The Eve of the Eve of the New Year

December 30, 2018

The Eve of the Eve of the New Year

Is there anyone else out there who detests New Year’s Eve?  Not that getting together with friends and family for a celebration is inherently detestable, but on this one night, the gathering seems a little too forced and most parties are full of strangers who you’ve never seen before and will likely never see again.  

Don’t even think about showing up at one of these shindigs in your ratty gender-neutral jeans and a worn tee without a date and no real career plans because this puts you in the LOSER category like nothing else ever will.  Boom!  The sound of the door slamming, shutting your scruffy self in the cell reserved for people with no ambition, echoes loudly in the minds of the party goers who adhered to the mandate that regardless of the truth this one night you must put on a show for the world. If you don’t, then well…LOSER might as well be tattooed on your forehead.  

Even here deep in the Piney Woods in East Texas, where fashion is often disregarded as nothing more than big city nonsense, we know that on New Year’s Eve, tinsel trumps substance.  Even though we know that tinsel is nothing more than glittery crap (don’t hate the writer, mom, for using one of your most hated words) people put on to mask the flaws in their lives, it is required attire for the event.  If that isn’t bad enough, our ordinary dull lives must be glossed over to make it seem like life (or at least the future) is wide open and wonderful.  

Is it any wonder that we wake up on January 1 feeling whipped and a bit whiney?  

Is it any wonder that on New Year’s Day we find those useless resolutions of change buzzing in our brains like World War II Kamikazes on a bombing raid?  Their rat-a-tat-tat causing our head to feel like it’s going to explode? 

Resolutions fail because change is hard.  We know this.  Yet, year after year we compile a list to rival Letterman’s famous top ten.  Our lists are filled with resolutions that we know will fall by the wayside before January closes the door on the first month of the new year, but we are compelled to make them anyway.  Some of us will even go to the trouble to write them down faithfully, even numbering them from least important to most important, and seal them in envelops marked Open January 1, 2019, as if that will somehow make them impossible to break.  

So, here’s a proposal—proposals are big on New Year’s Eve, you know—let’s take the eve of the eve and make it a real moment.  Gather together with the people you cherish the most and celebrate what these people mean to you.  Immerse yourself in the love and friendship that sustains you throughout the year.  Use this as your amour against the false gaiety that surrounds most New Year’s Eve bashes.  That’s not to say you can’t join in on the “fun” on the final night of the old year, if that’s your thing.  Just keep it real this year.  

One final note from a future old fuddy-duddy: Any celebration that requires adult beverages to bring life to it, is probably full of glittery tinsel worshipers and best avoided to begin with.  

Got no people?  Then, friend, your resolution for this year better be to mend fences and/or make a few real friends.  No one should go through this life alone.  

Happy Eve of the Eve of the New Year 2018.

graphics from Google images and clip art labeled for reuse.

The Dreary Days of December.

December 28, 2017

The Dreary Days of December have come again!

Have you ever noticed that the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day seems drearier than the rest of the year?

The presents are opened, the stockings are empty, the Christmas decorations have lost some of their luster...and we find ourselves wishing for summer.

   It could be the sugar crash that most of us experience.  Or it might be the symbolic end of another year, although birthdays are a better anniversary for the passage of years, regardless of the annual year-end countdowns that fill our airways the last week of December.  

    But this insidious feeling of bleakness has its roots sunk deep in our psyche.  We have long been led to believe that dark, dreary, and dull equal depressing.  There is actually some science behind this notion.  It’s called a lack of Vitamin D.  The most potent source of Vitamin D, which is not actually a vitamin, is sunlight. 

    Think about it. 

    December is the calendar opposite of June, with the winter equinox being diametrically opposite the summer solstice—the shortest day of the year and the longest day of the year in terms of sunlight.  So, maybe it makes sense that December seems dreary and depressing.  December averages 8 hours of sunlight each day.  Considering most people work 8-10 hours a day, that means we go to work in the dark and leave work in the dark.  Slogging through each day as if we are mired in syrupy mud, brain fogged by too much food, beverage, and family, depression etching its mournful buzzwords in our collective conscious because Christmas seems more about spending money than spending time with loved ones, is it any wonder that we flounder a bit.

  

     However, it seems, despite myths to the contrary, that all this dark, dreariness does not make us suicidal.  Depressed, yes; suicidal, no! This might be the one bright spot in these otherwise dark days—suicide rates actually drop during December. According to those in the know (therapists, shrinks, counselors, and various others with alphabet strings behind their names), we bring these depressing times on ourselves by feeling the need to buy a bigger, better holiday.

     Whatever the reason for this season of dreary days, Merle Haggard said it best, or should that be sung it best, “if we make it through December, everything's gonna be alright, I know...If we make it through December we’ll be fine.”  Because the sun will rise, and a new day will dawn, and December will be nothing but a memory

If we make it through December.  Here is a link to Merle's song if you would like to give it a listen.

What Have You Sacrificed?

The U. S. Army, from Revolutionary to Present

What Have You Sacrificed?

If you live in the United States, or any country that embraces the freedoms of its citizens, then you know that freedom comes with a price. A deadly price.

From the birth of our nation to the present, men and women have fought and died to assure that the citizens of this country have the freedoms guaranteed them by the constitution.  And yes, that includes the right to criticize all things American, if that’s is your thing.  HOWEVER, that same constitution does not guarantee you that your ranting will not have consequences, or that everyone will agree with you and embrace your opinions, as some celebrities are finding out to their chagrin.  Still, it is your right to speak your mind.

Personally, it makes this blogger very sad to see so many people dishonoring the people who sacrificed everything to protect this country. In every community, there are mothers, fathers, wives, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends that grieve the loss of a loved one; no doubt such censure rings across their hearts like a slap in the face sharpening the grief that clings with needle sharp talons to their souls. IMO such disrespect borders on treason, but…

 

This blogger isn’t interested in debating the rights or wrongs of the military, war, or the ills of our political system.  Nor is this outpouring of feeling intended to put down people who oppose any of the above.  Your opinion is your opinion, and as was stated previously, it is your right to speak it, from the mountain tops if you chose. 

So, for today, let’s leave that subject and move on.  In fact, it is appropriate at this point to borrow from President Kennedy’s famous speech and ask:  What have you sacrificed for your freedom?  Or you have you lived your whole life as the beneficiary of someone else’s sacrifice?  For most of us, the answer to these questions, if you are perfectly honest, is “Nothing!” and “Yes.”  Nothing!—and Yes!  Now, think about this, what are you willing to sacrifice for your country?

For those of you who need facts to go with your pancakes, here you go.  The first Memorial Day was observed in 1868.  It has been an official national holiday since 1966.  The purpose of the day is to remember soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice (died) in matters domestic and foreign.  The number of people who have died to defend our freedom totals more than 1.1 million.  ONE POINT, ONE MILLION MEN AND WOMEN.

 1,100,000 people.  Doesn’t matter how it’s written, it resounds across the battlefields, past and present, with a million or more cries of grief, and though some of those death were revolutionary in nature, their echoes leave a long, deep tear across the depth and breath of our nation’s collective soul.

Regardless of your opinion, man up and take a minute and be thankful for the people who are willing to sacrifice their all for our freedom and feel some empathy for their loved ones who are struggling to find a way to come to terms with the price of our freedom. 

  

A Day to Honor Mothers

May 14, 2017

Mother's Day

     Did you know that it is estimated that more than 23 billion dollars will be spent on flowers and presents for Mother's Day this year?  Mind boggling, isn't it.  One can only imagine how the lady who considered herself the Founder of Mother's Day, Anna Jarvis, would react to that.  Even though it was her life long quest to have a day in May designated as Mother's Day, a day to honor the mothers, she fought equally as hard to keep it from becoming a commercialized holiday.  Regardless of her intentions, the idea grew--backed by florists, restaurants, and card shops--until in 1914 Congress passed a law making the second Sunday of May a national day to remember mothers.  Why      May, you ask?  Jarvis' mother died in May.  She wanted the day to be closed to the anniversary of her mother's death as possible.  Jarvis's mother, Anna Reeves Jarvis, was active in helping mothers learn how to take care of their children in what was then called Mother's Day Work Clubs.  According to historian, Katharine Antolini, Jarvis fought to make the day one of honor rather than pity or rampant commercialism.  
     There is more about Jarvis's quest if you are interested; articles are plentiful.  Don't you just love google?  For this blogger, the day is less about gifts and more about giving.  By and large, mothers are notoriously easy to please. After giving you a lifetime of love, they want, maybe that should be need, a reminder on this day that you love them as well.  Give all the presents you want, but don't forget to make the effort to visit and say those three little words that make a mother's heart soar--and it is not, Mom, I need money, just so you know.  

     Red roses symbolize true love (unless they appear in your dreams, than they mean a new romance is headed your way, but interrupting dreams is  a blog for a different day), and there should be no love more true blue...uh, make that red...than a mother's, so here's a rose for Mom.  I love you.

Happy Mother’s Day to mothers one and all.

For those in heaven and those on earth,

without you we would be nothing at all.

Literally.

Remembering the Challeger

January 28, 2017

On this day in 1986, NASA suffered a devastating loss. Not the first loss, by any means, but one that would become an albatross around NASA's neck for years to come and halt all future launches for three years.  Maybe it was because there had been so much publicity before launch that this tragedy captured the nation.  Early in 1985, to boost the public's interest in space, our then president, Ronald Reagan, launched the Teacher in Space Program.  Christa McAuliffe, a teacher from New Hampshire, won the opportunity to be NASA's first "Teacher in Space."  One winner; 10462 losers.  As the winner, she was to travel with the crew of the space shuttle, deliver a lesson from space, return to Earth and take her place in history as the first civilian in space.  A Cinderella story of a sort, only no prince at the end.  No HEA.  Instead of a watery grave for McAuliffe and an ending to a dream that cut deep into the heart of humanity leaving an aching scar and humbling the soul of a nation which had become so blase about manned space flights and the risk that astronauts take every time there is a lift-off.
Seven lives were lost that day as cable network streamed the moment live into high school classrooms across the nation.  73 seconds into the 10th shuttle flight, disaster struck, and the shuttle broke apart.  Thousands of students saw it happen.  Thousands of students and one would assume, 10,642 people who were suddenly grateful that they had not been chosen.  It was an experience that changed lives.
In the aftermath, one chilling fact surfaced.  Most people believed, after seeing the replay on television a gazillion times, that the people on board died instantly when the Challenger exploded; however, evidence recovered suggests that there was not a quote-unquote explosion and the crew was still alive, although hopefully not conscious, when the capsule hit the ocean.

There is no doubt that McAuliffe taught a lesson to all that chilly day in January.  But not the lesson she had prepared in the months before her space flight.  The lesson we should learn here: there are no guarantees in life because nothing is a sure thing.  Or maybe, unanswered prayers are a blessing in disguise.
Did McAuliffe know the risks?   Absolutely.  Did she believe that her trip into space would end as is did?  That would be a resounding, NO!  Do either of these question matter, now thirty-one years after the fact?  Maybe.  Our job now is to keep the spirit of these seven brave people alive.  We should be willing to pave the way for others, regardless of the risk to ourselves.  If you look back through history, the people who have left their mark on the world are those who did just that.
Are  you curious about the teachers who didn't win a seat on the Challenger? Here is a link that will catch you up on the Teachers in Space Project.

Can I Get a Snow Day?

January 12, 2017

As I sit here and listen to the weather for the next few days, high 50s with a less than 40% chance of rain during the day; low 30s at night, I can’t help but feel a little relieved. Especially when The Weather Channel flashed a map of all the places in the U S that it's snowing today.  Brrrrr!  

https://weather.com/maps/currentussnowcover

So. Glad. I'm. Not. In. The. Northwest. Today.  Animals at the Portland Zoo feel a little differently. They seem to be enjoying their "closed because of heavy snow" day the way that school kids do when school is closed because of snow. If you have trouble getting the video to play, you can view it on youtube at this link: First Day of Snow at Portland Zoo.  

Don't worry folks if the rumors are a little thin today. You know that this blogger has an ear to ground for all the latest gossip and will fill you in later...on that you can be sure.  Things are definitely heating up in Miller, even if the temps are warm enough to shed the old jacket and roll up your sleeves.  Does anyone else find it odd that that our own Fast Gun (FG) has been mum about her recent trip to Vegas?  Have you ladies noticed that there is a new Handsome Hunk (HH) in town.  And said HH recently spent time in Vegas?  Several folks have noticed that he spends a lot of time at the tattoo parlor owner by none other than FG.  The word on the street is that FG and HH took a side trip to a little chapel for a little ceremony Elvis style. Neither party is wearing a ring or saying just what happened in Vegas.  If they think what happened in Vegas is going to stay in Vegas, they are just fooling themselves. This bears watching, and trust the curiosity, some call it plain old nosiness(How rude!), of this intrepid blogger, if love is being inked on someone's heart, you can read all about it hear.

Meanwhile, don’t leave home without several layers.  This time of year, the weather can't be trusted.  It can be 70° one minute and cold enough to freeze your booty off the next.  Not that we all couldn't use a little less booty, but frost bite is not the way to lose those unwanted pounds.  Nuff said.

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