I still vividly remember where I was and what I was doing.

I’m sure you do, too.

My phone started buzzing with that irritating emergency alert noise. I looked at it and was stunned to read the message. We couldn’t use our water for anything other than flushing toilets until further notice. I was confident they would get it all resolved in a day or so. It just couldn’t go on any longer than that. Could it?

My wife was sure it was going to take a while to get it all straightened out. Afterward, and to her credit, she never looked at me and said “I told you so”.

I recently read a really interesting article on the EPA Superfund program. It talked about how people had largely forgotten about the program and how it was now underfunded. Congress let the funding for the program lapse. The thing is, there are 1322 superfund sites across the country and another 53 that regulators have proposed for the program. While a number of those sites have been cleaned up and are now closed, many take constant maintenance as toxic chemicals continue to ooze from underground and have to be treated. How soon we forget canals that were so polluted they caught on fire or polluted ground that to be dug up and put in a specially-made landfill because of the barrels of chemicals literally in people’s backyards.

And those places aren’t somewhere else. One of the last stories I reported on as a newspaper reporter 20 years ago was the expansion of the Winfield Locks and Dam where the ground was so polluted from a rail car cleaning facility that the ground had to be incinerated before construction could move forward.

Did you know there are nearly 100 EPA Superfund sites in West Virginia? I was stunned when I looked it up.

But that was years ago. Things like that don’t happen anymore, right? The anniversary of the water crisis that gripped the Kanawha Valley is Friday. On January 9th, the water supply for the entire Kanawha Valley was compromised because chemicals were leaked into a river.

West Virginia is wild and wonderful and our greatest natural resource is the nature that surrounds us. Let’s not forget about that and let a water crisis happen again, or to anyone else..

I was curious where the idea of making New Year’s Resolutions came from. It didn’t take me long to find out that they actually had a religious underpinning, even in pre-Christian times.

• The Babylonians promised their gods at the start of the year they would return borrowed objects and pay debts.
• Romans promised the god Janus they would do better, too. (And named the first month of the year after him to make sure they remembered.)

Today, most of our resolutions revolve around personal self improvement. The top five resolutions are:

• Lose weight
• Volunteer
• Quit smoking
• Get a better education
• Get a better job

Interestingly, only one of those is oriented toward helping others. Most are self-centered. (At least volunteering to help others is #2.) I wonder if that self-centeredness is part of the problem. We vow to change things we don’t really want to change. I’d almost bet that if we focused on more on helping others, we’d find it easier to make the personal changes we want to make.

The second reason most of us fail to follow through on our resolutions is remembering them. We write them down (maybe) or say them out loud, but don’t do anything else with them. Jonathan Edwards, a New England Puritan, wrote all of his resolutions down (he had 70) and he committed to reading them each week. That was actually part of his first resolution and it was so important to him, it didn’t count as part of the 70.

A couple of his more interesting ones include:

• Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.
• Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.
• Resolved, never to do anything out of revenge.
• Resolved, in narrations never to speak anything but the pure and simple verity (truth).
• Let there be something of benevolence, in all that I speak.

(If you want to read all 70, you can find them here.)

I haven’t made resolutions the last few years, but I think I’ll try to follow some of those set out by Edwards. Of course, he didn’t try to accomplish everything in one day. He wrote them over two years as he thought of things that would make him a better person. Frankly, I think I need to start where the Babylonian’s did…

Happy New Year!.

One hundred years ago Europe was embroiled in World War I. The United States wouldn’t join the fray until 1917, but the fight was in full swing on battlefields in Belgium and France. Germany had invaded her neighbors and the Allies were doing their best to stop them.

There is no such thing as a “good” war. Wars may be fought for good reasons, but the death and destruction they bring is terrible. World War I is known for being especially awful as the two opposing armies had reached a stalemate dug into trenches along the battle lines. Men died of illness and disease, along with bullets and bombs. The area between the opposing trenches was strewn with the injured and the dead.

On Christmas Eve, something miraculous happened. Soldiers from both sides decided peace was more important than war, at least for a few days. Germans placed lighted trees on top of their trenches and Allied soldiers joined them. Stanley Weintraub says in his book “Silent Night” that the soldiers shouted to each other “You no shoot, we no shoot”. The two groups came together to sing Christmas carols, shake hands and share a smoke. They agreed to stop fighting through Christmas Day so they could meet again and bury their dead. They helped each other dig graves, held memorials, traded uniform buttons and played soccer.

A few days later, the generals ordered the men to continue the fight or face military discipline.

I’d never heard that story until I read about it recently in the December 2014 issue of National Geographic Magazine. For me it serves as a reminder that no matter how far apart two sides are in any conflict, there is always the chance that people can come together. Those men knew at some point they would have to go back to trying to kill each other. Many knew the men they shared a cigarette with would not see the end of the war. But they chose peace for a day or two. They shared the real Christmas spirit on a battlefield. For the ones who made it home, from both sides, I have to imagine they were forever changed by the experience.

Many times we see our personal problems as divisions that nothing can overcome. I disagree. Thinking back on Christmas Eve 1914 tells me there is no better time than Christmas Eve 2014 to reach out a hand and look for peace.

Merry Christmas..

December brings with it an interesting paradox. We go out of our way to give gifts and make charitable efforts for the needy in our community, donating toys for children or food for foodbanks. We also exhibit every greedy, rude and callous behavior while shopping for those gifts.

Okay, not everyone and not every time. The opening is too general. (It is just possible I may have written that to get your attention.) And I’m not even talking about Black Friday and that craziness. On a related note, I saw that shopping on Black Friday itself was down significantly this year because retailers stretched out their “deals” to make it an entire week and more people chose to shop online. That may just be the biggest positive of the shopping season.

In a lot of cases customer service doesn’t seem to exist anymore. I get very annoyed when an employee in a drive-thru doesn’t even bother to acknowledge me when I pull up to pay. Mostly that comes down to poor training and I blame the managers rather than getting frustrated with the employees.  But we almost seem to take it for granted and accept that that is the way it is supposed to be.

On the other hand, I understand how people in the service industry get tired of rude shoppers, too. We all need to stop, take a breath and remember that the person helping us may have been on his or her feet for hours without a break. Or may have just been hired for the season and may not really know the product line and where everything is in the store.

I’m not saying every bad employee deserves to get a pass this year, or that every shopper is at fault either. Just that there are extenuating circumstances for each. My hope and prayer for this Christmas season is that we don’t get so angry in the process of spreading Christmas cheer that we need therapy to relieve that stress.

And if you can’t handle the crowds or get too angry at the other shoppers, stay home and shop online. It isn’t worth the headache. Better yet, shop small. Get a book signed by a local author. Go to the small boutiques and local retailers. I’m willing to bet you’ll get better service there, because you’re likely talking the owner or the artisan that made what you’re trying to buy.

Then you get to feel doubly good about yourself as a member of the local community and as a savvy shopper. From that, you get to give unique gifts. That really sounds like Christmas cheer to me!.

I was talking to an acquaintance a few days ago. He is a newspaper photographer and had just come from a devastating house fire where a young couple lost everything…with the exception of their lives. In general things are just things. If you are alive, you can always rebuild. Investigators weren’t sure if the home had working smoke detectors.

When we were talking, I had just finished replacing the smoke alarms in my house. And I don’t mean the batteries, but the entire smoke alarms. Did you know you were supposed to replace smoke alarms every 10 years? It was news to me.

Smoke alarms are electrical devices and as such they can fail. The likelihood that they will fail increases a little bit every year. So, you should test them regularly and then replace them after 10 years. Some new alarms come with 10-year long-life batteries. Instead of replacing batteries every six months (and forgetting) the alarms are sealed. When the alarm stops working, you replace the entire unit. This also helps avoid the temptation of pulling the batteries out of alarms to use in a child’s toy.

According to the National Fire Protection Association

• Three out of five home fire deaths result from fires in properties without working smoke alarms
• More than one-third (37 percent) of home fire deaths result from fires in which no smoke alarms are present.
• The risk of dying in a home fire is cut in half in homes with working smoke alarms.

A couple years ago, I wrote a column about the very first electric Christmas lights. As a publicity stunt, on December 22, Edward Johnson, then the vice president of the Edison Electric Light Company, strung 80 colored lights on a Christmas tree. Before that, house fires were common as people placed burning candles in the dried out branches. (That column is on my website: Christmas lights and December 22)

People aren’t hanging open flames in their trees any more (I hope!) but winter is still the season for fires in fireplaces, space heaters and other devices that can cause fires in homes. While we should do everything we can to prevent a house fire at all, please think about a Christmas gift for your home – replace your smoke alarms.

You can always rebuild after a fire, but not if you don’t make it out alive..