Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/101270
This, That and the Other to Start a New Year by MARGARET DICKSON The holidays are wonderful ��� at least most of the time, and our family���s holidays were ���lled with family, friends, food, good laughs and a thoroughly messy house. I loved it all! The arrival of a new year brings an entirely different feeling ��� fresh, clean and renewed. Decorations collected over the years, everything from Sunday school clothespins turned into reindeer to glittering balls and stars to elegant White House collectibles, have been packed away to be anticipated and welcomed next Christmas. The living room corner where the tree stood looks crisp, clean and a bit empty. The dining room table, so recently covered by my mother���s linens and set with my china is bare except for a bowl my grandmother painted more than a century ago. There are some lingering poinsettias hanging on, but I try to think of them as spots of color, not holiday decorations. I cannot help pondering, though, about the evolution of family as seen during the holiday season. Not very long ago, the Precious Jewels were awake well before dawn, anxious for permission to ���y downstairs to see whether Santa had arrived. Now they, like their parents and other older relatives, luxuriate in the down time of the holidays and the joys of just relaxing together. We sit by the ���re. We linger over meals of special foods and treasure the moments, increasingly rare, when we can all be together. Warm, cozy, and loving as it all has been, a bittersweet note echoes through every now and again as I remember Christmases past and realize how far our little family has come. I would not trade any one of them, even as we all keep moving ��� ��������� Raleigh seems very proud of itself, having Nancy McFarlane, a former city council member, as mayor. The capital city had its ���rst woman mayor, a charming granny in tennis shoes named Isabella Cannon, in 1977. Fayetteville, however, elected its ���rst ��� and only as far as I know ��� woman mayor in 1975. Beth Finch served two terms on Fayetteville City Council, and when Mayor Jack Lee decided he had had enough, she stepped up and was elected. Mrs. Finch, as almost everyone called her, ran a tight municipal ship. She did not suffer fools lightly, but her demeanor was unfailingly even-handed and polite. She went on to become the ������rst woman��� in several important policy-making jobs, including the ���rst woman president of the North Carolina League of Municipalities. A lifelong Democrat who followed a staunch Republican in the mayor���s chair, I never saw or heard any partisan positioning or spinning from her during my days as a reporter covering local government, nor would she have put up with partisan behavior from members of council. Mrs. Finch retired from local politics in 1981 and enjoyed a more private business and personal life until her death just after Christmas at age 91. Beth Finch was both an inspiration for younger women who harbored political aspirations and a model of how to run for of���ce successfully and to serve one���s community well and with one���s dignity ���rmly in place. ��������� For as long as I can remember I have signed my emails and informal notes to the Precious Jewels and others near and dear with ���xox��� ��� meanings hugs and kisses. I have never thought much about it other than a way to send love from afar until one of the Jewels sent me a blog post by Joanna Goddard on this very topic ��� signing emails with xoxo. Who knew this was a topic au courant? No less that a publication like the venerable Atlantic is in the know and recently published an article by Jessica Bennett and Rachel Simmons about the lovey-letters phenomenon. It seems, they tell us, that xo is used almost exclusively by women and that it has sneaked from emails to family and close friends into the workplace, which, as you might expect, is causing all sorts of odd dilemmas. What if you inadvertently xo your manly man married boss? Journalist Diane Sawyer apparently uses xo so freely that underlings who receive and email from her without the customary xo have been known to panic. Notes blogger Goddard, though, xoxoxo does not literally mean ���kiss��� anymore because ���I���m not planning to kiss my accountant, sweet as he is.��� Could it be that the rise of xo in communications with people who are not actually loved ones re���ects women���s expectations that we be both competent and authoritative in the of���ce and also be ���nice?��� Who knows? In the meantime, a very healthy and MARGARET DICKSON, Conhappy 2013 to all and���. xoxoxox! tributing Writer, COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomingweekly.com. We're ONLINE! Hang out and register to gain access to our archives. Visit us at www.upandcomingweekly.com! WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM JANUARY 2-8, 2013 UCW 5