New Year Resolutions

By Alan on Dec 28 in Blog tagged Dennis Adamson, garden, Happy New Year, January 2st, make a garden, New years resolutions, stop eating sweets | Comments Off

Week 51 – New Year Resolutions

Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to.  Bill Vaughan

Old age is when you no longer care to watch the ball drop in New York on TV and go to bed when you live 2 times zones earlier. Dennis Adamson

He who breaks a resolution is a weakling;
He who makes one is a fool. F.M. Knowles

New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time. James Agate

Good [New Year] resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account. Oscar Wilde

May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions. Joey Adams

One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this:

“To rise above the little things.” John Burroughs

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential. Ellen Goodman

People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and the New Year, but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas. Author Unknown

From this last quote maybe we should be making New Year Resolutions that will allow you to eat better during the coming year.  One way to do this is to eat those things that we grow.  It has been shown that kids are more likely to eat things that they have grown themselves.

I was looking through documentaries on Netflix recently and came across an interesting one called, “Beyond the Gates of Splendor” directed and written by Jim Hanon and produced by Kevin McAfee.  It was about a group of missionary families from an unnamed Christian group who went to a region of the headwaters of the Amazon River  in Ecuador to help the indigenous peoples there.  They learned of a vicious tribe called the Waodani.   The Waodani were not only vicious toward other tribes and outsiders, but also toward each other.  They settled their difference by spearing each other to death.  If they didn’t die right away, they could request that their children be killed and buried with them.  The missionaries eventually spotted one of their villages while flying over the region.  Five of the missionary husbands decided to make personal contact with them after flying over the village and dropping supplies and presents several times.  They landed their plane on a sandbar near the village and were visited by 3 of the tribe members.  When one of the tribesmen lied about what the missionaries were doing, he and other men killed all 5 of the missionaries.  Surprisingly, two of the wives made contact with this tribe and lived with them for a long period of time.  Because of these women changes were made in their way of life.

Some of the missionaries’ younger family members were raised with the tribe.  One of the sons of a murdered missionary took his family back to live with them.  They became very attached to members of the village.   A grandson of one of the murdered missionary started calling Mincaye, one of those that had killed his grandfather, ‘Grandfather’.  After he had returned to the US and finished college he asked his father to bring Mincaye to the US for his graduation.  I found the comments of Mincaye, about our culture, to be insightful.

When Mincaye was in the airport, he spotted the moving sidewalks.  When he returned to the tribe he said, “The foreigners are really big and fat because even when they go walking they don’t move their feet they just get on the trail and the trail moves.”

He told them, “They don’t walk, they don’t climb, they don’t make gardens.”  The villagers asked, “How are they going to live then?”  Mincaye said, “They have these big food houses and there is just piles of food.”  He described going to the checkout counter at the ‘big food houses’.   “First there’s these young people (the cashier) and they are standing at the place where you go out and you smile as big as you can.  They pretend like they’re not seeing you and then after a little while then they look at you and then they smile and when they smile then, boom, you can just go take all of the food with you.”  They had tried to explain to him that they had paid for the food with a credit card.  Mincaye said, “They just give it right back to you.”  He couldn’t understand the transaction with the credit card.

They took him to a fast food restaurant with a drive thru window.  Mincaye said, “Some of the foreigners are so nice that even when you are driving you just stop by their houses and you go to one of the openings in their walls and they just open it for you and then they start giving you food and it is already hot and it is already cooked and stuff.”

Mincaye took advantage of every chance he got to eat at these places and the documentary showed him eating what looked like a huge ice cream sundae among other things.  When he got back to the village his wife, Ompodae, complained, “Big and fat Mincaye came back.”   She complained that he was so fat that when she would give him a job he would just go out and sit under a tree.

Well I have gotten ‘big and fat’ this fall and early winter.  I have been enjoying those big food houses and homes with openings in the walls where they give you hot cooked food and stuff.  I had my yearly physical last week and my triglycerides were high and my HDL (good cholesterol) was low.  I need to get back to ‘walking and climbing and making gardens.

I have started my New Year Resolution early.  I have stopped eating sweets and lots of carbohydrates.   I am eating more salads from my cold frame and have cut way back on the cheeses that I had gotten into a habit of eating every day.  I have to go back to the doctor in 3 months to check on my progress.  I will report on how successful I am.

I hope that you all had a joyously Merry Christmas and will have a great New Year!

“That ye put off the old man, which is corrupt … 23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; 24 And that ye put on the new man … 32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.” Eph. 4: 22

Next week: One of Alan’s suggestions: A Survival Garden

Dennis Adamson – Master Gardner
adamsond@juno.com = Email Dennis any of your questions!
For The Family