Your Favorite Christmas Music

I’ve started listening to my Christmas playlist, and I see that I really need to add to it. I’ve been listening to the same 70 songs for years now. Please tell me your favorite Christmas pieces, popular, classical, I love all genres (okay, there’s a lot of jazz that doesn’t speak to me, what can I say). I need new music!

This is a picture of the editorial team of Interactions, the ITP newspaper started by Eric Kibble, who, sadly, has since passed away. (ITP=Interactive Telecommunications Program, a grad school program at NYU.) I think it’s from 1987 or 1988. I feel terrible that I can’t name everyone in this picture although I recognize them all. Therefore I’m not naming anyone so the people I can’t name don’t get mad at me.

I’m easy to spot. The one with the bangs in the back. Why wasn’t I smiling?? Extreme Stacy Close-Up below.

Depending on the year, I’m 30 or 31 in this picture, and one or two years away from starting Echo, the business that changed my life and also led to my writing career, something I’ve wanted since I was 9 years old.

I didn’t have a clue then. I’d only gotten out of rehab one or two years before (the year I started grad school) and while my first year was rough—the process of getting back to life and learning how to think again wasn’t easy—by this time I was starting to feel hopeful and happy again. I had no idea how great things would get then, I was just so relieved to not be destroying my life on a daily basis anymore.

Instead I was learning about nested loops, how to animate, writing, meeting all these amazing people. Life was good again. Thank you NYU, Red Burns, and all my fellow students. (And rest in peace Eric Kibble. You were taken so unfairly soon.)