Happy New Year!

We were part of a Chinese New Year's celebration last night, hosted by a couple who have recently returned from spending six years in China. It was a gala evening of wine, "real" Chinese food, a slide show of pictures, and good conversation.

Only once before have I celebrated Chinese New Year. That was many years--decades--ago, in Boston, when we went to a parade in Boston's Chinatown with some Danish friends. It was colorful, but not as elaborate as the parades and fireworks I saw on TV yesterday. I remember that the weather was very cold. Perhaps we topped off the afternoon with a visit to Joyce Chen's Cambridge restaurant. Joyce Chen pioneered Chinese cooking in the U.S. She had a cooking program on WGBH, the public television station in Boston, which aired in 1966-67, after the better-known Julia Child had begun to teach America how to cook French. Joyce Chen was the first TV cooking chef I knew, as I was still living in Ohio in the early 1960s when The French Chef began broadcasting, from Boston but not all they way to small-town Ohio.

The New Year's celebration last night was in a warmer locale, and the food was better than I remembered from Joyce Chen's restaurant, when I had been surprised by very sticky white rice. For one thing, we had the option of brown rice last night, in addition to the traditional white (but less sticky). With the rice we had an egg and tomato dish, which our hosts explained had been their regular Monday night dinner while in China, because that was what their housekeeper prepared. It reminded me a bit of the Egg Foo Yung that had been featured on one of the episodes of the Joyce Chen program that I had seen during my early married years, but the egg was fluffier and there was lots of tomato, which was an ingredient that I don't recall Chen using, and which I don't think I've seen in American Chinese restaurants.

Prior to the egg, tomato, and rice we enjoyed a delicious cold salad of diced cucumber and carrot with boiled whole peanuts, with a nice dressing that could be spiced up with various sauces. Most cuisines have a cucumber salad, I have learned, but this may be the best I have ever tasted. It probably would not be bad with garbanzo beans instead of the peanuts, but less authentic, I suppose. It would also make a refreshing main dish summer salad.

After the rice and egg we made dumplings, a traditional Chinese New Year food, we were told. Some of us made them, that is. I just watched, sampled, and observed a handy little plastic dumpling press that the hostess told me she had found at the CAM International Market in Cincinnati, a giant supermarket that I had stumbled upon and previously walked through in awe, but where I had been too unprepared to buy anything. Now I have a mission: that dumpling press is the perfect gadget I need to make mini-empanadas for an Argentine meal.

We had been warned that the Chinese don't do good wine, so I went prepared to stick to the Chinese beer that had been promised instead. But our host had found wine with labels depicting roosters, and since we were entering the Year of the Rooster, that was a good enough excuse to offer wine as well and still be in the spirit of China.

The Rooster is one of the twelve zodiac signs of the Chinese calendar and connotes fidelity and punctuality. That "punctuality" characteristic would prove that I am not born in any year of the rooster. Rather, I discovered, I was born in the year of the pig, which suggests a whole host of characteristics that are not particularly pleasing to me.  The best that can be said for the year of the pig is that it behaves itself and wishes no harm to others. Therefore I will refrain from any further comments on the Chinese zodiac.

On the Line

I did not go to Washington, D.C. for the Women's March last Saturday; I did not even make the trek to Washington Park in Cincinnati for the local "sister" march, though I support most of the various causes espoused so eloquently and peaceably by the hugely divergent groups of women who assembled worldwide to bring attention to women's rights and threats to them under the new U.S. administration.

Instead I chose to make one small, concrete effort on a single issue: feeding at-risk school children in Cincinnati. When schools close on Friday afternoon each week, a shocking proportion of students go home not knowing whether they will be able to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner during the weekend. Freestore Foodbank helps to reduce the number of students who may not eat, or eat nutritiously, on Saturday and Sunday.

I helped to assemble Power Packs. A Power Pack is a brown paper bag containing easy-to-prepare and shelf-stable food for one person for two days. The food in a Power Pack may include whole grain cereals, fruit and vegetable juices, sunflower seeds, health bars, complete pasta meals, and other healthy options. We had four assembly lines going on Saturday, and I was in station two of one of them. I received a bag in which my partner in station one had placed a cup of beef-a-roni and another cup of...I can't remember what microwaveable individual main dish. My job was to insert a bottle of some branded sports/health water that I had never seen before, and a tetra pack of cherry juice, balanced on its side. My partner on my right placed a cup of applesauce next to the juice, and some pudding. She then passed the bag down the line to three other people, who inserted more food items. I never had the time to find out what products they were putting in. At the end of the line, someone folded over the tops of the bags, someone else taped them shut, and another person packed six bags in a precise pattern into a cartoon and placed the cartons on a pallet.

In addition to the four assembly lines of packers, there were people uncrating products and moving them quickly from pallets to the assembly line, and removing the empty brown cartons, breaking them down, and dropping them into tall dumpsters. There were probably 50-60 volunteers there Saturday morning, some of whom were veterans, and others who were novices, like me. In two hours we filled more than 2000 Power Packs, moved them out to a loading dock, and replenished products in the assembly lines for the next group that was coming in. When we were told to wind up, I was just beginning to realize that I was tired of standing on my feet and moving in a limited, prescribed motion for two hours with no break. But it was a great feeling to know that some kids would eat better next weekend because of what we had done. I hope to come back for another shift next month.

The Freestore Foodbank's Power Packs are part of a larger national effort called Feeding America.  Perhaps there is one near you.

So Many Books ... More Time to Read

Each month in our Scandinavian Scribblers writing group we read aloud during the meeting what we have written at home. You learn something about your fellow writers when you hear them share their stories month after month. Their selection of topics, the details of what they relate, and the way they say it all contribute to the experience.  Most often we write personal stories, and therefore we have learned about our fellow members, their arenas and grandparents, their children, their work, avocations, and travel. This past Monday one of our members, who worked for many years as a scientist, reported on a technical study of the effects of reading on longevity.

The provenance of the report is amusing. Our Scribbler found the story in a Danish language newspapers, published in the U.S. Essentially he translated the brief article from Danish to English for us. It told of a Yale study of 3600 people over 50 years of age that concluded that book readers lived longer than people who did not read.  Subjects were divided into three groups: those who did not read books at all, those who read 3 1/2 hours per week, and those who read more. People who read for up to 3 1/2 hours per week were 17 percent less likely to die during the 12 years of follow-up, and those who read more than that were 23 percent less likely to die. On average, book readers lived two years longer than those who did not read at all. Although a similar correlation existed for those who read newspapers and magazines but not books, it was weaker than for those who read books.

I did not catch all the details of the report during the meeting, but I congratulated myself for taking a picture of the news article tom the Bien newspaper so I could read it later. Unfortunately, my photo wasn't good enough for me to really read all the details. I noticed that the Bien article had gotten its facts from the New York Times. It was a simple matter, therefore, to run a Google search and find the New York Times story as well as other coverage in the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and professional literature and sites as well. Most of the coverage was markedly similar--three or four paragraphs, all with the same facts, descriptions, and quotes.Occasionally some analysis or even questioning would be added and a longer article ensued. Several of the articles named the original journal in which the results had been reported: Social Science & Medicine, September 2016 issue. I followed the links through to see whether I could get to the article, but no, it was behind a pay wall. The abstract was available for free, however:

Abstract
Although books can expose people to new people and places, whether books also have health benefits beyond other types of reading materials is not known. This study examined whether those who read books have a survival advantage over those who do not read books and over those who read other types of materials, and if so, whether cognition mediates this book reading effect. The cohort consisted of 3635 participants in the nationally representative Health and Retirement Study who provided information about their reading patterns at baseline. Cox proportional hazards models were based on survival information up to 12 years after baseline. A dose-response survival advantage was found for book reading by tertile (HRT2 = 0.83, p < 0.001, HRT3 = 0.77, p < 0.001), after adjusting for relevant covariates including age, sex, race, education, comorbidities, self-rated health, wealth, marital status, and depression. Book reading contributed to a survival advantage that was significantly greater than that observed for reading newspapers or magazines (tT2 = 90.6, p < 0.001; tT3 = 67.9, p < 0.001). Compared to non-book readers, book readers had a 23-month survival advantage at the point of 80% survival in the unadjusted model. A survival advantage persisted after adjustment for all covariates (HR = .80, p < .01), indicating book readers experienced a 20% reduction in risk of mortality over the 12 years of follow up compared to non-book readers. Cognition mediated the book reading-survival advantage (p = 0.04). These findings suggest that the benefits of reading books include a longer life in which to read them.

After I read it, I determined that I need not try the original article. The level of scholarly description and statistical analysis was more than I can comfortably tackle. I sure would hate to use up my "extra" two hours of life reading academic jargon when it would be much more beneficial and fun to read a book.

Epiphany

I remember that it was an epiphany for me a few years ago when I realized that the serious Christian holiday of Epiphany coincided with the Spanish holiday of Three Kings Day, the day on which Spanish children received their Christmas gifts, brought by the Three Kings, not Santa Claus.

The Three Kings, or Three Wise Men, had to go on a long journey to get to the baby Jesus after they heard he had been born in Bethlehem. It took them 12 days--the Twelve Days of Christmas. Ah, suddenly all these yuletide references are coming together.

I loved the Spanish star, which showed motion from one point to another, where it hung over Bethlehem to show the way for the Wise Men. It was featured in all the belenes (the Bethlehems),  elaborate Christmas village scenes that were the centerpiece of each town's Christmas celebrations (no worries about celebrating a religious holiday on government grounds here).

I also loved the tradition of not having to have all Christmas decorations down by January 1st. Since Three Kings Day falls on January 6, and that's when the Three Kings come to deliver gifts, it is perfectly acceptable to have Christmas decorations up through January 6.

So now I have begun thinking of January 6th as the day that I should start thinking about taking down Christmas decorations. And since it fell on Friday this year, I figured I would have the weekend to remove traces of yuletide from my house. But we had gotten only a few decorations up this year, since we were doing a major kitchen renovation, which somehow seems to spill over into the rest of the house--at least the first floor--and we got them up late. And then we had an unexpected event on Friday that demanded attention through Sunday. So here I am Sunday evening two days after Epiphany, and the decorations are still up. I'll get to them tomorrow, maybe. Well, probably not, since I will be out all day. Tuesday, then.

But then there is the Danish Christmas song:

"Julen varer lige til Påske."   [Christmas lasts until Easter.]

So I still have time. And the julenisser (Christmas elves) can stay nestled on the mantle for another day or two.

Planning for the New Year

I spent a couple days this week filling in the pages of my new 2017 calendar with activities scheduled for the new year. There are a lot of them, and I hope I got all my commitments down and can avoid some of the conflicts--and more importantly, forgotten appointments--that I experienced in 2016.

This necessary exercise made me realize how much my life has changed in the past two years, since we moved from Spain. Petánque, Spanish classes, and the next tapas run no longer are the most important dates noted in my calendar. This week I wrote in dates for my monthly writing group and two reading groups, quarterly and monthly musical performance events, monthly "senior" luncheons, church committee and service dates, a few upcoming medical appointments, and a whole slew of courses and presentations for which I registered in the winter OLLI trimester. I also wrote in the dates for two trips that are already scheduled, and checked for the optimum dates for a third trip in the "definitely-going but not sure when" category.

Notably absent were two trips that I have been making yearly for a couple decades or more. These would be the semiannual conferences of the American Library Association. Although I am still working part-time and would still benefit from this regular immersion into education, networking, and entertainment, I have decided this year that my priorities are shifting and I would rather allot my money, time, and energy to newer areas of interest--one of which presents a conference opportunity at the exact same time as one of the ALA meetings. I still pencilled them in on the calendar, so I would be aware of when they were happening, but I'll be participating only from my desktop.

There is a posting going round and round on Facebook suggesting that each week of 2017 you put a piece of paper into a jar with a few words noting something good that happened to you that week, and then at the end of the year, you would be able to look back and see that you had had a good year.  I "liked" this when I first saw it and said to myself, "After all, that's what SundaysinSpain, the predecessor blog to this one, was all about." I wrote it to concentrate once a week on something good, funny, or thoughtful about the experiences I was having while living in Spain, and then sharing it with family and friends at a distance, and the occasional unknown person from the public who stumbled across it by chance or a Google search. I had been pondering why it was relatively easy for me to post in that blog religiously, as it were, almost every Sunday, whereas it is obviously difficult for me to do so with Sundays in Cincinnati.

One reason for the difference was that I was less busy in Spain than I am here; I had fewer things to do and therefore it was easier to pick an event or a thought to write about Here I have far more that I do, and I am enjoying it, and therefore it is harder to pick one thing and concentrate on it. And of course, since I am doing more, there is less time to write. Another reason is that I no longer have the need to communicate with my family through the distance, because they are here. I don't imagine that my Spain friends make it a point to look at Sundays in Cincinnati for a post each week, while my family in Cincinnati did let me know if I failed to write in Sundays in Spain.

The compelling reason for posting less often in a blog, though, is undoubtedly that I am posting more often on Facebook. That is something that many of the Spain friends do see, as well as more-distant family and friends from Denmark, Argentina, and other parts of the U.S. Actually, I don't post on Facebook as often as I "share" a post, and even though I never share a post that I haven't read completely (going to the source link and waiting for it to load, then reading it, and then going back to Facebook) I have to say that the effort that goes into the Facebook post or share is less than what goes into a blog post.

But my FB posts and shares are almost always more substantive than what's in a 140-character tweet. I tweeted briefly, by the way, from December 2007 through some time in 2012, generating fewer tweets in five years than Donald Trump does in a month. And even a tweet is longer than a few words  on a piece of paper stuck in a jar for a year.

So I know I'm not doing the jar thing in 2017. I do use, and keep, my yearly calendars as a sort of diary, but the entries there would be little more than the words-in-a-jar approach. And I have no intention of joining the president on Twitter, though I would do that it it would keep the mainstream media from using their airtime to tell me over and over again what he had posted. I would like to say that I will return to blog posting "religiously" every Sunday, but it is in fact my new-found "religion" that is one of the reasons I find it difficult to do that. So it is a toss-up as to whether the best chronicle of my year will be here or on Facebook. Facebook, of course, will remind me 365 days or fewer from now of what it thinks is significant of what I posted this year. But that's their evaluation. So I'm going to make greater efforts to return to a chronicle here.