Oliver.

Courageous politicians stood up against fascism. But it’s mostly folks I’ve been reading, such as Robert Reich, Terry Moran, and especially Heather Cox Richardson; y’all ought to read or watch her daily.

BOO!

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

There are so many! Obviously, the #1 on the list is Metamucilini for too many reasons to list. He ought to be impeached (AGAIN) -“thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Terry Moran wrote this on the last weekend of December:

“Trumpism—while it is many things—is not a practical approach to constitutional governance. It is a farrago of one man’s atavistic fantasies, personal prejudices, and corrupt appetites. It’s not even a political ideology, but rather a vision of a world arranged to prove that Trump is always right and to glorify him forever. That’s why we have to put up with those grotesquely obsequious cabinet meetings; that’s why he’s slapping his name on everything he can, before he dies. That’s why he’s frantically demanding a Nobel Peace Prize, and solemnly accepting the farcical FIFA Peace Prize instead.

“And what about those practical results voters want? They are almost irrelevant to Trump, since no matter what happens, he will claim everything good in the world as his own personal triumph, or blame everything bad on someone else, anyone else. Or he’ll just lie and deny any inconvenient truths.”

Meanwhile, we will suffer from the so-called OBBB cuts while spending on a grotesque military parade, and he enriches himself and his cronies.

BOO!

But also:

Russ Vought – the OMB head was a chief designer of Project 2025, spearheading  “the project’s playbook.” And the dude in charge of the budget impasse cuts.

Kristi Noem – the Homeland Security head wallows over the cruelty of the immigration policy and has helped to wreck FEMA’s response to disasters

Elon Musk – he bought the 2024 election, and then DOGEd us into an irresponsible country. What are they doing with our data?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – his own family is ashamed of how he has Made America Sicker Again

Stephen Miller – the fingerprints of this stochastic terrorism are all over the ICE raids. 

Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense (or War—whatever), is the epitome of a DEI (dull, empty, ignorant) hire. He gave the worst speech of the year by a government official, and his boss was stiff competition.

Marco Rubio – He has surrendered the last shred of self-respect as Secretary of State and the three or four other titles he has. His USAID cuts are responsible for at least half a million preventable deaths.

John Roberts – if a fair history will be written, they’ll say that Roberts was the worst Chief Justice of SCOTUS, worse than Roger Taney. The general rationale for allowing FOTUS to fire people who were presumed to have administrative protection shows up in Trump v. Boyle and other places. “The stay we issued…reflected ‘our judgment that the Government faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty.'” So he gets to dump whomever until THEY appeal.

BOO!

Pam Bondi – she has politicized the Department of Justice

J.D. Vance – among other things, he and his tech bros are enriching themselves

Mike Johnson – the Speaker seems to have forgotten that there are coequal branches of government. 

Brett Kavanaugh – the Associate Justice has codified racial profiling

Lee Zeldin – wrecking the environment as the EPA head

Brendan Carr – the Mafioso boss of the FCC got Nexstar, which wants to grow bigger, to stop carrying Jimmy Kimmel on their many stations. Eventually, ABC drops Kimmel, though they eventually bring him back

Tom Hogan – the ICE guy who apparently did NOT pocket $50,000 in cash

Karoline Leavitt – I will say she lies better than FOTUS’ previous press secretaries.

Kevin Hassert – the National Economic Council Director is a sycophant toady who FOTUS may pick as the next Fed Chair. Terry Moran: “he publicly defended forecasts and claims that outside analysts—including many conservative economists—dismissed as unrealistic/loony, including the assertion that the 2017 tax cuts would ‘pay for themselves. ‘” 

Tulsi Gabbard – because she accidentally told the truth early on, the  Director of National Intelligence has had to work extra hard to kiss the royal butt

Howard Lutnick – the Secretary of Commerce really tries to tell us how great the tariffs are

Well, that’s 20, but there are a lot more. And this is just the American list: I could have added Bibi, Putin, and many others.

MONEY

Where did most of your money go?

Possibly the ancillary expenses relating to the daughter going to South Africa. Also, some medical stuff. 

What did you get really excited about?

Actually, my daughter’s going abroad was exciting

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

Clearly sadder

Thinner or fatter?

I track these things. I lost a little, then gained a bit, and now I’m at about the same place as I started.

Richer or poorer?

Poorer. At some point next year, I have to start taking out my Required Minimum Distribution from my 401(k); I understand this philosophically, but I’ll need to talk to a financial adviser.

What do you wish you’d done more of?

Everything: writing, reading, traveling. But time is not fungible.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Living in my head.

How did you spend Christmas?

Choir on Christmas Eve, family at home on Christmas Day, then visiting my MIL.

Did you fall in love in 2025?

Quite possibly.

How many one-night stands?

Nah.

FAVES

What was your favorite TV program?

I watch John Oliver on YouTube. We are way behind on Only Murders in the Building; I mean, a couple of seasons. 60 Minutes, CBS Sunday Morning, JEOPARDY, football on Sunday and Monday nights.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Let’s put this way: I have utter contempt and disdain for at least one person.

What was the best book you read?

Surprisingly, 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s

What was your greatest musical discovery?

It’s not a single album. As I’ve noted before, I go through my collection and play CDs based on the performers’ birthdays. But I haven’t really attached to a particular birthday for many performers. So I’ve been going through my entire collection of CDs I own but seldom play. While there are a few duds, I liked quite a few of them a lot. One I’m listening to as I’m writing this is Infinity on High by Fall Out Boy; I forgot I even owned it.

What did you want and get?

Nothing I hadn’t done before, but those are good. Singing in choir, ZOOMing with my sisters

What did you want and not get?

A nation where fascism is not a tolerable option for many voters.

What were your favorite films of this year?

Flow, The Life Of Chuck, Sinners, Sorry, Baby, Materialists, Rental Family

Natal day

What did you do on your birthday?

I deliberately wrote about it for this very moment.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2025?

None, save for comfortable footwear.

What kept you sane?

Assuming  I am, music.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Much to my surprise, Jimmy Kimmel is really a fine host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, for which he won an Emmy.

What political issue stirred you the most?

As Kelly wrote LAST year, “America’s ongoing flirtation with sh#tcanning democracy.” I learned who Horst Wessel was.

Who did you miss?

More than once, I thought of my friend Norman Nissen (d. 2016) and Tom Hoffman (d. 2004), who might have some cogent political analysis of what the hell is going on.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2025:

Always use the cane when walking on uneven surfaces.

If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:

I did exactly one selfie in 2025. It’s not my thing unless I AM the spider.

“Quote a song lyric that sums up your year”

You know that end-of-the-year quiz I do? This one question is taking up too much space.

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

It would be easy to stick previous years’ songs on the list.

Logical Song by Supertramp

I said, Now, watch what you say, they’ll be calling you a radicalA liberal, oh, fanatical, criminalOh, won’t you sign up your name? We’d like to feel you’re acceptableRespectable, oh, presentable, a vegetable

Monster by Steppenwolf

America, where are you now
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters
Don’t you know we need you now
We can’t fight alone against the monster

Virtually all of Elephant Talk by King Crimson

And especially The Trouble With Normal by Bruce Coburn

The trouble with normal is that it always gets worse 

Resistance?

Then I saw a HeatherCox Richardson video from August 7 titled Forms of Resistance and Reasons to Believe It’s Working. From about three minutes in, she said: 

Those sorts of ways of recognizing quietly, of making a statement quietly, matter because people hear them and recognize that they are not alone.

Do you hear the people sing?Singing a song of angry men?It is the music of a peopleWho will not be slaves again
When the beating of your heartEchoes the beating of the drumsThere is a life about to startWhen tomorrow comes
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?Beyond the barricadeIs there a world you long to see?Then join in the fightThat will give you the right to be free
Related

That was set in France in the first third of the 19th century. Here’s a song set in France, slightly earlier.  Marat-Sade as sung by Judy Collins:

Marat, we’re poor and the poor stay poor

Marat, don’t make us wait any more

We want our rights, and we don’t care how
We want a revolution
Now 

That brought to mind another tune sung by Judy Collins, Democracy, written by Leonard Cohen. The penultimate verse:
It’s coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst
It’s here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And it’s here they got the spiritual thirst
It’s here – the family’s broken
And it’s here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A 

Another song I thought of was (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thing by Heaven 17. As I recall, someone with the band or the label thought it was a bit overboard to say about Ronald Reagan. I’m not litigating that, but in a 2025 performance, the band said the song was more relevant now than then. And it has a great beat.

Have you heard it on the news about this fascist groove thang

Evil men with racist views spreading all across the land

Don’t just sit there on your ass, unlock that funky chain dance

Brothers, sisters, shoot your best. We don’t need this fascist groove thang

NYT

On July 1, Jon Pareles put together a list for the New York Times 

Tracy Chapman, Talkin’ ‘Bout A Revolution
The Isley Brothers, Fight the Power, Pts. 1 and 2
Public Enemy, Fight the Power
Michael Franti & Spearhead, Yell Fire!
Bob Marley & the Wailers, Get Up, Stand Up
Mavis Staples, Eyes On The Prize
Patti Smith, People Have the Power
Björk, Declare Independence
Rage Against the Machine, Know Your Enemy
Antibalas, Uprising

I know I own the ones I linked to. That Isley Brothers couplet has been running through my head even before the list was published:

 When I rolled with the punches

I got knocked on the groundWith all this bullsh#t going down

 

I can’t forget American Idiot by Green Day, which came out in 2004 in response to the knee-jerk reaction to the stupidity of that time. 

Don’t wanna be an American idiotOne nation controlled by the mediaInformation age of hysteriaIt’s calling out to idiot America

Welcome to a new kind of tensionAll across the alienationWhere everything isn’t meant to be okayIn television dreams of tomorrowWe’re not the ones who’re meant to followFor that’s enough to argue

 

The chorus of Tubthumping by Chumbawamba runs through my head a LOT, over and over:

I get knocked down

But I get up againYou’re never gonna keep me down
But the winner

I just saw the 2025 video for the Dropkick Murphys’  Who Will Stand For Us? I’m not a “you must watch” guy, but please watch.  Lyrics

Who’ll stand with us?Don’t tell us everything is fineWho’ll stand with us?Because this treatment is a crimeThe working people fuel the engineWhile you yank the chainWe fight the wars and build the buildingsFor someone else’s gain
So, tell me, who will stand with us?
And as time rolls on, not a single thing has changedAnd the wealth gap’s only grown as we all point to blameWe’re at the throats of one another, though we share a single fateAnd the golden few laugh on and on as we all take the bait

The 2024 Year’s End Quiz continued

tax the rich!

Last year, which is to say yesterday, I  started to do the 2024 Year’s End Quiz that Kelly always does. But my answers became Too Damn Long, so I split it up. 

Whose behavior merited celebration?

Oh, there’s a bunch of people trying to fight the good fight; I suppose there are a lot of local heroes. And there’s a person who has taken a great deal of interest in my genealogical process, which I greatly appreciate. 

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

There are SO many.

A wide swath of the American public seems to think that taxing rich people is a bad thing, even though they’re not rich themselves. I remember the discussion over the so-called death tax a few years ago, and people balked at it even though they’re extremely unlikely to be in that situation. The Ultra Millionaire Tax Act of 2024 (H.R. 7749) is far less likely to impact them. They won’t be making $50 million, which might be taxable. Income inequality has been rampant since Ronald Reagan’s time, and it has only worsened.

And then, there are the politicians.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) “authored a resolution that would ban trans women from women’s bathrooms at the U.S. Capitol” after saying how much of an ally she is to LGBTQ people.

Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), possibly the most incompetent Senator, said it’s ‘Not Our Job’ to vet djt’s Cabinet picks (psst: yes, it is)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) blames Democrats for weaponizing the weather.

Most of the Cabinet picks (Hegseth, RFK Jr, Gabbard, and especially Kash Patel)

Orange

Elon Musk and his tech bro buddies (rump jr, Vance)

Where did most of your money go?

The house, specifically a new back porch; the daughter’s education.

What did you get really excited about?

The mystery project

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

Sharply sadder, though better now than in the summer.

Thinner or fatter?

Definitely fatter. There is a distinct correlation between my emotional state and my food consumption.

Richer or poorer?

Poorer.

Science!

What do you wish you’d done more of?

I’d be in good shape if I could only get that cloning thing going.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Brooding.

How did you spend Christmas?

With my wife, daughter, and MIL.

Did you fall in love in 2024?

Absolutely.

How many one-night stands?

Lessee: (two cubed) minus (the square root of 64).

What was your favorite TV program?

CBS Sunday Morning, CBS Saturday Morning, Abbott Elementary, Elsbeth. 

I’ve discovered that I like watching NFL football in the last year or two that I hadn’t felt for decades. It’s always recorded. Every week, I learn something new. In a game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the hated Dallas Cowboys, the score was tied near the end of the game. Cincinnati punted the ball, but Dallas blocked the kick. All the Cowboys needed to do was to let the ball go. They would have possession, and they were already in field goal territory. Instead, one of the Cowboys touched the ball but could not control it.  The Bengals regained possession and soon scored a touchdown to win the game. I loved it.

There’s a thin line…

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Hate is such a terrible word. If I did, and I’m not saying I do, it’d be Elon, who helped buy an election by spending over a quarter of a billion dollars on djt and his cronies. Then he dances around, threatening to slash Social Security. As a friend likes to say, “Chuck YOU, Farley!” (Sidebar: one minor reason I don’t prefer the term African-American is that recently, someone referred to Elon Musk as an African-American, and it hurt my head.)

What was the best book you read?

Prequel and The Undertow are in the same vein.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

Cage the Elephant, who Anthony Mason interviewed on CBS Mornings.

What did you want and get?

To get to sing, listen to music, go to plays.

What did you want and not get?

Democracy

What were your favorite films of this year?

Conclave, The Wild Robot, Sing Sing, Ghostlight, Thelma, Inside Out 2, Poor Things, and Anatomy of a Fall. But my favorite was American Fiction.

What did you do on your birthday?

It was a Thursday, so I went to choir and took out the trash. Beyond that, I have no idea.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2024?

Comfortable.

Facts not in evidence

What kept you sane?

I think I went a little insane this year.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Bill McKibben

What political issue stirred you the most?

Global warming, abortion rights, book banning, racism, sexism, homophobia. Oh, and the possibility that good chunks of Project 2025, which I only mentioned a half dozen times, will be enacted, threatening democracy.

Who did you miss?

In the throes of my despair, it was my friend Norm, who died in 2016.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2024:

This is part of what Kelly wrote last year. I think it works.

The United States of America desperately needs to re-embrace rational and collective thinking, and ditch its mythologies about rugged individualism and the eternal wisdom of “the Founders”.

If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:

I don’t take many selfies. The one above, taken at the Museum of Broadway in Manhattan (and I don’t mean Kansas) in January 2024, is the only one I can find. 

The musical portion of the post 

 

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

I was leaning into the third segment of the Monster / Suicide / America medley on the Monster album. The first part is relevant but slightly clunky, but there’s something very basic about the end of Suicide. The third part is anthemic. Lyrics and the track.

‘Cause there’s a monster on the looseIt’s got our heads into the nooseAnd it just sits there watchin’
America, where are you nowDon’t you care about your sons and daughtersDon’t you know we need you nowWe can’t fight alone against the monster
Also

The other song that came to mind was American Idiot by Green Day. This is the 20th anniversary of that album. I’m fairly sure that ADD gave it to me at some point. It’s a great collection, and the title song seems very appropriate. Lyrics. “Starting off the album with a bang, ‘American Idiot’ is a scathing takedown of American culture in the years following 9/11.” The track.

Don’t wanna be an American idiot
One nation controlled by the media
Information age of hysteria
It’s calling out to idiot America

Welcome to a new kind of tension
All across the alienation
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay
Television dreams of tomorrow
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow
For that’s enough to argue

What 2024 Meant To Me

I DO make resolutions

And now, a general exploration of What 2024 Meant To Me:

I often wonder why I do what I do. This summer, I was struck by something that John Green, the vlogger (no relation), had posted: that he questioned whether his actions were worthwhile. I thought that was odd: he was helping fight infant and maternal mortality in Africa, fighting disease, etc., so I couldn’t understand why he would question his impact.

But it triggered an evaluation of how I want to use my time. I retired five years ago and assumed that after a half-decade, I would have reached certain mileposts, goals, or whatever. This has simply not happened.

I decided to sign up to have a therapist. It was online, one of those Zoomy-like things, and it simply didn’t take. It’s not the first time I’ve gotten therapy or the first time it hasn’t worked out the way I’d hoped. However, perhaps by pursuing the process, I reached some conclusions anyway.

Just say no

One of them was not to work on a book project. It was a text that the adult child of a very famous person had written, and it was referred to me.  I realized that working on it was making me frickin’ nuts, but I felt obliged to work on it because I had said I would until I realized it was not worth my sanity. The author never understood this. In fact, about a week later, he texted me and said, “How much money would it take for you to finish it?” The answer to the question was that there was no amount of money in the world that would have had me continue to work on this project. Not only did it not bring me joy, but it brought me despair.

I also quit participating on a board I had a great deal of emotional attachment to. This was very difficult, but for reasons that are way more complicated and boring to recite here, it became a necessity as well. I took some mild solace in that three or four others departed the board after I left. I feel bad that the board is in such disarray, but I can’t make that my issue, he said.

Genealogy

One of my to-do lists has been my genealogy, which has gone virtually nowhere in 2024. My sister Leslie has talked to the family on both sides of the tree, our third cousin on my mother’s side, and my father’s first cousin so that the needle might move in 2025.

Since someone asked, the blog still serves a function for me. It is, among other things, a history of events that I frankly can’t remember when they happened. It’s a public diary, and I suppose I could write a private one, but I would never bother to.

As I’ve said, I failed miserably when I planned to write about my daughter’s early days. The public diary has forced me to think about things in a way I need to process the world.

Starting the quiz

Here’s an annual Year’s End Quiz, which I continue to purloin from Kelly.

Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Every year, I keep saying that I don’t make resolutions, but I think that’s probably incorrect. I think I made resolutions about doing genealogy, which, as I’ve noted, I failed to fulfill. I offered resolutions about straightening up some work areas that are largely undone and reading more books, which is only marginally better than the year before.

As for 2025, I am going to make the same resolutions. But I’m also going to work on a project, a specific, measurable project, and I ain’t gonna tell you what it is here until I get to a certain point in the process. It might be July or maybe even late August, but I will mention it. And I will work on it because… oh, if you knew what it was, you would know why, but you don’t, so there it is.

Did anyone close to you give birth?

I don’t believe so

Did anyone close to you die?

Nancy, Al, and Barry. Oh, and Midnight.

What countries did you visit?

None in 2024. I’m toying with going someplace in 2025, and I’ll probably return to the States, won’t I?

Future

What would you like to have in 2025 that you lacked in 2024?

Inner peace? Democracy?

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I don’t know; sometimes, I think just showing up is an achievement. I’d say writing on this blog daily, but I did that last year and the year before…

What was your biggest failure?

I could not recognize earlier how much the aforementioned book editing and the committee work were making me – how did I put it? -frickin’ nuts.

What was the best thing you bought?

Nothing substantial comes to mind. Some music. Bellflower. Oh wait, I know what it is. I bought a new iPhone case, a certain green shade. According to Charli XCX, the color is brat, whatever that means.  More importantly, my phone case is much easier to distinguish than a black or gray one, making it simpler to find when I inevitably misplace it in my house.

This is TOO MUCH. I’ll finish it next year, which is to say, tomorrow. 

a valuable life lesson learned in 2023

How does a weary world rejoice?

One more question: 

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2023:

Repeating what I’ve said before, The trouble with normal is it always gets worse. After the UNLV shooting, in which three people died, an NBC reporter interviewed a witness. The reporter said, “Incredibly,” the witness was also present at the 2017 Vegas shooting at which five dozen were killed and hundreds wounded. There was nothing “incredible” about it. It’s just guns in America.

Someone fired a shot around a Jewish temple in Albany, NY, on December 7, the first night of Hanukkah, which led the NBC Nightly News. No one was hurt, and the shooter was quickly apprehended. But the Israel/Hamas/Palestinian war has stirred long-simmering anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim,  anti-Palestinian bigotry, which we’ve seen everywhere from college campus to the streets of bucolic Burlington, VT, where three Palestinian college kids were staying because it was perceived as safer than being in the occupied West Bank. They were shot, and one likely will never walk again.

People can’t keep saying, “It can’t happen here.” I searched Wikipedia for Maine shootings, and I had choices: the one in 1993, the one in 2006, or the two in 2023.

orange

Then there’s the political turmoil. djt will be the Republican nominee, even if he’s convicted of one or more cases against him. The Atlantic is so terrified it had a whole issue dedicated to it.

Even if he’s not in office, his minions dominate the House, starting with the Speaker, Mike Johnson. And trumpism is baked in – book bans being the most on-the-nose example – and we can’t even count on the courts, certainly not SCOTUS, to stop it.

Add to this the ecological precipice we’re on and refugee crises worldwide, and you can call me Debbie Downer.

What is the remedy?

Still, I have hope because hopelessness is too hard. No hope means not getting out of bed in the morning. You do what you can. If that’s irrational, so be it.

How do I get there? And I see this as an ongoing process, not that I’ve arrived. For me, and it wasn’t initially a conscious decision, I’ve been embracing a series of sermons our pastors have been presenting during Advent and Christmastide collectively titled: “How does a weary world rejoice?”

“We acknowledge our weariness.” I’m very good at THAT. The first two sections of this post are precisely why I am weary. And I left a few things out.

“We find joy in connection.” Like many people, the real difficulty with COVID was the feeling of community. I’ve been embracing these opportunities. Thrice this year, I participated in trivia contests, as much for the collegiality as the competition; I’d only done trivia twice before, and one was in 2022. Participating in the Ironweed reading, a potluck, and a carol sing were other examples.

“We allow ourselves to be amazed.” My daughter interviewed me for a class project, which she says she’ll allow me to use in this blog early in 2024. I learned things about her but also about myself.

Awesome

“We make room.” Our friends gave us their tickets to the Albany Symphony Orchestra on December 10. I particularly loved watching the joy that one of the cellists was experiencing. At some moment in Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 4, which I was unfamiliar with, there is a dead silence. It was awesome and unexpected.

It was raining very hard that day. My wife pointed out that I mentioned the wonder of a brief silence twice. It was pouring out. I get JOY when we drive below an overpass, and the sound of the deluge is stilled for 1.5 seconds.  This has been true for a very long time.

“We sing stories of hope.” On Christmas Eve 2020, my church service was online. The pastors were present, but few others. The music was provided by recordings of our choir singing from previous years. Watching me sing brought me to tears, and they were not happy tears but weeping of despair. I don’t take singing on Christmas Eve, Maundy, Easter Sunday, or even a regular weekly service for granted.

“We root ourselves in ritual.” I have Thursday choir rehearsal, Sunday service, and Tuesday book talk at the Washington Avenue branch of the Albany Public Library (moving, BTW, from noon to 2 p.m. this year). Many years ago, a friend complained when I refused to pass on choir rehearsal to do something else. Rehearsing means knowing the music better on Sunday and experiencing the choir gestalt.  

Ramblin' with Roger
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