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Jan. 29th, 2010 08:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pensnestLet me start by saying I've had a story written for me, joy! puszysty has produced this little sparkly gem as the first of my Haiti auction prizes, so you shall all go and read it.
I'm very pleased with myself for winning a generous handful of the auctions, so I shall have more poppy goodness in days to come. Thank you, awesomepeeps, for donating your talents. You know who you are.
*
Beast and I went to a funeral on Tuesday, the husband of my oldest cousin, only fifteen years older than Beast. :-( The chapel was overflowing with people, which my cousin was very gratified about, though I did think the officiant seemed to be trying to make it All About Him—incredibly inappropriate—and the organist was a bit puny.
It occurred to me afterwards, as I was pondering my own obsequies (as you do), that what I as an atheist lack is Good Songs. I approve of getting the congregation to sing at funerals, but what do they sing at mine? I don't particularly want hymns, but hymns are the songs that those there present are most likely to know. I mean, I sang both 'We Plough the Fields and Scatter' and 'Morning Has Broken' entirely from memory (too late to get a hymnbook), and I probably haven't sung them since I left school, except at other funerals. But what else is there that will be as well known? (Admittedly I hope to live long enough that the mourners will be of generations younger than mine whose school days did not include daily Assembly with hymns.) I'd prefer a participatory memorial to the kind where the mourners are just the audience, but what can they sing?
Something by the Beatles, possibly...
*
I read a long and mostly excellent fanfic yesterday/this morning. Unfortunately it flipped from awesomeness into self-indulgence rather a lot in the later chapters, and also there was an irritating and oft-repeated grammatical error, which was a shame in something that was mostly very erudite and well written. So now, I'm wondering whether to leave feedback or not. Gah.
puszysty has produced this little sparkly gem as the first of my Haiti auction prizes, so you shall all go and read it.I'm very pleased with myself for winning a generous handful of the auctions, so I shall have more poppy goodness in days to come. Thank you, awesomepeeps, for donating your talents. You know who you are.
*
Beast and I went to a funeral on Tuesday, the husband of my oldest cousin, only fifteen years older than Beast. :-( The chapel was overflowing with people, which my cousin was very gratified about, though I did think the officiant seemed to be trying to make it All About Him—incredibly inappropriate—and the organist was a bit puny.
It occurred to me afterwards, as I was pondering my own obsequies (as you do), that what I as an atheist lack is Good Songs. I approve of getting the congregation to sing at funerals, but what do they sing at mine? I don't particularly want hymns, but hymns are the songs that those there present are most likely to know. I mean, I sang both 'We Plough the Fields and Scatter' and 'Morning Has Broken' entirely from memory (too late to get a hymnbook), and I probably haven't sung them since I left school, except at other funerals. But what else is there that will be as well known? (Admittedly I hope to live long enough that the mourners will be of generations younger than mine whose school days did not include daily Assembly with hymns.) I'd prefer a participatory memorial to the kind where the mourners are just the audience, but what can they sing?
Something by the Beatles, possibly...
*
I read a long and mostly excellent fanfic yesterday/this morning. Unfortunately it flipped from awesomeness into self-indulgence rather a lot in the later chapters, and also there was an irritating and oft-repeated grammatical error, which was a shame in something that was mostly very erudite and well written. So now, I'm wondering whether to leave feedback or not. Gah.