Let’s Figure This One Out Together

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In the Bleak Midwinter

Oftentimes, this column starts as a handful of tips I’ve gleaned over a month, via reading and conversations. I cobble a column together for Dear Reader around those tips, tying them together with an emerging theme. The theme becomes the title. It’s not an intellectual process; it just unfolds. Let us see, together, where this one goes, shall we? I’m curious myself.

This December, for many, was a month of x-treme holiday busy-ness (performances, volunteering, religious services, gift-getting and making, and decorating—which always unearths some cry-worthy old family ornament or photo or child’s art). Many felt the holiday prep time too compressed this year, a full weekend shorter than usual. I think this is why people kept saying, “It doesn’t feel like Christmas.” Or maybe that’s just the age of the crowd I run with. 

With all the socializing, there was much discussion of the Current State of Things, at home and abroad. There was some hopefulness, a lot of apprehension, and less faith in governing bodies and corporations (and people) than I’ve ever heard in my lifetime. Maybe that blasted pandemic rocketed us into not just a new direction, but a new dimension entirely. In 10 years it’ll all make more sense. Like when a presidency or marriage is later re-evaluated in the longer scheme of history. Too soon to tell.

For now: some tips. Then let’s see if we can extract the columnular Theme, which so far remains unclear.

Hang Out with Others if it Kills You
You may have over-mingled last month. But while allowing less time for solitude and wintry deep thots, spending time with the right people is a sane-making distraction at the least, and a whale of a good time at the most. Get in the habit of getting together, no matter the temperature, before that nasty Cabin Fever kicks in.

Jar of Thanks
There is a free magazine available in churches (stay with me here). “The Upper Room,” written by ordinary folks worldwide, has a daily Bible quote with an uplifting personal story from the “ordinary” author. The one for New Year’s Eve was by an American who writes on a slip of paper every day something he’s thankful for, and puts it in a jar. On New Year’s Day, he empties the jar and reads them all. I started mine, in a funky vase that catches the light. Dear Reader can start one late, who cares? It’s proves a lovely way to end the day. I bet it’ll make New Year’s Day a real bawlfest. “Oh, remember that? How dear! Boo hoo hoo.” Can’t wait.

Make Goals, Not Resolutions
Attainable goals. Not, “I’ll go to the gym every day for 5 years.” (Or: making a list of your accomplishments in the prior year can be more fun.) My main goal, if I may reveal: to feel cheery in the face of all manner of reasons not to be. Despite terrible things happening, it does no one any good to feel hopeless or lousy. Acknowledge the event, do something about it if you can, then shift gears. Wish me luck, I’m not good at this. Others are. I’m open to advice.

Lie to Yourself
…in the mirror and say, “Damn, I look better already!” Maybe you do.

Spread Reasons to be Cheerful 
The New York Times, which keeps stats separate from the FBI, calculated in 2024 an actually far lower rate of murder than in recent years, along with other violent crimes. It’s not often you see “violent crimes” or “murder rate” in a piece meant to be uplifting, but there you have it. Now go look at NASA’s Image of the Day. Exquisite or weird, each is mindblowing and broadens your perspective.

Share Helpful Tips
Here’s how to glue different materials together, suggested by a techie whiz kid I know.

How to fix your own devices: Nearly every appliance and electronics device, large or small, bears a plate or panel with the model# and serial#. Take a photo of it. Then go to www.partselect.com, where you can search by brand, model/part, or symptom.

Good Deeds
… are as strong a medicine as laughter. Focusing on others, not yourself, and ameliorating someone else’s situation, well, what’s better than that? It’s even in The Wizard of Oz: “Back where I come from there are men who do nothing all day but good deeds. They are called phila… er, phila… er, yes, er, Good Deed Doers.”  They must be very happy people, Mr. Wizard!

Have and Cause Laffs
Years ago, a colleague’s son visited his grandmother at Christmas time and saw her miniature nativity scene. Upon returning home he remarked, “Grandma’s Jesus dollhouse is really cool.” 

A friend who’s half Jewish/half Catholic celebrates both holidays. When her kids were young, the rabbi from Chabad House arrived unexpectedly. They couldn’t not invite him in, so they all maneuvered him to keep him from seeing their Christmas tree. “Check out our new painting!” or, “Oh look, a bird!” Still cracks me up.

I highly recommend hanging around people who have contagious laughs (Anderson Cooper?), and listening to the recent “Fiasco!” episode of the This American Life (now on podcast). These true stories of fiascos are hilarious. I was laughing so hard I almost drove off the road.  People who drove past me then also snickered. It made me feel we were all in this together, which we of course are.

So, what does Dear Reader think these ingredients create thematically? The pieces seem to be this: help others, and spread good cheer, hot tips, and big laffs. Which we will definitely need in 2025, which promises to be a weird one. How we start the New Year is important; start early on establishing new habits this year. (I began my year with a snowy walk and a nap. Not bad!) Adversity has been and will always be there, as will wrenching stories of ills befalling others.  Our good spirits and good deeds are the best antidote. We are indeed all in this together.  

I have absolutely no idea how this can coalesce into a succinct columnular title. Wait:  I think it’s the one I already wrote; just make it about the year ahead instead of about this humble column.

Tell me about your first good deed of 2025. How was it, exciting? I’m certain it was. Good year, Dear Reader, good good-deed doing, and good day.

Ann Aikens is an author, columnist, speaker, and blogger. Her darkly comical book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, was published in 2023, her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. Find contact info and bookshops at annaikens.com; her blog is uppervalleygirl.com.

Good Time of Year for Repairs

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As we’ve been snowed in, and will (hopefully) continue to be early and often, it’s a great time of year for puttering. This pony’s leg broke off above the fetlock … 10 years ago? It’s in a Baggie that I trot out with all my ornaments every year — and never deal with — before putting it away in January.

This is the year. With advice from This to That, a website tip from a whiz-bang smarty colleague of mine. “Because people have a need to glue things to other things.”

‘Tis The Season to be Gifty (and Thrifty!)

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For me, gift shopping has to do with the experience. I rarely buy gifts online. I much prefer holiday craft bazaars and going to magical shops like New Moon and Royal Towne Gifts in Randolph, Free Verse Farm Shop in Chelsea, Althea’s Attic Boutique in Montpelier, Yankee Bookshop in Woodstock, a dozen others. Go see the lights in Bethel one night! Lovely.

Books make great presents because they can be re-gifted to friends or donated to charities. I’m currently digging a book by local publisher, Inner Traditions in Rochester, “The Culinary Pharmacy: Intuitive Eating, Ancestral Healing, and your Personal Nutrition Plan.” For the health conscious, crunchy people, and self-improvers on your list, it’s ideal.

For those being tormented one way or another at work, school, or home, let them Snark in the New Year with “The Snark Handbook.” This will arm them with witty zingers. Hilarious. The GIFT of laffs – and verbal self-defense. Sample: “Gee what a terrific party. Later on we’ll get some fluid and embalm each other.” – Neil Simon.

Instead of gift cards to big box stores, try gift certificates at local stores. Even auto parts stores sell them! Your beloveds may want art or art supplies or a haircut or movie tickets or dining … almost any place you can think of sells gift certificates, at the amount you want. It keeps your local economy going and your gifting off the internet, which has sadly destroyed independent shops worldwide. I’ve had stores invent a gift certificate for me on the spot.

I particularly like gifting something to do. Show tickets, a season’s pass or gym membership, or a class such as ceramics, stained glass, or any of the many offerings at the White River Craft Center. Piano lessons, horseback riding, Reiki … any class at all. What about a blank book you give to a retired person, in which they can chronicle their life? Gifts of fun! And really, what’s more fun that reading your local newspaper? A subscription to the Herald … perfect.

If you’ve written a book or are thinking of it, or know someone who did and want to give them a monumental gift … might I suggest the audio book recording maven in Shelburne: Voice Over Vermont. She’s super relaxed, nice, and smart, with the coziest setup (or she can direct you from your home or local studio). Not only is she affordable compared to other, less-excellent companies, she is a fantastic director. Which I promise you need. It’s far harder to read out loud than you think.

And at the pinnacle, there’s the most precious gift, the gift you made yourself.  Pen a song or poem or cartoon for someone. You can gift food, knits, cuttings from your favorite plants, bathtub gin, art, or anything else you’ve created. I’ve concocted uneven pot holders, crooked scarves, sketchy pillow cases, sorry-looking hats, childlike tree ornaments, lopsided ceramics — and exquisite deodorant. Each was well received. For the person who has everything, a calendar with meaningful photos is fantastic. You can now order them easily online (and in some pharmacies), but for years I made mine with actual photos glued carefully into a calendar sold for this purpose at the Pink Smock Shop at Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital. When you come across these years later, they blow your bean, pleasantly. Tip: hospital gift shops can always use your money.

Broke? Gift a service you will provide with a homemade, redeemable coupon. Surely I read this in a women’s magazine in 1982. It can be a massage, errand, snow shoveling, planting in the spring, or, if you’ve completely lost your mind, oven cleaning. Maybe you could teach someone how to do something. Show them how to make a Manhattan? You can use a low-end whiskey like The Famous Grouse as long as you use top shelf cherries, like Luxardo Italian. Boom.

Honestly, I think the most enchanted part of winter in my childhood was quietly shoveling people’s driveways in the dark while they were still at work, so they’d come home to a nice surprise. Heavily influenced in youth by the “Brownie Scout Handbook,” wherein at some point elves called Brownies did tasks for people (cobbling shoes?) anonymously at night without asking for any thanks (a true mitsvah!), I felt my secret shoveling a kind of sacred mischief. I relished every pass with the shovel, every sweep of the steps. It used to snow more back then, the big white fluffy kind I call “Hollywood snow” falling gently on my eyelashes and cheeks as I did my good deed. I shoveled out a Danish widow who worked long hours at the United Nations. A woman who’d fallen and had her jaw wired shut to heal. An elderly couple. A woman who championed, way ahead of her time, the rights of – and employment opportunities for – her intellectually disabled daughter and others like her. For these kindhearted and hardworking neighbors, it was the least I could do. I hope that today kids get off screens long enough to experience the unspeakable joy that comes from doing a good deed. And knowing their neighbors.

Funny, I’d forgotten entirely about all that. Also this: a decade ago I was panicking on my way back to Vermont on Amtrak. A massive storm had struck the east coast and I had to roll my luggage from the Randolph train station to my house in snow that the plows could not keep up with, a good quarter mile. The train had arrived late. It was dark and the snow was really coming down. I dreaded the final lap of wading through two feet of accumulated driveway snow with my suitcase in my arms like a giant baby … until, sweating, I approached my dimly lit home, stopped to catch my breath, and looked up. What had happened here? What was going on? Why, someone had snow-blown my driveway! I was exclaiming out loud, crying with thankfulness at this great kindness. I don’t generally believe at all that what goes around comes around, but in this case it did.

Well, Dear Reader and your Humble Columnist better get a move on. As you approach the clubhouse turn of holiday shopping, I do hope this has been of some use, or at the least entertaining. Because sometimes in the midst of all the holiday prep and partying, it’s best to don your gay apparel and just … sit down and read the paper. Good prep, good holidays, and good new year to all.

Ann Aikens is an author, columnist, speaker, and blogger. Her darkly comical book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, was published in 2023, her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. Find events and bookshops at annaikens.com; her blog is uppervalleygirl.com.

Halloween, Pagans, and Religion in General

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I know some readers ran from the building upon seeing the word religion, above. And I know it should not be discussed in polite company. But I further know that many readers – and nutters I call friends – would not consider themselves polite company. 

Ah, Halloween! A magical holiday where I grew up, a place then not as rural as Vermont, yet not the overdeveloped bastion of privilege that it sadly became. Back then, it was a lot of houses made by dads and uncles moving their families to “the country” from the Bronx and such. A lot of woods. And a heck of a lot of childhood mischief, especially on Halloween.

I recall like yesterday the thrill as we crunched through (mostly oak?) leaves in inventive costumes, dragging wands, too-long skirts, broomsticks and giant satchels, delighting in autumnal smells. The real excitement began once we were old enough to go out without parental supervision. It was invigorating as hell. Our antennae (lit. and fig.) were on high alert. We had minimal street lighting. No halogens. Dark! There was a palpable sense of danger in the air. Little to do with honoring the dead or saints on All Hallows’ Eve, or the possibly pagan roots thereof.

Melissa Kirsch suggested in the NYT that we all try not knowing everything in advance. Not spending hours comparing products before buying. Not researching the heck out of each place before going there.  Letting an adventure unfold, and inspire wonder. Doing an unscheduled, impromptu, playful thing. 

This holiday was that. We had no master plan for maximum treatage. We weren’t greedy. We were just roaming in the dark, tittering, wondering what was around every bush, house, and corner. The older kids were generally menacing on any given day. What might they do to us on this day? Attack? Plunder our treat haul? Anything but that!  

Raised Episcopalian, to my Catholic grandmother’s dismay, I later became a bit of a pagan in the original sense (not as in the polytheistic belief in multiple gods, but as in the Latin pagani: people who lived rurally, thus considered ignorant). I’m happily, rurally ignorant. Due to unexplainable events and crazy coincidences I experienced, over time I came to believe in energies and nature spirits, certainly ghosts, and in celebrating the change of seasons. Which might make me Wiccan. A modern pagan.

Dear Reader may find that nuts, but what sissy writes about religion without stating where she stands? I’m not too worried what people think of me. I go to a great church. I also believe that trees have a kind of consciousness (which has been scientifically examined), as does everything in nature. We should honor nature. We should cheer it on. I feel it would respond in kind. More oxygen. Cooling temps. Fewer storms. 

Is this paganism? Wicca? A heretical blending of “true” religion with fanciful notions? Does it matter what it’s called? I just call it energetic. Have you never nursed something or someone back to health by your own seeming sheer force of will, with or without prayer mixed in? Thoughts and desires carry energy.

As for the earth’s widely accepted Abrahamic religions, and any other I’ve read about, I find some of it silly – including in my own Christianity, which I very much enjoy right along with my less conventional beliefs. Still, I think the world would be a lot happier if more people regularly practiced some form of religion (spirituality?) without judging the others. It has been proven that people who live in groups are happiest. And I can tell you for sure that people who gather in groups to give thanks, to commune, to do good works, and sing maybe, and pray for each other and our planet, and to celebrate together, absolutely get a happiness and a peace from it. I doubt most people attend services these days because they’re afraid of eternal damnation. They go because they feel good there. Hopeful. Valued. Useful.

I’ve been in mosques, Russian Orthodox churches, JW meetings, Jewish temples and Chabad Houses, weddings of all stripes, Buddhist funerals, a Catholic Easter in Rome … and honestly, they all felt spiritual, holy, life-affirming. I’m not keen on those run solely by men (still?!?), but no one forced me to attend.

Many don’t believe in any God at all, regarding earthly suffering as proof that no loving being is In Charge. I’ve waivered myself, and understand. I don’t believe in predestination or fate; I do believe in free will and in luck — including bad luck. I don’t believe in a punishment/reward-based karma, but did when younger, and I do believe in multiple lifetimes. Is there truly no divine being of any kind? The universe is too magnificent, with too many synchronicities, for there not to be something larger than ourselves at play, way I see it.

I get your God, if it’s love-based. What I don’t get, as perhaps Dear Reader does not, is why so many consider their religion superior — in fact, the only valid one. If that were the case, you’d have to be born in a certain place to certain parents to be lucky enough not to burn in the fires of Hell (or whatever) for eternity (or whatever). To wit: all the poor slobs who weren’t born like you were just born damned. And should be punished or enslaved, in life or in death? I’m not buying it. 

Surely all religions, when not misinterpreted by maniacs with agendas, basically lead to the same place. Be kind. Stand for what’s right. Make amends. Help others, including strangers. Respect however our planet’s beauty was created; steward its health. Do good works. Spread love.

Ideas
• Try taking time off weekly, a secular sabbath of sorts, to appreciate things. I’m awed when something nice, even a cloud formation, is delivered unto me. I thank the Forces almost daily for something, however small, because my belief is that there’s no way this whole show is running itself. I think we’re co-running it with some benevolent spirit or spirits, and if we’d just quit screwing things up on our end, everything would get a lot nicer real fast. 

• If you can’t do, CHEER ON. Can’t run or perform? Go see a footrace or a play or a concert. Participants are boosted like a rocket when spectators are rooting for them! Feel the energy travel around the participants and spectators. It’s magical. My niece said that a dog got so excited as she ardently cheered on 5K runners that he “piddled.” Feel the love. Good day.

Ann Aikens is an author, columnist, speaker, and blogger. Her darkly comical book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, was published in 2023, her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. Find bookshops at annaikens.com; blog:  uppervalleygirl.com.

Free eBook thru Tuesday midnight Pacific time

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Free downloads at the Amazon start tonight at midnight. Use the free $0.00 eBook at upper right, not the Kindle download. Sign up for my e-list at www.annaikens.com and win a Prize! And my undying LERV. PS Don’t think that I think I look good here! Authors often don’t. We’re not a fancy lot. We’re more concerned with thots than our hair?

Change of Seasons, Change of Heart, Change

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At the end of an idyllic college reunion weekend, a friend said three words as we watched a classmate loading his car become morose. “Transitions are hard,” she whispered.

Truer words never spoken. I wish someone had said them to me decades ago. 

Because emotions are more dealable when you know why you’re feeling them. Such as: “I’m despondent because I’m going through a transition.” Not: “I’m overreacting.” Or “I’m losing my mind for no apparent reason.” At reunion, it was this: “I had the best time this weekend. I love my funny, smart college friends. Now I have to go home.”

Transitioning seasons is a hard one for many. Some lament the end of summer, particularly the gardeners and the sun- and water- lovers. Myself, I welcome fall. Summer drags on too long for me. When the sun shines, we feel obligated to make hay. When we have a summer with little rain, that’s a lot of haymaking. Read: outdoorsy work, socializing, exercising. There’s not much time to … reflect. It feels to me like a lot of “racing around,” as my mother would put it.

Fall’s shorter days heighten our more introspective inclinations, for good or bad. I savor the colors and the smells of autumn (if not the Leafer traffic), the harvest, the stews, the cooler temps, the colder waters. Stick season delights me, while it sends others spiraling downwards.  A few weeks ago was monarch butterfly season. Then, termite season. Now: wasps-looking-to get-in-the-house season. Some geese already heading south. Boom boom boom, one after the other. Change. 

The longer you live, more change. With each season, an anniversary: we remember something – or someone – now gone. Family and friends who have died. The houses loved, with so many memories, sold. My pal I used to take to the summer fried clam shacks or the fall apple festivals now unable to leave his residence! Nieces and nephews I rarely see! Who, when small, had inventive costumes for Halloween. (One Halloween the youngest declared she would be: “a marshmallow on a stick”. And she was). Little them, all running up and down streets for tricks and treats. I’m terribly nostalgic for those times. I am gladdened when anyone says they miss when their kids were young. Then I’m not alone.

I asked a college friend, what change was hard about becoming an empty nester? Was it that the house grew quiet, that you missed your daughter’s presence, that three was now two? He said, “All of it … and just … where did 20 years go?”

There’s that – the growing up of the youth below us – sometimes as the people above us, who took care of us, now need caretaking. And when the once-capable parents die, as a sage friend put it, “It’s like losing a roof over your head that you never even knew was there.” Heck, it’s hard enough for me when friends move away. 

Nostalgia is an odd thing, defined by Merriam-Webster as “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.” The American Heritage Dictionary takes it one further: “Homesickness; esp., a severe and sometimes fatal form of melancholia, due to homesickness.” Yipes! I hope I don’t have the fatal kind. I do hate change. Except for a change of heart. That I like.

I think we’re born with a degree of nostalgia, and life circumstances make it grow more for some people.  Some of us are barely nostalgic at all (I envy you), and some are what I call “nostalgia monsters.” A scientist might call us “superstalgics”. 

A niece and I are both that. We’ll talk about things we miss, and bawl. When I suggested that we are both nostalgia monsters, she said, “I’m so nostalgic that once I rearranged my room and immediately cried because I missed the way it ‘used to be’ an hour earlier.” (One advantage to kids’ growing up: their self-awareness and humor become more sophisticated.)

I’m not sure what function nostalgia serves. It’s mostly just painful. Perhaps, in the way spiritual and artistic and carpentry gatherings connect people within a community, nostalgia connects time within ourselves. It connects our present to our past in a mostly good way. There might be some biological survival-of-the-species value in this. I don’t know. All I know is I couldn’t bear saying goodbye to my elementary school teachers at year-end and I haven’t changed a bit.

It doesn’t matter how logically superstalgics think. We can’t embrace change when our heart is throbbing with sorrow.

Back to fall. Stick season was at one time, for me, a harbinger of the noisy, wonderful family gatherings of Thanksgiving. But my family doesn’t have those any more. My mommy was the center of them, as a mother so often is. Maybe, with age, you have less to look forward to in general. For yourself. You can be happy for the pivotal events in the lives of those younger, but for you, not that much is happening. Maybe you can’t get off work for holidays, or traveling has become difficult. Maybe money is tight, and you can’t visit your people. I get it all.

So if you wax gloomy as the leaves fall, I feel your pain. I won’t say, “Let us embrace change!” any more than I’d say, “Let us wrap barbed wire around hot dogs and eat them!” But I for one can and must distract myself from nostalgia. “Life is for the living,” my sage friend says. 

I yank myself into the present. I help others as able, attend the New World Festival, the Tunbridge Fair, the Morrill Homestead Apple and Cheese Festival, consider crafting holiday gifts. I ponder the Covid-19 test called BinaxNOW and wonder if the NOW indicates urgency, or if it’s an acronym (No Organisms Within?), and whether NOW should be applied to other products, such as TortillasNOW, Old SpiceNOW, or – definitely – ImmodiumNOW. Needs an exclamation point. Good day.

Ann Aikens is an author, columnist, speaker, and blogger. Her darkly comical book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, was published in 2023, her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. Find bookshops at annaikens.com; her blog is uppervalleygirl.com.

Prize-winning entry in the Children’s Decorated Vegetables at the Tunbridge World’s Fair

The Summer Olympics Enchant Us – Especially Now

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My family, as perhaps yours, was always glued to the TV the entire Olympics. It brought our family together. The theme music sent us sprinting to the living room. Takashi Ono, Muhammad Ali, Larisa Latynina, Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, Katarina Witt, Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis, and – perhaps most charmingly of all – Nadia Comaneci, blew the world’s collective mind. 

In 2000, the Olympic Committee’s slogan was The Joy Unites Us. Coke’s current ad campaign is: “It’s magic when the world comes together.” I do hope that these are both true, and happening. I admit I entered this 33rd Olympiad in a jaded state. The world has gone cuckoo. I miss the (innocent!) Russian gymnasts, and the Refugee Olympic Team breaks my heart conceptually … but, man, it has all turned out exciting. 

Summer has 329 events, 32 sports (winter has 15). Daytime and weekends are the best time to watch. At night, NBC seems to think Americans only want to hear about Americans. Well sure, NBC’s viewers are mainly American, but in the past, we got far more background on athletes of all the Lands. Now it’s all “USA! USA! USA!” 

I love Simone Biles and other remarkable American contenders as much as anyone, but surely there are “foreign” athletes that have overcome adversity whose stories are worth telling? And we’d like to learn more, maybe, about the host nation’s athletes?

As a sports fan I’m a perpetual underdogger, beyond thrilled, for example, when the Netherlands, Kenya, Ukraine (Mahuchinkh in her sleeping bag between high jumps!), and the tiny Caribbean nation of St. Lucia strike gold in track and field, Algeria in uneven bars, or Armenia medals on vault. Refugee team member Simone Ngamba of Camaroon with at least a bronze in boxing: I wept. 

The point of The Joy Unites Us, the best slogan ever, was the jubilance on the beaming faces of medaling athletes of any nation whatsoever, captivating and connecting an entire globe. It wasn’t about the largest countries with the most athletes and biggest pocketbooks to train them. 

Seeing Greece’s and Ireland’s absolute elation at capturing bronze (rings; swimming), and (especially underdog) winning athletes and coaches from around the globe crying freely, Djokovic full-out sobbing … that’s what it’s about for me. I panic whenever someone falls off a device, wipes out, trips, disqualifies, loses a medal last-minute due to the judges’ gaffe (what?!), or blows a dive, after years of training. That’s sorrow, an empathetic sorrow. But when NBC shows us a team celebrating the low score of another country’s athlete because it means they just went up a notch themselves, I want to turn the TV off.

Yet mostly, as ever, I’m bawling. United in joy with humans planet-wide! Many things remain the same. The butterfly stroke still boggles. The insane balance beam, rings, vault, pommel horse, bike racing, and hurdles still terrify. 

Newer events astound. Surfing, skateboarding: yipes. I dug the Mixed Relays in track and swimming. In track, it’s men vs. men and women vs. women for each leg; in swimming it’s anyone’s choice for each leg. Please know I don’t consider women superior to men, but how amazing to see women best men in any race at all. I’ve seen no broadcast of Breaking or Canoe Slalom. I guess that’s why God invented YouTube.

Mercifully, there is way less Beach Volleyball this year, which felt like an endless broadcast of women in microkinis, when there are dozens of other competitions going on.

So watch the athletes put the final pedals to the medals and pour on the gas, with much drama remaining. You just might feel something in that place where your heart used to be. Closing Ceremonies on Sunday. Next up: the Paralympics. Riveting!

Good Olympics, good Paralympics, and good day.

Ann Aikens’ book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, is at Amazon & Vermont shops. She has written her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. Find shops & events at annaikens.com; more of her writing at uppervalleygirl.com.

How To Find Relief in the Face of Certain Misery

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THINK OF THE TICKS!

Given the increasingly maddening state of global affairs, the New Climate rollercoaster, plus whatever you’re going through personally, I imagine that Dear Reader is somewhat terrified. Or, at the least, dismayed. Bewildered?

I get it, and offer here some tips. My own life a basketful of paralyzing worries on a daily basis, I’ve had to actively endeavor not to go crackers. So I consider myself, if sadly, an expert at digging myself out of the hole. Here’s this. Hope it not silly pablum, but something of use.

Help where you can. Then: There are so many terrible things happening on earth — all being reported in exquisite detail — we simply must turn down the volume. Decide against reading past a panic-inducing headline even if it kills you. Turn off some alerts – or people. Turn off your notifications and tune in to Tight Pants Dance Party on Pandora (Pandora’s free, if you can stand the occasional ads) and go scrub the bathtub. Then get in?

Ah yes, real physical exercise, as much as you can muster. That and getting in water just kick the stuffing out of anxiety. You’ll sleep better. What, you’re not getting good sleep? Haha! Who is? I want to meet these people. What is their secret? Oh wait, they lack empathy. Goody for them.

When this world is alarming, check out and go to other worlds. If you can afford it, travel. Meditation (always free on the excellent Insight Timer app), contemplative prayer, lovely scenery set to music on Youtube (a superb use of drones), napping, forest bathing, earthing, swimming, reading spiritual books or those with happy endings…I’m doing all those things, plus watching pro tennis (I enjoy the inaudible muttering) and — of course — the Olympics. You have your own jones.  Fishing? Boating? Zip-lining? Drive-in movies? Go! Other worlds, I tell you.

Subscribe to good news. Thankfully, there is in fact good news out there. See a list of IG recommendations at the end of this column.

Dear Reader may have a physical situation exacerbating your outlook. Who needs that? Low thyroid, blood sugar, and hormonal issues can wreak havoc. See a doctor or alternative medicine practitioner recommended by someone you actually know. Try something new, like reiki, EMDR, hypnotism – could intrigue and boost. At the least, distract!

Laugh out loud. I saw a book at the annual Barnard Fire & Rescue tag sale, Bread Machine Magic. Others laughed heartily at their own finds. Mere laughter makes others laugh.

Make music or art. Dust off that accordion or your vocal cords … get craft supplies at your local purveyor … take a class … and steep yourself in sane-making pleasures.

Don’t be too hard on yourself. A kind friend recently said I was too hard on myself. My unspoken reaction was, “Our parents were hard on us, so that makes sense.” The last thing you need when things are difficult is you being your own adversary.

Spend some money, by crikey. We’ve all become so tight-fisted that I think it’s making us contract physically and spiritually. Eat out! Get something you’ve badly needed for months or years (yes, the price went up, and it’s not going down). Or just some frippery that elevates you. Buy a gift for someone worse off than you. And I don’t mean on the Amazon. Post-COVID Burl, post-flood Montpelier, and your very own town can use the biz — and uplift. Watch the proprietor’s face light right up. Customers! By buying something, you’re gifting to your friend or self an object or service, and the gifts of cheer and hope to the seller. The world could use a whole lot more of those. Money talks. Hello, it says, I’m here for the trading.

As promised: Hot Instagram tips from lifelong friend COL.

The Dogist: He goes around NYC taking photos of people’s dogs, talking briefly to the owners.

Outta Puff Daddys: Middle-aged British dudes who formed a little dance company; it morphed into advocating for men’s mental health. So dear.

Funkanometry: Two young Canadian guys who do hip-hop type dance to all different kinds of music.

This chick named Jen I couldn’t find, who post things positive every day, as she says at the end, apparently.

Dan Harris: Anchorman had a panic attack on TV, then wrote the bestseller Ten Percent Happier… like a Buddhist Zen for current times. No candy coating. He gives little snippets and then ends little each one with: “Inner peace, m—–f—–‘s“

The self-help people: Mel Robbins, Jay Shetty, many others.

The dancing and art ones. Just search.

The PS22 Chorus! Not-privileged fifth graders in NYC public school. They sing with total heart and a young, funny, energetic leader. I dare you not to cry.

Nathan Clark Wildlife… He had the coolest photos and videos of a little owl family at the top of a dead tree.

Soul Seeds for All: Uplifting nuggets. Break out the Kleenex.

Surely something up there is your bag? By all means send me your own faves. Regardless: Don’t go down without a fight! Take steps to feel UP! Then spread the wealth, as able. Good day.

Ann Aikens is an author, columnist, speaker, and blogger. Her darkly comical book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, was published in 2023, her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. See ww.uppervalleygirl.com and www.annaikens.com.

The Magic of the J

2 Replies

The NBC bloom, once it get serious, curls upward into a letter “J.” Shades of the Monarch butterfly caterpillar once that is hanging upside down and readying to spin its cocoon. It also becomes a J.

Must be something about the letter J, as there are other cool things in nature like the Chambered Nautilus’ golden spiral,  a sea creature in the same class as the octopus.

If you know of another J, by all means report in as able.