Day: March 28, 2012

“Danny Boy” at church

Coulda knocked me over with a vigil light last night at the start of our Lenten reconciliation service when the first hymn was “Danny Boy” — the tune, that is.  The lyrics, by the prolific Dottie Rambo, began:

Amazing grace shall always be my song of praise./ For it was grace that bought my liberty;/ I do not know just why He came to love me so,/ He looked beyond my fault and saw my need.”

Etc.  Phew.

“Amazing grace” is our “song of praise.”  Make of that what you will.

At the usual point, I hunched up my shoulders somehow to react sympathetically to that Danny Boy high note:

At “there” in the immortal line:

‘Tis I’ll be there in sunshine or in shadow

At “bend” in this one:

For you will bend and tell me that you love me.

And last night at the second syllable of “marvelous” in this line:

How marvelous the grace that caught my falling soul.

My devotion knew no bounds.

Management talks tough about pension plan

Here’s a neat statement about pension plans and, for that matter, most rich employee benefits or even social welfare programs:

[T]he most important thing we can do is to eliminate the expense, risk and volatility of the defined-benefit pension plans many of our employees have enjoyed over the years. . . .   They are great for employees, but they are, sadly, unaffordable.

Oh, that old affordability business.  Just like an employer, eh? 

In this case it’s New York Times management to its newspaper guild editorialists.  Like something out of the National Assn. of Manufacturers. 

Economics makes strange bedfellows, no?