THE NEW YEAR ILLUSION

When the New Year arrives I always have to deal with my illusion that it will somehow be a new beginning. Nothing changes at all. All the problems of the preceding year are still there. All things undone on the To-Do list of 2007 followed me into 2008. Weight doesn't magically fall off nor do the aches and pains in my body disappear. The only real change is my disappointment in realizing that every problem still exists both in the world at large and in my own personal sphere.

Birthdays seem to have a similar process. You wake up on the day of your birthday as a child with great expectations of having a 'special' day. Indeed it is special because you are center stage, get a cake with candles to blow out, and if you are lucky, a party with friends and some nice gifts. However, after you reach the mileposts of 16, 18, 21, and 30, there is far less to look forward to. You feel the same after your birthday as you did the day before, and if no one knew you had a birthday, they couldn't tell.

Years ago, I gave up making New Year's Resolutions. Waiting for the new year to start anything is, in my mind, total procrastination. Whatever day of the year I resolve to do anything is the day I start the change or there will be no change. It has always fascinated me that people make so much of New Year's Eve. I can't imagine myself standing in a freezing Times Square, another herring in a sardine can, for five hours to watch a ball drop even if God were standing there holding the ball. First Night celebrations are a step up. It seems that any excuse for fireworks is grabbed up by someone. The rest of the entertainment is well-planned and organized and seems a worthwhile venue with all the entertainers, ice artists, and everything else offered. Happily, the celebration does not depend on my being there. I feel that anything presented outdoors when it is under 70 degrees will not tempt me any more than an ocean colder than bathtub temperature will draw me in. Spending a large part of the evening in lines to get into places when the comfort of my living room offers good entertainment also does not seem a particular attraction, either.

Then main thing that I notice this New Year is that I have been to a lot of places, done a lot, saw a lot, gave at the office, learned my lessons, paid the price for my mistakes, and work harder to be optimistic about my fellow human beings. Despite this seemingly pessimistic view of life, I find no end of things or people in my world that aren't exciting and which make me happy to wake up to face every morning!

A HEADFUL NOT WORTH REPEATING

Sometimes one's thoughts race around in many circles, touching subjects along the way like an insect flying in the garden, touching on the leaves, blossoms, and plants, never staying on any spot for long. My head has behaved in that manner today...too many thoughts to unwind singly from the cumulative mass.

As a disappointed old faithful of the TV pundits and talking heads, I've decided to take a bit of a hiatus and limit myself choices to listening only to the speeches I hear directly from the candidates themselves. I continue to respond to phone calls, some of which are interesting and some not, though I admit I am far more apt to talk longer to people who care enough to ask me what is new in my life as well as telling me what is new in theirs. The New England continuously changing weather makes each day a challenge for leaving this cozy nest. The parking area in front of the house has become a very lumpy skating rink. While the walk has been melted of ice and cleared, the walk over the lawn requires the skill displayed by Evel Knievel to get to the car and down from the wall safely.

With a holiday in the middle of the week, which changed the trash day and pushed the weekend up too fast and totally disoriented me, I've decided to stay quiet and give my head a rest by watching chick-flick movies that are purely vanilla (or B-flat, if you prefer a music metaphor). Since my first choice would have been to stay at home in warmth until the leaves are out in the spring, this is what I will have to settle for tonight.

AFTER THE IOWA CAUCUS

For a long time I have been watching MSNBC because it was more fair and balanced than Fox. I admired Chris Matthews, until recently when he stopped being a journalist and has resorted to spewing his own brand of snake oil sales for his own beliefs. He asks questions of people he is interviewing then talks over their answers. He makes his personal choices clear to his audience and supports them with fantasy such as, "I'm sure they are now in their living room talking about ....." and other totally made up statements which he then offers as though fact. He leads the people he is interviewing and cuts them off when he doesn't like what he is hearing. He makes evident that his own opinion is most important than anyone else's on his air time. I often wonder what Tip O'Neil would think of him today!! What a disappointment! He is obsessed with the fact that Hillary Clinton won't let her nose be rubbed in puppy poop for her vote on Iraq though it is clear she says she would not have voted had she known the truth. Now he insists she SHOULD have known the truth!

There is one clear voice who remains on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann, who can tell it like it is without having to make up material to substantiate his opinions but states them clearly with explanations from whence those opinions emanate. Even Tim Russert has slipped a little from his professional pedestal, though I believe he tries to be fair and objective.

Wouldn't it be nice if the media didn't pretend that they had crystal balls but just reported truths and not their opinionated guesses!

FAVORS FOR FRIENDS

It seems that I rarely agree to do a friend a favor with an accurate prediction of the time it will take. It never takes up the amount of time originally planned. I should remember that people who ask me to do things they can't do themselves also means they have no idea what is entailed or how much time it will take. I've had people look at a silver chain I have made that may have taken a total of 60 or more hours and say, "Oh that's nice, will you make me one?" I remember knitting a beautiful wool afghan in blue and white cable stitch. It took months since I only used to knit when I was sitting down watching TV or conversing...neither activity that I do with people often in the house...so the finished product may take a long time as this did. I said, "This is all wool so please be careful and wash it by hand in cold water." The next time I saw my painstakingly knit afghan, the colors had run together and it was now about 24 inches square and more than an inch thick.

This time I agreed to do a mass mailing for someone trying to get people involved in a task to help themselves on a grand and legal scale. My task was simply to enter email addresses that had been handwritten (over 100 of them) and type the letter handed me, then send it off in blind copy.

I did that within a 2 hour period and thought, "Now that wasn't too bad." Within a few minutes I began to receive delivery failure notices. I have no idea how outdated the addresses were but many were 'unknown' and others indicated that the mailbox was unavailable, triggering my assumption that their ISP or spam controller considered it to be spam....after all, my name would not have been familiar to the receiver.

One responder really laid into me, rather annoyingly. I emailed back: 'Please do not kill the messenger", followed by a description of my limited role. I got an apology and I replied with a question as to whether she wanted me to forward her email to the concerned parties. Another email in which she agreed that I should forward to the person with whom she had not previously spoken, which I did. Then I had to email the forward.

Checking the list and removing the ones that failed took considerable time since the list was not alphabetized. New failures kept coming in throughout the evening. So much for favors that won't take long!! Will I even learn to say, "NO!" Probably not! I like my friends and it is easy for me to do what I know how to do than watch them fumble through time trying to get things done...but i have difficulty asking others to do for me ....but that is for another blog......

NEW YEAR'S DAY

My mother always told me that what happens on New Year's Day, what you do and how you do it, will reflect what will happen for the rest of the year. She died 21 years ago. It was never accurate before, so why do I still think about how I should behave on New Year's Day?

Every New Year's Eve I clean up the kitchen before I go to bed, as I do most nights. I used to try to finish all the old year's business...but decided that's a lost cause this year. Each year I lose too much ground. There's just too much undone to start the year without 2007 baggage.

True to New England weather, the day was gray and alternated between heavy snow and rain. The temperature was at least kind and stayed above freezing so there does not seem to be a significant accumulation. We missed breaking a record for the most snow in December by .2 inch. Some records seem irrelevant, especially if you've been shoveling and sliding for the month to reach it. Missing the record was hardly a disappointment.

TV on New Year's Day seems to be for football lovers mainly...well, the hawkers of great bargains were also pretty visible, as well. I am the adman's worst nightmare. I cannot remember a single product from an ad I have seen. I don't even need a mute button to tune them out. I even got caught up in college football in which I usually have zilch interest. The Miami-Michigan game was exciting, to my surprise. Despite that, I could not muster interest in the Rose Bowl and turned a Twilight Zone repeat. One was enough, then I moved onto the evening News. Why does the media think it must predict the outcome. Is it some sort of game to see which staffers win the pool or is it more insidiously prepping the public, the political sheep?

The best part of the day was that I had total peace and quiet until early evening, more or less....broken up by a few phone calls, some more favorably received than others. That is the way most days go. The holiday was not different. I never screen calls, maybe I should though I don't have a problem getting rid of telemarketers, If available I would always speak to friends and relatives. Even with caller ID, I still take all calls. Some of my more private friends make it more difficult by listing themselves as 'private caller'. So I just take all calls.

I tried to envision how others were spending the day. Then I asked myself, "Why would I care?" Maybe they are playing with their Christmas toys. Maybe they want to be with people. Maybe they are hungover from last night's partying. Maybe they wouldn't be thrilled that it was warm enough for me to wash the kitchen window and get rid of all the spider's webs I had watched all Fall, to clean them out when they froze. With no one there to tell me I shouldn't be doing it, I climbed a ladder, padded the edge of the sink so it wouldn't hurt my bone-on-bone knee joint and washed the window inside and out, top and bottom panes! That was MY Mount Everest for the day as I realized when I read an account by a friend who had walked home in a snowstorm for 5 hours and considered it HIS Mount Everest! What a delight to feel even minor accomplishments are major! If only all problems were so simple.

Was my mother right? Will the rest of my year be peaceful, pleasant and productive? I certainly hope so.

NEW EUROPEAN SMOKING BANS

In 1986 we bought a cabin in Vermont where we went weekends and vacations. We stopped eating breakfast out because we could not stand the smoke. To our utter amazement, this state, where it seemed everyone smoked excessively, was one of the first to ban smoking in restaurants. At last, I could both eat and breathe at the same time in a restaurant. At last I could enjoy eating out and not pay for it later with a headache and wheezing.

Airplanes were even worse. You could be in a no-smoking section right behind a smoker. The circulating air, usually unfiltered, was as useless as the no pee area in a swimming pool. Those who think they are not bothering people when they smoke on the beach or outside haven't a clue. Murphy's Law draws the smoke to the nearest non-smoker every time.

There ought to be a ban on priests shaking incense into the air in churches. It is just as vile to asthmatics as smoking cigarettes would be. I'd like to see the lawmaker who dares outlaw that one! My solution is to just avoid church...God must want me not to be there or he would have taken away the incense burners by now.

Smoking bans are the only thing in which the US beats most other countries. Paris and Berlin just banned cafe smoking. They are usually so much smarter than the US about health issues. Their tobacco lobbies must be pretty strong. Does the US still give money to tobacco growers? Apparently no longer! Well Paris and Berlin are being very kind and letting themselves ease into it by turning the other cheek for six months or something like that.

Now I can only wish the doctors I worked with for 17 years had believed that second hand smoke was harmful when they were being told it by research results. Only after I quit my job and went into a smoke-free home office did I get free of daily headaches. Just before I left in 1983, they made one side of the large hall, where conferences were held, smoke free. Did they miss that the air mixes? It was another example of a no-pee section in a swimming pool. That move bolstered my belief that denial is rampart even in mental health institutions.

Oh well, is there any place left where people's judgment can be trusted just because they have a lot of letters after their names?

CLIFF HANGER GAME TO CLIFF HANGER MOVIE

Having survived the agony of suspense over the NE Patriot's last night, tonight I went to the cinema to see the movie, ATONEMENT. It is a drama, romance and WWII movie based on an Ian McEwan novel. It has already been nominated for many awards though it has not played in the US major theaters. Focus Films, the film company that also did the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice filmed this production.

This an exciting, emotionally moving, suspenseful movie throughout and well worth the 2 hours - 3 minutes it takes to view it. However, don't look for the 'chick flick' mentality here. Unlike Jane Austen, Ian McEwan uses a very different outline for his plot. My usual rule: ; 'I want to leave the theater laughing' was broken. I guess I figured, if I had survived the football game of the night before, my nerves would survive a drama. The acting was superb, all details beautiful done and the music totally and unexpectedly different but to the ears like beluga caviar to the taste. The very long line for the ladies room, directly afterwards, might speak a bit about the female audience as a whole. None of the conversation was negative. Women talked about having read the book and how wonderful it had been. It was, to me, the kind of movie that I would not enjoy after reading the book, knowing all of what was to come. Was the dash all due to the two hour length of the movie? My theater companion and I debriefed all through dinner, having had identical reactions and wondering how much we had missed, sure that we had been so absorbed in parts that we must have missed dialogue and action.