Revelry

New Years Eve almost requires sitting in front of the TV to watch the descent of the big glass ball over Times Square.  A transition ritual  About forty minutes worth for me.

While Guy Lombardo of my younger years conducted a nostolgic, lyrical Auld Lang Syne, the people who paid enough, or were important enough, to attend the Waldorf-Astoria ballroom live all came to party.  The less well-off but more bold packed the streets nearby, waiting for the ball to drop.  They wore hats, kept in motion, danced to themselves.  Cheer and revelry abounded.  It remains today, fifty or more years later.  Our flat screens display NY Eve and Fireworks around the world through each time zone, though Eastern Standard Time still dominates.  Every city, LA, Vegas, Miami, and NYC have people intent on being entertained.  I saw these forty minutes as something of a freak show.  Singers with millions of albums sold to other people, whose words I had to watch on closed caption as not discernible to me in my native language.  People, nearly all young adults, bouncing as best they can in the square foot allotted to them.  None of this revelry engaged me.  I am in the business of clock watching on New Years Eve.  My desire for entertainment, hedonism, or revelry of any type just hasn't been there, if it ever was there.   My hair doesn't get let down.  I do not bounce.

Still, the people on my screens have neural circuits.  Many usually in force lose their inhibition.  Or maybe not.  Perhaps they are the ones who purchase those performer albums and shuckle in private at home or at whatever replaced the disco in our contemporary public.  Maybe the brain evolves.  There were no grannies on those screens, but Guy Lombardo's dance floor needed to sell space to matronadults of wealth accumulation.  

As a community, for civic cohesion, perhaps we need a specified time like NY Eve.  A time when mostly young adults can release energy, sway to musical sounds even if they also need closed captioning to grasp the words.  I watch for forty minutes, sip some bubbly, and retire for the night.  They see the year as demarcation. However, they also plan for months to immerse themselves in this revelry.  They need money to travel to NY or Vegas.  Venues that compensate name talent while offering food, tables, and alcohol all charge admission, requiring most in attendance to save up during the year.  They not only enjoy themselves but impress others with their best duds and most garish accessories.  That means some planning and some shopping.  Revelry has its frivolous end point but its serious preparation.  The old year, a monument to what they were.  The new appearance, the aspiration to what might happen.  Always beginning at what is possible.  The peak of thrill, if only for the brief ecstasy of anticipation.

That's them.  And there are a lot of them.  There is only one me.

Miinor Time Demarcation

Our calendar year has transitioned.  For the most part I have not.  The twelve projects of focus might be a little different in some ways, but not very different.  My weekly activity list this week could be mostly copied from last week's, though the highlighter that I use to mark what comprises a semi-annual project differs.  Mostly I strive to do the same things but better.

One medical license not renewed, the other not to be renewed, though each met the renewal requirements.  My relations with my synagogue remains cynical for the same reason it has been cynical for a while.  Health measurements, reading initiatives, and travel not very different.  Personal relations not very different, though perhaps could be more generous on my part.  Finances not much different.  Desire to express myself mostly the same but with more of a resolve to create some of what I've wanted to do but let languish.  The new calendar year, while somewhat artificial as all cultures with solar calendars designate a transition from old to new in some way, still accompanies a shift in mindset.  Usually, as resolutions, these peter out quickly.  As tangible projects, particularly as continuations of SMART projects whose T=timed did not come to completion, they can be achieved with a few revisions to how they are pursued and measured.  

New Year's Eve Shabbat

Covering the hospitals on Christmas and surrounding days always assured me not having to do that for either Thanksgiving or New Year's.  Each could be festive, though the final day of the calendar year was nearly always a work day.  Festivities take place after work with the legal holiday something of a denouement with Bowl Games or just not having to go to work or check mail that day. 

Retirement takes a different perspective.  I no longer have work obligations on New Year's Eve so I can spend the day making a special dinner, much like on Thanksgiving.  This year it coincides with shabbos.  Since the span between supper and the Big Steel Ball knocking down New York comprises a lot of snacking with a split of bubbly when the Apple lights up, I've planned something of a contiguous indulgence from kiddush to welcoming the calendar transition.

Snacks tend to be milchig.  So will shabbos dinner.  Coulibiac, or Russian Fish Pie, always seems festive, making a small compromise with commercial puff pastry.  The price of mushrooms has gone up as has parsley.  Still I opted for Shop-Rite bunch parsley though leaves of my outdoor pot herb garden probably could have gotten me by.  Just enough steps to keep me engaged in cooking activities, not nearly as many as Thanksgiving.  A vegetable.  Got carrots.  Glaze with maple syrup or honey should contrast the fish pie, which already contains rice as the starch.  Cheesecake for dessert.  For some reason, amid a national cream cheese shortage, Shop-Rite has been selecting their house brand bricks for one of their leader sale items.  Add some sour cream or unflavored yogurt, sugar, graham crackers and eggs plus some patience in bringing items to room temperature and a multiday treat comes forth.  Sparkling cider in its finest form also on sale, to avoid the evil soda.

After supper snacks have been accumulating.  Cream puff mini's with a digital coupon, a few types of crackers.  Corn chips with salsa. We don't pop popcorn on shabbos, though.  

Kiddush to Big Steel Ball spans about six hours, though.  As attractive as these indulgences seem, unlikely I really want to make this one continuous meal.

The Mummers

New Year's Day in Philadelphia brings a tradition.  Groups called Mummers, who prepare all years for their glimpse of fame, strut along South Broad Street, reaching City Hall which lies on a plaza where Market and Broad Streets intersect.  There is a set of bleachers for which people can buy tickets, while judges make some assessments and present awards.  They then strut, never march, around the corner.  A local TV station usually covers the parade from beginning to end, which in recent years includes some indoor presentation as one of the divisions, The Fancy Brigades, have costumes that are not weather friendly.

Having lived in metro Philadelphia the vast majority of my adult life, I had never attended the Mummers Parade and rarely watched much of it on TV.  I had seen them perform off season, which they often do to raise money for their ornate costumes or rental of a practice facility.  But the full parade, never.  Legitimate excuses abound.  Cold weather, having to work the next day, out of town that day only happened once, too much champagne the night before.  But for 2019, unseasonably warm weather, dry skies, a split of bubbly instead of a bottle, left me without excuses.

Getting to Center City Philadelphia has a few options, but the commuter rail seemed the most suitable.  Fare $5.25 each way, holiday rates.  Since I boarded the train at its onset, various revelers, some with New Years hats or similar insignia, joined in at each stop.  Some were annual revelers who knew exactly where to get off.  Our train pulled into Suburban Station and everyone exited.  I thought I could just follow everyone else, but the station is a big place, spanning several blocks of underground.  By asking a few people dressed as either policemen or Mummers, I eventually found my way to the parade route, at a site after the judging.  Getting to the front of the crowd barricade proved rather easy.  I stood next to a small post which would allow me to steady my camera, the adjustable one with zoom lens and the cell phone accessory which would allow me to transmit the movie or still images quickly.

Before long the brigades started coming.  Far from military discipline, the participants semi-danced along the parade route, stopping along the barricades to give High 5's or to place beaded necklaces on the little girls.  A new set of strutters would appear about every 10 minutes.  There was music from times gone by, though I left before the popular string bands had their turn.  Gaudy costumes, painted faces though the blackface tradition had long since been banned, small trucks to receive the gear at the end of the route.  Stayed about an hour, maybe a little longer, called the kids to wish them a happy New Year on their cell phone answering devices, then headed home.

I had not been to Suburban Station in many years.  Work days bring a lot of communter traffic, served by Dunkin Donuts and the like.  Since the underground comprises several blocks, some of it far from where people enter and exit their trains, some of the areas have gotten seedy.  For the vagrants the rent is cheap, mainly keeping an eye out for the police, rest rooms too much of a bother for some, and the price of some underused psychotropic medicine too high.  Nobody seemed drunk despite the night before being a prime night for intoxication, nobody panhandled, and nobody appeared aggressive.  It was an eyesore just the same but off the path for which the desired tourists to the city would walk to get to the glittering buildings that rose from the sidewalks at street level.  Mummers are unique.  People who prosperity has passed by are not.

Happy New Year

A New Year

I stayed up late to watch the gaudy ball come down over Times Square, had a small amount of low priced but good Spanish bubbly, then departed for a night's sleep to begin tackling the tasks of the coming calendar year.  After pondering for a month, there is just not that much more personal upgrading that I would like to undertake.  It would be nice to live with less clutter but do I really want to do the things that bring it about?  Maximize longevity?  Yes, up to a point.  Exercise daily, probably not.  Write a book for posterity?  Maybe.  Create fixed time devoted to nothing else, unlikely.

For the first time in a while, I could say that life has been going reasonably well, with the usual stresses but 2011 had fewer crises than most.  The relative predictability of job, kids in school a while longer, stable home all create a lull to not want to seek very much beyond that.

Electronically Challenged

It took a geek to make my new iPod functional.  It's still not entirely functional.  Electronic Medical Records as I have used them the last three months impede my ability to think about patients.  My three computers, the main one, my laptop, and the one on my desk at work never seem to work at peak function.  And I get ripped off for most of the services I am compelled to purchase for these.

In a prior generation, when I was a potential geek on the sidelines, it was the cars that got enthusiasts enthused but irritated the rest of us by costly breakdowns for which we were dependent on people a little outside the main stream to get us mobile again.

My patients may have similar comments about me as their Patient Repairman.  I did not create the complexity of their physiology nor did I cause its malfunction, at least not initially.  Things are generally repairable and upgradable.  I do not perceive doctors as geeks the way I regard computer experts or auto mechanics, though the public may not concur.

This new calendar year, I will make a better effort to understand my electronic resources and bodily resources and use them in a more functional way.

Happy New Year.