Come, Let Us Anew

Come, Let Us Anew

Come, let us anew our journey pursue,
Roll round with the year,
And never stand still till the Master appear.
His adorable will let us gladly fulfill,
And our talents improve
By the patience of hope and the labor of love.

Our life as a dream, our time as a stream
Glide swiftly away,
And the fugitive moment refuses to stay;
For the arrow is flown and the moments are gone.
The millennial year
Presses on to our view, and eternity's here.

Oh, that each in the day of His coming may say,

"I have fought my way thru;

I have finished the work thou didst give me to do."

Oh, that each from his Lord may receive the glad word:

"Well and faithfully done;

Enter into my joy and sit down on my throne."

We sang this hymn today in church on the first Sunday of the new year. The lyrics were written by Charles Wesley (1707-1788), founder of the Methodist Church. I'm using them as my theme for this new year. I plan to pursue my journey anew and roll round with the year, never stand still, and improve some talents. I can hardly grasp that we've come to a new year again. The fugitive moment really does refuse to stay, the arrow has flown and the moments are gone. It seems like we just celebrated the arrival of 2024 a few weeks ago, and here we are already five days into Anno Domini Two Thousand and Twenty-five. 

I've never gotten used to this phenomenon of time seeming to speed up as we get older. I wondered why this happens, so I read up on it and discovered that there is a correlation between how we perceive time and processing information. The more information our mind processes, the slower time seems to move. When we are in our normal environments, doing familiar things, with the same people around us, time seems to move quickly because we aren't processing any new information. That, the psychologists say, is why time seems to speed up as we get older. A psychologist named Ruth Ogden did a study in 2023 of 918 adults and found that 77% of them said that Christmas seems to arrive more quickly each year. I am in agreement with the 77%. I must have said "Didn't we just do all this a few weeks ago?" a dozen times recently.

According to the study, most people feel that time seemed to pass slower when they were children. That's because when we are children we have a lot of new experiences and are constantly processing new information. The older we get, we have fewer and fewer new experiences and more things become automatic to us. We become desensitized to our surroundings and absorb less information. There are things you can do to change that. By introducing new things into our lives, traveling to new places, learning new things, getting a new hobby, living more mindfully of our day-to-day experiences, seeing more of the wonder in the world around us -- like a child -- time will seem to slow down a little again. That's what I will try to do this year. We will travel a little. Stacey and I are going to Utah at the end of the month to visit Geoffrey's family. We've canceled our trip to Italy in April. We're hoping to go later in the year, perhaps July or August. There may be other opportunities to travel. I'm going to start a new hobby, watercolor painting. Miriam got me a nice set of watercolors, brushes, and paper for Christmas. And I'm determined to pay more attention to the wonders around me. There are new books to read and some old ones to reread. There are gardens to plan, plant, tend, and harvest. I think it will be a good, and maybe a little slower, year.

The final days of 2024 were pretty dreary weather-wise. Cold, but not freezing. Wet, but not snowy. Gray and soggy. Despite the gloom outdoors on Monday, it was very lively indoors. Miriam was in charge of homeschooling the Thayn children all week and that day they had a geography lesson and began to memorize the states in the United States. She taught them half of the "Fifty nifty United States" song. They also had a project making paper crowns as part of learning about the Middle Ages. For lunch they had a tea party with lemon tea, chicken nuggets, and other dainties.

All decked out with paper crowns and other regalia.

Who knew the piano was a good place to park your cars?

The tea party.

On Monday I opened the bucket of sauerkraut that Miriam and I started back in October to see if it was ready for our New Year's Day dinner. If you'll recall, our cabbages were not very good last summer. They were small and dry. It took all the ones we had just to make one bucket of kraut, a mix of green and red cabbages. We opened the bucket and found the whole thing had turned bright pink because of the red cabbage. Miriam tasted some and said it tasted like dirt. It's kind of hard sometimes to tell whether sauerkraut is off or not. It has some powerful fragrances that might smell bad, but taste good. Like some cheeses. Sarah came up later in the afternoon and we had her taste it too. She said the same thing, it tasted like very strong, salty dirt. The whole batch was no good. I threw it to the chickens. I was sad about that. I feel garden failures keenly. Fortunately, we still had kraut from last year in the freezer, otherwise we would have had to resort to store bought and that would have been too much.

The pretty, but ruined sauerkraut.

Monday evening after dinner, we called my mother and sang happy birthday to her. I chatted with her for a while. I asked her how she was doing and she said she can't really see or hear much anymore, but it could be worse. She was looking forward to pizza, cake, and ice cream for her birthday dinner.

My mother on her 96th birthday.

Tuesday morning we had a beautiful sunrise, a nice valedictory display for 2024. During the day, we made preparations for the evening's celebration. Our friend Nancy Jones brought us two cheeseballs, some crackers, and some stuffed dates for our spread. I made another cheeseball because they are a popular item and we wouldn't want to risk running out. Later toward dinner time, I made okonomiyaki. Stacey made the Little Smokies in mustard sauce and started steaming the pot-stickers and baking the eggrolls. We set up the table with our traditional red table cloth and made the sherbet punch and we were almost ready to celebrate.

Sunrise on the last day of the year.

The Fosters arrived at 6:00 and brought taco dip to add to the feast. Sarah made some special treats for me, almond crackers so I could enjoy the cheeseballs, coconut panna cotta with raspberry sauce, and dark chocolate mousse with raspberry sauce. After we ate, to keep the children occupied and direct some of their abundant energy, we had a piñata making project. It was messy, but fun. The Fosters left for home at 9:00. The rest of the family went upstairs to watch a movie. I sat downstairs and read a book. The youngest two, Russell and Florence, went to bed. Stacey and I did not stay up. I prefer to greet the new year sound asleep. Miriam, Hannah, Hazel, June, and Mabel stayed awake to see the new year in. They had a quiet party upstairs.

Our New Year's Eve spread.

Making piñatas to keep the children occupied.

The late night revelers. Happy New Year!

On New Year's Day I was awake at my normal time (5:30) and I did all my normal morning things. I tried to be as quiet as I could and let everyone sleep as late as they wanted. It was a dreary morning, gray and wet. Not the prettiest beginning for the new year. When I went down to do the chores the weather was trying to decide if it was going to rain or snow. After I fed the chickens, I took down the Christmas lights from along the barn fence. When I got back to the house, I unplugged the timers on the other Christmas lights on the house. That's the last of the festive decorations. I won't actually take down those lights until we have a dry warm day, so probably in June. By the time the children were up and about, the weather had decided on snow.

New Year's Day in the morning.

I have a little tradition that I keep on New Year's Day where I do, even if it's just for a minute or two, the things I hope to do a lot of during the coming year. So during the day, I read a little. I listened to music. I did a little family history research. I tended my houseplants as a token of time I hope to spend gardening. I went for a walk. At noon we went down to the Foster's and at 1:00, we ate our traditional New Year's dinner of pork and sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, and rolls. The pork roast was not from our own pig, but it was local, and it was delicious. The potatoes were from our garden. Tosh mashed them and added butter and garlic and they were fantastic. The second choice kraut was very good. There are members of the family, I won't name names, who don't like kraut, but everyone tried at least a tiny bit for tradition's sake. Those of us with more mature palates -- Sarah, Tosh, Miriam, Hazel, and I -- all love kraut and partook freely. After dinner, we spent the rest of the day at the Foster's playing games, watching movies, just hanging out together. Later in the afternoon we took a walk down their road to visit Bozo and Rosie. Bozo is a 40 year old pony that belongs to the Rigases. Rosie is a goat that keeps Bozo company. They live in a very nice little barn. It snowed most of the afternoon and the roads were a bit slick when we drove home. Once home, the two youngest took baths and went to bed. The older ones played Dutch Blitz for a while. The oldest one (me) curled up with a book until bedtime. It was a nice first day of the new year.

New Year's dinner.

The barn where Bozo and Rosie live.

Visiting Bozo and Rosie.

Every year at the new year, I commission a Japanese New Year's card, (called nengajo in Japanese 年賀状, ねんがじょう), from Miriam. She uses the Chinese/Japanese zodiac sign for the year as her theme. This year, 2025, is the year of the wood snake (蛇 in Chinese and 巳 in Japanese). I always intend to mail out the nengajo, but most years it gets by me until it is too late. Here is Miriam's nengajo for 2025. Whether I get around to printing them and mailing them remains to be seen.

Thursday morning we woke up to three inches of snow. The atmosphere in the house was subdued all morning. Stacey and Hannah went to work. I trudged down to the barn and did the morning chores. When I got back from that, I didn't feel like doing much of anything. Everyone else slept late and when they did finally get up, they dragged around a while. The post-holidays blahs had settled in. Normal things had to be done again, laundry and cleaning and other mundane things. At noon I ventured out on errands. I did a trash run. We had a lot of trash. I went to Wellsville to buy chicken feed. When I got back, I unloaded the feed and did the afternoon chores. Ho-hum.

I think we tend to expect the new year to be immediately and discernably different and, when it isn't, we feel a little disappointed. It's silly to think things would suddenly change just because we put up a new calendar. The things going on in the natural world just go on like they always do, nothing sudden, just the cycle of the seasons rolling on as usual. I'm sure there will be big changes during the year in the human realms of family and society, but nothing yet, and, in my cynical and advancing years, I find myself agreeing more and more with the French journalist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808-1890) who wrote, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Thursday evening the piñata project was finally finished.

Finished piñatas.

It snowed most of the day on Thursday and into the night. By Friday morning we had five inches of it on the ground. It kept coming down off and on through the day. At sunset, it became pretty intense. We'd planned to take Hazel, June, and Mabel into town to see Wicked that night. They were excited and prepared all day for it. Miriam made them Wicked-themed outfits. By dinner time they were all made up and ready to go. The snow was falling heavily by then and if they hadn't put in so much effort and were not so excited, I would have canceled the trip. But I couldn't do that. So we set out for Coudersport. We dropped Florence and Russell off at the Foster's so Sarah could watch them and picked up Tosh and away we went into the swirling snow.

I read the book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory McGuire back in around the year 2000 or so, and I wasn't particularly a fan of it. It was much darker than the Oz books I'd read and loved as a child. Then ten years ago, Stacey, Hannah, Josiah, and I saw a performance of Wicked on Broadway when we were on a school trip. It was much edited from the book and we enjoyed it. I'm always a bit leery when they convert a stage play to the big screen, especially one that has such amazing effects on stage like Wicked. Seeing it on a stage, when they do something spectacular you say, "Wow! How did they do that?" On the screen you say, "Meh, that was all CGI, done on the computer." It was that way for me with Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables -- spectacular on the stage, somehow lacking on the big screen. Wicked was the same for me. And it was too long. And this was just part one. So it was fun being there with the girls, and the movie had its good points and some not so good points. Perhaps I'm being too critical. Maybe I expect too much.

After the movie.

Saturday was another cold, windy, snowy day. When I went down to do the morning chores the wind was blowing hard, carrying the snow into drifts more than a foot deep across the front yard. The wind chill was seven degrees. When I got back from the barn, I shoveled snow off the front porch and the front porch stairs. It was an act of futility. Within an hour the wind had undone all my work. We needed a snow day diversion, so that afternoon we drove up to Angelica, New York, to browse through some of their antique stores. It was fun looking at all the old stuff for sale. I was especially interested in the old books, but I didn't find anything to tempt me. We made a few purchases -- some toy cars for Russell, some Christmas decorations that were on sale. But mostly it was just a fun way to spend a cold and windy afternoon.

One of the antique stores we stopped at.

Another antique store we visited.

Miriam was enamored with this faux fur coat, but it was too expensive.

After dinner we went down to the Foster's to watch The Wizard of Oz. The Thayn children, who have seen Wicked twice now, had never seen it and we thought we should remedy that. I've always loved the movie. Back in the day when they aired it on television once a year, we never missed watching it. It will always seem magical to me.

Miriam and Hannah were going to leave to take the Thayn children home after church today, but the weather looked bad, so they left before church. The roads as Stacey and I drove up to Wellsville for church were not too bad. The last report we got from Miriam traveling south was that they've had no problems. So Stacey and I came home from church to a very quiet house. The grandchildren have been here since Christmas Eve, thirteen days ago. Thirteen days? Christmas already seems like it happened a long time ago. Tabor and Rachel arrive home from their trip later tonight. I hope the grandchildren have happy memories of visiting here. I love having them live close enough that we are together often. Miriam and Hannah hope to drive home tomorrow, but they are bracing for a big storm south of us, so they might be delayed. The Thayns had to leave a lot of things behind that wouldn't fit in the car, so we are thinking we might drive down to the Pittsburgh Temple this Saturday and meet them there and give them all their stuff. We'll see. We're at that point in the year when plans depend entirely on the weather and can change very quickly.

This what's happening to the south of us.

So we are here, just the two of us for a day or two. I'll spend some time tomorrow restoring some semblance of order to the post-grandchildren house. But it will seem very dull and quiet. I have plans to start a more thorough new year's cleaning during the week. That's the plan for now anyway.