Happy New Year.
We always hope for better things with the dawn of a new year, but after being and taking part in nearly 90 similar events through the decades, we can only hope that the goodness of the new year will somehow outnumber any harmful side.
As always, we will be confronted by the icy tribulations of the season, the anxiety of political events and the fearsome jumble of unknown trials which we may face. The joys of the past week; the Christmas presents, the Hanukkah latkes and the unity and faith of Kwanzaa can soon be merely memories that get lost in the onrush of time and life.
A few years ago, in an end-of-year column, we put together on these pages, a short list of crossed-finger notions that could solve the small annoyances of life.
- The end of dialing 708 for every local phone call.
- An automatic 10-minute silencer for every sports announcer who screams “are you kidding me?”
- Double A batteries that beep a warning two days before they die.
- Shopping carts that automatically tally purchases and include the tax.
- An automatic robocall that will connect us when we get telephone calls from a legitimate not-for-profit organization and disconnect those solicitations from those merely grubbing for our dollars.
There was no response from the public, but we hope for improved results in the near future.
This past weekend it seemed as if things would be better when we were notified that a glorious full-color seed and plant catalog would soon be in our mailbox. The gloom of winter was quickly dispelled by tempting thoughts of multicolored flowers and mouthwatering vegetables seen throughout the glossy pages.
There is nothing else that comes close to warming a hardened heart throughout these cold months than the promises radiating from these tempting pages. This new year we are resolved that once again we will see our back-of-the-garage garden and part of our front lawn awash in colorful displays of veggies and flowers.
Knowing we are merely human and thus fallible, we try not to make any New Year’s resolutions, but maybe this year things will be different. This year our garden, we hope, will thrive as will all else. Maybe this will be the year.
A favorite goodbye line I use is when someone says to me “have a good day,” I will reply, “and have an easy day.”
Easy is better than good, I add.
So Happy 2025 to everyone. Have an easy year.
Mia maxima culpa
When I was working in the bowels of the mother ship downtown, someone, (as a joke, of course) put a postcard on my desk, addressed to “The Dumbest Person in the Department.”
Now, the TDPITD lives up to that description.
I need to correct an error in the previous column when I decried the lack of candidates in both the upcoming local election in Park Forest as well as the 2023 ballot, and blundered when I wrote there were no contests for any races for either for Village or Library board seats in Park Forest for the last two election cycles.
In 2023 both Andy Gladstone and Joshua Travis ran and lost their bids for a seat on the Village Board.
Alas, my well-worn dunce cap still fits.
Hopes and deeds
We have written these words each year at this time, but it bears repeating now more than ever.
We live in challenging times and every so often we need to recall and grasp the words of a poem by Eugene Pickett, the former president of the Unitarian Church of America.
Pickett’s eight optimistic verses always seem appropriate at the dawn of each year. He begins with homage to the universe and moves from there to a celebration of our world, our lives and our beliefs, concluding with a plea that we live “not by our fears but our hopes, not by our words, but our deeds.”
The year 2025 is the right time to start.
Jerry Shnay, at jerryshnay@gmail.com, is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.
