2006 -- Some Modest Proposals

To be honest, I never keep my New Year's resolutions. But am I going to let that keep me from proposing resolutions for all of us? Not a bit!

Vote. Every chance you get.

Leave a little more space between your car and the one in front of you.

We are surrounded by idiots. Learn to deal with it without raising your blood pressure.

Turn off the vacuum cleaner, or the computer, or the TV, or the iPod. Sit outside on the grass and watch the sun set. It will do you good.

If you aren't healthy, get there. If you are, get healthier. A new influenza pandemic IS coming. The only questions are: when? and how bad? The government will not be ready to help us, and the medical establishment won't be able to. There will not be enough hospital beds, there will not be enough respirators, there will not be enough medicines or enough doctors & nurses to administer them. We are on our own.

Watch more baseball.

If you can't take the vacation of your dreams this year, start planning it. You never know. A year ago, I never would have believed I'd have tickets to Ireland.

Be nice to someone who doesn't deserve it.

And then refrain from congratulating yourself.

Every single day, do something you truly love. Even if it's only for five minutes.

Plant something. We need more oxygen.

Learn something new.

Tell someone you love them.

Mean it.

Oh, Happy WhatEVER!

And people wonder why I bury myself in fiction and genealogy? Good grief, look at the latest tempest -- all about whether we should be saying "Happy Holidays" or "Merry Christmas!"

(Aside: it must be nice to live so obliviously, that you think this is the biggest problem in the world.)

Note to the ayatollahs -- and yes, that includes you, Mr. O'Reilly -- the root of the word 'holiday' is, now brace yourself, "holy day." When you wish someone "happy holidays," you are wishing them a happy day for whatever they are celebrating, whether that be Christmas, or Hannukah, or Eid, or Kwanzaa, or Jiminy Cricket's birthday.

If anyone's going to complain about that, shouldn't it be the atheists?

So, in the interests of PC non-offensiveness, and not to forget inclusiveness, I'd like to wish you all the very best of days, every day, whether or not you or anyone else recognizes it as having some civic, personal, religious, spiritual, or commercial significance; and whether or not it has any reference to any putative deity or deities, or historical and/or mythological status of same.

Let's see Hallmark come up with a card for that one!

Blessed be, y'all.

Vote for Mama!!!

Go to time.com and vote for Mother Nature for Person of the Year, 2005.

Two reasons:
1) This award is for the "person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill," during the past year. From the tsunami to hurricanes to earthquakes to tornados, Mother Nature certainly qualifies more than any of the other nominees listed.

2) Can't you just hear the fundies screaming? "You're promoting paganism!!!"
Anything that raises their blood pressure is, as Martha would say, A Good Thing.