New Years

Call the Bomb Squad, it’s 2023

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“There has never been a ‘New Year’ that has managed to become ‘new’ if the mistakes of the old years are repeated!”

― Mehmet Murat ildan

I’m not going to touch 2023 with a ten-foot pole unless the bomb squad says it is okay. A change in the House leadership, threats of retribution for perceived liberal evils, charges looming against a former president, Hunter’s laptop…and House leadership walking the halls of Congress with a gallon of gasoline and a Zippo. I hope that is metaphorical.

For the past six years I have had hopes that we would turn ourselves around as humans and strive to make the principles this country was founded on a reality. Well, enough about the ridiculous and on to the sublime.  The sublime of course, is me.

When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, I have an affliction like Midas’ golden touch except instead of gold, my touch creates gooey, stinky, piles of cow poo.

After reading my posts from the past five or six New Years I’ve decided the New Year is a little like Monty Hall’s “Let’s Make a Deal” with a twist. Instead of “My whole life lies waitin’ behind Door Number Three” it is Door Number 2023, My choices are a smelly Billy goat, Uncle Cletus’ dirty underwear, or a live bomb.1 Should I mention the three wires leading to the bomb are all black?

I had great hopes 2022 would reverse the trend I have noticed since I began writing in 2014. That would be both personally and politically. Instead, 2022 started badly and finished worse with a few ups and many downs in between.

From the January 6th insurrection to a positive Covid test over Thanksgiving and what was characterized as a Covid carryover of vertigo and nausea on Christmas Day, 2022 has been circling the toilet for a while and refusing to flush. If I look closely, I see the ghosts of New Years past circling too. Seems little has changed. I’m a bit worried about what New Year’s Eve might bring.

As I reread my New Year’s posts, they followed similar pig trails. Lamentations of broken resolutions, self-reflection on why they were broken before listing the hopes I have for the next New Year. Hopes and dreams that quickly turn into pipe dreams, fantasies, or will-‘o-the wisp mirages.

I think my depression has taken hold. Thank goodness the daylight hours are lengthening.

Rather than choosing to avoid making resolutions, I’ve decided this year to use the “Kiss” principle. “Keep it simple stupid,” the old naval design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960 that I attempted to model as a coach…. I was 13 and 27 as a varsity head football coach. I’m already rethinking that choice.

So here it is, my resolution for 2023. “Ta…ta…ta-taaaaa.” Do one positive thing daily, other than getting out of bed in the morning. That is as simple as I can make it. I mean aren’t the chances good that I’ll do something positive whether I’m trying or not? I do take daily showers, that’s positive, right? I know, it’s like giving up calf liver for Lent, something I give up the remainder of the year too.

Happy New Year, Friends. To you I make this toast, “May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early! My own plan is to swear off every kind of virtue so that I triumph even when I fall!” – Aleister Crowley

1The game show referenced earlier was “Let’s Make a Deal.” Created and hosted by Monty Hall, it premiered in 1963 and featured crazy people with signs, in crazy dress hoping to get Monty’s attention and a chance at the brass ring. The ending segment pitted a previous winner who was given the choice of trading their winnings for prizes of varying worth located behind one of three doors, one featuring a prize of worth, a car possibly, the others not so much.

The song “Door Number Three” referenced with the reframe, “My Whole World Lies Waiting Behind Door Number Three” was a song written by Steve Goodwin in 1975 and most famously performed by Jimmy Buffett on his A1A album. The tune is now circling my brain like 2022 circled the toilet. So, with the video below you can join in along with Monty Hall and the crazies from “Let’s Make a Deal.” Make sure you watch till the end.

Further readings by Don Miller may be found at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Collards and Black-Eyed Peas, the Witches Brew

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I asked. “What do witches eat?” “Witches loves pork meat,” she said. “They loves rice and potatoes. They loves black-eyed peas and cornbread. Lima beans, too, and collard greens and cabbage, all cooked in pork fat. Witches is old folks, most of them. They don’t care none for low-cal. You pile that food on a paper plate, stick a plastic fork in it, and set it down by the side of a tree. And that feeds the witches.”

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil— John Berendt

It is a witches brew that feeds Southerners who aren’t witches, especially on New Year’s Day. Gather ‘round children, your social studies lesson is about to begin.

Southern culture is steeped with superstition, from painting our porch ceilings “haint blue” (Gulla/Geechie) to protect against evil spirits, to hanging a mirror beside our front door (Appalachian) to occupy the devil. Another superstition involves the love for black-eyed peas and collard greens and their relationship to luck and prosperity.

Eating collard greens and black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day are a Southern tradition that has spread to other parts of the land, south to north and south to west and the historian in me loves to ask the question, “Where did the tradition of eating collard greens and black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day originate and why?”

As with most “ancient” history, there is “gracious plenty” speculation and like all histories, are written by the victors or at least by those people who remained in power.

We Southerners can all agree that peas are the embodiment of blessings or luck and collard greens, prosperity but how did it get to be that way? Why did it spread so widely?

Peas are the oldest of the New Year’s traditions, used by Jewish folk to celebrate the New Year as far back as 500 AD. The Jewish tradition of eating black-eyed peas for fertility and luck continues today during the Jewish New Year some 2500 years later. Our Southern tradition doesn’t date that far back but is just as strongly embedded.

The origin is not as clear-cut in the Southern United States. According to “some” White Southerners, peas became a New Year’s staple because of that dastardly General William T. Sherman and his infamous “March to the Sea” during the Civil War. According to “some” historians, Sherman deemed salt pork and dried peas to be unfit for human consumption and left them behind, giving starving Southerners and Confederate soldiers a “blessing” as they were “lucky” enough to have it to stave off starvation.

In another tradition, Black Southerners, read slaves, made black-eyed peas a staple for New Year’s celebrations because the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863, and black-eyed peas were their only abundant food source.

Once considered a crop fit only for livestock, starving Southerners of both races consumed black-eyed peas out of necessity and transformed them into a symbolic and well-loved tradition.

I’m sure there is truth in both stories but what I know as truth, black-eyed peas in the United States date from the time slaves brought them from Africa. Black-eyed peas became so pervasive throughout the old slave states that black-eyed peas appear in recipes as varied as Cowboy Caviar down in Texas to Hoppin’ John in South Carolina to Peas with Ham up in North Carolina.

Dried beans of all varieties have been a staple, certainly a staple in my childhood, of Southern cooking especially during the dismal, gray days of winter and have a quality of taste that far surpasses those canned today. They were never used as livestock food during my lifetime unless the cow got loose in the pea patch. In my grandmother’s kitchen, dried peas were sorted through, washed, and then allowed to soak in water overnight before being rinsed again and put on to cook with salt, onions, garlic, and, of course, pork fat.

Collard greens are a bit more straight forward. Collard greens, along with their cousin turnip greens, are typically one of the only fresh vegetables that you can find in January in the South, so their place in the New Year’s food bill of fare is quite practical. They are also inexpensive and nutritious. More importantly, they are quite tasty when cooked in bacon grease, salt pork, or with ham hocks and seasoned with red pepper flakes and vinegar to add a little heat and tartness.

How collards came to be regarded as a precursor to prosperity is unknown, except that collard greens are green like paper money. I have been told “every mouthful of collard greens is worth a thousand dollars in your pocket.” For this reason, greens have replaced cabbage or sauerkraut in most Southern New Year’s celebrations.

With all that pot liquor created from cooking you must have something to sop it up with and that leads us to cornbread, corn being a staple in the South, both for animal and human consumption. Over time I have come to believe that cornbread makes us stop and remember what we have and where we came from. It harkens to our “roots.” Pones of cornbread prepared in cast iron pans passed down from the generations before us and seasoned by the hands of angels no longer with us. Rich in flavor, yellow in color, this bread has been compared to the color of gold and thought to bring good fortune and wealth.

Every Southern supper (dinner to you Yanks) involves a protein and hogs were the cheap staple even if you ate “high on the hog.” Slaves, later freemen, and poor white farmers alike found ways to prepare lesser cuts, making them palatable to the point of being preferred.  Hog jowls or ham hocks are slowly cooked, the meat picked out before being added to collards and peas already cooked with salt pork. Spareribs slowly cooked over a barbacoa, I’m salivating a bit.  One tradition says that a pig cannot turn its head, which means it’s always looking forward as we should be looking to the future.

How peas and collards culturally diffused to parts north and west is easy to understand and troubling for a progressive Southerner. The Great Migration was one of the largest movements of people in United States history. Six million Black people moved from the American South to Northern, Midwestern, and Western states from the 1910s until the 1970s.

The driving force behind the mass movement was to escape racial violence, pursue economic and educational opportunities, and obtain freedom from the oppression of Jim Crow in my beloved South. With their migration they took their culture and their traditions and passed them on to other folks. Traditions that included black eye-peas and collards. Traditions that added vivid colors to the canvas of life in the United States.

I have been lucky, and blessed, if not rich…rich monetarily that is. My life has been filled with richness attributed to family and friends, acquaintances, and students I taught and coached. The people I have been lucky enough to run across in my seven decades on earth. I don’t know how much to attribute to eating black-eyed peas and collards, dumb luck, or a benevolent Supreme Being. What I most appreciate are the diverse traditions and the diverse people who make me smile and add richness to my own off-white canvas.

My hope for the New Year is that we all will celebrate a newfound prosperity, monetary or otherwise, good luck, good health, and peace. Peace from Covid, war, and peace in our own lives. I hope the New Year brings people together with understanding rather than forcing them apart with disinformation.

Happy New Years from the Foothills of the Blue Ridge. Enjoy your peas and collards.

Sources:

https://www.southernliving.com/holidays-occasions/new-years/new-years-traditions-black-eyed-peas

https://www.gastonoutside.com/post/collards-and-black-eyed-peas-the-history-of-new-year-s-day-food-and-where-to-find-it-in-gaston

https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/migrations/great-migration

https://www.allrecipes.com/article/how-to-cook-dried-beans/

And a lifetime living in the South.

Don Miller’s latest nonfiction release is “Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes,” a collection of short stories and essays on life in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. It can be purchased in paperback or downloaded at https://www.amazon.com/Pig-Trails-Rabbit-Holes-Southerner/dp/B09GQSNYL2/ref=sr_1_1?crid=FXC3AISNRIU7&keywords=pig+trails+and+rabbit+holes&qid=1640701551&s=books&sprefix=Pig+trails+an%2Cstripbooks%2C299&sr=1-1

Spinnin’ in Her Grave

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I’m sure my grandmother is looking down from the great beyond and shaking her head.  I’m guessing what is left of her earthly body is spinnin’ in her grave.  As soon as she heard that can opener, I visualize a side eyed look below her furrowed brow.  Not only am I cooking canned black-eyed peas I’m serving canned collards to go with them.  If she were still alive, I’m sure I would be disenfranchised. 

My grandmother, Nannie, was not known for her cooking.  She wasn’t into exotic food…I don’t think I ate a pizza until I went off to college.  Pizza…exotic?  Cooter Stew was about as exotic as she got.  But there were lines she would never cross and peas with collards from a can was a line in concrete. 

Peas and collards fit right in with her idea of utilitarian food, with cornbread and a raw onion of course.  Oh, and some of Aunt Alta’s chow chow. Bless my soul, I had forgotten that. Nannie’s meals were made to fortify you for a long day in the field.  Exotic foods weren’t known to stick to your ribs.

In her small kitchen dried black-eyed peas from her fields would have been put in the Dutch oven to soak the night before, picked over to remove shells or gravel that might have “snuck” in.  Drained and rinsed, they would have returned to the Dutch oven along with onions, ham hocks, and seasonings and allowed to slow simmer in water and get to know each other for the next four or five hours.  When the ham hocks were tender, they would be removed, and the meat picked from the bone and fat and returned to the peas. 

Well before the pickin’, fresh collards from her garden would have been washed and rinsed repeatedly, chopped awaiting placement into another Dutch oven.  There they would join up with sauteed, in bacon grease, onion and chopped ham, some broth, apple cider vinegar, and red pepper flakes.  These would hang together until cooked to death. 

An hour before the meal was ready, a cast iron frying pan with a dollop of Crisco would be placed in the old stove to become screaming hot before corn bread batter was poured into it and put back in the oven to cook and brown.  I can remember the sizzle the batter made when it hit the grease and have a mental vision of a tanned and creased, flour-streaked cheek.  I also remember the corn bread to be a tad dry but something to mop the pot likker from my bowl with. 

Tea so sweet it made your teeth ache or fresh buttermilk would wash down the meal.

All told, she spent the better part of half a day to get the meal on the table…which is why I will open a can.  My bride will cook her special brand of cornbread, better than my grandmothers, moister at least…and I’ll mop up my pot likker with it.  I’ll keep the collards and peas a bit healthier and a lot less tasty, all-in hopes of seeing another New Year’s Day or two. We may oven fry some pork chops…the other white meat.

It is about traditions, I reckon Southern traditions in this case.  It is about honoring the past.  As I have quoted before, William Faulkner’s line, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” 

Peas swelling as they cook for luck, greens for money, pork because hogs are always moving forward as they forage, and cornbread for gold is a long running tradition…as is cornbread running in butter. 

In the South, how the tradition began involves two stories of note. Not sure either is true. According to one, during Sherman’s March to the Sea during the Civil War, “bummers” left behind peas and salt pork thinking it was nothing more than animal feed.  Southerners gave thanks for having even that gracious little to get through the winter.  I have my doubts about the story.  It makes no sense to leave even animal feed behind.  It does make for a good story and a reason to celebrate.

According to the second, and I find this more likely, black-eyed peas were a symbol of emancipation for African Americans who were officially freed on New Year’s Day, 1863 by the Emancipation Proclamation.  As the story goes peas were all they had to eat, and it became a symbol.  Again, I am unsure of the story but know former slaves initiated the idea for adding rice to the peas along with bacon, onion, and spices, giving us Hoppin’ John.  That is a good thing whether the story is true or not and has become a favorite Southern tradition of mine.

Yes, the South does have traditions we are not likely to allow to die.  Some I wish would.  Peas and collards isn’t one of them even from a can.  Be sure and eat your peas and collards. 

I hope you have a healthy and prosperous New Year.

Visit Don Miller’s Author’s Page https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR12bCTU7L4-4kWnHyS1zoacryFywuXQm_mLnMXCkCldT08Goh0UKW8dkZY

 Sittin’ on a Cactus

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“Being negative only makes a difficult journey more difficult. You may be given a cactus, but you don’t have to sit on it.”  Joyce Meyer

I’m trying to be positive, but I hold no notion 2020 will be any better than 2019 unless I take the cacti by the thorns.  I remember thinking 2018 was awful….  Now 2019 has been awful.  I think you get what you expect, and I’ve been expecting nothin’ if not the worse.

I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions anymore per se.  Why take the time when you are going to break them.  I set goals…I break them too but try to climb back on the horse whenever I fall off…until lately.  Lately, I’ve chosen the easy way, to lay in my bed of cactus and sleep in it.

As I look at the “coming New Year” posts I made from 2016, 2017, and 2018, it would appear we are…or I am…in a downward spiral.  A toilet bowl kind of spiral.  I have a vision of a large turd with my face on it going around, and round, and down. and down.  Too dramatic?  Sorry, just the way I feel.

I am sitting in the dark, listening to rain pelt down against my metal roof trying to take inventory of the previous year.  I probably need to turn on some lights, my depression is getting the better of me.  My inventory tells me I haven’t accomplished very much…and sadly, I’m feeling okay with having done absolutely nothing I needed to do in 2019…2018…etc.

I once looked at the New Year as a painter looks at a blank canvas.  What kind of brilliant colors can I put on my canvas?  Who am I kidding? I can’t draw a stick figure that looks like a stick figure and my 2019 canvas is still blank…blank?  Blank to the point of being transparent.  I seem to be sucking the color out of my life and planting more cacti.

Even the simple things seem to escape me.  I’m still trying to lose the ten pounds I needed to lose in 2016.  By God!  I’m going to do it this year!  Or maybe next.  Should I put a check in the box because it is still just ten pounds…maybe, I haven’t weighed today, and yesterday and the day before were long days of TV football and pizza eating.  Let’s look shall we…nope can’t check that box.  Tomorrow?  2021?

I’d like to resolve to enjoy life more…something I’m not doing…and so little time left.  If I resolve I make a resolution so I can’t do that for fear of breaking it.  

Sometimes my lack of motivations are external forces at work but this morning I look in the mirror, I point a finger, scrunch up my face and yell, “Really?  It’s your fault.  Get off your ass and do something with that potted cactus.”  It is my fault.  I am choosing to sit on the cactus.  It seems easier to deal with the pain than do something about it.

Years ago, I had an old fart tell me his biggest issue with growing old was having no dreams.  The old fart was younger than I now am.  Not sleep dreams, old farts still have those.  Accomplishment dreams, relationship dreams, aspirational dreams are no longer there.  Young men have dreams, old men have memories…or regrets.  I believed him to be full of ”**it.”  Not so much now.

My goal is to change my outlook.  I still won’t have aspirational dreams; those days are gone unless it is aspiring to get out of bed.  I can have accomplishment dreams and relationship dreams.  I can add to my memories…somehow.  I have some ideas, some things to think about.  Positive thoughts on how to change the direction my brain is taking me.  We’ll see.  You’ll have to wait until the end of 2020 to find out.  “Tune in next year….”

If I made a New Year’s resolution, it would be to“quit wallerin’ on a cactus and destroying the blooms”…the good things.

Set some easy goals at first like losing a pound ten times instead of saying you had to lose ten pounds all at once…or fifteen and if you fall off the wagon, climb out of the cacti.  Maybe quit eating Oreos and drinking chocolate milk as a midnight snack…that might get the job done right there…but the Oreos!

Take care of the little things, the easy things daily, and maybe the big things won’t overwhelm you.  Remember that no problem ever gets better on its own.

To all a Happy New Year and a wish for us all…

“I hope there are days when your coffee tastes like magic, your playlist makes you dance, strangers make you smile, and the night sky touches your soul. I hope there are days when you fall in love with being alive.”–Brooke Hampton

Don Miller writes on various subjects both fiction and non-fiction.  His author’s page may be found at https://www.facebook.com/cigarman501/?eid=ARBT–kBkSHJV1fxQoDO_FML7NeUu6ktF4-9U4AQ6u3WdIzjy__fU6WDa_wF0AlHkp3VPIxEzVnOBjkb

Or https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

 

Stumble, Fumble….

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I despise the New Year. My birth year ends in a zero so it’s easy to figure out your age and realize the path behind you is significantly longer than the path ahead. I’m not concerned about my age…well…maybe I am since I’m posting about it. Okay, I’m not concerned about my death…unless it is lingering and painful. Okay, okay! So, I’m concerned.

I despise the New Year because of the resolutions I make that I know I’m going to break or stumble over…” stumble, bumble, fart, and fall….” Odd things that stick in your head. It’s the fourth and I’m already stumbling…and I’m always smelly.

I made simple resolutions. Easy to accomplish even if a few roadblocks arise. Maintain or, notice the “or”, improve my fitness. Maintain my 2016 weight which I was unable to maintain in 2017. That means losing the ten pounds from last year that I picked up when I was supposed to be maintaining. Just walk a little more…we got this.

I wish I had told my wife. Obviously, her New Year’s resolution is to cook this year. The veggie and beef homemade soup, following the traditional greens, peas and pork roast on New Year’s Day. Would have been healthy…maybe…but she had to make cornbread. I love her cornbread…did I have to have the second piece? Yes, I did…and the third. I just forgot about her tomato pie…oh my.

Well, I expect her to break her resolution soon, “I’m not cooking anymore this year!”

“But….”

“But nothing!”

My second resolution was also a simple, easy to accomplish, I want to be a better person and make a difference. You know, better for the wife, daughter, grandkids, asshole brother…sorry, non-asshole brother. Not best…just better.

My beloved has thrown a roadblock in front of that too. Thirty-one years together and I still find a way to not be able to get out of my own way.

“I need for you to…” fill in the blank.

A “better person” would simply go do it. A “better person” would not wait until he forgot what she asked him to do in the first place. A “better person” wouldn’t want to hear, “I asked you six months ago to…” fill in the blank. So, with a hand driver, I jumped on it! Bam!

“What are you doing?”

“You asked me to….”

“I didn’t mean now. You are in my way. Go do something else.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Don’t ask me questions now, can’t you see I’m busy?”

A “better person” won’t use the hand driver as a weapon. Great, resolution accomplished! Maybe this isn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

For more of Don Miller’s musings, try the following link: https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Kicking and Screaming into 2018

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Is it just normal to be this hopeful for the upcoming year or is this just because 2017 was such a bloody hemorrhoidal tissue kind of year?  2017 was like a cocklebur suppository and I didn’t much like it.

Don’t get me wrong, I have much to be thankful for.  I survived!!!!!!!  2018 has got to be better…didn’t I say that about 2017?  I guess I did and 2017 was the worse year since 1968 in my humble opinion.

I don’t do resolutions…I do have ambitions like certain fitness goals, and once again I have fallen short as 2017 closes.  It’s not my fault I’ve gained weight.  My body just doesn’t absorb doughnut calories as well as it used to…could be that bone on bone rubbing in my knee slowing calorie absorption down.  It is also keeping from doing any kind of running so the marathon is probably out.

Back to the subject. I don’t do resolutions but if I did I would use the trite, too often used, “Be the man my puppies think I am.” While I am good to them, I treat them better than I treat my fellow man.  I realize that I need to be a part of something bigger than me and my puppies.

Our world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket…but in my little part of the world, I’m not sure that is true although I know there are many people suffering.  My puppies don’t think it’s true.

I watch the people I interact with and see what their love can do to improve the world I am lucky enough to live in.  My best friend, Mike Hawkins, carries blankets around to give to the homeless he runs into.  My brother, Steve Miller, saw a need and works tirelessly to support a soup kitchen. Leland and Emily Browder models what it means to be a follower of Christ and have passed on their beliefs of service to their God and humanity to their children and grandchildren.  I give thanks to them and others.

In a climate that seems to breed boorish behavior, that seems to extol disrespect for those who you disagree with.  When humility is portrayed as a weakness rather than a strength, men, and women like Mike, Steve, Emily, and Leland go about their daily business of doing good.

Watching their efforts has made me aware of my shortcomings as a caring and gracious human being.  It is time to get off the sidelines and quit watching.  We all need to start acting,  get into the game and leave our political beliefs in the stands.

I’m not going to attempt to start a movement, run for office or pontificate ad nauseum.  I’m just going to try and make a difference, one person at a time,.

For more of Don Miller’s pontifications, you might be interested in clicking on the following link:   https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

BAGGAGE

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

It is 2017. Time to make those resolutions that if I’m lucky I will not break by February. I make ten resolutions, one of which is “I will not beat myself up if I break a resolution.” Rather than beat myself up I will reassess where I am, what went wrong and create another goal. For instance, one of my measurable goals is I want to double my running mileage for this coming year but what happens if I injure myself like I did this past year, only running half the mileage I resolved to run in 2016. It’s not the end of the world, just readjust. Another goal might be, I’m going to work hard not to injure myself this year. That one might be a bit tougher to meet if 2017 is anything like 2017.

For some reason, not beating myself up might be the hardest resolution to keep because I equate failure with guilt…sometimes even when I have no control over the failure. A bird dies in China and somehow, I could have prevented it. Therefore, I feel guilty about it. I have a suitcase full of guilt. How full? I ain’t gonna try to pick it up. Jesus Christ forgives me with much more ease than I forgive myself. Believe in him, ask for forgiveness, sins are washed away. My sins are purged and I am whiter than snow. Easy! Except for my head. I participate in a type of self-flagellation, the voices in my head mentally whipping me every time the metaphorical pigeon dies…or the metaphorical suitcase full of sins suddenly opens in the middle of the night.

I’m not an evil person…am I? Sometimes good people do bad things…I have two ex-wives that might disagree. The suitcase is chuck full of people I feel I have wronged. I even feel guilty because I don’t feel guilt for having married a third time…successfully this time I might add…although I am sure I’ve wronged her too. Does serving her coffee in bed every morning off set my wrongs?
My resolution is to dump the baggage. No negative self-speak about how terrible I was. Some of those folks aren’t of this world anymore. One especially. An attractive brunette I should have treated better. Have I already broken my resolution?

I probably should just change my resolution to JUST BE THANKFUL. My wife and family, the grandbabies, a red headed monkey and one I haven’t had time to figure out yet. More friends than I deserve, my blind puppies, one who, as I write this, is trying to get my attention by pawing at a chair I’m not sitting in. The fire roaring in my fire place, dry wood popping. The beautiful sunrises and sunsets, memories of a bluegill causing my line to cut through the water, a red bird visiting my feeders. Being able to get out of bed in the morning and make my own coffee. Early morning walks, the crisp air blowing in my face. Rain or sleet pelting down on the metal roof. Writing even when I do it badly.

Yes, pausing to be thankful is a resolution I think I can keep.

May 2017 be the best year of your life…so far.

For more of Don Miller’s unique views of life, humor and Southern stories of a bygone time, try http://goo.gl/lomuQf