December 2022

Feelings are fickle friends, especially around the holidays. We often look forward to attending parties, gathering around the table with loved ones, and listening to our favorite Christmas music. However, as events draw closer and December pushes to close another year, we sometimes hear the music differently. The songs that we sang jubilantly now leave us feeling melancholy. There might be several plausible reasons for this shift, or we may not know how a veiled emptiness snuck its way into our music and moments.

I grew up in the 1950s, in a family that lacked many of the amenities of that day. When television was introduced to our town, I joined kids at the home of the Joneses (not their real name), the only TV owners in the neighborhood, watching western movies after school. After a few weeks of us kids trashing his house, Mr. Jones restricted the entertainment to his family.

Dear Dr. Roach: I used to give blood regularly. While in the Air Force, I was stationed in England for four years in the early 1980s. Sometime in the 1990s, I was told that due to concern about mad cow disease, I would no longer be able to donate. Is that still true? If so, what do people in the United Kingdom do, since it would seem no one would be eligible to be a donor?

Dear Abby: A friend, “Marie,” approached me in the parking lot after church, raising her voice, flailing her arms and saying three people had told her that I told them to stay away from her and her husband. I told Marie it wasn’t true, and she and her husband were my friends. She reiterated that three people said it, shaking her hand and holding up three fingers in my face.

Dear Neil: We applied the pre-emergent as you recommended last spring. It helped a great deal with this year’s lawn through the summer (until the drought). We intended to apply it again two weeks before the average date of the first killing freeze this fall, as per your book, but we had an early first freeze and never got it down until recently. Have we wasted our money?