Peoria Times
December 30, 2021
OPINION
9
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AROUND THE BLUHMIN’ TOWN
Fasten your seat belt for the New Year, folks BY JUDY BLUHM Peoria Times Columnist
Are you ready to board Flight 2022? Well, fasten your seat belts because we are on the verge of saying “hello” to a New Year. Ready or not, it is coming, so we might as well pop the cork, pour the bubbly, and watch the ball in Time Square (or boot in Prescott) drop. Time, once again, is marching into the beginning of a new calendar, dragging us along with it. New Year’s celebrations have been going on for over 4,000 years. This is the oldest of holidays and was first observed in ancient Babylon with a festival that lasted for 11 days! It was those party animals, the Babylonians, who first came up with the idea to make New Year’s resolutions. What would
those earliest resolutions be? The most common was to return borrowed tools. (If you have a few tools that you borrowed from a neighbor still in your garage, now might be the time to return them). My colleague has made a resolution that she will not shop for any clothes or shoes in 2022 (drastic). I have a friend who says she is going to train her Arabian for a 100-mile race (unbelievable). A cousin claims she will not cook a thing in 2022 so she can “rest” her culinary skills and do more creative things (crazy). Hmmm, in my house not cooking translates to not eating. And so it goes. But why even bother with resolutions? Aren’t they just impossible little statements that cause disappointment? Let’s get past this ancient ritual and just embrace the New Year with a reasonable attitude. Mark Twain had a philosophy that
we should keep all of our “bad habits.” He wrote that habits are like baggage that comes in handy when your ship is sinking and you need to throw something overboard. He claimed that when your health begins to fail, it is always good to have a “few bad habits,” like smoking, drinking and overeating, that you can “toss aside.” I mentioned this philosophy to my physician, and she adamantly disagrees. On that note, I suppose healthy eating and lifestyle choices should be a resolution worth considering. Reflecting back on 2021 might cause us to wonder how the year flew by. Many Americans moved, left their jobs and worked from home. It seems like everyone was remodeling. Housing prices soared. So did gas prices and inflation. We learned how to have meetings on Zoom and video calls became a big part of our life. Many folks limit-
ed travel, parties and gatherings. The coronavirus reared its head and still caused havoc. We experienced supply shortages that we simply aren’t used to in America. And we cooked. As one woman emailed me, “Never did I consider that being an adult would mean that I will need to cook dinner every night. Of my entire life. For the rest of my life.” Yes, the cooking classes began at the beginning of the pandemic and have never stopped. Welcome aboard Flight 2022. Takeoff is New Year’s Day. There is no baggage allowed on this flight. Only positive attitudes, hope for better days, and faith for reaching new heights. Destination? New beginnings. PT
City.” To you, the city was home once, the backdrop for a million childhood memories: a piping hot slice of pizza dripping with cheese, a walk around the Central Park reservoir, the concrete stoop fronting the old red brick apartment in Queens, the Garden for a Knicks game, a knish purchased from a street vendor and painted in brown mustard. She dreamed aloud. You egged it on, and thus a trip was born. New York at Christmastime and for New Year’s Eve. Plane tickets were purchased; hotel, theater and dinner reservations were made.
And then Omicron showed up, which is exactly America’s luck in 2021. The spiking pandemic gives rise to a question, one that feels a little bit like some bad “Hamlet,” given that vacation issues are a decidedly first-world problem to have in the midst of global affliction. To go or not to go? To get on that jetliner, which departs tonight, or to cancel our plans and instead spend Christmas watching “Miracle on 34th Street” instead of living it? Some background: We have both been vaccinated three times, and thus have been maximally protected against the dread virus. We are both in good
health. We both understand that New York City will still be there next month, next year, next vacation or the one after that. And yet making the trip still feels tempting, especially when you run the numbers in your head. Last week in New York City, the infection rate among all 8 million residents was 193 infections for every 100,000 people. That’s a tenth of a percentage point chance of getting sick — and the infection rate for the vaccinated is half as much. This year in New York, COVID-19
Judy Bluhm is a writer and a local Realtor. Have a story or a comment? Email Judy at judy@judybluhm.com.
Big Apple trip poses a question befitting ‘Hamlet’ BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ Peoria Times Columnist
Early on in your relationship, she confessed a semi-startling fact. While she had visited China as a little girl and walked along the Great Wall, never once had she been to New York City. To her, the metropolis back east seemed like a gleaming trophy to life made large. Broadway, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty. Skyscrapers and a chance to stride up Fifth Avenue in spike heels, like Carrie in “Sex and the
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