New Year

Another year winds to a close. The idea that the year changes at midnight tonight is an arbitrary idea. The calendar could just as well have been set up to have the year end on the winter solstice of December 22nd, or the spring equinox in March, or on April Fools day for that matter. Never-the-less tonight is the night for the western world to celebrate the change. Las Vegas expects about 300,000 celebrants from around the world. The police will block off more than a mile of the Strip and it will be shoulder to shoulder people as sequenced fireworks explodes from atop numerous casino/hotels at twelve midnight. We were in Vegas for 17 New Years Eves and were never once tempted to join that roiling mass of humanity. I can think of little I would like less than being jostled by hundreds of thousands of total strangers in the middle of the street, then trying to retrieve the car and find a route through the traffic jam afterwards.

The New Year comes in 24 different times around the world, once in each time zone. If we had Star Trek's ability to beam a person from one point to another we could celebrate the new year 24 times in one day. I don't think I would make it through all 24 glasses of Champaign though.

We look at the new year as a dividing point, another category to segregate our lives into manageable segments of time. It's a time to reflect on the year just passing, the good the bad, a time to consider changes we need or want to make in the new year just dawning. Many people make new year's resolutions, then break them the first week. Personally I like to think about the year just passing, recalling the good memories and good times, and be thankful for the many blessings the year has brought.

I wish for each of you a fulfilling new year of love and joy, of wonderful times and memories. Whatever may come, strive to enjoy 2008, creating fond memories to reflect on a year from now. Happy New Year.

Christmas

We had a call from our daughter about 6:30 Christmas morning informing us they were up. We were to join them for opening Christmas presents so the wife and I ambled over to their home just a couple hundred feet from us. Our granddaughter is eighteen, a Senior in school this year and will be in college next Christmas, so this is probably her last Christmas living at home. Most of the gifts were for her and it was such fun watching her sit in the middle of the floor surrounding herself with wrapping paper as each treasure was exposed for all to see. To me one of the best parts of Christmas has always been watching children opening presents, and this morning was no exception.

The four of us had spent Christmas Eve watching the old classics, "The Miracle on 34th Street" and "It's a Wonderful Life". My wife had a turkey in the oven slow cooking all night, so we four adjourned to our home for Christmas dinner. Of course we had green bean casserole (one of the first things a Midwestern girl learns to cook). We also had dressing, cranberry sauce, candied yams, hot buttered rolls then pumpkin and cherry pie with whipped cream to finish. So far I've upheld my end of things by diligently over-eating - again. It's been a perfect Christmas.

It's interesting thinking back over the Christmas' of my lifetime from a child believing in Santa Claus, to an older child joining in the gift giving and sharing. Later came marriage, children of our own and the joy of watching their faces Christmas morning.

One year we had a slender Christmas when we were struggling to get a new business off the ground, and the tree was a small cedar cut from the field of a friend. A neighbor gave us some potatoes and a squash he'd raised and a sack of black walnuts he'd shelled. We incorporated his gift into Christmas dinner with mashed potatoes, a squash pie, and a chocolate cake with walnuts in it. He made Christmas special for us that year.

One Christmas the family was in Kentucky and I was in Arizona. We talked that morning, wishing each other a Merry Christmas, but the rest of the day I was by myself. I didn't have a tree or decorations but decided to spend the day meditating, thinking on the blessings of my life and of the season rather than feeling sorry for myself, and it was another wonderful Christmas.

Then there was over twenty years when we might have two, one or none of our children around on Christmas day, and finally everything worked out for us to be with all four of our kids and their respective families on one grand and joyous Christmas at my eldest daughter's home in the wilderness of Northern Arizona. Not exactly the traditional Christmas though. Instead of turkey or ham we'd brought about forty pounds of top sirloin, and our eldest son knows how to cook a steak to perfection regardless of how you want it. We all slept over a couple of nights.

We may never have another Christmas with all of us together, but that's all right too. We get to see each other now and then, only once with all six of us since moving here in 2004, but quite a few times with one or two of the kids around.

Christmas really isn't shared in a locality, but shared in the heart.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas this year.

On your AM Radio Dial

I saw my first television broadcast just before my tenth birthday, and it was another three or four years before we had our first television set in the home. Prior to that we listened to a table model Philco AM radio with a wooden cabinet and an external antenna wire. Radio was king in those days, and your radio personalities were national or local celebrities. Radio, much like books, required you to use your imagination to create the scenes portrayed by the characters. Television could never have created a set as foreboding and drear as my mind portrayed Jack Benny's money vault down in the dungeon of his home, and Fibber McGee's closet would never have been as funny as a sight gag as it was in my own mind. You knew the Shadow was there in the room with the bad guy, but on television you just see the bad guy by himself in a room. The same thing happens today when they take a book you've enjoyed and make a movie from it. To start they have to leave so much out to make it into a two hour movie, but the scenes and characters never resemble the ones you've created in your mind. It's almost always a big let-down. So much so I generally refuse to see a movie made from a book I've liked.

My grandmother had one of the huge old floor model radios with a cabinet that was a fine piece of furniture. It used such large vacuum tubes it must have made the electric meter spin when it was turned on. On a cold day you could stand next to it to keep warm. With an outside antenna that ran most of the length of the property it could, when the weather was right, pick up signals from around the world. There were actually spots on the dial identified by city names such as London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Tokyo, and with the proper weather inversion you could actually receive these foreign language broadcasts. FM radio is primarily dependent on line of sight, but the AM signals could skip around the world. My brother-in-law and I, sitting in central Indiana, listened to "Music of the Islands, from the Islands", Honolulu Hawaii for a couple of hours one night, and it was the strongest station on the dial. That was on a small, table model AM radio with no external antenna too. At times radio was an adventure.

If I could return to those days and the programming we enjoyed, I wouldn't. I still remember how magical it seemed to have movie shows in your own living room once television hit the scene, and today's news from around the world in real time is sheer magic. I'll never forget how the radio brought me the world, entertained me, and added so much to the pleasant memories of childhood.

One program I remember from childhood was called "The Renfro Valley Barn Dance", a country music show that was on every Saturday night. Last week-end we drove through Renfro Valley, Kentucky and that's what started this train of thought. I'm happy to announce the barn dance still goes on, though I don't know if it's broadcast these days.

I'm Back !!!

My "New" computer went belly up again. After more than a week in the shop with them trying everything, they concluded the hard drive was really dead. The odd thing, when they hooked it up to their diagnostic equipment it showed the hard drive there (which indicates it is working), but they could not access it no matter how hard they tried.

So, with a new hard drive, here I am trying to reorganize it to something similar to what I like, reinstalling all my pet programs, trying to pick up everything I need from back-up disks. Of course you never back-up often enough to have everything up to date when you start over.

Anyhow, we had a great Thanksgiving in Indiana with the daughter and son that live there and their families. Our daughter and granddaughter from here went with us so we had three out of our four youngsters with us. I upheld my end of the day perfectly. I over-ate, and continued to graze throughout the day.
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A man walked into a bar in Lexington, Kentucky and ordered a drink. While he was sitting at the bar watching T.V., one of Hillary's political ads came on.
After it went off, he stood up and announced to everyone, "Hillary is a horse's ass!" The bartender reached under the bar and brought out an oak club about 18 inches long and hit the man square across the mouth, knocking him off his stool and onto the floor.
After a minute or two, the man got up, straightened himself up and said to the bartender,
"I'm sorry. I didn't know this was Hillary country."
"It's not!" replied the bartender. "This is horse country!"