RESOLUTIONS
Weekly correspondence
Fawn Staten came up with a New Year’s resolution in 2001 that proved so successful, she has practiced it consistently since. After living in various places around the country, she vowed to keep in touch with her widely scattered friends by sending a handwritten letter or card to someone once a week.
“I found out that people love to get mail that isn’t junk mail or a bill,” said Staten, 41, who said she doesn’t use Facebook. “I’ve really touched a lot of my friends. It makes people so happy, and it makes me happy.”
The Harrison West resident said she probably has averaged more than one mailing a week, ranging from a simple birthday card to multipage letters.
“I’m single-handedly keeping the post office in business,” she said. “I buy stamps by the hundreds.”
Strings lessons
For years, Kathy Lewis listened wistfully to her daughter, Becky, play the violin.
“She got into the country music and fiddle-type music,” Lewis said, “and I would listen to these jam sessions and think, ‘Man, I want to do that.’”
The 62-year-old resident of Rockbridge, in Hocking County, retired from a sales-manager position in August and decided that now is the time to pursue that goal. She borrowed the violin back from her daughter, now 30; had the instrument reconditioned; and pledged to become proficient at it in 2018.
“I actually bought the book ‘Violin for Dummies,’ which walks you through all the bowing and fingering techniques,” she said. “I’m ready for a new challenge.”
She recognizes that she has some work to do. Recently, she taught herself the Cat Stevens tune “Morning Has Broken,” then asked her husband, Chris, to listen to her rendition.
“He said, ‘Oh, honey, that’s really great,’ and I said, ‘So you knew what song it was?’” Lewis recalled.
“And he said, ‘Oh, was it a song?’ That’s not good.”
An achievable goal
Melissa Faulkner is not a “resolutions” person, she says. Instead, the 22-year-old Clintonville resident has life goals, which she doesn’t necessarily tie to a new year.
Viewing resolutions as silly, she decided last year to set a silly goal.
“My roommate always refilled the Brita water pitcher we have in the fridge,” Faulkner said, “and I never did it.”
So she resolved to do her share of refilling — and was successful.
This year, then, she is aiming to change the pitcher’s filter more often.
“The point is that you can have those little victories and feel excited when you achieve them,” Faulkner said. “It’s fun to reflect on a year and say, ‘Oh, I actually did this because I set the bar so low.’”
Political motivation
Ann Everett said she has long been informed on important issues and never missed a chance to vote. Events of the past year or so, however, prompted the East Side resident to resolve to become politically active this year. “I’ve never felt this unhappy and scared about what’s going on, and I just don’t agree with anything that’s happening,” said Everett, 62. “I thought, ‘Why sit around and let other people go out and work?’”
Everett isn’t sure exactly what her activism will look like. She thinks her first step will be to volunteer on the re-election campaign for U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.
“I really do feel motivated.”
What is a peacoat named after?
Peacoat (or jacket) did not originally refer to a P.-jacket (an abbreviation of pilot’s jacket), but derives from pijjekker, a short, double-breasted, heavy woolen coat which was worn by Dutch sailors as early as the 15th century. is the Dutch word for a coarse, thick cloth, and means “jacket”.
How long has Reader’s Digest been around?
In 1920, media entrepreneur DeWitt Wallace created an idea for a new media property: a monthly periodical that contained one interesting and timely story for each day of the month. Two years later, Reader’s Digest was published, with DeWitt and his wife, Lila Wallace, on the masthead as editors. From the beginning, the Reader’s Digest Association’s business model was different. It bypassed traditional distribution to sell the magazine directly to consumers by mail. It also had a strict no-ads policy to ensure that nothing came between its stories and its readers.
Where did the saying “see a man about a horse” come from?
It means to politely excuse yourself from a situation to go to the restroom or buy a drink. It originated from men disappearing to go bet on horse or dog races. See a man about a dog means the same thing.
The earliest confirmed publication is the 1866 Dion Boucicault play “Flying Scud” in which a character knowingly breezes past a difficult situation saying, "Excuse me Mr. Quail, I can't stop; I’ve got to see a man about a dog.” In a listing for a 1939 revival on the NBC Radio program “America’s Lost Plays,” Time magazine observed that the phrase is the play’s “claim to fame.”
During Prohibition in the United States, the phrase was most commonly used in relation to the consumption or purchase of alcoholic beverages.
Sources: "The Facts on File Encylopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson, Webster’s New College Dictionary, https:// www.trustedmediabrands. com/history/, https://www. urbandictionary.com/define. php?term=See%20a%20 man%20about%20a%20 horse