JOHN DAY — As you read this, we will be in our third day of 2024. Many will have already broken their resolutions. My wish for everyone is that we all do our best to make 2024 better than 2023.

As I look back through 2023 and think about all the changes we have made at our John Day Senior Center, it is better than it was in 2022. Plans are in the making to make it better in 2024 than it was in 2023.

Last Monday was Christmas Day, and Roseann and Glenn Palmer sponsored and worked to have Christmas dinner at the senior center like they did before COVID came along. I arrived at noon and every table was nearly filled with people. It was so great so see that. Since COVID, we don’t see crowds that fill the room with voices chatting and laughter and folks getting to eat. My heart was warmed by just the sight, and then to mingle and greet folks and see new faces nearly made me wanna shout. One person said I missed him at a table I was greeting, and I felt like I wasn’t paying enough attention. We chatted on Thursday, and all is good.

On Thursday, Dec. 28, Darlene and Sonie were at the desk greeting all the in-house diners and the ones who came to pick up meals. Thanks, Darlene and Sonie, and thanks, Judy, for filling in when one had to leave early.

Jeff and Jodi, Dennis and Linda Dickerson, and Rick LaMountain delivered 60 fresh and 54 frozen meals to folks in our community who cannot come dine with us in person. Thank you all for your service of love for others.

Sixteen meals were picked up by folks who cannot stay to dine with us, or to have their dinner already prepared. Twenty-seven in-house diners were chatting away as they were enjoying a great New Year’s Eve feast of hamburger steak, mixed veggies, an overstuffed baked potato, peach cobbler with cream and a Jell-O cake. I was stuffed to eat most of this meal in one sitting. It was naptime but no time for napping, so must keep busy with deeds that must be done.

Thanks, Shay, Alyssa and Valeda, for the great meal and great service. Chris was also helping in the kitchen, so thanks, Chris, for choosing to spend some time with us today. You always work so hard, and we are so grateful. Veanne and Sharon were the servers, and a great job was done, and the smiles and comments were great as well. Thanks, ladies, for a job well done. We will look forward to seeing you again. Both Veanne and Sharon work at A Flower Shop N More. Thank you to the flower shop for loaning these ladies to us for a few hours. We sure do appreciate our volunteers and the places they work. What a great community we have.

The Dollar General donated a large amount of vegetables to our kitchen, and our chef was grateful for them. Thank you, Dollar General.

The Grant County Library is still looking for someone to hire. This would be a great place to work and mingle with people and get to know more about John Day.

There are several flyers on our desk that we can learn from; some about Alzheimers, some about protecting your home, some about caring for seniors that need help, and some about fraud that is happening to many people, especially seniors. And there are some about where we can get help if we need it. Check out our desk and see what you can learn there.

There were 137 meals that went out of our kitchen today. Shay and all who helped sure did a good job. And the kitchen looks pretty good, too.

Ron Phillips won the Chester’s card, and Bob Johnston won the free meal. Scott Myers won the fresh bouquet. The 50/50 pot was won by Ron Phillips. Congratulations to all four of you.

Tomorrow, Jan. 4, the lunch menu will be chicken strips, mashed potatoes and gravy, veggies, rolls and birthday cake. Monday, Jan. 8, the menu will be ham and beans, fried potatoes, cornbread and cook’s choice for dessert.

MONUMENT — We are almost done with the year 2023. I just can’t believe it. Where did the time go? 2024 is just around the corner, but when you are reading this, it will be 2024! It seems like a blur, a blink of an eye. I see now how it says in God’s Word, how our lives are like a vapor. Hope everyone has a blessed New Year!

Our greeters at the table were Sue Cavender and Linda Abraham. They checked in all the guests, collected and counted up the money. They also filled out the paperwork. Since there was no other person around, yours truly led everyone in the flag salute, made the announcements, and prayed the blessing over the meal. Max Breeding was the winner of the free meal ticket.

Our cooks, Terry Cade and Carrie Jewell, made us sweet and sour meatballs, steamed rice, a fresh green salad, and an assortment of different kinds of cookies for our dessert. Shh, don’t tell anyone, but I ate about three peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, possibly maybe four. LOL. I love peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. They were perfect, for they were a little crunchy. We thank our cooks for their wonderful cooking!

We are going to have two sewing days in the month of January. The first sewing day will be on Wednesday, Jan. 10. The second sewing day will be on the third Wednesday, Jan. 17. On Jan. 10, it will be our regular sewing day. You can bring whatever project you want to sew, crochet, knit, or hang out. We will share a potluck lunch at noon. The sewing day on the 17th is a day to do a special tote bag. Judy Harris will let us know what materials we will need for that project. You can still come and sew or do something else on that day as well if you prefer not to work on the bag project. Hope to see you there!

So, I have discovered the art of refurbishing old, vintage sewing machines. What I am talking about is watching these fabulous people on YouTube, finding old, rusty, dirty and very sad-looking Singer sewing machines, which they take apart, clean, sandblast, repaint and fix. Wow! It truly is a work of love, art and skill.

One person actually found one disgusting machine in an old chicken coop! Yeah, seriously, very dirty and covered in dry chicken poop. He brought it home and started working on it and by the end of the video, it looked absolutely beautiful. He even lasered the gold emblem of “Singer” back on the sewing machine, which amazed me. He shared that it took him two months to complete the task of restoring that beautiful antique sewing machine. I don’t know how he remembered to put all the pieces and screws back into the right places.

One thing for sure about those old vintage machines, they were built to last. They were made with all metal parts and all you had to do was clean and oil them to maintain them and their stitches are absolutely perfect. They sure outlasted their owners, for some are over 100 years old!

Psalms 116:1-2 I love the LORD, because He hath heard my voice and my supplications. Because He hath inclined His ear unto me, therefore will I call upon Him as long as I live.

PRAIRIE CITY — Happy New Year! And I discovered that it is a leap year, too. So all of those people who were born on Feb. 29 get to have a birthday celebration this year. Maybe that’s how Jack Benny was only 39 for all those years …

No, we did not have a meal on the 27th, as I reported. Some people don’t read the paper. Or read the signboard on the outside of the building. Not much we can do about that, is there? I heard this complaint 30 years ago when advertising for local community artistic productions. The leader commented: I don’t know what else to do beyond getting the phone book and giving everyone a personal call! And with today’s plethora of cellphones, you can’t even do that!

So, oopsie to our birthday cake donator, Driskill Memorial Chapel, who showed up with the cake, but no one was there. So we will have cake in the future! We thank them for doing this for us every month anyway! And I have commented on the decorative frosting before. The people who do that have a great time doing it, I imagine. I just don’t think that way artistically. … Now if you have a melody stuck in your head and you want it written down … that’s another story.

I received three Christmas music boxes as a gift. They were not windup mechanisms that played Christmas songs. They were wooden boxes, 6 inches by 4½ inches. The front had the sheet music of a Christmas carol, and over it was painted the appropriate Christmas symbol as sung in the song. Most appropriate, don’t you think? I also received a clear globe with little roses inside it. Now, how did they do that?! Glass blowing is fascinating! Who figured that out ages ago? That if you melt sand, you get glass! Amazing. Almost as amazing as two gases make a liquid. But not just any gas! Has to be hydrogen and oxygen. Ah, the wonders of the created universe …

And one can always learn new things about the world and its history. I subscribe to a little newspaper called Old News. Find out the most interesting things that I didn’t get from the history books. Today’s factoid was that Pieter Stuyvesant was not the first governor of the New Amsterdam colony … and he was a dictator. You can imagine what the man he replaced was like! Then Stuyvesant was to be replaced by a man with the wonderful name of Adriaen van der Donck. Due to war and other political considerations, he was not able to. He did manage to purchase property along the Hudson River in New York which became Yonkers, New York. Mr. Donck was the first to promote democracy in the Dutch colony.

Reading a book about Time magazine founder Henry Luce and his wife. Wages a hundred years ago were $18 a week. That’s the entry-level wage per hour now. Whew. Remember “Back to the Future”? The price of a car? The best line of those movies was “Since we outlawed lawyers, trials go much faster.” Which brings me back to the notion that if everyone just obeyed the Ten Commandments — not the Ten Suggestions — what a better place this world would be.

Eccle. 3:1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.