Ah, New Year’s Day, when we eat collards and black-eyed peas and look forward to changing ourselves for the better, vowing to practice mindfulness so that the all too ephemeral array of everyday wonders doesn’t flash by unheeded. 

Alas, however, our resolutions, more often than not, succumb to the deadly weight of habit as we, distracted by the morning news, fail to appreciate the taste of our buttery toast.

Although I’m not a fan of HD Thoreau (too smug, too self-righteous, too puritanical), he does have somewhat of a point here:

“And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, – we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad of instances and applications?”

New Year’s Resolution #1: Don’t read the paper or doom scroll while eating.^[1]

On the other hand, you do want to be somewhat cognizant of what’s going on in the world, to base whom you’re voting for on something more concrete than “it’s time for a change” or “the price of avocados has gone through the roof.” Democracy depends on an informed citizenry and all that jazz.

I recall a Mad Magazine parody of the Fifties sitcom Ozzie and Harriet where Harriet, not wanting to upset husband Ozzie, had cut out unpleasant news stories from the paper, which resulted in his booking the family’s vacation in the civil war torn Dominican Republic, the contemporary equivalent booking a tour of the Gaza Strip.

New Year’s Resolution #2: Don’t book vacations in war zones.^[2]

Hey, wait, here’s s resolution I hope we all can embrace without caveats.

New Year’s Resolution #3: Strive to be kind.

Hey, y’all, Happy New Year! Thanks for reading.

My son Ned’s Nuremberg rendition of his mother Judy Birdsong’s New Year’s Soup (Bon Choy substituted for collards, which you can’t get in Germany.

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^[1] Caveat #1: Yeah, but I’m not eating toast, I’m eating some generic cereal, so I’d rather read about the latest baseball transactions than contemplate the taste of cardboard.

^[2] Caveat #2. Yeah, but the bluesman Robert Lighthouse recently toured The Ukraine and found it to be one of the most rewarding experiences of his life. (You can read my interview with Robert HERE.)