Happy - -or at least a tolerable - - New Year! As I write this the cold rain to precede the predicted snow has just begun. Hope it's as beautiful as the one in December of last year (!) was.

     Here's a quatrain written by a resident during that one:

I lay in bed and saw

Bits of sunlight

Bright as stars

Caught in the icy trees.

E.E.H.

     Did you know that no two single snowflake is ever exactly the same as any other?

     At least that's what Rezzy read once. Who knows where or when!

     But if that is so, how presumptuous of all the know-it-alls to think each of us should approach some norm!   

     Shudder how many checks we'll write before we get the year right?

     Last year wasn't too bad. Once you saw it written you only had to remember a 2 and a zero and decide the order in which they occurred. 2002? 2020?

     Of course nothing about any other aspects of the year was quietly reassuring. Be grateful for small favors.

     2003 2003 2003 2003 2003

If you're a bridge fan, I'm sure you read the Tulsa World's Bridge Hand each day.    

     If you're not game for bridge "Dear Abby" is on

  the same page. She'll keep you touch with today's real world. Which may be somewhere you would rather not go!

     "Dr. Donohue" is on the same page. He can help you to stay informed about the symptoms, fears and pathology of all the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." At least those of the people whose letters he answered in the column.

     But the one on that page which Rezzy recommends is:

     "THINK ON THESE THINGS" It is written by Joyce Sequichie Hifler. It is seldom in the same spot on the page; it is not always the same shape. In short, it is as varied as the writer's concerns and viewing angles. Reading her is usually like viewing a familiar idea through a prism instead of as one usually sees it.

     One of her little essays in December began with the question, "Are we teaching ourselves to be quiet?"

     Good question for all of us who feel a sense of inadequacy when we aren't doing something.

     Toward the end f the writing, Hifler says:  "- - learn to be quiet; learn how to mature gracefully, learn how to love without possessing - - "

     Let Rezzy pre-empt those good admonitions as a New Year's Greeting. - 

Happy, Quiet New Year!