Christmas Carols

When I was a kid, we had a Simon and Garfunkel record that had a song on it called "Seven O'Clock News/Silent Night". Simon and Garfunkel sang "Silent Night", while an anchorman read the news - it was the 60's, so the news was about Martin Luther King, and the Vietnam war, and Richard Speck, the man who murdered nine nurses in Chicago in 1966. I always found the juxtaposition of the two tracks - the news and a Christmas carol - chilling.

And I've discovered a new, 21st century take on it. Open your iTunes and start playing Christmas music. Then open your Internet browser and read Drudge Report or CNN or MSNBC or another news site, while the Christmas music plays. Do it now, then come back ....

.... weird, isn't it? It's great if you just need a break from all the holiday cheer and want to freak yourself out a little. Pretty sobering. I'm trying to find the perfect song/news story combination. Listening to Tony Bennet sing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" while reading about the man who was shot in the Atlanta airport was especially sad.

However!

Tonight after I picked Laura up from Girl Scouts we drove around a little and looked at Christmas lights.

I recycled a lot of paper tonight. It's amazing the amount of paper a writing class generates, every term. Handouts and rough drafts and quizzes oh my.

It's very very cold out, but I think the dogs may actually become depressed if they don't have a walk soon. I don't know how I'll be able to tell if they're depressed, because all they do is sleep anyway. But I am beginning to sense the reproach in the way they sleep, especially when they lie right in front of my office door so it's hard not to trip over them. It seems to say, we would be enjoying this sleep a lot more if someone had taken a mere fifteen minutes out of her day - we're not asking for a three mile walk, we know it's cold, we know you're busy - to walk us.

So off I go.