Welcome to 2025
Terry Odell
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Hello, and Happy New Year TKZers. I have the honor of being the first to post in 2025. I hope you’ve recovered from any celebratory events at your place.
What did I do during the annual TKZ hiatus?
Unlike Mr. Gilstrap, the holidays aren’t a big thing in our household.
I continued my weekly yoga practices. Had a hair salon appointment. Took the dog to the vet for her checkup. Had a massage. All of these are ordinary, everyday type events. Hanukkah began at sundown on December 25th, so while most of you were probably having a Christmas turkey, ham, or whatever, we gathered and had latkes, courtesy of our son. Host has the pleasure of having their house smell like grease for days afterward.
I brought the requested rugelach, which was a little easier this year because one of my daughters was in town and helped with the assembly.
**Those of you who are subscribed to my free Substack, “Writings and Wanderings” received the recipes for both of those dishes in my holiday post.
Tonight, we’ll light the last candles.
And I worked. Since my last post of 2024, I added about 25,000 words to the current manuscript.
I also checked with my editor, and I’m on her schedule for February 1st, which means I’ll be busy in January, finishing the draft and then getting it whipped into a shape I’m comfortable sending her.
As I write this, I still have no title or cover image selected, but I’m planning to pick an image from our trip to Copenhagen and the Faroe Islands last August.
Speaking of images, I put together a gallery of my favorite shots of 2024.
**My Substack subscribers have already received that link, too.
The Hubster and I welcomed the New Year in our own traditional fashion. An early dinner (late lunch) out, and then a bottle of bubbly at home for a quiet evening. I can’t remember the last time we managed to stay awake until midnight, and since fireworks are outlawed in our community—in fact, in the entire county with the exception of organized displays—it is a quiet night. If we were so inclined, we could go up the street a hundred yards or so and watch the annual Pikes Peak display, assuming there’s no cloud cover, and it’s not snowing. Or too cold for us. And we managed to be awake. So far, we’ve been here 14 years and have never seen the display. Not even the 9 PM test. Every year a group of climbers ascend the peak to set off fireworks. For them, it’s a two-day ordeal starting the night before when they climb to Barr Camp and spend the night. They climb to the summit the next day, and set off a fireworks display at midnight.
If you want the history and more details, you can find them here.
Note: When we lived in Orlando, we could stand in our driveway and watch the fireworks from the theme parks. It was never cold.
Okay, that’s the holiday summation. What’s next?
A thought has been niggling through my brain as I think about the year ahead. “May you live in interesting times.” I was curious about the origin and meaning of this statement, and I paid a visit to the Google Machine. I found this article at Wikipedia, and I’m blatantly copying and pasting it here. I’ve redacted the footnotes. If you want all the references, you can find the article in its entirety here.
“May you live in interesting times” is an English expression that is claimed to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. The expression is ironic: “interesting” times are usually times of trouble.
Despite being so common in English as to be known as the “Chinese curse”, the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced. The most likely connection to Chinese culture may be deduced from analysis of the late-19th-century speeches of Joseph Chamberlain, probably erroneously transmitted and revised through his son Austen Chamberlain.
Origins
Despite the phrase being widely attributed as a Chinese curse, there is no known equivalent expression in Chinese. The nearest related Chinese expression translates as “Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos.” The expression originates from Volume 3 of the 1627 short story collection by Feng Menglong, Stories to Awaken the World.
Evidence that the phrase was in use as early as 1936 is provided in a memoir written by Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, the British Ambassador to China in 1936 and 1937, and published in 1949. He mentions that before he left England for China in 1936, a friend told him of a Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”
Frederic René Coudert Jr. also recounted having first heard the phrase in 1936:
Some years ago, in 1936, I had to write to a very dear and honoured friend of mine, who has since died, Sir Austen Chamberlain, brother of the present Prime Minister, and I concluded my letter with a rather banal remark “that we were living in an interesting age”. Evidently he read the whole letter, because by return mail he wrote to me and concluded as follows: “Many years ago I learned from one of our diplomats in China that one of the principal Chinese curses heaped upon an enemy is, ‘May you live in an interesting age.'” “Surely”, he said, “no age has been more fraught with insecurity than our own present time.” That was three years ago.[7]
The phrase is again described as a “Chinese curse” in an article published in Child Study: A Journal of Parent Education in 1943.
“Chamberlain curse” theory
Research by philologist Garson O’Toole shows a probable origin in the mind of Austen Chamberlain’s father Joseph Chamberlain dating around the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Specifically, O’Toole cites the following statement Joseph made during a speech in 1898:
I think that you will all agree that we are living in most interesting times. (Hear, hear.) I never remember myself a time in which our history was so full, in which day by day brought us new objects of interest, and, let me say also, new objects for anxiety. (Hear, hear.)
Over time, the Chamberlain family may have come to believe that the elder Chamberlain had not used his own phrase, but had repeated a phrase from Chinese.
That’s it from me. Any thoughts, traditions, events you’d like to share. The floor is yours.
New! Find me at Substack with Writings and Wanderings
Double Intrigue
When your dream assignment turns into more than you bargained for
Shalah Kennedy has dreams of becoming a senior travel advisor—one who actually gets to travel. Her big break comes when the agency’s “Golden Girl” is hospitalized and Shalah is sent on a Danube River cruise in her place. She’s the only advisor in the agency with a knowledge of photography, and she’s determined to get stunning images for the agency’s website.
Aleksy Jakes wants out. He’s been working for an unscrupulous taskmaster in Prague, and he’s had enough. When he spots one of his coworkers in a Prague hotel restaurant, he’s shocked to discover she’s not who he thought she was.
As Shalah and Aleksy cruise along the Danube, the simple excursion soon becomes an adventure neither of them imagined.
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Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”
Happy New Year, Terry. Any rugelach left as you light the last candle?
Impressive stack of pages! Congratulations!
“Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos.” Except dogs can’t write!
I constantly discover new story fodder in these “interesting times.”
Happy New Year, Debbie.
No, the rugelach were gone on the second night. Most of them were devoured at our latke party.
Maybe those dogs remind us we need to take a break now and then. The fodder will still be there.
Happy New Year Everyone! And, yes, we live in interesting times.
Our New Years eve was quiet except for the illegal fireworks that sent our dog into a tither… She survived, though I expect she didn’t think she would, and is playing this morning. Gotta love resilience!
All was quiet here on our mountain. Most of the people in our development respect the laws. And it was REALLY cold last night. Single digits, which I imagine kept most people indoors.
Happy New Year, Fran.
Happy New Year to you and all TKZers, Terry!
Like you and your husband, we celebrate a quiet holiday season. Our son comes for a week or so, and we enjoy being together again. We’re a little unusual (maybe an understatement) because we celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah. This year it was made very meaningful since the first night of Hanukkah was on Christmas evening. After Christmas dinner, we asked one of our guests to light the first candle of Hanukkah and explain to some of our other guests the story of the miracle of the oil. It made for a special evening.
I don’t know how “interesting” the future will be, but I made up my list of writing goals for 2025, and it looks like it’s going to be a busy year. 🙂 Time to get to work.
Thanks for sharing your tradition, Kay. We’re going to be going down the mountain to our daughter and son-in-law’s place for their annual New Years Day Open House, which coincides with the last night of Hanukkah this year. They’ll be serving latkes and Hoppin’ John.
Good on you for making goals. I haven’t opened that can of worms yet, other than to make sure I get my manuscript to my editor by the deadline.
Happy 2025, Terry!
Just a word about our usual July 4th and New Year’s Eve happenings. We’re stay-at-homers. Usual 9:00pm retire time. But…then it gets interesting.
We live in the redneck half of WA State, in a rural area, surrounded by hills and orchards. And died-in-the-wool rednecks.
At about 8pm the fun begins and doesn’t quiet down until about 1am. Aerial fireworks and gunfire. Big guns. It wouldn’t bother either of us, but our sensitive German shepherd with those great big ears becomes frantic. So, we give her some calming bites and settle in for a few hours of dog nursing. Last night was particularly bad for her. I think folks around here were celebrating extra hard for some reason.
But now it’s over until July, so the three of us will get a good night’s sleep tonight.
🙂
Happy New Year, Deb! Even here in suburbia, we have extensive fireworks as well on the Fourth and New Years (and in the run up evenings to each). Much money goes expended for those extensive aerial noise making.
No fireworks here despite our community being … not my demographic. Still, they respect the laws of the county and don’t shoot off fireworks. Or, I slept through any lawbreakers. The dog didn’t come into our room, so I’m thinking all was good.
Happy New Year, Terry! It’s inspiring to see that addition to your WIP, written during the busiest time of year. Fascinating deep dive into the supposed-Chinese curse. It does look to be a Western invention. FWIW my history degree focused on East Asia, and I can’t recall ever encountering it in that context.
Our New Years Eve celebration usually revolves around either hosting or visiting friends/family. We have a dear friend who lost his wife three years ago to cancer (she was also a dear friend) so every Tuesday evening we have him over for dinner and video, and he was here, along with two other friends for a this year’s low key New Years Eve. Despite heavy rains here, we still had the neighborhood fireworks.
I used to always stay up until 12:30 or 1, but no longer. Going to be at a reasonable hour means I can start off the new year awake 🙂
The flu postponed our extended family’s Christmas gathering, so that’s happening today instead.
Happy New Year, Dale. We tend to play fast and loose with the ‘actual dates’ of celebrations, although when everything’s closed, we’re forced to observe in some respect. Our New Years Eve “dinner” was lunch at our local Asian fusion restaurant. The sake was a BOGO special, so Hubster and I shared, and we put off our usual bottle of bubbly until tonight.
Crawled into bed to read at 9 and was out by 10.
I’m so envious of your (mostly) fireworks-free community, Terry! My area is more like Deb’s: rednecks on parade. Even worse at Fourth of July.
I don’t hate fireworks in regulated displays, but some drunk idiot an acre away, setting off mortar rounds while listening to country music at volume 11 until 3am, is too much. For that, I could have stayed in the city.
(As I write this at 7pm on Wed night, another idiot is shooting off bottle rockets somewhere across the woods. But it was brief.)
The hubs & I were reminiscing last night about Y2K and how we spent that NYE camped at an 1830s rendezvous event, cold but full of good whiskey, and in good company. (Those boys shot off cannons to mark the new year. But we were far from civilization!)
This year I picked up dinner from our favourite Med restaurant, we watched a movie, and were in bed before midnight. The yokels left off the music this year. I think they, too, were tired and just wanted to go to bed.
I feel like we’ve already lived through too many “interesting times, ” and I’d really like for this year to be a quiet one. I need the drama to be in my writing, not real life!
We’re very lucky to live where we do, and it was pretty much luck of the draw when we bought our house. Questions like how the hood celebrated never occurred to us. But the illegality of them, plus the fire danger (we had a scare about a month ago when someone’s house wast set on fire) might help. Plus, there are a lot of retired LEOs living here.
May 2025 be boring.
NYE is a crazy night in the pizza biz. Poor management made NYE2024 extra special. Most people tip very generously on NYE. My night included a HS cheerleader party where one girl noticed my knee brace and then told me she had a torn meniscus too.
The extra special part started when the 11:00 PM driver went home at 10:15. For where I deliver, most hoses sit on one acre or better lots. (a home I have been to a few times was listed on zillowgonewild, https://www.instagram.com/p/DBWwc_0PU2r/?img_index=1) This means going to 3 houses in an hour means you are probably driving too fast. From 10:30-12:15 I was at 11 houses. Then home.
January 1 was (is?) my wedding anniversary. The children and I went out for steaks as is family tradition.
Happy New Year Everybody.
Sounds like a busy night, Alan –
Where I live nobody delivers. It’s Fedex, UPS, and the mail (which doesn’t come to our house, but to community boxes almost a mile away) so we’ve learned to live without.
Happy anniversary and Happy New Year.