Good to see the last day of 2009

New Year's Eve is largely a social celebration of the year's end, and rightly so, this year, since it needs to end and we should celebrate hoping for a better year throughout 2010. So while we are glad this year is over we also celebrate even more when the next year begins with hugs and kisses for everyone around in our company.

Every year up to a million people gather in Times Square to watch the ball drop, and an estimated 100 million in the United States will be watching television as the 11,875-pound, 12-foot diameter Waterford crystal ball located high above Times Square is lowered, starting at 11:59 p.m. and reaching the bottom of its tower 60 seconds later, at the stroke of midnight signifying the beginning of 2010. The first New Year's Eve celebration was held in Times Square (then known as Longacre Square) in 1904.

It must be a great celebration for that many people to cope with the usually very cold temperature. The average temperature at midnight in New York City since the ball dropping tradition began in 1907 is 33.7 degrees. At last year's ball drop, the temperature was 18 degrees.

If the year 2010 has more bad news in store for us than what we have witnessed in 2009 it will be hard for us to take more unexpected happenings and bad news. The government's takeover and management of just about everything, the failure of the stock market, the failure of so many people who we all depended upon financially and emotionally, the deaths of so many very famous and well known celebrities, the attempts at changing how health care is provided, the birth of so many babies by one person, the explosion of the cell phone industry and texting, the total decadence and immorality in television programming.

It's as if everyone in charge believes in the end of the world in December 2012 and may be trying to get everything they can without regard to the long-term consequences. It won't matter anyway in 2013.

Many workers will be starting the year off with some good news if they are working tomorrow because of the holiday pay, perhaps double time pay while others will get a free day off, at least I did while working for the government.

The PW and I wish for all to have a healthy, prosperous and happy new year.

Guts
A DeLand friend, Joe Rogers, sent me the following example of a word that could be used to define today's governing dignitaries.

Chutzpah is a word meaning gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, sheer guts plus arrogance; it's Yiddish and, as Leo Rosten writes, no other word, and no other language, can do it justice.

This example is better than a thousand words.

A little old lady sold pretzels on a street corner for 25 cents each.

Every day a young man would leave his office building at lunch time and as he passed the pretzel stand he would leave her a quarter, but never take a pretzel.

And this went on for more than three years. The two of them never spoke.

One day as the young man passed the old lady's stand and left his quarter as usual, the pretzel lady spoke to him.

Without blinking an eye she said: "They're 35 cents now."