Ruth: a woman who loved well

This afternoon I learned the heartbreaking news that Ruth Graham passed away. Though we didn’t know each other incredibly well, Ruth has forever impacted my life. We met briefly before Chase and I moved to Nicaragua, but we really got to know her via e-mail when she and her 3-year-old son Ethan began to send us e-mails. First, we received this one.

6/22/2010

Dear Julie and Chase,

Hello to you from OK! My son and and I have only met you once briefly just before you left. (I graduated from JBU, if that helps!)  We read your emails together and talk about how you help the children in Nicaragua.

Ethan, 3, has a couple of questions for you!

Observations on some Christmas songs II

This second installment of seasonal music criticism has been a long time coming, but it’s finally here just in time for the holidays! (You can see my first post on the topic here.) I understand that not all Christmas music has to be excellent—or even make sense! —I just expect that the music that achieves a degree of popularity does so because it’s actually good. This expectation is met with disappointment time after time.

This year, I take issue with the following songs:

#1. Last Christmas. In addition to being more repetitive—and less creative—than a country song, this whiny George Michael number proves that the only thing a song needs to do to be called a “Christmas song” is include the word Christmas. Nothing else about the content of the song even hints at other things associated with Christmas (Santa, Jesus, snow, presents, December, etc.). If you changed the word Christmas to summer, for example (“Last summer, I gave you my heart…”), you would lose nothing except an annoying song at the end of the year. Can we do this, please?