The Latest

As I watched the Biden-Harris inaugural ceremonies this week, I found myself overcome by unanticipated thoughts and feelings.

Although I've been aware of presidential inaugurations since 1960, when I was nine, this is the first one I've ever taken the time to watch in its entirety.

Of course, as a reliable Democrat, there were the expected feelings of relief as the political pendulum swung in favor of my preferred affiliation.

As I write these words, the invasion of our US Capitol in DC is only a week behind us.

At least in terms of what I've been reading (and writing) over the intervening period, many of us are wracked anew by the question of how it could have come to this, and what these actions might mean for our future.

The invasion of our Capitol building on January 6th, 2021, and the accompanying disruption of the work of our duly elected members of Congress, was certainly an unprecedented and frightening addition to our American history books.

And yet, when added to the list of coup attempts that have taken place around the world throughout human history, this action seems a bit out of place.

Here we are at the end of another year, well into what many of us call the holiday season.

As I've remarked elsewhere, when it comes to religion, I'm a bit of a mongrel, so my approach to the holidays, while imbued with many of the traditional elements associated with a good Methodist upbringing, does not hew closely to any particular set of Christian dictates.

But that's perhaps as it should be, for Christmas, it seems to me, has always been too big a thing to be narrowly claimed by any particular religious organization.

The Christmas season is one of my favorite times of year, and I've acquired a huge collection of holiday music over the years, so I thought I would share my thoughts about a few of my favorites with all of you. So here are 20 of my favorite holiday tracks. I've tried to select as wide a variety of songs as possible, mixing different artists and styles.

This is a bluegrass song written by Bell Labs engineer and bluegrass fiddler Benjamin “Tex” Logan, and first recorded by Bill Monroe in 1951.

This song has a similar theme to “Christmas Time Back Home”, but has a very different feel to it. Whereas “Christmas Time Back Home” is full of yearning, this song always seems to me to be full of sheer joy.