Many times throughout the past year, this newsletter felt like the right idea born at the wrong time. The central premise—make dumb lists, email them to people—seemed like a simple and sturdy enough theme in late 2019 and even in early 2020.

Then the reality of the pandemic hit the United States in mid-March and everything changed seemingly overnight. Plans vanished into thin air. Stay at home orders were issued. Tom Hanks got that shit. Things only continued to get much worse from there in new and surprising ways.

My silly side projects naturally fell down the ol’ priority list in favor of the more serious and essential work of staying alive, safe, and employed (and by those three measures, I’m happy to report that my year was a raging personal success). I didn’t know how to transmute any of the perpetual cosmic garbage being lobbed at us into an irreverent and/or humorous (?) list format, and I likely still don’t. So that’s fun.

It’s a new year, and I have no illusions about the fact that many things are still objectively terrible. But I think maybe some of us are craving a fresh start, a metaphorical (if arbitrary) turning of the page on a very bleak and challenging chapter of our collective history. And with that, I resolve to send this newsletter out a little more regularly this year. Or at the very least, you can expect more than the whopping three lists I sent in 2020. Probably.

Today, instead of a list of my own making, I offer you an old favorite: Woody Guthrie’s “New Years Rulin’s” from 1943. It’s a perfect list that continues to be oddly resonant long after it was first written. (Turns out beating fascism and remembering to eat vegetables were as hard 78 years ago as they are today.) I love it and I hope you do, too.

1. Work more and better
2. Work by a schedule
3. Wash teeth if any
4. Shave
5. Take bath
6. Eat good — fruit — vegetables — milk
7. Drink very scant if any
8. Write a song a day
9. Wear clean clothes — look good
10. Shine shoes
11. Change socks
12. Change bed cloths often
13. Read lots good books
14. Listen to radio a lot
15. Learn people better
16. Keep rancho clean
17. Don’t get lonesome
18. Stay glad
19. Keep hoping machine running
20. Dream good
21. Bank all extra money
22. Save dough
23. Have company but don’t waste time
24. Send Mary and kids money
25. Play and sing good
26. Dance better
27. Help win war — beat fascism
28. Love mama
29. Love papa
30. Love Pete
31. Love everybody
32. Make up your mind
33. Wake up and fight

Happy new year, friends! Here’s hoping for better things to come.

Yer pal,
Eileen