December 2024 - Page 2 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Lydster: Wall of boxes

miracle

When our daughter came home from college on December 20, we had a wall of boxes. The wall between the hallway and the living room was a bunch of presents we had received via UPS and the Postal Service.

The Amazon box contained a small Christmas tree we received from relatives. As you might be able to tell, the huge box contained an office chair, which, as it turned out, was for me.

The three similar boxes were packages with a bit of a story. UPS had been delivering certain deliveries to a CVS closing on Thursday, December 12th. I received a notice from UPS that the boxes had been delivered to that address on Wednesday, December 11th. So I went there, but the boxes weren’t there—hmm.

As it turned out, the boxes were delivered to the CVS in Stuyvesant Plaza. The next day, I took my cart and went to that CVS to get the three boxes much bigger than I had anticipated. They weighed about 20 kilograms apiece, but they were also bulky. Getting them home on a bus with a cart was a challenge, as only one box fit into the cart. The other two hung on the top, and it was an interesting balancing act. After I got them home, I was pretty much spent for the day.

In addition

The tall, thin box was a bed frame for our daughter’s room.

Lydia's stuff

Then, our daughter’s stuff was hanging out behind the wall of boxes. It included the things she brought home this month and some items from when she came home for Thanksgiving, so half of the living room was swallowed up.

Fortunately, she did yoeperson’s work and cleaned all this up by the evening of December 23, plus set up and decorate the tree with a friend. The big box in this picture is the same chair, and the little tree was the one in the Amazon box, also put together by our daughter.

The picture below was taken the morning of Christmas Eve. It’s not entirely tidy, but it’s considerably less chaotic than it had been only a few days before. It’s our little holiday miracle.

Christmas tree 2024

On Christmas Day in the Morning

Shchedryk

Merry Christmas! While searching YouTube, I came across this 1915 track, Christmas Day in the Morning ~ Olive Kline with Chorus and Orchestra. The rest of this post will be more conventional.

She turns 70 today! (HT, David.) The Holly and The Ivy – Annie Lennox.

Something from the third A Very Special Christmas (1997). Children, Go Where I Send Thee – Natalie Merchant.

We had a carol sing at my church 11 days ago, but we didn’t sing one of my favorite Christmas hymns, Lo, How A Rose e’er Blooming (Praetorius), performed here by the Atlanta Master Chorale.

In high school, we often sang Carol of the Bells. It always seemed too… chirpy. Then, a couple of years ago, after Russia invaded Ukraine, I heard a slower and, therefore, more melodic version by a Ukranian choir. Here’s Shchedryk (Carol of the Bells) by Bel Canto Choir Vilnius.

One of my wife’s K-girls: The Wexford Carol – Alison Krauss and Yo-Yo Ma. (HT, Gus.)

The Shepherds’ Farewell by Hector Berlioz features an inverse pedal point, one of my favorite musical effects. The Brandenburg Camino, Step5 performs it.

Kelly linked to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. One familiar segment for me is Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light, by the College of King’s College. In the post, Kelly pointed out that he refuses to associate Handel’s Messiah with Christmas (for him, “that work is all about Easter.”) Yet I have sung the Christmas portion at least a half dozen times during Advent. So there’s that. Here’s Handel Messiah (Christmas Portion) – Robert Shaw and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus.

Annie Lennox is 70 (Christmas Day)

Eurythmics

Annie Lennox poses on the red carpet during an award reception at the Library of Congress for 2023 Gershwin Prize for Popular Song honoree Joni Mitchell, February 28, 2023. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.

Scottish-born Annie Lennox dropped out of the Royal Academy of Music to become part of the late 1970s new wave band the Tourists. I wasn’t familiar with them. They had a couple of UK hits, the familiar tune, I Only Want To Be With You (1979) and So Good To Be Back Home Again (1980).

The band broke up in late 1980. Lennox and Dave Stewart split up as a couple but decided to continue working as the musical duo Eurythmics.

I have two of their vinyl albums, plus their greatest hits on CD. After she went solo in 1992, I got two CDs.

Five years ago, my wife and I went to MassMOCA to see ‘Now I Let You Go…’ an art installation by Annie Lennox.

Coverville 1514: The Annie Lennox Cover Story II

Some songs

When Tomorrow Comes – Eurythmics. It was no released s a single in the US.

Missionary Man – Eurythmics. “Upon the single’s US 1986 release, the song was described as being inspired in part by Lennox’s 1984–1985 marriage to devout Hare Krishna Radha Raman. When discussing the song’s inspiration and meaning, Lennox stated ‘Obviously, there is a personal meaning in [Missionary Man] for me, because of my past history. But I also think that there are a great deal of people in the media, in the form of politicians or religious speakers or philosophical people, people who are generally trying to have some power over other people, who I just don’t trust.'” #14 pop (1986), Grammy for Rock Vocal Duo.

Who’s That Girl – Eurythmics, #21 US pop in 1984.

Two Angels

Angel – Eurythmics It “would be the duo’s final single for almost a decade (discounting the re-release of two older singles the following year)… Lennox said in an interview at the time that the song was inspired by the death of her aunt, as she sings about a woman who has killed herself and now has ‘gone to meet her maker.'”

There Must Be An Angel (Playing with My Heart)”- Eurythmics. It “features a harmonica solo by Stevie Wonder. The song became the duo’s only chart-topper in the United Kingdom. #22 US pop (1985).

No More ‘I Love You’s – a cover of a song by a group called The Lover Speaks, the 1st song on her album Medusa, #23 US pop and a Grammy winner for pop female vocal.

Why -Annie Lennox. “It was taken from her debut solo album, Diva (1992), and reached number five in the United Kingdom. In the United States, “Why” peaked at number 34 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number six on the Adult Contemporary chart… Stereogum ranked “Why” number one on their list of “The 10 Best Annie Lennox Songs” in 2015.

With QoS

Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves -Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin. “A modern feminist anthem, it was… featured on both Eurythmics’ Be Yourself Tonight (1985) and Franklin’s Who’s Zoomin’ Who? (1985) albums. [I have both albums.] The duo originally intended to perform with Tina Turner, who was unavailable at the time and so they flew to Detroit and recorded with Franklin instead. The track also features three of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers: Stan Lynch on drums, Benmont Tench on organ, and Mike Campbell on lead guitar, plus session bassist Nathan East.” #18 US pop (1985)

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) Eurythmics, their breakthrough hit, it reached number two on the UK Singles Chart and #1 US pop (1983)

Would I Lie To You – Eurythmics. In the heyday of MTV, it was probably one of the Top 10 favorite videos, #5 US pop (1985).

Annie Lennox has been involved with AIDS activism, wmen’s rights, and antiwar activities. In February 2024, at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, during an in memoriam segment, she performed [with Wendy and Lisa] late singer Sinéad O’Connor’s song Nothing Compares 2 U; Lennox repeated her call for a ceasefire and ‘peace in the world.'”

While it’s a bit precious, I think the description of Eurythmics’ 2022 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is not wrong.

“Much like the moment in The Wizard of Oz when the film turns from black-and-white to Technicolor, the opening strains of Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” irrevocably changed perceptions of 1980s pop-rock. Employing the mechanistic funk of Krautrock, the grit of gospel, and the strangeness of psychedelia, Eurythmics’ genre- and gender-fluid pop vision was both futuristic and beholden to past eras, while remaining eminently accessible.”

Their bones

Do they matter?

Frank S. Robinson wrote an interesting, though chilling, book review of “We Carry Their Bones: A Florida Horror Story.”

“This book by anthropologist/archeologist Erin Kimmerle relates her authorized official investigations at the site of the Dozier School, a “reform school” in Florida’s panhandle, operating from 1900 to 2011. Actually a prison. Incarcerating thousands of boys, sentenced for mostly minor notional offenses, some as young as five, mostly Black.

The resolution caught my attention: “Kimmerle made great efforts not only to find burials but then to identify whose. Generally, the bodies had been interred unceremoniously, hence with little left to exhume. But the team was able to extract DNA even from bone fragments and thereby identify many victims. Amazing modern science…” So it is.

“Yet, though we are embodied in our physical selves while alive, afterward the dead corporeal remains should lose meaning. Our connections to our dead reside in our hearts and minds, our remembrance, not in their disintegrated bones.

“Those families already knew, basically, what had befallen their kin. Receiving a box of remains really adds nothing. I think we’re too fixated on such physicality; it’s a kind of superstition.”

I agree with about half of that. It is a bit of superstition, I suppose. But the box of remains does signify something significant.

Civil War

I saw this piece on CBS News Sunday Morning: Honoring a Civil War veteran lost to history.

“There is an unmarked African American burial ground on their farm [in Tennessee]. ‘They took me there, and for that, I’m eternally grateful,’ said Cheryl. “Because we had no idea it was there. We only had a hunch.”

“Cheryl hired an archeology team with experience finding America’s missing-in-action from more recent wars. Of the 38 graves they found here, they zeroed in on one – its size, date, and fragmentary remains matched every known detail of her ancestor.

“‘Sunday Morning’ was there with the families and local veterans when Private Sandy Wills’ remains were placed in a casket, and solemnly marched from the knoll, through green fields, to a waiting hearse.”

WWII

The Operation 85 project aims to identify unknown servicemen who perished aboard the USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“In September 1947, after the pressures of war had subsided, 170 unknown servicemen were exhumed from their graves in Hawaii and brought to the Schofield Barracks Central Identification Laboratory, where over 100 were identified and their families subsequently notified. The disinterment was a remarkable success despite the remaining 70 men being declared ‘unrecoverable.’ Those men were reburied at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu (unofficially known as Punchbowl Cemetery because of its location at Punchbowl Crater).

“It is these ‘unrecoverable’ men that Kevin Kline, grandnephew of Gunner’s Mate Second Class Robert Edwin Kline, who perished aboard the Arizona, wants the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) to identify and return to their families.”

9/11

In January 2024, the “1,650th victim of 9/11 was named after 22 years. More than 1,100 remain unidentified.”

With the amazing advancement of technology, we’ll likely be able to find more victims of airplane crashes, weather disasters, and terrorist activities. Is it worth it? Worth, as a subjective term, is difficult to encapsulate.

I support the efforts because it completes the line from their death for whatever tragic reason to burial by their families, who, even if they are generations removed, still feel a sense of pride and dignity. If that is a superstition, then so be it.

On the calendar: Ask Roger Anything

naming the weeks

Christmas and Kwanzaa are always right next to each other on the calendar. But this year, Chanukah (Hanukkah) “starts at nightfall on December 25, 2024, and ends with nightfall on January 2, 2025, beginning on the Hebrew calendar date of 25 Kislev, and lasting for eight days.” I happen to love holidays that have movable dates. Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Easter, and even the Monday holidays have different dates.

I spent more time than it was worth trying to answer a question somebody posted on Facebook. We have names for the months of the year and for the days of the week. Why don’t we have names for the weeks? It’s primarily because of the quirky nature of the calendar.

Even if we did name them, what would they be called? November 2nd to 8th could be election week, and November 22nd to 28th could be Thanksgiving week. But that doesn’t work for two good reasons. There are only 13 days between them, and they’re way too specifically American. Starting on the equinoxes or solstices is problematic because they aren’t the same worldwide.

I’ve concluded that weeks are just not meant to be named, although if you have some ideas, please let me know. It must be a system that applies to multiple countries, cultures, and religions or eschews them.

The ask

Whatever holiday you celebrate, you can provide a present: Ask Roger Anything. Roger loves this present. This is the time of the year when you let him know what you’re thinking about. You will likely ask him questions that he had not thought of asking himself.

Running a daily blog involves talking to oneself, so having you talk to him is much more enjoyable and far less schizophrenic.

Whatever you ask, I will endeavor to respond in the next several days. I’ll even promise to tell the truth; it may not be the WHOLE truth, but it’ll be pretty close.

You may leave your questions in this blog’s comments section, on my Facebook page (Roger Owen Green), or on my BlueSky page (roger green.bsky.social); always look for the duck.