Minor Wisdom

A song for New Year's Eve

Here’s a touching video accompanied by (what else?) Guy Lombardo doing Auld Lang Syne. I’m posting it now because I figure this evening, you’ll have other things to do besides reading blogs. It gets a little racy there at the end, so you may not want to watch it at work.

Happy New Year, everyone. See you on the other side.

How to set an ancient digital watch

Years ago, my wife bought me a Citizen GN-4-S watch, just like the one in this photo.¹ It has both analog and digital displays.

There is one minor and endearing problem. The digital display can only handle years between 1989 and 2004 inclusive. Apparently when Citizen built this watch, they thought it would last 15 years max. Mine is at 19 years with no sign of running down. Today I had to change the battery and re-set the digital display. How does one set such a timepiece to display the date and day correctly when it can’t handle 2008?

Calendar Home to the rescue. It has a like-years calculator, ideal for programming old VCRs or antique digital watches. To set my watch today, I just asked the calculator for a year when December 30 fell on a Tuesday, then set my watch to 1997. So if you have some old timekeeping electronics that can’t handle the post-Y2K world, bookmark Calendar Home.
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¹ Photo credit: Vintage Restoration.

PS22 Chorus: “Blues for Christmas”

Happy Third Day of Christmas, everyone. To celebrate, please give a listen to the PS22 Chorus, a group of 70 fifth-grade students enrolled in New York City public schools. If you listen to this video and read their web site, you’ll have a little more hope than you did before. (Warning: Excellent teacher at work.)

A year-end reflection

Here’s an excerpt from a Henri Nouwen collection that I’ve been reading off and on for weeks. It seems appropriate for the year’s end:

When we speak about celebration we tend rather easily to bring to mind happy, pleasant, gay festivities in which we can forget for a while the hardships of life and immerse ourselves in an atmosphere of music, dance, drinks, laughter, and a lot of cozy small-talk. But celebration in the Christian sense has very little to do with this. Celebration is only possible through the deep realization that life and death are never found completely separate. Celebration can really come about only where fear and love, joy and sorrow, tears and smiles can exist together.... [L]ife is precious not only because it can be seen, touched, and tasted, but also because it will be gone forever.

When we celebrate a wedding, we celebrate a union as well as a departure, when we celebrate death we celebrate lost friendship as well as gained liberty. We can indeed make our sorrows, just as much as our joys, a part of our celebration of life in the deep realization that life and death are not opponents but do, in fact, kiss each other at every moment of our existence.

When we are born we become free to breathe on our own but lose the safety of our mother’s body; when we go to school we are free to join a greater society but lose a particular place in our family; when we marry we find a new partner but lose the special tie we had with our parents; when we find work we win our independence by making our own money but lost the stimulation of teachers and fellow students; when we receive children we discover a new world but lose much of our freedom to move; when we are promoted we become more important in the eyes of others but lose the chance to take many risks; when we retire we finally have the chance to do what we wanted but lose the support of being wanted. When we have been able to celebrate life in all these decisive moments where gaining and losing—that is, life and death—touched each other all the time, we will be able to celebrate even our own dying because we have learned from life that he who loses it can find it (see Matt. 16:25).

Noel Nouvelet

Hat tip to First Draft.

Peace on earth, the war is over

I’ve been to church this evening and gotten some good religion. Henceforth, I forsake war (at least for this year). So for the few readers remaining after the recent hostilities ...

Meet Sungha Jung, a Korean lad who aspires to become a professional acoustic fingerstyle guitarist. I’d say he’s well on his way to fulfilling his dream. Here is his rendition of “Silent Night,” a song originally written for guitar.

Cluster bomb

We’re getting near the end of the holiday-video war. Time to fire everything left in the arsenal. So here is a triple shot of Jingle Bell Rock, featuring Hall & Oates, penguins, and line dancers with bad audio.

Christmas for Hitler and Germany

A couple of days ago, Loki posted a video with a Christmas-and-death theme. How to top that? Perhaps Christmas with Hitler:

“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation ....” —Adrienne Rich

This probably isn’t the worst performance of “Little Drummer Boy,” but it’s certainly the most bizarre.

The rules of engagement

What are the rules of engagement for this holiday-video war?¹ Maitri quotes Greg Peters on that subject:

“I think the purest kind of holiday horror is not something designed to be offensive, but a piece done with all sincerity and good intentions that nevertheless makes you want to strip the skin off someone’s skull with a potato peeler.”

I have an alternative description. Remember in A Clockwork Orange where they hold this miscreant’s eyes open with clamps and force him to watch stuff until he loses his mind? If you were to inflict that torture on someone, what would you make him watch?

Then there’s this item. It’s certainly “done with all sincerity and good intentions.” Yet the sheer incongruity of elements—not to mention the Barry Manilow soundtrack²—make it a fearsome weapon. And it has a bit of an Andy Kaufman, “what the hell is going on here?” quality.

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¹I say "holiday" rather than "Christmas" because Leigh has posted some worthy entries with a Hannukah theme.

²I wonder whether Barry recorded the vocal track in one take. At 2:05, the band takes him to a higher key. But he can’t finish the verse in that key; at 2:10, he drops an octave.