You are currently viewing archive for December 2007

26 2007-12-17 14:51 Christmas carols
gifts

here's my collection of Christmas carols in this zip file. it's not comprehensive, but i know it could be useful to somebody. (would have been useful to me in the past!) i transcribed some myself; others are from various sources.

UPDATE 2007-12-25: i added a few more chord charts, and notably :) sheet music (both printable and powerpoint) for several songs. here's what's in the new zip file (link above).

UPDATE 2009-12-14: i added a Christmas Caroling booklet, 27 songs ready to print on 11 sheets of paper in Microsoft Word, fold in half and staple, voila!  See the new post.

Sheet Music:
Angels From The Realm Of Glory
Angels We Have Heard On High
Bring A Torch, Jeanette Isabella
Come Thou Long Expected Jesus (alternate tune)
Deck The Halls
Ding Dong Merrily On High
First Noel, The
Go Tell It On The Mountain
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
Good Christian Men Rejoice
Hark The Herald Angels Sing
I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day
Infant Holy, Infant Lowly
It Came Upon The Midnight Clear
Joy To The World
Oh Christmas Tree
Oh Come All Ye Faithful
Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel
Oh Holy Night
Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem
Once In Royal David's City
Silent Night
Wassail Song (Here We Come A-Wassailing)
We Three Kings
What Child Is This

Chord Charts:
G      Angels From The Realm Of Glory
E,G    Angels We Have Heard On High
E      Away In A Manger (two tunes)
D      Born This Day
A      Come And Worship
D,E    Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus
G      For The Beauty Of The Earth
E      Go Tell It On The Mountain
D      Gotta Get Up
C,D    Hark The Herald Angels Sing
G      It Came Upon The Midnight Clear
CDEG   Joy To The World
G      Oh Come All Ye Faithful
Am     Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel
A,G    Oh Holy Night
A      Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem
A      Once In Royal David's City
D      Prepare the Way
C      Silent Night
Am/C   We Three Kings
C      We Wish You A Merry Christmas
Em,Am  What Child Is This

Powerpoint:
A Communion Hymn For Christmas
Advent Of Our God
Angels From The Realm Of Glory
Angels We Have Heard On High
Away In A Manger (two tunes)
Birthday Of A King
Come And Worship
Come On, Ring Those Bells
Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus
First Noel, The
For The Beauty Of The Earth
Go Tell It On The Mountain
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
Good Christian Men Rejoice
Hark The Herald Angels Sing
How Great Our Joy
I Cannot Tell
I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day
I Wonder As I Wander
Infant Holy, Infant Lowly
It Came Upon The Midnight Clear
Joy To The World
Joy to the World (He Is Jesus the King)
Lo! How A Rose E'er Blooming
O Thou Joyful O Thou Wonderful
Oh Come All Ye Faithful
Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel
Oh Holy Night
Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem
Once In Royal David's City
Prepare the Way
Silent Night
Sweet Little Jesus Boy
There Is Room In My Heart For Thee
Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne
We Three Kings
What Child Is This

also in there is a longer list of Christmas songs along with what key and time signature they're in. happy carolling!

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25 2007-12-17 13:20 more turbulence
newsletter

i'm pretty sure this is her head in this video:

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24 2007-12-16 18:30 Christmas program
gifts

Trying to come up with a musical children's Christmas program? Feel free to recycle ours. The script and all the chord charts are in this zip file. (Could be handy for caroling or Christmas worship services too.) It includes one or two verses of each of these songs:

Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem
Silent Night
Away In A Manger
Angels We Have Heard On High (modified lyric)
Hark The Herald Angels Sing
We Three Kings
Joy To The World
We Wish You A Merry Christmas

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23 2007-12-14 22:17 belly turbulence
newsletter

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22 2007-12-13 15:48 k-mart is closed
minutiae

Last year our friend Super Samantha gave us the Sufjan Stevens Christmas collection: all 5 of his Christmas CDs. We listened a couple times and it was cool. This year we've been listening to more music, and we've played Sufjan a bunch and paid more attention to his lyrics. Laura's favorite Sufjan Christmas lyric: "K-Mart is closed". The line that most sticks in my head (from the same song, "Come On! Let's Boogey To The Elf Dance!"): "Santa Claus is coming, hear the banjo strumming". Best song title: "Get Behind Me, Santa!"

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21 2007-12-07 14:28 traveler
exposition

I posted a couple comments on Traveler (University of Arkansas student newspaper) articles. I got a little mean in the second one.

Trophy's credibility on the line this season more than ever before

Here's a fair comparison of the rushing game of the two players: against shared SEC opponents (Auburn, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee) Tebow had 12 TD runs for a total of 56 yards (7, 5, 9, 6, 2, 9, 2, 5, 1, 3, 2, 5) while McFadden had five TD runs for a total of 234 yards (56, 80, 16, 73, 9). Put that in yards per TD carry and it's 4.7 for Tebow, 47 for McFadden.

Tebow had 511 attempts to pass or rush (317+194) on the season, McFadden had 315 (304+11, not counting receiving).

 

UA residents vote against tobacco ban

"It should be noted that research shows that tobacco smoke only affects your health if you are less than 18 inches away from the smoker. You really shouldn't be that close to anyone."

Whatever hat you pulled that tidbit out of, it's a ludicrous oversimplification. The effects of smoke have little to do with distance from the source of the smoke, but rather the concentration of toxins and duration of exposure.

Twenty-five feet is usually not far enough. The old policy causes everyone to have to run a gauntlet of smokers and toxins at every building entry.

The situation is exacerbated during stable atmospheric conditions, when smoke doesn't readily float or blow away, and concentrations just build up in one spot. It's especially bad at recessed entryways (such as at Bell Engineering Center) or those with awnings. A smoker may be 25 feet from the door but still be inside the entryway, where smoke collects almost as if in a balloon.

The question is not how far from buildings is far enough, it's how far from buildings and sidewalks, without being upwind of them. Otherwise, smoke is still forced upon us all, only farther from the classroom. Clearly the only way to accomodate people who wish to inhale smoke on campus while not infringing on the free breathing of everyone else is to have designated smoking areas that are out of the way of most foot traffic.

As irksome as this must be for the former group, it's understandable why an official charged with optimizing the university's collective health would decide against going out of her way and spending money to enable smokers to continue to pollute the grounds of a public institution.

In practice, of course, we can't afford to make smokers unhappy, because there are still several of them. That consideration would seem to justify having us all foot a share of the bill for the construction of some sheltered, designated smoking areas, however irksome the idea might be to some non-smokers. I'm okay with that; that's the way things are. (It's better than having partiers' cab fares extorted from us with the implication that if we didn't provide their safe ride, they might choose to drive drunk and kill somebody...)

It's pretty crazy when you think about it. If I stood around outside a classroom building or the football stadium with a smoldering roll of tar or styrofoam or benzene-soaked paper or just about anything, wafting a cloud of carcinogenic fumes over bystanders, it wouldn't take long for me to be arrested, maybe charged with assault or terrorism of some kind.

Unless it's tobacco, because we are all used to that. So used to it that to some readers I probably sound quite extreme and radical in just pointing it out.

It's the year 2007, folks. Nobody should be smoking anymore. But if they choose to, they certainly shouldn't foist it upon others. The question should not be how much poison is it okay to expose random passersby to, and can we claim that research shows it doesn't affect them as much below a certain level.

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