I've just started the process of making black eyed peas for today, using the ham bone from lunch last week to cook with them. The day is sunny and cold, and I always have a huge reservoir of happiness and hope going into the next year.I share with you now one of my favorite texts, that I found in a book from 1893 "Men, Women and Emotions". Although a small part of it is a wee dated, reading it always makes me feel that each new year is a chance to start fresh, with an adventure on the horizon. Here's part.

There is something wonderfully exhilarating in the new year to me. It is like a new birth-a new baptism in life. It is like the waking after a Turkish bath, refreshed, clean, strong, vigorous. It is like Monday morning after a Sunday rest and sleep.

I think the world stops in its mighty whirl around the sun on the last night of the old year, shakes itself like a tired horse out of the harness, breathes a long breath, and fills its great lungs full of fresh air ready for a new lunge through space.

On New Year's Day I can feel the new vigor and force which the world has found and life always seems to don a new grace.

It seems to me that every living soul ought to feel on New Year's that there is hope for him in life, no matter how dark his surroundings, how utter his failures in the past.

Happy New Year to you all and may 2008 be your best year ever!