Nearly New Year's Eve

(c) Lyn Fenwick drawing from 2015

There are still a few days until 2018 tumbles to a disquieting close, and the notion of New Year's Resolutions may seem like a relic from the past.  Or, maybe not.  Perhaps it is up to each of us to reflect on what resolutions we each might contribute to make 2019 less disquieting.

I am a collector of quotes--odds and ends from many sources, including this one I found on a cereal box, with which I will begin.  Unfortunately, the cereal box did not provide the author.  "Fame is fleeting, money evaporates, and all we have left is character."  New Year's Eve is a pretty good time for a character check.

Younger readers may not recognize the name of John Wooden, but those of us with some gray in our hair will remember this incredible coach and what was for a while his unbeatable University of California team!  This is what he called His Creed:  "Be true to yourself.  Make each day a masterpiece.  Help others.  Drink deeply from good books.  Make friendship a fine art.  Build a shelter against a rainy day."  You don't have to play basketball to find some good advice in Wooden's creed, and any or all of those commitments would make great resolutions.

Words attributed to Wm Shakespeare on the internet but probably a prank to see if people believed that attribution, nevertheless made their way onto my quote collection because they challenged me to consider how seriously I honor the things that I say matter to me.  I share this not to suggest you adopt the particular things mentioned but rather to challenge you, as it did me, to consider whether you truly honor by your actions the things you say you value.  "You say you love the rain, but you open your umbrella.  You say you love the sun, but you find a shady spot.  You say you love the wind, but you close your windows.  This is why I am afraid, you say you love me too." 

The advice of Ralph Waldo Emerson has inspired many generations, and I found this in my quote file:  "The purpose of life is not to be happy.  It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."   Some would say, I believe, that doing those things will bring you happiness.

Most of us will tolerate hard truths from Mark Twain because he's clever...or perhaps because we think he is poking fun at others rather than at us. This is one of my favorites:  "It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."

I will close with a movie quote taken from a conversation when a young man, discouraged by what he sees around him, turns to his uncle for advice.  The movie is Secondhand Lions and the actor speaking the quoted lines is the great Robert Duvall.  "Sometimes, the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most:  that people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power, mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love, true love, never dies.  You remember that, boy.  Doesn't matter if they are true or not.  A man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in."   

Selecting these quotes to share has given me hope for 2019, and I hope they have given you some ideas for your own New Year's Resolutions.  Admit it.  You know you probably will not stick to a diet or adhere to an exercise program for more than a few weeks.  And if you are a smoker, the odds are against really quitting because of a New Year's Resolution.  Maybe, however, something I shared might be worth the effort...  Have a safe and happy New Years Eve!

(You can click to enlarge the drawing.  Please pay particular attention to the words around the clock face.)

New Year's Resolutions

When I asked face book friends to share their New Year's Resolutions for this blog, a very special friend from law school replied with these words:  "I hate to share a resolution.  Like a wish, [it] may not come true!"  Interestingly, she is not alone.  My research for this blog indicated that many people are superstitious about sharing their resolutions for fear that might jinx the outcome.  Others decline to share their resolutions because they don't want anyone to know if they failed to keep them!

Isaac Werner never mentioned making a New Year's resolution in his journal, although he did mention attending a few New Years' parties.  My research indicates that the tradition goes back for centuries, perhaps 4,000 years, with its roots in religion.  The Babylonians are believed to have been the first, although their New Year began in mid-March when crops were planted.  They promised their Gods to pay their debts and to return borrowed objects!

Roman God Janus

Another ancient God is also connected with the New Year, for January is named for the Roman God Janus.  Of course, Janus is the 2-faced God that decorates doorways and arches, seeing both those coming and going.  Symbolically, he could look back at the old year as well as forward into the new year.

As for Americans today, the most common New Year's Resolutions fall into certain categories:

1.  Self improvement physically and mentally;

2.  Advancement in career and financial circumstances;

3.  Personal growth in such ways as education, organization, and time-management;

4.  Interpersonal relationships through volunteering, making new friends, and improving social skills;

5.  More time with family;

6.  Traveling;

7.  Confronting decisions, like marriage, parenthood, faith;

8.  And perhaps the newest one on the list and the one most quickly broken, Spending less time on social media!

Victorian New Year's Day Card

Statistics about the number of Americans who make New Year's Resolutions were not found as far back as the late 1800s when Isaac Werner was keeping his journal.  But at the end of the Great Depression, it is said that only about 25% of American adults made resolutions, in contrast to the start of the current century when about 40% did.  Some believe that number has grown to 50% today.  Studies have shown that actually making a resolution to achieve the typical "Self improvement" goals, like more healthful eating, weight loss, exercise, and quitting smoking, will make you 10-times more likely to succeed than those who only want to do those things, without an actual resolution.

So, for those of you who decline to share your resolution because it might not happen, only you will know whether you succeeded or failed.  However, according to one survey for those of you who share your resolution with others and don't quite succeed, here are four great excuses that one survey found:  35% said they had set unrealistic goals for themselves; 33% said they didn't keep track of their progress; 23% said they forgot about what they had resolved to do; and about 1 in 10 respondents to the survey said they made too many resolutions!

I'm only planning two resolutions for 2018.  I'm following my friend's example and keeping one resolution to myself!  However, the following resolution I'm willing to share:  "Make more time to read books by authors whose work I respect and learn to put books down when an author disappoints me!...although I may have to modify that commitment by making myself more careful about what I choose to read, since I seem to struggle with abandoning a book unfinished!!"  See, I've even built an excuse into my resolution in case I fail at laying a disappointing book aside!

Readers' Resolutions

Time in a Bottle Collection

After our years of living in the South, we learned the importance of eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day if we expect good luck in the coming year.  So, dutifully, we fixed our black-eyed peas with jalapeno and ham and baked some corn bread to go with it.

Several of you shared your own New Year's Resolutions via face book, e-mail, and a comment to the blog.  One of my favorites was the suggestion by CH to read more books in 2016!  

On the practical side, JBB challenged her friends to a 91 day de-clutter program to get their houses in shape, and HJG suggested practical steps for a more healthful diet in 2016--dieting being a popular New Year's resolution.

GLW-T's very personal resolution was  "To continue 'releasing myself to the peace of knowing' and do my best to 'handle all the imperfections perfectly.'  And, yes, create a healthier environment so my mind, body and spirit will be a happier me."

RB, a talented photographer, decided his idea of starting a photography blog might make a good resolution for 2016.

Time in a Bottle Collection

It was RM who offered a great continuing resolution idea for those who, like me, are feeling saddened by all the bad reports we hear on the nightly news.  He suggested starting the New Year with an empty jar and adding a weekly note with a good thing that happened that week.  Then, fifty-two weeks later on New Year's Eve, empty the jar to read all the amazing things that happened during the year.  It isn't too late to take his advice and start your "Good Things Jar" for 2016!

For many of us, the pledge to exercise has already lagged, the diet has failed, and other resolutions are getting tiresome.  Don't berate yourself too harshly.  Mark Twain knows just how you feel:

Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.  *   *   *   Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual."

All three of the antique New Year's cards pictured in this blog were found at www.rubylane.com, and the merchants offering them for sale are shown under each image.  

The illustrator of all three cards was Frances Brundage, (1854-1937), who was known for depictions of children.  In addition to cards, she also illustrated books by Louisa May Alcott, Johanna Spyri, and Robert Louis Stevenson, among others, and her work remains highly collectible even today.

Victorian Dreams Collection

She was taught by her father, Rembrandt Lockwood, and it was fortunate he had taught her well, for when she was only seventeen he abandoned his family and Frances became a professional artist.  Her first illustration was of a poem by Louisa May Alcott, which the author herself purchased.  Frances was in her early 30s when she married artist, William Tyson Brundage.  A tragic twist to her life was that although she is known for her lovely depictions of children, her only child, daughter Mary Frances, died at the age of 17 months.  She remained active professionally into her late 60s and died at the age of 82.

Because she illustrated books such as The Arabian Nights and Robin Hood, as well as calenders and prints, and she was working professionally in the 1880s and 1890s, it is quite possible that Isaac B. Werner might have seen her work.

A great way to conclude is with the resolutions of EPD.  "... be positive and ignore negativity... [and] do just one thing every day, no matter how small, that I have been putting off."

Wisdom for the New Year from Isaac and Others

My early connection with Isaac B. Werner grew from our mutual passion for reading and our common belief in the benefits to each generation from reading the wisdom of their forefathers that can be found in books.  (See "Isaac's Library," Blog Archives 2-2-2012.)

On the last day of 1870 Isaac recorded in his journal recent purchases of books, including legal maxims, history, poetry, and art, expressing his wish for the financial resources to have purchased more.  He wrote:  "But there is nothing like patience to conquer great many things & undertakings.  Whether I really increased the value of my real estate & chattles [sic] during this last year or not, I confidently feel that I enriched my mind, satisfactory to my desire--beyond my any expectations--and in my eye that looks a fortune worth possessing--'O learn thou young man...'"

At FDR's Museum and Library

When my husband and I visited Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Museum and Library, we paused to read the words he had spoken at the dedication: "...the dedication of a library is in itself an act of faith.  To bring together the records of the past and to house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a Nation must believe in three things.  It must believe in the past.  It must believe in the future.  It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future."

As a reader and a writer, I am always saving quotes about books and writing.  For many years, Salmon Rushdie lived in hiding, constantly guarded by a police team devoted to protecting him from the fatwa issued against him because of words he had written.  Rushdie was required to give himself a new name to protect his identity, and even the policemen guarding him in the privacy of his various hiding places called him by that name, training themselves never to call out his real name in a moment of carelessness.  He chose as his pseudonym a combination of the names of two of his favorite authors--Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekov.  His recent book, Joseph Anton, A Memoir, describes those years of isolation, when he questioned whether his words were worthy of the sacrifices it cost not only him but also his friends and family.  For a time, he questioned whether he should have censored himself, whether he should have written fiction about a subject some found offensive, whether the writing he believed truly important actually made a difference in the greater world.  For a time he thought he had lost the ability to write anything, so crippled was he by the isolation and emotional stress.  Eventually, he found his answers and wrote these words:  "This is what literature knew, had always known.  Literature tried to open the universe, to increase, even if only slightly, the sum total of what it was possible for human beings to perceive, understand, and so, finally, to be.  Great literature went to the edges of the known and pushed against the boundaries of language, form, and possibility, to make the world feel larger, wider, than before."  Rushdie could not stop writing about things he believed to be important, nor could he apologize for what he had written because his story offended some--not ever, and especially, not now, in "an age in which men and women were being pushed toward ever narrower definitions of themselves."         

Milton's Areopagitica

In reaching his answer, Rushdie found a quote from Milton's Areopagitica that reaffirmed his decision.  "He who destroys a good book, kills reason itself...Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties."

Thomas Jefferson is famous for his love of books, having said, "I cannot live without books."  In fact, he loved books so much that he nearly bankrupted himself buying them!  After the British burned the Capitol in the War of 1812, it was the purchase of books from Thomas Jefferson's library that formed the core of our Library of Congress.  Jefferson's belief in the necessity for American citizens to read and study in order for the nation to prosper is expressed in these words:  "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." 

Katherine Hepburn, never one to waste words in her pithy comments stated it more simply.  "What in the world would we do without our libraries?" 

Thomas Jefferson

As Isaac Werner regarded with satisfaction the books he had studied during the previous months, he reflected on the months ahead.  "These last hours of 1870, who may see the last of 1871, only 365 days, but what changes may take place in that very short time to come.  How many a now warm beating pulse may rest motionless till then, and what [future] Shakespeare may take his life in the meantime to shine some future day, an ornament to the period.  Very nearly can I say that I enter the New Year--at least--without pressing debts, about $40.00 near at hand to liquidate, while I have also just the cost in pocket to meet same, any amount square.  While that would leave me about square and strapped--but how many would feel rich at that..."  Isaac continued by enumerating books on painting, Shakespeare, history, the Bible, Don Quixote, and Gibbon's Roman Empire that he wished to buy, including in the enumeration their prices.  He concluded by admitting that "I can't hardly spare so much money at once...but will have to take it cooly and get them by degrees."  He prioritized his wish list, writing, "The following works I long to possess, but not quite as much in a hurry as some above named, but I expect in due course of time to possess them all, and arranged in my library." 

Isaac concluded his New Year's Eve ruminations with this maxim:  "God hath provided wisdom the reward of study," words reflected a century later in FDR's belief that Americans must "learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future."

With 2014 just begun, the words of these wise people, reminding us of the importance of reading, seem particularly important!