(no subject)

[cahn]

Me: Now that it's mid-November, I've finally got the church Christmas program sorted and I can start catching up on other stuff, like DW and my Yuletide fic and beta --

Bishopric: Hey, just wanted to call and catch up on Christmas music and mention two things. First, the stake is holding a Christmas music celebration and is asking if our ward choir can participate.

Me: ???? This sounds... like not the best idea our stake has ever had...
...But anyway, a month ago when I asked what the guidance was on choirs, the bishop told me choirs were only possible masked and distanced (which I think is great) and I asked around and literally no one I talked to wanted to have choir under those restrictions. So we don't HAVE a choir. But we do have a small group of vaccinated people who were going to sing something and I guess I could ask them...

Bishopric: Cool, sounds legit! Also the First Presidency [global Church leaders; as you probably know this is an extremely hierarchical church, so this would be sort of like the Pope and the Vatican, I guess, except that people actually do what the First Presidency says, for the most part] this week was encouraging people to have Christmas programs on Dec 26. Not Dec 19, which is when you've planned everything for.

Me: ... okay. I guess... I'll ask everyone if they can do that.
[I should say that Bishopric guy was extremely apologetic! Totally not his fault, but gah.]

Bishopric: One last thing, we've historically had this Christmas ward musical fireside thing, do you think we should do that again now that we also have this stake music thing?

Me, remembering the multiple conversations I had in 2019 with other musicians saying "...don't you think this is all a bit much, we are all super stretched thin??": You know what, I'm super going to go with "no" on this one. If people complain bitterly we can tell them it was because of the pandemic (not even false, I was assuming we weren't going to have it this year because of the pandemic).

So last night (and part of tonight) instead of doing fun stuff I emailed/texted everyone involved, and I think got back that most people are going to be able to do stuff on Dec 26? Including the person who I wasn't sure was due to have a baby Dec 26 or Jan 2, but it turns out it's Jan 2 and so as long as she's support/coach and not directly performing, it seems like it will all be okay unless she goes into labor that day which she thinks is unlikely :) There might be minor drama with one person which hopefully will be easily fixed if everyone else is reasonable. Crossing my fingers on that one -- of the four people involved in the conversation, two of them I am super confident will be super reasonable, and then there is a small but nontrivial chance that Fourth Person will be unreasonable in the opposite direction. But aaaaaaah! (ETA: Fourth Person has responded entirely reasonably, YAY)

But at least I will probably not have to do anything for a ward musical fireside!

Comments

[luzula]

Oh, that sounds like annoying extra work! My sympathies, hope you get some time to catch up now.

[cahn]

Thank you! Nothing has broken so far tonight so... so far so good :)

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ooof. At least you're not beta-ing for me this Yuletide? :D

[cahn]

Ha, this is a very good thing! :)

(K)

[(Anonymous)]

Oh dear. Perhaps we should reschedule a bit? (Will email)

But what I'm confused about is the micromanagement. Why does it matter which Sunday you pick? Is there some reason why every ward in the world needs to have their Christmas programs on the same Christmas-adjacent Sunday? If this is coming as a surprise in mid November, then it's not like there's some time-honored church calendar involved?

I get that micromanagement about, say, family home evening, leads to promulgation of best practices -- but this feels more like a whim that complicates holiday plans that many people have already made.

Re: (K)

[cahn]

Why does it matter which Sunday you pick? Is there some reason why every ward in the world needs to have their Christmas programs on the same Christmas-adjacent Sunday?

So... to be honest the actual stricture was that there will be no second hour of church on the 26th, so I think there's some interpretation going on by our bishopric that this means it ought to be the Christmas Program Sunday. Which I suppose isn't an unreasonable assumption (not least because the Christmas program always, always goes over time).

I do think, now that I have calmed down from being annoyed at being given more work, that the actual intent was to do everyone a favor by making it a less time-consuming Sunday for everyone (we almost always have two-hour church on Christmas Sunday unless Christmas itself falls that day or sometimes the day before), but it's also the case that if you only have the one meeting, tradition and stage management (so to speak) dictates that ought to be the Christmas program because otherwise it would be super anticlimactic, which maybe they didn't think through.

[zdenka]

That sounds stressful! I'm glad Fourth Person responded helpfully, and I hope the rest of the arrangements go well!

[cahn]

Thank you! In fact everyone has been super nice and helpful and I feel a bit bad now for being so grumpy. although I think everyone else kind of realizes I am grumpy so they are being super nice and helpful? :)

[cenozoicsynapsid]

I have been skipping the Frederick threads, but just wanted to stop by and say that this sounds tough, and hope your holidays don't get *too* crazy.

[cahn]

<3 Complaining about Christmas is something of a yearly ritual for me -- being reasonably musical and active in a denomination that doesn't believe in hiring musicians (and which often makes the mistake of thinking that people who are good at music must also be good at music organization, omg) means that I seem to get sucked into the vortex of Christmas music every year, and usually something goes wrong and hopefully this is the quota for this year. It will all be okay, it will just be more okay when it's over :) And everyone has been super nice this year even when I've been asking them to reschedule more than once (sigh), which is certainly a huge step up from that One Year With All The Drama (fortunately I only had only one small kid then, because I don't think I could have handled the drama with the amount of non-kid spoons I currently have).

haha, I super don't blame you for skipping the Frederick threads, those things are intense! :) During Yuletide it's usual for my non-Yuletide-canon-review book consumption to go way down, but I should still probably read things so that I can nominate for the Hugos in 2022 -- any recs? (And how's Yuletide going for you?)

[cenozoicsynapsid]

The winter season is a busy time, yeah. It's easy to get overloaded and drop stuff by accident. Are you familiar with Suzette Elgin's Native Tongue books? (Probably, given the other stuff I know you've read?) I don't like the books at all, but I love the LAadan glossary, and this is one of my favorites: "radíidin: non-holiday, a time allegedly a holiday but actually so much a burden because of work and preparations that it’s a dreaded occasion; especially when there are too many guests and none of them help."

YT is going well for me this year, in an unexpected way... last year was the year of mega-longfic, and this year is super-tinyfic. Not because I don't like the canon--- things just need to be the length they are. Now I'm looking around for something to write a treat for. Not you, sadly: I will let those who liked the Scholomance as much as you did explore it with you, and while I will be eagerly watching the Matter of Seggri tag, I don't think I can do it justice.

My latest reads are finally finishing Malka Older's "State Tectonics" trilogy (good, but not Hugo-eligible--- I missed it when it came out), and Lindsay Ellis's sequel to Axiom's End. What I liked about AE: the acknowledgment that relationships are complicated, and memorizing a list of keywords ("consent", "autonomy") will not remove this complexity, and people who are too messed up to have wholly "good" relationships still need other people. What I didn't like: the aliens themselves... not alien enough. The sequel is right where the first one was on both counts.

A bit further back, Nghi Vo's "Singing Hills" novellas and Zen Cho's "Black Water Sisters," both of which have lovely Asian-mythology worldbuilding and queer female characters, and which are otherwise not much alike. IIRC those were both on this current year's Hugo cycle?

How is your YT going?

[cahn]

I'm actually not familiar with Suzette Elgin's SF (I think someone told me it would probably not be my thing?) but I am familiar with her Verbal Self-Defense books, which I found extremely useful at the time. Ha, that's a great definition.

*nods* I'm definitely familiar with having to write longfic for some things and shortfic for others! Totally agree that things sometimes just need to be a particular length. Ha, of course I am always extremely happy to get treats from you! -- though I'd kind of suspected in any case that my requests this year weren't quite your style. Maybe next year... :)

I haven't read any Older or Axiom's End, though I keep seeing them about -- hm, what you like about AE sounds very much like I'd like it too, and maybe I won't mind the aliens too much if I know about them going in :)

The first Singing Hill novella was on this year's Hugo ballot, and I really really liked it. Oh, hmm, the Zen Cho was published this year, so I should take a look at it for next year's ballot, thanks!

My YT is going well! I fortunately landed a request where the writing wasn't a problem (sometimes I feel like a story flows pretty naturally, and sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get it to work, and this one is the former). I'm hoping to have time to write a treat -- we'll see. (Probably not for you as well -- you have amazing canons and prompts which I have no idea how I could fill :) I will read the heck out of whatever gets written for you, though!)