LIFE AFTER 55

By Michele Bazan Reed

Email: bazanreed@hotmail.com

Season’s Greetings

We’re coming into my favorite season. Oh sure, I love a Central New York fall with its crunchy apples, brilliant leaves, sweater weather and pumpkin spice everything. But I was specifically thinking of … greeting card season!

The advertisements start coming back in August — catalogs from the Metropolitan Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, UNICEF, all ready to tempt me with the most beautiful Christmas cards. I eagerly browse the beautiful artwork and inspiring messages. Renaissance Madonnas, modern art Christmas trees and stylized doves beguile me. I’d buy them all if I could.

But why stop there? There’s a whole big season of card-sending ahead. Halloween, Thanksgiving, New Year’s and Valentine’s Day call for personal notes on clever cards. Then there’s Easter on the horizon, and all the months sprinkled with birthdays, graduations, weddings and new babies.

There are those who long ago predicted the demise of greeting cards. Why, if you can instantly send an email to wish someone Happy Birthday or post your greetings on their Facebook page, would you bother to handwrite a card, apply a stamp and head out to the post office or a letterbox to mail it? The rise of animated e-cards with music and dancing animals or interactive games caused the Cassandras to bemoan the sorry future of paper-andink greetings.

But a funny thing happened on the way to greeting card oblivion. As Marshall McLuhan said, “The medium is the message.” People still clung to the personal touch: a greeting handwritten by a friend, on a card they hand-picked with the recipient in mind, and the obvious time and effort it took to choose, sign, address and mail it was still a cherished thing.

Statistics compiled in 2019 by the Greeting Card Association show that Americans routinely purchase about 6.5 billion greeting cards per year, and spend between $7 billion and $8 billion on them. And while it’s true we baby boomers buy the most cards, millennials spend the most on them. It seems the younger generation, they who grew up emailing and texting one another from childhood, somehow along the way discovered the joys of a handwritten greeting.

Maybe it’s all the thank-you notes we forced them to write as children, or maybe they discovered for themselves that the online world is fleeting. Texts and e-greetings are free and have the benefit of immediacy, but it’s just not the same as a paper greeting you can hold in your hand, pin up over your desk, or tuck in a book to reread whenever you need something to cheer you up.

The tradition of exchanging

These cards, from a local antique shop, carried warm Christmas wishes to recipients from 1911 to 1920.

holiday greetings dates all the way back to ancient new year’s wishes shared by Chinese, Egyptian and Roman people. The modern paper greeting card craze started in the mid-19th century with postcards, made plentiful and affordable due to innovations in printing.

Traditions vary widely across the globe. I know when Bill and I were in France, they don’t routinely send Christmas cards. It’s possible to get Christmas cards wishing Joyeux Noel if you really hunt them down, but for the most part, the French send New Year’s greetings with cards much like our own Christmas cards and neighbors wish each other Bonne Année throughout the month of January.

There’s a great divide between those who keep cards and those who dispose of them once read. Many people I know keep their Christmas cards all season, hanging them on mantelpieces or banisters, or covering an interior door with rows of greetings from family and friends. But often they discard other cards after the occasion for their arrival has passed.

I have one cousin who sends carefully chosen greetings for every occasion, even St. Patrick’s Day. She expressed horror that a friend of hers admitted tossing greeting cards shortly after receiving them. I’m sure she thought of the time she spent meticulously choosing the right image and verse, not to mention the cost of cards, which averages from $3 to $5 now and can climb as high as $8 or $10 for pop-up or musical versions, or handmade creations with intricately cut or painted designs.

Earlier generations saved cards. Perhaps the expense had something to do with it, or the tangible connection with loved ones far away. Thanks to them, we have many examples to hunt down and enjoy.

Over the years, prowling around in antique shops and flea markets, I collected many of these postcard greetings, with rhyming verses, pinkcheeked children and illustrations alternately humorous and ornate. They marked the birthdays and holidays of people long dead. I loved decorating with them for the various holidays. Reading the messages inscribed on the back always seemed a little like eavesdropping, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, imagining the writers and the recipients, and weaving narratives of my own out of the cryptic snippets of message.

So in this, my favorite season, I’ll carry on the tradition of those Victorian-age correspondents. I’ll shop for the funniest, or most heartfelt, or truly beautiful cards to express my wishes to friends and family at the upcoming holidays. And maybe, if the cards survive, someone a hundred years from now, poking through a 22nd-century equivalent of an antique shop, may find my good wishes and marvel at the old-fashioned greetings.

last page By Mary Beth Roach

Eugene Conway, 69

Onondaga County sheriff reflects on a career in law enforcement. He is retiring at the end of the year

Q: You’re retiring at the end of the year. What are some of the reasons behind your decision?

A: A variety of reasons. My initial plan was hopefully to serve two terms as sheriff. The first time was to become elected and then the second time being re-elected. To me, being re-elected is more of a validation of how I performed in the first term. I just turned 69. I feel that being 70 years old and in law enforcement is too old. I think it’s a younger profession. I just listened to a lot of advice.

Q: Do you have any plans for retirement?

A: I have family — I have children and grandchildren, so certainly spending more time with my family will be a priority.

sheriff, what would you say are some of your accomplishments?

A: I don’t know if I like using the word accomplishments. I’m proud of the fact that we have reached the highest levels of accreditation for all four departments. I’m proud of having an employee of the month and an employee of the year recognition every single month that I’ve been here. That has not been overlooked. Just proud of supporting the men and women of the sheriff’s office who continue to distinguish themselves.

Q: Is there anything you would like to do or accomplish before you leave office?

A: Improve the facilities that we work out of. Our heliport, our property evidence unit, our headquarters building. They all need improvement as far as renovations. Actually, we’re trying to consolidate with the city police on property evidence. That has stalled. I don’t know why since consolidation was so important a couple, three years ago.

Q: Has there been a most favorite and a least favorite part of your job?

A: Most favorite is having the pleasure of promoting and recognizing people either on a monthly basis or at our annual awards ceremony and promoting those people who are deserving of promotion. Least favorite — attending police funerals.

Q: This job comes with some controversy and stress. How do you handle all that?

A: I’m a person who embraces challenges. I accept those challenges and that’s how I look at things that maybe difficult or controversial or what people say maybe impossible to achieve. It’s certainly stressful, but I have a great family that supports me and I have a lot of people that I work with and also outside work that I enjoy being with, so that helps.

Q: The sheriff’s department has been in the spotlight in recent months over various issues. How do you keep the morale up among your deputies?

A:Certainly through communication with them. I remind them quite often, and especially the new recruits, that we, as human beings, are imperfect. We make mistakes. Those mistakes are probably amplified more so than other occupations. But it’s important that we continue to try to put our best foot forward all the time because when we do, that reflects on all law enforcement, and when we don’t, that also reflects on everyone in law enforcement, regardless of the agency.

Q: With the spike in gun violence lately, and with your years of experience, how can we mitigate some of these tragedies?

A: I think it’s a big picture question. And my feeling is that somehow we have to get back to respecting people as human beings, have a value for life. These are more social issues. Respect for each other, unfortunately, seems to have been all but thrown out the window. We have no respect for human life, and our value system seems to have denigrated.