Making the Best of Holiday Stress

The joy of brightening other lives, bearing each others’ burdens, easing others’ loads and supplanting empty hearts and lives with generous gifts becomes for us the magic of Christmas.

W. C. Jones

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At the risk of agreeing with a certain tight-fisted crank out of a Dickens novel, it may be a good thing the Holidays come but once a year.

After all, every cheerfully gift-wrapped package you place under the Christmas tree with care takes a bite out of your butter and egg money; every office party and mall crawl takes a bite out of your increasingly precious time; and, with every savory bite of turkey and all the gravy-soaked trimmings, the only thing you seem to have more of is yourself.

According to an American Psychological Association (APA) poll, most people point to lack of money as their chief holiday headache, followed in close order by the pressures of gift-giving, lack of time, and credit card debt. As if that weren’t enough coal in the national stocking, one-fifth of Americans worry that the holiday blues could damage their health, which isn’t surprising since 36 percent admit self-treating the problem with food and/or booze, two front-end fixes that commonly yield a freight of new frets down the road. Happily, there are plenty of effective remedies for seasonal stress that don’t involve either saturated fats or lampshade hats.

Meditation-at-Pure-Hot-Yoga“Engage in activities that you enjoy and find relaxing,” counsels the APA. “Taking care of yourself helps keep your mind and body primed to deal with stressful situations.”

A solid 45 percent of Americans list exercise as their preferred stress-busting strategy. Got a house full of cranky relatives? Run away to the gym and let them resolve the great LED vs incandescent debate without you. Can’t face another minute of combat-shopping at Southwest Plaza? Most local wilderness trails are free, and there’s never a line.

Given the spirit of the season, it’s entirely appropriate that 44 percent of Americans banish their Christmas cares with religious and spiritual activities. If the holidays traditionally entail a whole raft of onerous duties and responsibilities, they also provide endless opportunities for both inspiration and quiet reflection. Special church observances, holiday concerts and programs, and even cable reruns of Perry Como Christmas specials can help the harried rise above the mundane and profane and appreciate the season’s more eloquent messages.

Finally, and as difficult as it may be, what with lights to string and cards to write and hams to glaze, the best antidote to winter worries is simply to get over yourself. You may be frustrated and fatigued, but at least you’ve got the strength to get up in the morning and a warm bed to collapse into each night.

“…Focus outward rather than inward,” advises Candy Arrington, writing for CBN.com. “Realize that you are not the only one struggling during the holidays. There are many others who are sad, depressed and lonely. Even though you might not feel like exerting yourself, push yourself to find a way to offer an act of service for an elderly or disabled person in your church or community.”

Turns out, the “season of giving” is called that for a very good reason. It’s hard to get uptight about the mote in your own eye when your attention is on the plank in somebody else’s.

“When you find a way to improve someone’s day, two things will happen,” explains the online Family Education Network. “One, you’ll forget your own worries for a while, perhaps even putting them in better perspective, and, two, you’ll feel a rush of confidence as you make a difference in someone’s life.”

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Moving On

New Horizons

While Evergreen Newspaper journalists Bonnie Benjamin-Skopinski and Nancy Hull cheerfully prepare for exciting new careers, their friends and colleagues gird themselves for the dismal prospect of empty desks and comrades truly missed.

“I think what I’ll miss most about Bunny is her excellent writing posture,” said Chris Ferguson, his voice husky with emotion. “There’s going to be a lot of young cub reporters coming through here who’ll never have the chance to see her sit…sit there…typing so…vertically.” Overwhelmed by his feelings, Ferguson buried his face in his hands and wept.

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A silver lining

“I haven’t been here as long as some, but I feel like Nancy was – in a real way – my rock, my sensei,” said Jeffco reporter Heath Urie, wiping tears on his sleeve and digging through Nancy’s desk at the Columbine office looking for useful office supplies. “Does her chair look more comfortable than mine? I think it looks more comfortable than mine.”

“It’ll be a bummer without Bonnie,” said Nick King, photo editor for Evergreen Newspapers. “I’ve gotten so used to sharing hip-hop downloads with her, and Bonnie’s turned me on to some very fly rap artists. Often, we’d sing along together in the office, jiving to the jungle beat and driving Brian crazy. I guess those happy times are gone for good, now.”

“As a reporter, as a coworker, and as a friend of the earth, Nancy has many strengths,” Logo-USCC-BPI-compostablesaid Clear Creek Courant editor Meghan Murphy, lounging slothfully in her Idaho Springs office. “If I had to pick her best feature, it would be her almost total biodegradability. From top to bottom, Nancy’s organic. I wish more people shared her commitment to the environment.”

 

“Bonnie’s more than a great reporter,” explained news editor Noelle Leavitt, softly petting the cheap formica desktop where so many of Bonnie’s powerful stories were created. “She was like a 24-hour-a-day podcast that never needed refreshing. I’ll always be grateful to her for introducing me to the world of Internet journalism.”

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Cherished memories

“I guess what I admire most about Bonnie is how she used to travel through the woods wearing that striking leather mini-skirt, stopping at every village she came to and fighting for the common people against robbers and corrupt officials.” As she spoke, High Timber Times reporter Pamela Lawson paged through one of nearly a dozen tear-stained photo-albums she’s compiled showing Bonnie in every aspect – at work, shopping for groceries, in her hockey uniform, walking her dogs – pictures that Pamela spent three years surreptitiously gathering and that are all she has now by which to remember her colleague. 

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A memento

 

“I think I speak for everyone in the Columbine office when I say that Nancy was a very neat dresser, but if Heath thinks he’s getting her chair, he’s dreaming,” sobbed sports editor Dan Johnson, attaching initialed sticky notes to everything from plastic filers to Nancy’s Tri-Delt photograph. “Does she have a stapler? Because I could use a new stapler.”

We Hardly Knew Ye’

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Smell you later

Even as the loathsome stinkweed plant waxes in late summer and launches its noxious spores to the protesting winds, so Evergreen Newspapers must bid aloha o’e to a pair of its most valued nuts, releasing them to corrupt new fields of endeavor.

Bonnie Benjamin-Skopinski and Nancy Hull, their names forever enshrined within the hearts and minds of some theoretical people within whose hearts and minds their names are enshrined within, will shortly take leave of their prestigious reporting posts to follow the capricious dictates of overweening ambition.

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Among the savages

Pursued by plausibly deniable allegations stemming from her literal application of the “bedside manner” concept among the prudish Hopi of northern New Mexico, Bon Jovi ‘Bonnie’ Benjamin-Skopinski fled her former nursing career to become the Canyon Courier’s premier local gumshoe and crazy-junk-guy-writer-abouter. Often chided by co-workers as “Beantown Bonnie” because of her Philadelphian roots, B-S’s incomprehensible Up-East enunciations and scything judgments upon the iniquitous quickly established her as an aromatic Boston Harbor breeze of integrity and niceness blowing across the fetid lime-pit that is Evergreen.

Ask her, and Bonnie will say her proudest achievement was a riveting Outdoors story detailing the surprisingly nihilistic worldview of marmots, a well-punctuated piece in which her gutsy use of the word “booger” earned an unprecedented fifth Writing Excellence and News award – the coveted Weanie.

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A brighter vision

Bonnie’s greatest contribution to the Canyon Courier’s journalistic canon – or at least the one that will be mentioned here – was her damn-the-torpedoes expose of Colorado fly fishing. While all who read the article agree that its raw language and brutal narrative style brought the sport’s terror and exhilaration home to even the most unimaginative reader, few realize that Bonnie salted the trout she caught that day, smoked them in her toaster oven and – at her own expense – mailed them to Peru where they helped feed Shining Path communist insurgents.

That dedication to Marxist principle is ultimately what prompted Bonnie-Bon Jovi to abandon her literary situation and resume the health professional’s white uniform and callous demeanor. Upon completing a medical refresher course and several weeks of re-indoctrination at a guerilla camp deep in the Honduran jungle, Benjamin-Skopinski will make her way to Cuba and bend her healing powers to the rehabilitation of that troubled island’s ailing despot.

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Sick in love

“We hahd a thing a few years bahk when Ah was giving aid and comfort to the Sahndahnistah’s in Nicahraguah,” BBJBS explains. “Ah figure Ah owe Fifi that much, aht least.”

Yet even in that benighted land, Senora Bonita will contribute to the reading world’s intellectual advancement as Aunt Bunny, wiring her acclaimed recipe column from “Los Capitalista Estubido,” a cyberbar in Havana’s colorful port district. Her submissions are expected to arrive dripping with acidic commentary and morally corrosive computer viruses.

The gaping lesion that Bonnie’s absence will leave suppurating upon the ashen skin of the Canyon Courier newsroom will be mirrored at the Columbine Courier office, in that murky corner for so long brightened by the relentless optimism and loud computer-Solitaire games of Nancy Hepzubah Hull.

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Wichita Ag College

Graduating with a degree in pre-industrial robotics from Wichita Agricultural College, Nancy – or Nan, as she insists that everyone call her – came to Colorado about four years ago in search of a slumbersome backwater where she could escape the frenetic activity and soul-destroying progressiveness of her home state, Kansas. By virtue of her great talent, even temperament and a Polaroid she got somewhere of editor Ken Eiseman during an unguarded moment with a goat, Nan landed Evergreen Newspaper’s coveted education-reporter slot. Gifted with a Kansananian’s native opportunism, Nan supplemented her generous LCNI wage by using her access to Jeffco schools to build a thriving trade in methamphetamines and unregistered handguns.

Among journalists working at weekly newspapers on Coal Mine Avenue, Hull is most famed for her willingness to suffer for a story. To breathe life into her magnum opus – a gritty depiction of bird watching’s seamy underbelly – Nan spent nearly a year living as an ivory-billed woodpecker – eating bugs and beetles, sleeping with her head under her arm and defecating on copies of the Golden Transcript spread on her kitchen floor.

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Method writing

“To write about the bird, I had to get inside its feathers, you might say,” she explains, sitting at her soon-to-be-vacant desk and slathering her arms with finch-mite cream. “It’s called method-writing.”

With the introduction of drug-sniffing dogs to Jeffco schools, Hull has decided to return to Wichita and accept a public relations position. Coincidentally, she’ll be working for prominent Wichita banker Festus T. Millet, the 71-year-old business associate of her father’s to whom she was promised on her third birthday, a common practice in the Sunflower State.

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Meet the Mister

Nan’s absence will be keenly felt in other quarters, as well. Learning of Hull’s planned departure, Foothills Parks and Recreation District Executive Director Bob Easton actually rose from his wheelchair and, overcome by strong emotion, danced a halting jig of despair.

Doug Bell, the recently-crowned Shirley Temple of Evergreen media’s Good Ship Lollipop, says he supports employees’ efforts at self-improvement and celebrates Benjamin-Skopinski’s and Hull’s rosy prospects. Despite his legendary empathy, however, Bell feels that minor fine-tuning of editorial policies will ensure a seamless transition and help Evergreen Newspapers maintain the high standards for which its known in the industry.

“Resignations are no longer being accepted,” says the unrepentant Welshman, blinking the mist from his eyes and reaching for a Kleenex-brand facial tissue. Bell wears his natural empathy like a spiky leather collar. “If you work here, get used to it. You’re not going anywhere unless you leave in a box.”

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Readership is up 63%

Still, the news is a harsh mistress and Bell is already processing the paperwork for Bunny’s and Nan’s replacements, a pair of hard-working primates from Zaire’s Mbutu-Kinshazi Chimpanzee Sanctuary.

 To comment on this story, visit www.hotgurls/hothot.com or call 1-800-BOTTTOM.

 

Getting Real

who_are_you_album_coverjpgFacebook can present a somewhat one-dimensional picture of its habitues.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take me, for example. Anyone who knows me three-dimensionally will tell you I’m kind, sweet, trusty, diligent, generous, capable, discerning, vivacious, saintly and modest. Sadly, folks who know me only through my occasional Facebook contributions might do me the unwitting injustice of believing me merely heroic. The fact that I don’t take it personally attests to another of my rare qualities, that of clemency.

Did I not mention I’m clement?

Oh, I’m totally clement.

I’m clement because I discern that the reason such a criminally narrow portrait of all that is I could emerge in the first place lies in Human Nature.  I have observed that, over time, most regular posters tend to slide into comfortable themes. Because I have lots of pictures of myself behaving heroically, that’s what I post. Because my frequent acts of saintliness don’t really photograph well, that aspect of my character tends to go unremarked. It’s the same with my Facebook friends.

Often it’s simply an interest – more than one person on my roll appears to spend the bulk of their time online sending me links to bands I’ve never heard of singing songs I don’t like in videos that give me a nervous bowel. Sometimes it’s a hobby, such as Astrology, by which art one regular friend recently divined that I can expect news, that topaz will help me control my lust, and that I should try to be more open to copper.

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Yes, the metal.

 

 

Then there are those unimaginative sorts whose principle Facebook involvement is robotically passing along every witty remark, lurid brief, colorful picture and inspirational platitude that pops up on their wall. Not that I’m complaining, necessarily. Sometimes those trite posts really are funny, or fascinating, or pretty, or even encouraging. But distributing somebody else’s day-old tapioca is hardly revealing of oneself, and knowing that a person enjoys cartoons of animals doing people-things tells me nothing about their willingness to float me a Grover Cleveland on a handshake.

 

If the term “friend” was to have any meaning at all, I knew I must tear down the wall and meet the people behind the pap. I accomplished this easily (see “capable” above) by visiting the personal pages of those whose posts I admire – a privilege routinely granted between Facebook friends – and snooping around until my curiosity was satisfied.

In the name of research.

Linda Kirkpatrick publishes the online Evergreen news organ “Just Around Here”, and has been known to post links, tips and tidbits of interest or utility to the scribbling classes. One less diligent than myself might interpret Linda’s fixation on the written word as symptomatic of a bookish and retiring disposition. I am happy to report that such is not the case. There, on her home page, is the glowing blue assurance that she earned her sheepskin at Katharine Gibbs College in Boston, Mass. Now, I don’t know Katharine Gibbs from Andy Gibb, but I do know that Beantown is lousy with persons of Irish extraction, and the wise will appreciate that four years in that peaty melting pot must necessarily have rendered Kirkpatrick drunken, maudlin, truculent, bone-idle, sporatically violent, and prone to spontaneous jigging whenever the English pound dips against the “nicker.”

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See? She’s more fun already.

 

 

Joe Watt doesn’t post often, but when he does it’s usually a picture of Joe Watt. The uncritical friend might suspect that Joe Watt is either building a modeling portfolio or simply entertains a healthy regard for Joe Watt. Both may be true, but that’s only part of the picture. Truth is, Joe Watt’s page is full of things Joe Watt likes that aren’t Joe Watt. He likes the Beatles, whose music is pleasing to Joe Watt. He likes Yarn West, a business owned by Joe Watt’s wife, Laura, and producing monies that can be spent on Joe Watt. And Joe Watt likes the Alliance for Kids, possibly because the Alliance Against Kids registration line kept Joe Watt on hold for nearly a minute, and Joe Watt doesn’t stand in line for anybody.

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Even Joe Watt.

 

 

 

 

Thus we see that drawing conclusions based solely on the content of a person’s Facebook posts does a disservice to both poster and postee. The lazy surfer might dismiss Kirkpatrick as a bespectacled tome-totaler, but that would be to ignore her dangerous Gaelic idiosyncrasies. And only the indifferent friend would peg Joe Watt as nothing more than a shameless camera hound without taking a moment to explore his many outside (if tangentially related) interests.

So take a moment. Dig a little deeper. You may find that the person you’ve written off as a shallow Johnny One-Note is really a rich symphony of layers, textures and disturbing eccentricities. And the heroic cyber-chum you’ve been marveling over these many months may embody sublime virtues not evident at in their posts.

Modesty prevents me.

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My Quality Revealed

crown

Royalty.

Yours truly.

No, seriously.

And I don’t mean royalty like that Johnny-come-lately Windsor crew. I’m talking about a divine right stretching back to the dim and darkly days when the dapper Duke of Cambridge’s clan wore mostly dirt and ate boiled peat for breakfast, lunch and tiffin. But hey, I’m not here to run down my noble cousins.

That would be common.

I’m here to talk about the social media’s awesome ability to socially elevate. Sure, I’m an extreme case, but several other examples pompously strode across my Facebook wall this month, each instructive of how reg’lar folk can exploit the reality-altering power of the Internet to raise themselves above the common swamp and achieve a mossy perch of marginal respectability.

Case in point:

asparagus-finger-sandwiches-R081990-ssA few weeks ago, Linda Morris posted a photograph of, and link to, a fancy-pants “tea sandwich” recipe. They’re dainty little morsels, full of hifalutin ingredients like Persian cucumbers, chopped scallions, and a cheese that has, if I understand correctly, been “creamed” in some way. Thing is, I’ve learned through semi-reliable channels that Linda subsists almost exclusively on a diet of Slim Jims, Pringles and Mountain Dew. And yet, in a stroke, she’s now perceived in more credulous circles as a woman of taste and refinement. I downloaded the recipe because it looks like the sort of thing that hereditary kings probably eat a lot of.

Without the crusts.

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Tom Carby raised his public stock by sweatier means, posting this self-congratulatory notice on Apr. 10: “This is the 100th day of 2012. I completed my 10,000th pushup today. 100 pushups a day for 100 days. What’s next?”

Surgery would be my guess, but you can see how Tom, who once refused to get up off his La-Z-Boy and open the door for the Publishers Clearing House Prize Patrol because “I just got comfortable”, has, with a few keystrokes, turned a dreary exercise regimen into a solid cyber-reputation for physical prowess. Of course, once I assume my rightful place atop society’s Olympus, I’ll doubtless have people to do my pushups for me.

You know – little people.

On the other hand, while a fitness cred might evoke a certain grudging deference from Buchanan’s stationary-bike crowd, it won’t cut much ice with the pomegranite-martini-and-brie-brouchee brigade down Gotham-way. That’s probably why John Steinle shunned gym shorts in favor of a smart blue double-breasted with gold piping and two shiny rows of brass. No, he didn’t dress up as Cap’n Crunch, but that was a good guess. He was impersonating Capt. Edward Smith, by which artifice he secured a berth at the Molly Brown House Titanic Dinner and Gala at the Oxford Hotel.

10418597-captain-edward-smithImplausible? Not at all. Consider – Capt. Smith had a beard and mustache; John has a beard and mustache. Smith was born in on Jan. 27, 1850, in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, England; John was also born. Capt. Smith’s last words are purportly “Be British”; The last words John said to me were “be quiet.” A masterful illusion, and by posting a photograph of himself in the guise of the unfortunate ship’s unfortunate skipper, John has achieved a new and superior social status by virtue of contrived association. Good show! But you may be wondering what all that has to do with my own claim to majesty.

Not as much as you’d think.

Late last month, Kayte Christopher-Walker posted a simple diagram professing to describe the three most common types of human toe arrangement – Greek, Roman and Egyptian. It came as quite a revelation, as I had not previously imagined that somebody might take the time and effort to codify such information.

“Did I really just pull my sock off to find out which way my toes are aligned?” Kayte wrote. Of course she did, and I did too. When Socrates said “know thyself,” he appended no exemption of the pedal extremities. Meticulous examination reveal my toes to be an artistic blending of the blunt Roman and tapering Egyptian styles. The conclusion is as obvious as it is inescapable – I am directly descended from a heretofore unidentified love-child of well-heeled Roman general Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII Philopater, the last of Egypt’s cash-flush Ptolemy line. I’ve checked my findings twice, on both feet, and there can be no mistake.

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It’s science.

 

 

The way I’ve got it figured, I’m entitled to either a triumphal arch on the Piazza del Popolo and my own province (Calabria or better), or else clear title to Alexandria. Either way, as soon as I submit my evidence to the proper agencies, I don’t expect you’ll be detecting my haunting fragrance behind you at the supermarket checkout anymore because I’ll be reclining on a silk divan in my Mamluk palace nibbling crust-less tea sandwiches and seeing to it that my valet de chambre does at least 100 power-crunches a day.

For my fitness cred.

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