In no particular order, here are my top ten choices for Christmas music.

Favorite Christmas Albums

1. Come Darkness, Come Light – Mary Chapin Carpenter. Melancholy, yet comforting like cocoa by the tree on a wintry day, this album has become like a cherished friend of the family we only get to see at holiday time. We all love it and listen to it over and over and over again. With simple arrangements and Carpenter’s nuanced vocals, this one never gets old. Favorite title: Very difficult to choose since the album is so evenly produced, but my sentimental favorite is “Hot Buttered Rum”

2. A Christmas Dream – Bobby Schnitzer, et al. We picked this one up several years ago while Christmas shopping at Louisiana Pecans. While this is an album of mainly Christmas standards, I’ve never had that dread feeling of “not What Child Is This AGAIN.” It’s low-key approach (just three primary instruments) makes it the perfect background CD throughout the holiday. Favorite title: “Coventry Carol”

3. The Chipmunks Greatest Christmas Hits – Chipmunks. I remember wearing out the old eight-track of this album when I was a kid. It honestly didn’t sound much different at that point, but the point is that I loved the Chipmunks. I love hearing it again every holiday. Once. My wife doesn’t care to hear it even that much. My daughter has taken over the obsession of wanting to hear it over and over. Favorite title: “Here Comes Santa Claus”

4. Rocky Mountain Christmas – John Denver. This is my wife’s favorite. I was never a John Denver fan, but I have to admit his voice is both powerful and beautiful on this album. It’s a sacred experience, with the exception of “Please Daddy Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas,” which I also will sing at the top of my lungs, to the accompaniment of eye rolls from the girls. Favorite title: “Aspenglow”

5. A Charlie Brown Christmas . A less offensive version of a childhood obsession, this album’s jazzy instrumentals are universally identifiable and beloved. Favorite title: “Christmastime is Here”

6. Noels and Carols from the Olde World – Various. When I long for a break from the endless covers and want a classical music fix as well, this is my go-to album. These are the original holiday classics. As a bonus, they can be listened to as background music, unlike Handel. Favorite title: “Fum, Fum, Fum!”

7. Carpenters Christmas Collection. I love voices — especially when it comes to Christmas music. Karen Carpenter was a the peak of her vocal powers and phrasing during the recording of these classics. Her brother Richard, more than brought it himself with the instrumentals, producing the definitive holiday title. Favorite title: “Christmas Waltz”

8. Smokey Mountain Christmas – Various. Simple, melodic and down-to-earth without wallowing in its bluegrass roots, this album maintains an even pace that’s the perfect soundtrack for anyone’s country Christmas. Favorite title: “Joy to the World” starts it off just right

9. An Evening in December – First Call. The harmonies on this a capella album fall on your ears with the gentleness of winter’s first snowfall. I still have a hard time believing just three people provided all the harmonies on this album. Favorite title: “Starlight”

10. The Gift Goes On – Sandi Patty. This 1983 album is Sandi Patty at the zenith of crystal vocal perfection. Arranged in a classical style, it’s a Christmas title that’s never been matched in my opinion for beauty, power and sheer addictiveness. Nobody will ever beat this album’s rendition of O Holy Night. When it’s time to start decorating at our house each year, this is the first accompaniment. Favorite title: “O Holy Night in a close tie with Bethlehem Morning”

And a bonus …

Christmas Live – Sandi Patty. Nearly 30 years after The Gift Goes On was released, my family was fortunate to be in the audience during this live recording in Richardson, Texas. This is a testament to a seasoned vocalist who takes care of her talent. It is available in both DVD and audio CD formats. Both highly recommended. Favorite title: “Songs of Snow”

Now that you know my favorite holiday albums, what are yours?

Graphic by By hans s on Flickr

I first discovered David’s book Getting Things Done about three years ago. While a lot in my life still gets done slowly, it will get done. At the very least I know when to recognize that something is not worth doing or just not possible in the current circumstances.

The freedom this system provided ignited the spark to create something simple that has in turn given me even a bit more freedom. It’s been working for me (and even a few co-workers) for a while now, so I thought I’d share it. Just tape it on front of your project folder and enjoy mind like water!

Related Links:

http://www.davidco.com

http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-the-hipster-pda

http://www.diyplanner.com/docs/diyplanner/advice/hpdasetup

Despite developing the Master of Arts in Heritage Resources program into a nationally respected program, my wife ElizaBeth (a tenured, full professor) will be the only faculty member eliminated with that program. Her equally competent counterpart in the Bachelor of Arts in Heritage Resources program, Julie Ernstein, will be the only person to go with that program.

I’ve watched ElizaBeth and Julie work tirelessly over the last six years to develop these programs so their students can enjoy an Ivy League educational opportunity at a state university in Louisiana. The programs have succeeded with many graduates who are doing significant things to preserve our country’s cultural heritage.

If you want to know why this program is probably the most valuable, sustainable and academically viable NSU has going, you can read lots of reasons in the G-Rated version of this post, located on Voices of the Past.

Here on my personal blog, I’m going to vent about a group of folks who’ve outlived their usefulness by a collective 90 years or so.

Yes, I’ve heard many millions in cuts; more coming. All Bobby Jindal’s fault. Sure, Louisiana has room for blame at all levels. But I’ve worked in PR long enough to know when a practiced line is used as an excuse, and nothing makes it less of one, no matter how many times you repeat it or try to deflect your own accountability in a situation. Using a budget crisis as a case to dispose two uniquely sustainable programs and the two people that made them that way–despite organizational offers to fundraise and appeals by state-level officials–makes no sense on any level.

Indeed, the NSU cabinet makes BP look like an institutional PR genius. Throughout this process, we’ve certainly not heard anything by the folks in authority there, or a concrete plan of action, or any way the community can help, even as a platitude. We heard nary a word to calm the fears of the faculty when the La. Board of Supervisors cited NSU as a school likely for closure in the budget crisis worsens.

Perhaps the PR journalism students could have advised them on a positive approach to build rapport and confidence with their employees in troubling times. Oh, wait. That program is gone too. Instead, we get Professor Giggles holding faculty forums where everyone is either too scared to question anything or is supplied with long, baffling non-answers worthy of an old Gracie Allen skit.

If the administration wants everyone to believe the Program Review-AKA-Elimination Committee really made these decisions, they need to buckle down on all the non-tenured junior faculty they placed on it, because that process is rapidly being revealed as a sham. Some of the programs eliminated were not even on their list to review. All the College of Ed programs put on the original list were evidently sacred cows to begin with and never could actually be considered for elimination. Despite repeated requests from faculty, the minutes from their last several meetings have not been posted on the Provost’s site as of this writing.

The inability keep up with the times is the kind of mindset that contributed to this situation above and beyond the punishment the state is now dealing out. For its part, NSU could have saved millions by now just by getting rid of the bubble time sheets and endless quadruplicate forms that went out of style everywhere else 20 years ago. Where’s the accountability for lack of decision making?

For their part, the Heritage Resources programs could teach a few lessons in integrity to some of NSU’s other degree programs — including one that I happen to have a master’s in — that would compare much less favorably in the sunlight of a genuine review process based on academic merit. If this is strictly a numbers game, fine. But at least go ahead rename it Northwestern Community College and not kid the world about potential contributions to scholarship.

By now, everyone has heard the refrain that the administration “just can’t help it. Our hands are tied” (insert tears). If there’s ANY cabinet-level professor from ANY university who can’t make the intellectual leap from slavish reliance on state-run formulas to finding creative ways for keeping a low-cost, nationally recognized program alive, let a computer in Baton Rouge do his or her job. That should free up funds for the salaries of a good two or three professors who are losing theirs. Or at least give the money to someone who has the courage to make a public stand for quality higher education, win or lose. Leaders at other universities are doing this!

Really, what’s to lose at this point?

The thought of leaving my hometown because of some shell game that moves a bunch of people and departments around but does little else to solve the long-term problems of the university is a bit sickening. Then again, I can’t honestly look at my child and say my best hopes and dreams for her future lie in this kind of educational environment. Could you?

That’s a huge realization because Natchitoches and the Cane River region are so core to my identity. I’m proud that there are few places in the U.S. with the diversity of cultural heritage and organizational partnerships that could have supported the heritage resources programs so well in the first place.

Even when things have not been historically good in Louisiana, we could always fall back on pride in our cultural heritage and traditions to get us through the hard times. That’s in jeopardy now with events like the oil disaster. But students and graduates from these programs are on the ground down there right now, safeguarding our heritage resources with the skills and training they’ve learned from these unique programs at Northwestern State University.

The sad fact is that the future of our state and town is evaporating at such a rapid rate that the media and citizenship have been blinded by it and our educational future dies for lack for interest. This will all be a fascinating case study for somebody’s thesis someday, obviously at some other state’s university.

My daughter turned five this past week and to celebrate, we invited her kindergarten class to her party. In the past, this has always just entailed nearby family, so we had no idea what we were in for. Luckily, our town has a gymnastics facility for young people that hosts birthday parties. Kids are led through structured gym activities both before and after all the sugar! We had Nazy Lacour create a doll cake again this year, and will continue to do so every year until she doesn’t care to anymore. It was a Tinker Bell cake, in keeping with the theme Kaleigh selected several months ago. The birthday went off splendidly, with everyone exhausted and happy. Me and my wife may just need another year to recover, though.

What if you knew that in the time it takes to read to this sentence, seven new blogs will be created?

Yes, some will be “spam” blogs, conceived of evil intent to steal your time or money. And some will be the stillborn attempt of a person who had a great idea but found a blank composition screen too intimidating or the prospect of criticism unbearable. For the one or two that eventually sport worthwhile content, their chances for surviving more than a month are slim, never mind their chances for making a difference in the world. But still, there is a chance. It’s happening more and more.

In that same small span of time, hundreds of posts went up on other blogs. Tens of thousands of blog posts were commented on and hundreds of thousands of connections were made through some form of social media. The printing press, radio, television and even the web’s first iteration fundamentally changed the world we live in. But each had the weakness of needing gatekeepers … People with specialized training or a lot of money determined what came out of those devices. And nobody likes being fenced in.

As a result, you’ve now read long enough to allow the creation of 203 more blogs. They’re right there, waiting in your web browser. More than 200 soapboxes, each containing the promise of infinite combinations of things to say—for all of humanity, forever. Chances are getting better that one may be a keeper. In far less time than it takes you to finish this chapter, one could even be yours.
What are you still doing here?

Yes, the potential is huge but social media doesn’t begin as some theoretical “Big Bang” event that creates a universe that eventually leads to a sun and an earth and an atmosphere all the way down to you reading this post. It begins with a simple question, or a need. Often the answer is short and sweet and a conversation begins. Two people connecting—maybe from opposite sides of the planet—and drawing inspiration from one another to accomplish their dreams. That’s how it begins. Get to talking with enough of those folks; that’s where your Big Bang happens.

In “The Future of Communications – A Manifesto for Integrating Social Media into Marketing,” Brian Solis, blogger at PR 2.0 and principal of FutureWorks PR, puts it this way: “Social media has created a new layer of influencers. It is the understanding of the role people play in the process of not only reading and disseminating information, but also how they in turn, share and also create content for others to participate. This, and only this, allows us to truly grasp the future of communications.”

The democratization of information transcends national boundaries, giving new meaning to the term “global citizen.” Social media provides a voice. No longer are people powerless when faced with a bad customer service experience. Rate it. Blog about it. Post to a forum. Review it. Only the world will know. Someone, somewhere is sure to relate to your experience and together you will likely be able to rectify the situation.

Social media came a long way in 2007, but it’s still a toddler in terms of potential. Scores of new tools and “mashups” of others arrive each week. So many blog posts and news stories are written about it that it’s virtually impossible for one person to keep up with. You may as well try to come up with a pithy one-liner about how the world works. No field has undergone more fundamental change by social media than Public Relations.

Social media are a group of tools to help people interact online. Social media is about people interacting on a deep level, supported by online tools. Got that?

The distinction is subtle enough that most folks have to ruminate on it for a moment. The first sentence is how you would have stated it a couple of years ago when the I.T. people started with the term Web 2.0. The second sentence is what happened when the communicators moved in and took over.

Social media has a way of bringing big jobs down to size. With a lot of focused effort—evangelization, even—it won’t take much time for social media to ignite within each and every stakeholder group you are trying to reach. Who will they thank for this time-saving, life-changing knowledge? The bringers of the fire, of course.

It starts as a PR game but everyone wins.

So grab your racket, or gloves or bat. You can’t lose with the tools at your disposal: blogs, social networks, wikis, lifestreams, Twitter, video, livecasts, news aggregators, social media releases, videos, and podcasts. Or move your game to Second Life or other virtual worlds.

Social media is about people interacting on a deep level, supported by online tools.