A TIME TO BE STILL ...

During whatever we celebrate at the winter solace the rush of things, happenings, and people can be overwhelming. Coupled with gray weather and limited sunlight it can also be a season for "feeling blue". Those of us fortunate enough to have a few days off from work and school may yearn a return to the relative calm of nine to five. While it is OK to remain active and have a schedule during the holidays, it can also be stressful and downright maddening.

Perhaps in the rush and jumble of the season, it would be healthful to simply stop, be still, and be alone. With computers, fancy phones, digital games, parties, music noise, church, and family our wits can be ground to brittle nerve endings. With all due respect to friends, family, and holiday traditions the rush of so much stimulation in a compressed time may be counter productive to achieving holiday joy.

Therefore, to claim tranquility and inner peace during the celebrations of December and a new year find a quiet place and be still. Let your mind revel in good memories and the pleasantness of the present while abandoning the noise and clutter bursting forth from so many places. Beyond the season, realize the healthy habit of finding quiet and alone time. Perhaps in the process we may discover that "laughing" and happy place Uncle Remus told us about in the Brer' Rabbit story.

NEIGHBOR NAMED NED

My neighbor Ned is a total Neanderthal when it comes to lawn care.

In the spring, summer, and fall while most folks up and down the street groom yards of uniform green, Ned settles for various shades of green, brown, and yellow. My neighbors and I pay for cute little green trucks to deliver nutrients, seeds, and other services while Ned performs his yard work without a schedule or supply of reputable materials. Most lawns on the street are expertly cut by landscape engineers, but Ned chooses to push a smoky old mower. The mower blades are evidently so dull the grass is chopped and clumped into wet masses which become yellow lumps in a day. The hedges and beds around Ned's place are a hodgepodge of some legitimate flowering plants, but mostly common weeds.

In the fall and winter, the oaks and other trees in Ned's yard provide a steady shower of leaves which blow up and down the street. While most of us attend to the collection and destruction of the brown bits of debris, Ned seems content with allowing the leaves to pile up and blow into drifts around structures and parked cars. One or two times a season, Ned may rake or blow his leaves into piles which are either deposited at the back of his property to wait for fresh breezes or left in neat piles. Millions of worms, slugs, fleas, and varieties of mold surely flourish beneath his carpet of brown. Sometimes, I get so irritated with his misguided leaves littering my yard I fantasize writing his name on each leaf and mailing him weekly bundles of the blasted things.

On balance, I confess, Ned is generally a decent enough fellow, but a nuisance and nerd when it comes to complying with the niceties of lawn care. It irritates the stuffing out of me and probably my neighbors that his sloppy yard detracts from our manicured landscapes of green neatness. The cold holiday weather offers little relief as Ned detracts from our community of white window candles and professionally hung white lights. Ned seems to revel in Christmas lights which blink and flash a rainbow of odd colors. Rather than a scene of quiet white light dignity, his yard flashes all night like a carnival or Vegas gambling joint.

Sometimes I wish Ned would move his bad yard manners to another part of town. We who work so hard to present properly green and tidy yards do not deserve a  neighbor like Ned. We deserve a conforming good soul who abides by our high level of standards.

Then the alarm clock goes off. I wake and in the immortal spirit of Gustave Flaubert I realize that while I am not Madame Bovary, I am that Ned.