The Lydster, Part 141: the Presbyterian

The stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church USA explained the denomination to the Donald.

Presbyterian_Church_(U.S.A.)Both the Wife and I grew up in the Methodist tradition. We didn’t become Presbyterians until the 21st century. Theologically, there’s not that much of a difference between the two Christian denominations, IMO, but some of the rituals are a bit different.

The Daughter has grown up in the Presbyterian church, so it’s more difficult for her when we go to other houses of worship, such as my parents-in-law’s Methodist service. For my spouse and myself, it doesn’t much matter, when we recite the Lord’s Prayer, if we say “sins” or “debts” (our usual form) or “trespasses” (the Methodist form). I WILL admit that growing up, all that sibilant “trespasses… trespass against us” ironically sounded a bit serpentine.

When Donald Trump was campaigning, he made some comments about Ben Carson’s Seventh Day Adventist faith. Then he noted, “I’m Presbyterian. Boy, that’s down the middle of the road, folks, in all fairness.” The Daughter saw this on TV and grimaced. “He can’t be a Presbyterian, can he?” (The stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church USA explained the denomination to the Donald.)

I wish The Daughter was more familiar with the late Fred Rogers, who was a counterculture Christian icon, not just a wholesome American TV star. Here’s a lovely story about the ordained Presbyterian minister.

Music Throwback Christmas: For Unto Us A Child Is Born

Merry Christmas!

unto-usIsaiah 9:6 King James Version (KJV)

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Here are three traditional versions of the Handel Messiah piece:

Artist not listed. Some commenters think the tempo is a little fast; I think other versions can be a bit too slow.
Mormon Tabernacle Choir
Sir Colin Davis, Tenebrae, London Symphony Orchestra

Here is the Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration version:

Sounds of Blackness

Merry Christmas!

MORE Links

Listen on Spotify: The Obamas’ and Bidens’ Holiday Playlists.

Chipmunk Christmas Song – A Cappella Barbershop Quartet. All Julien Niel. (Do you hate this, Jaquandor?)

What Christmas Means to Me – Stevie Wonder.

And if you’re not into that Jesus stuff, you can still like Christmas.

Chuck Miller’s Best of our Times Union Community Blogs this week had a lot of seasonal narratives.

 

Christmas Eve 2015

A couple years, I’m drawing a complete blank.

xmastree2012One of the lovely things about December 24, Christmas Eve, pretty much since 1983, is that I know what I’ll be doing that evening: singing in church.

Back in the 1980s, the service at the Methodist church started at 10:30 p.m., and ended about midnight; when I went home, it was almost always snowing lightly. The service at my current church begins much earlier, but there’s a certain familiarity about the celebration, though the forecast this year is that the daytime temperatures will be in the 50s F (low teens C).

What I started thinking about was what did I do in the decade before I returned to the church. At least one year in the 1970s, I went to some random Roman Catholic church. Another year, I went with my then-girlfriend to her mother’s home near New York City; by New Year’s Eve, we had broken up.

Probably went out to eat with my girlfriend in the late 1970s, but what the heck did I do in 1980, after we had broken up earlier that month?

One Christmas, probably 1975, I lived in this coffeehouse in New Paltz, but, like the dorms, we had to vacate it during the winter break. I hitchhiked down to New York City and spent a week with my great aunt Charlotte. Surely we did NOT go to church – that wasn’t her thing – but we had a good time visiting cultural events that week.

Still, for a few years, I’m drawing a complete blank.

This is to say that I LIKE the tradition of going to church on Christmas eve. It’s not just theologically significant. It creates a sense of tradition when I feign not having one.

Links

1966 CBS holiday messaage, which I well remember.

Several versions of 12 Days of Christmas; the first one is my favorite.

Christmas Dishes From Around the World.

Mark Evanier’s Mel Torme story.

Listening While Feminist: In Defense of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”.

Charles Mingus’ Secret Eggnog recipe will knock you on your ass.

 

The office party

I am among the WORST gift wrappers on the planet.

office.ukI was not sleeping well the night before the holiday office party. Part of it was the fact that I knew The Wife was going to get a routine medical exam REALLY early the next morning. This meant that, instead of her getting up at 5:30 a.m., which, after all these years, I’m still barely used to, she’d be up before 5. Arrgh.

Abandoning the bed, I tried to sleep in the recliner downstairs for a while, then onto the sofa. I was awake enough to note the kitchen light was on but fell back asleep until 7:20. Not only did I have to rush to get dressed for work, but I also had to wake the Daughter – usual rising time 6:30 – so she could get to school before 8.

Also, I had to wrap the gift for the grab bag. I had chosen the soundtrack to the great Broadway musical Hamilton, which may very well be the album of the year. Fortunately, the Wife came home, so I could take a shower, and SHE could wrap the gift because I am among the WORST gift wrappers on the planet. Plus, I was running so late, she drove me to work.

I do two reference questions. Noticing that the Outlook calendar has noted the noon party time, I didn’t rush, knowing from experience that my colleagues are always late getting started. But when I looked up at 12:10, no one was there, as though I were in one of those Left Behind films. I hadn’t heard them leave; I wear headphones with music to minimize the external chatter. I walked the handful of blocks to the venue.

The first party game was putting together a list of holiday-related items. So I had at it, running through A to N without stopping, then picking off some other letters. The secretary/party coordinator said it didn’t specifically have to be the immediate upcoming holidays, so I used that for my V response. And even starting late, I won the contest.

Here was my list.
A: apple – I’ve sung, in a choir, the anthem “Jesus Christ, the Apple Tree”
B: bells
C: carols
D: ding dong. Thinking of “Ding Dong Merrily On High”, though the George Harrison song would also fit
E: eats
F: fun – these last two were pretty generic, but whatevs, as the Daughter says
G: greenery
H: holly
I ivy – the lat two from “The Holly and the Ivy,” naturally
J: joy, as in “to the world”
K: kisses, as in Hershey
L: love
M: manger
N: nativity
O: open the window; I’m thinking A Visit from St. Nicholas
P: pouch – Santa’s, of course
Q: quest for the King; a tad obtuse, but it’s Q
R: reindeer
S: Silent Night
T: Toys for Tots – we had just collected presents for them
U: unity -another vague one
V: Valentine’s, Saint – hey she said holidays, so I reached into February; Vixen would have been better
W: We Three Kings
X: Xmas
Y: in the Year of Our Lord
Z: Zion

I won two scratch-off lottery cards. I hadn’t played these in decades, and the second one seemed to have rather complicated instructions. But I had a 2X on a card, which means I won $10 X 2 or 20 bucks. When I went to the corner store later to cash it in, the proprietor seemed irritated that I didn’t know the procedure, which was to scratch off the code BELOW the game, and scan it to see if it’s a winner.

The grab bag had several alcoholic beverages, mostly wine, and I scored a nice Riesling plus a bar of Ghirardelli chocolate. Then there was a guessing game about who brought which gift. I think EVERYONE figured that it was I who brought Hamilton, especially after the only other likely candidate acknowledged that she would have coveted it had she not already owned it. I figured out only three gifts out of 12, whereas a couple of folks nailed six.

I should oversleep more often? Or I should get scratch-off lottery tickets more often? Or I should arrive late more often? There’s a life lesson here SOMEWHERE.

Diane Sawyer is 70

After a couple years, I found the show totally unwatchable.

sawyer.nixon2When Diane Sawyer was up for a job at CBS News in the late 1970s, I was wary. She had worked for years in the press office at the Nixon White House and then helping the resigned-before-he-was-impeached former president with his memoirs in San Clemente, California. She was even suspected of being Deep Throat, the source of leaks of classified information during the Watergate scandal. A character playing Sawyer shows up in the movie Frost/Nixon, but that was a cinematic contrivance.

Diane Sawyer turned out to be not bad, first as a reporter, then fairly quickly as the first female correspondent on 60 Minutes, the long-running investigative newsmagazine.

After five years with 60 Minutes (1984-1989), she moved to ABC News to co-anchor various news magazines (Primetime Live, 20/20). “In 1999, Sawyer returned to the morning news as the co-anchor of Good Morning America with Charles Gibson. The assignment was putatively temporary, but her success in the position, measured by a close in the gap with front-runner Today, NBC News’s morning program, sustained her in the position for far longer than anticipated.”

I had been watching ABC World News, going back to the days of Peter Jennings, who I thought was a consummate newsman, until he was diagnosed with lung cancer in early 2005, and died a few months later. I stayed with the network through the brief Bob Woodruff and Elizabeth Vargas period, and the version with Charles Gibson.
Diane_Sawyer_2011_Shankbone
“Sawyer was announced as the successor to Gibson, who retired as the anchor of ABC World News, on Friday, December 18, 2009. Sawyer left GMA on December 11, 2009, and [moved] to ABC World News on December 21, 2009, three days after Gibson’s departure.”

But the show evolved into having more “news you can use” features, the type of programming appropriate for GMA but what probably would have Jennings rolling over in his grave. ABC News had a glitzy “what’s trending” on social media segment and the periodic, mildly jingoistic “Made in America” pieces; I helped find a couple of the entrepreneurs.

After a couple of years, I found the show totally unwatchable, especially after the first commercial, and started watching other programs, almost anything. Sawyer left in the anchor desk in 2014 and concentrated on specials. Her piece on Julie Andrews I found irritating, seemingly more about how strenuous the hills in The Sound of Music were for the interviewer than new information about the subject.

Still, I think that Barbara Walters-like celebrity journalism does have its place. Who else had the soft news cred to have interviewed Bruce Jenner just before the transition to Caitlyn? And I appreciated how she gave her GMA colleagues the scoop the death of her husband, Mike Nichols, in November 2014.

I recognize that media will make more of the competition between two women, no matter the field, such as Sawyer’s rivalry with Barbara Walters or Katie Couric.

So I can appreciate her accomplishments, even her style is not always my cuppa.

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