New Year's Resolutions You'll Be Able To Keep…and other miscellaneous end of year stuff

New Year's resolutions have basically become an annual joke.  Every first of January we make resolutions for the upcoming year, and if we're lucky, they remain valid for the rest of the month.

So, this year how about making some resolutions you'll actually be able to keep during 2021?  Here's a list of several such resolutions. 2020 has been a very difficult year. We're all hoping that 2021 will be a better year. I hope you accept these suggestions in the spirit of humor in which they are offered.  If I've offended anyone, I apologize in advance.

1.  Gain Weight.  Let's face it, you already have a start on this one with all the holiday meals, candy, beverages, and snacks starting with Thanksgiving and continuing on through Christmas.

2.  Go Deeper Into Debt.  You probably have a head start on this one, too, from holiday gift shopping.  After all, even buying new things for yourself…well, it was probably stuff you needed and with all the great sales this year who could resist?

3.  Spend More Money.  This goes hand-in-hand with the second item on the list.  Spend it now while you're still physically able to get out to do it.

4.  Don't Get A Better Job.  Since having any job is better than not having one, be happy with status quo.

5.  Whatever Shape You're In Is Fine.  Seriously…round is a perfectly acceptable shape.

6.  Don't Go Back To School.  Look at your current life and time schedule.  Now add a part time college schedule to that plus the cost of tuition (probably the same amount as that new curved 80-inch 3D HDTV home theater with Dolby Surround Sound you bought in item two on the list) and the cost of expensive college textbooks.  Hmmm…a fine bottle of rare vintage wine or a bottle of aged single malt scotch vs. Concepts of Economics Vol. 1.

7.  Drink More Alcohol.  Open that fine bottle of wine or scotch and watch your new 80-inch TV.

8.  Smoke Like A Chimney.  When someone chastises you for putting second hand smoke out there, ask them if they've traded in their gas-guzzling car for a bicycle.

9.  Stay At Home for your vacation.  If, however, you prefer to find toilet paper that's hard enough to scrape paint, really weird television, and even weirder food…then travel out of the country.

And last but not least…

10.  Don't Volunteer!

And now for something completely different (with apologies to Monty Python for stealing…uh, I mean borrowing…their catch phrase).

As a follow up to Christmas, a few words about that much maligned holiday treat, the butt of so many jokes, that humble yet seemingly inedible concoction—fruitcake.

Food historians theorize that fruitcake (any cake in which dried fruits and nuts try to coexist with cake batter) is older than Moses.  Ancient Egyptians entombed fruitcake and Romans carried it into battle, probably for the same reason.  Fruitcake was built to last and it did, well into medieval times.

It was in the 18^th century that fruitcake achieved totemic status.  At that time nut-harvesting farmers encased fruits and nuts in a cakelike substance to save for the next harvest as a sort of good luck charm.

And thus the problem.  Any cake that is not meant to be eaten doesn't deserve to be classified as food.

Our love/hate relationship with fruitcake began in the early 20^th century when the first mail-order fruitcakes became fashionable gifts.  It ended up as a mass-produced product using barely recognizable fruits and packed into cans as heavy as barbell weights.

And another something different…

While celebrating the arrival of the New Year, there's one thing you should keep in mind—the darker the liquor, the bigger the hangover.  According to a new study that compares the after effects of drinking bourbon vs. vodka, what sounds like an old wives' tale is true…to a point.

Brownish colored spirits such as whiskey and rum contain greater amounts of congeners than clear liquors such as vodka and gin.  And what are congeners, you might ask?  They are substances that occur naturally or are added to alcohol during the production and aging process, many of which are toxic.  They contribute to the alcohol's color, odor, and taste.  They also interfere with cell function, and I'm NOT talking about your mobile phone. :)  And they viciously punish your head and tummy the next morning.  According to the study, bourbon is aged in oak barrels and has thirty-seven times as many congeners as vodka, which is heavily filtered to remove impurities.

Drinking in the study was relatively moderate compared to some New Year's Eve binges.  The average blood-alcohol content of the survey participants was 0.1 percent, somewhere between 0.09 ("mildly intoxicated" and considered legally over the limit in most states), and 0.15 ("visibly drunk" and definitely on your way to jail if you're driving a vehicle).  The study's findings may not translate to your holiday party.

The bottom line, however, is that congeners are not the primary culprit in the dreaded hangover.  The credit goes to the alcohol itself.

The Legend of St. Nicholas

Who is that man in red? The man who, every Christmas Eve, brazenly breaks into people's homes, helps himself to cookies and milk, and leaves things behind resulting in a mess of wrapping paper and ribbon for others to clean up the next morning. Reindeer and a heavily laden sleigh can't be good for the roof. Soot from a chimney tracked all over the floor…something else left behind for others to clean.

Yet every year we anxiously anticipate his arrival, track his progress through the skies, and welcome him into our homes.

Santa Claus can be traced back hundreds of years to a monk named St. Nicholas. It is believed that Nicholas was born sometime around 280 A.D. in Patara, near Myra in modern-day Turkey. Much admired for his piety and kindness, St. Nicholas became the subject of many legends. It is said that he gave away all of his inherited wealth and traveled the countryside helping the poor and sick. One of the best known of the St. Nicholas stories is that he saved three poor sisters from being sold into slavery or prostitution by their father when he provided them with a dowry so they could be married. Over the course of many years, Nicholas' popularity spread and he became known as the protector of children and sailors. His feast day is celebrated on the anniversary of his death, December 6. This was traditionally considered a lucky day to make large purchases or to get married. By the Renaissance, St. Nicholas was the most popular saint in Europe. Even after the Protestant Reformation, when the veneration of saints began to be discouraged, St. Nicholas maintained a positive reputation, especially in Holland.

Sinter Klaas Comes to New York

St. Nicholas made his first inroads into American popular culture towards the end of the 18th century. In December 1773, and again in 1774, a New York newspaper reported that groups of Dutch families had gathered to honor the anniversary of his death.

The name Santa Claus evolved from his Dutch nickname, Sinter Klaas, a shortened form of Sint Nikolaas (Dutch for Saint Nicholas). In 1804, John Pintard, a member of the New York Historical Society, distributed woodcuts of St. Nicholas at the society's annual meeting. The background of the engraving contains now-familiar Santa images including stockings filled with toys and fruit hung over a fireplace. In 1809, Washington Irving helped to popularize the Sinter Klaas stories when he referred to St. Nicholas as the patron saint of New York in his book, The History of New York. As his prominence grew, Sinter Klaas was described as everything from a rascal with a blue three-cornered hat, red waistcoat, and yellow stockings to a man wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a "huge pair of Flemish trunk hose."

Shopping Mall Santas

Gift-giving, mainly centered around children, has been an important part of the Christmas celebration since the holiday's rejuvenation in the early 19th century. Stores began to advertise Christmas shopping in 1820, and by the 1840s, newspapers were creating separate sections for holiday advertisements, which often featured images of the newly-popular Santa Claus. In 1841, thousands of children visited a Philadelphia shop to see a life-size Santa Claus model. It was only a matter of time before stores began to attract children, and their parents, with the lure of a peek at a live Santa Claus. In the early 1890s, the Salvation Army needed money to pay for the free Christmas meals they provided to needy families. They began dressing up unemployed men in Santa Claus suits and sending them into the streets of New York to solicit donations. Those familiar Salvation Army Santas have been ringing bells on the street corners of American cities ever since.

A Santa by Any Other Name

18th-century America's Santa Claus was not the only St. Nicholas-inspired gift-giver to make an appearance at Christmastime. Similar figures were popular all over the world. Christkind or Kris Kringle was believed to deliver presents to well-behaved Swiss and German children. Meaning Christ child, Christkind is an angel-like figure often accompanied by St. Nicholas on his holiday missions. In Scandinavia, a jolly elf named Jultomten was thought to deliver gifts in a sleigh drawn by goats. British legend explains that Father Christmas visits each home on Christmas Eve to fill children's stockings with holiday treats. Pere Noel is responsible for filling the shoes of French children. In Russia, it is believed that an elderly woman named Babouschka purposely gave the wise men wrong directions to Bethlehem so that they couldn't find Jesus. Later, she felt remorseful, but could not find the men to undo the damage. To this day, on January 5, Babouschka visits Russian children leaving gifts at their bedsides in the hope that one of them is the baby Jesus and she will be forgiven. In Italy, a similar story exists about a woman called La Befana, a kindly witch who rides a broomstick down the chimneys of Italian homes to deliver toys into the stockings of lucky children.

The Ninth Reindeer

Rudolph, "the most famous reindeer of all," was born over a hundred years after his eight flying counterparts. The red-nosed wonder was the creation of Robert L. May, a copywriter at the Montgomery Ward department store.

In 1939, May wrote a Christmas-themed story-poem to help bring holiday traffic into his store. Using a similar rhyme pattern to Moore's 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, May told the story of Rudolph, a young reindeer who was teased by the other deer because of his large, glowing, red nose. But, when Christmas Eve turned foggy and Santa worried that he wouldn't be able to deliver gifts that night, the former outcast saved Christmas by leading the sleigh with the light of his red nose. Rudolph's message—that given the opportunity, a liability can be turned into an asset—proved popular. Montgomery Ward sold almost two and a half million copies of the story in 1939. When it was reissued in 1946, the book sold over three and half million copies. Several years later, one of May's friends, Johnny Marks, wrote a short song based on Rudolph's story (1949). It was recorded by Gene Autry and sold over two million copies. Since then, the story has been translated into 25 languages and been made into a television movie, narrated by Burl Ives, which has charmed audiences since 1964.

HOPING FOR MORE character interview

HOPING FOR MORE, contemporary romance novella is part of the Deerbourne Inn series from The Wild Rose Press, scheduled for release on Wednesday, December 16, 2020.

Welcome to my blog. My guests today are Wynne Buchanan, assistant librarian in Willow Springs, Vermont, and Dr. Daniel Eugene Stevenson, Jr., professor of history at the University of Vermont in Burlington.  Wynne and Gene—thank you for taking time from your schedules to be with us today.

Wynne:  Thanks, Shawna. It's nice of you to invite us.

Gene:  This is the first interview we've done together.

My first question is, I think, an obvious one. Dr. Stevenson—

Gene:  Please, call me Gene.

And that's my first question. Why Gene when your first name is Daniel?

Gene:  Being a Jr., I chose to go by my middle name of Eugene—Gene—to separate my identity from my father's. He's also Dr. Daniel Eugene Stevenson, only in his case he's a medical doctor rather than a PhD. This was less confusing especially growing up when I was still living with my parents.

Wynne:  I was curious about that, too. I asked him the same question the second time we saw each other.

I understand the two of you met when Gene presented a program at the Willow Springs community center. How did that come about?

Wynne:  In addition to my duties as assistant librarian, I'm also responsible for scheduling the monthly programs at the community center. In the past, there had been numerous arts and crafts demonstrations, photographic exhibitions, and different talks about the local sports scene with emphasis on bicycling and skiing—both downhill and cross country. Even though bicycling and skiing are two of my favorite activities, I was looking for something that would provide more variety in our programs. We have an international best selling author living in Willow Springs who did a presentation about his newest novel focusing on the research he did to give the story authenticity. I decided to branch out and look beyond the local scene.

And that's where Gene entered the picture?

Gene:  Right. I was in my campus office between classes when I got a phone call from this absolutely charming woman wanting me to do a program at their community center. She told me I could talk about whatever I wanted but to keep in mind that it would be a varied audience of all ages. Her enthusiasm was totally infectious. All I could think of was the opportunity to meet this woman in person would be worth the trip to Willow Springs. We worked out a date that fit in with my schedule and everything immediately fell into place. That was a little over four years ago.

Wynne:  Gene's first program at the community center was about a Revolutionary War event that happened close to Willow Springs. His talk was a huge success, partly due to the topic being of local interest and partly because his presentation was both interesting and entertaining. That was on a Friday evening. The feedback was very positive. They all wanted him to come back and do another program. I called him that Monday and invited him to present a program on a regular basis, something that would work with his schedule, and he agreed.

Gene:  I was thrilled to hear from her. I had spent the weekend trying to figure out an excuse to call her, to ask her out…maybe having dinner. (chuckles) The distance between Burlington and Willow Springs, while not all that far, is definitely too far to claim 'I was just in the neighborhood' type of accidental meeting.

Obviously the two of you got together personally, separate from the community center programs. How did that—

Wynne:  I really wanted to see him again. That's why I took the initiative and called him the Monday after his Friday presentation. I wanted to establish an ongoing communication.

Gene:  The rest of it just sort of fell into place naturally. We started seeing each other on a regular basis although it was casual—just friends.

Kind of an opposites attract situation?

Wynne:  Well, I hadn't thought of it like that, but you're right.

Gene:  That's something that was in the back of my mind and as time passed it ended up in the front of my mind. Wynne is very athletic, enjoys all types of sports. I, on the other hand, had never been into sports.

Wynne:  We didn't have any problems finding things to talk about or to do. We'd have dinner, sometimes in Willow Springs and other times in Burlington. We went to concerts, plays, movies, art galleries…things like that. But always as just friends. Then about ten days before his most recent community center presentation, everything suddenly changed.

That sounds ominous. What happened?

Wynne: For starters, he told me he would be in town two or three days before his presentation. He referred to it as spending a couple of vacation days before his presentation. I was pleased to be able to spend that extra time with him, but he sounded…I don't know how to describe it…kind of distracted or unsettled. Then, to my shock, he showed up the next morning—ten days before his scheduled program.

Ten days early? That's certainly more than just a couple.

Gene:  (laughs) She wasn't the only one surprised. I woke up that morning and the decision to travel to Willow Springs that day popped into my mind. I packed my suitcase and headed my car in that direction. But being ten days early wasn't the only surprise when I arrived.

More surprises? Anything you'd care to share with us?

Gene:  (pauses as if to gather his thoughts) There was this man who made occasional trips to Willow Springs, apparently to visit Wynne. We had crossed paths in the past and she had introduced me to him. When I arrived this time, unexpected, there he was again.

A possible rival for Wynne's affections?

Gene:  That's what I feared. You'll need to read the book to discover who is was and why he continued to appear on the scene.

Wynne:  Gene wasn't the only one on the receiving end of a surprise…other than his arrival ten days early. He made an announcement…something he wanted me to help him with…that caught me totally off guard.

More surprises? Could you tell us about it?

Wynne:  (shoots sly glance toward Gene) No…you'll need to read the book.

Gene:  (laughs) I can tell you that Wynne wasn't the only one surprised. As the words came out of my mouth, I couldn't believe that I was actually saying them.

Wynne:  Then he handed me yet another surprise—actually it was more of a shock. For a week everything had been perfect, then three days before his program, he suddenly announced that he needed to return to Burlington right away. He assured me he'd be back in time for his presentation. He seemed very distracted, something I interpreted as being upset but I didn't know why. Everything was fine at lunch, or at least I thought it was, but by dinner everything seemed to have changed. I watched him drive away with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. It felt as if my heart was breaking, almost as if I'd never see him again.

Really? What was that all about?

Wynne and Gene in unison:  You need to read the book. (laughter)

Well, I guess there's nothing left to say except thank you Wynne and Gene for being my guests.

BLURB:

Dr. Daniel Eugene Stevenson, Jr., professor of history at the University of Vermont, is a popular guest speaker at the Willow Springs Community Center. But that's not the only reason he keeps returning to the small town. He's strongly attracted to the assistant librarian who coordinates the programs. So far, they've been good friends, but his upcoming scheduled talk provides the perfect opportunity to take their friendship to a serious commitment. He's just not sure if the other man he's seen her with is only a friend or someone special in her life.

Wynne Buchanan is looking forward to a certain shy professor's community center presentation about a murder committed in Willow Springs almost a century ago. Their friendship these past four years has meant the world to her, but every time she thinks they're moving toward a serious relationship, he pulls away. She's determined to find out why during his upcoming visit, because she's hoping for more…so much more.

HOPING FOR MORE by Shawna Delacorte, contemporary romance novella, is part of the Deerbourne Inn series from The Wild Rose Press   www.thewildrosepress.com 

Scheduled for release on Wednesday, December 16, 2020, in ebook at:

Amazon buy link:    www.amazon.com/Hoping-More-Deerbourne-Shawna-Delacorte-ebook/dp/B08KTY29YD/    

And other online vendors.

Excerpts and other information available on my website:  www.shawnadelacorte.com   

HOPING FOR MORE new release

HOPING FOR MORE by Shawna Delacorte is a contemporary romance novella scheduled for release on Wednesday, December 16, 2020, from The Wild Rose Press as part of their Deerbourne Inn series.

The Deerbourne Inn is a bed and breakfast in the fictional town of Willow Springs, Vermont, population of a little over 3000. My main characters are:  Wynne Buchanan—assistant librarian at the Willow Springs library along with scheduling the monthly program at the community center, and Dr. Daniel Eugene Stevenson, Jr.—professor of history at the University of Vermont in Burlington and popular guest speaker at the Willow Springs community center.

G-Excerpt #1:

Wynne Buchanan hurried across the hall to the head librarian’s office. Looking up from the papers scattered across his desk, Don Flanagan motioned her in. “What can I do for you?” He extended a teasing grin. “Is my assistant librarian having a problem she can’t handle?”

A soft chuckle escaped her throat. “No problems here. I just wanted to go over a couple of things with you before I entered everything into the computer.” She gestured toward the stack of papers in front of him. “Is this a bad time?”

“No. I need a break from this headache. I’m working on our requirements for the upcoming budget meeting.” He moved several file folders aside. “What’s up?”

“I just talked to Gene Stevenson. He emailed me the information for his talk at the community center, along with the handout he’ll be using. It’s scheduled for Friday evening before the Mad River Garden Party on Saturday.”

Don perked up at the mention of Gene Stevenson’s name. “What’s Dr. Stevenson have in store for us this time? I always enjoy his presentations. Since he’s a history professor, he always chooses some historical event for his talks, usually something that happened right here in Vermont or at least in New England. It makes for an interesting topic. People have a connection to the area where the event took place. You can always count on his presentations being well researched. And, to his credit, he also manages to make them both interesting and entertaining.”

“This time his topic is very local. It’s about a murder that happened right here in Willow Springs in 1931—a young woman named Martha Cotter. That should bring in a good crowd.” Wynne’s excitement bubbled inside her, sending an emotional warmth flowing through her veins. “He really is fascinating.” A tender smile turned the corners of her mouth, but she quickly hid it. “Uh, I mean he’s a fascinating speaker. People enjoy his talks.”

“Yes, people enjoy his talks.” Don nodded as he shot her a knowing look. “And some people more than others?”

BLURB:

Dr. Daniel Eugene Stevenson, Jr., professor of history at the University of Vermont, is a popular guest speaker at the Willow Springs Community Center. But that's not the only reason he keeps returning to the small town. He's strongly attracted to the assistant librarian who coordinates the programs. So far, they've been good friends, but his upcoming scheduled talk provides the perfect opportunity to take their friendship to a serious commitment. He's just not sure if the other man he's seen her with is only a friend or someone special in her life.

Wynne Buchanan is looking forward to a certain shy professor's community center presentation about a murder committed in Willow Springs almost a century ago. Their friendship these past four years has meant the world to her, but every time she thinks they're moving toward a serious relationship, he pulls away. She's determined to find out why during his upcoming visit, because she's hoping for more…so much more.

HOPING FOR MORE by Shawna Delacorte, contemporary romance novella, is part of the Deerbourne Inn series from The Wild Rose Press   www.thewildrosepress.com 

Available in ebook at:

Amazon buy link:    www.amazon.com/Hoping-More-Deerbourne-Shawna-Delacorte-ebook/dp/B08KTY29YD/    

And other online vendors.

More excerpts and other information available on my website:  www.shawnadelacorte.com