Rochelle Riley

Celebrated the eve of my birthday with wonderful friends in Washington, D.C. and learned two valuable lessons. My friend, Mark and I had a small accident on the way Jaleo’s, my favorite restaurant, in Arlington, Va.

We were chatting and laughing and Mark turned the corner to sharply, running over the extremely high medians (as Arlington tends to have in the city center). He got out and tried to push the car back over the nearly-foot high concrete barrier. No go. So he asked me to get behind the wheel.

I was holding my coat (The weather was gorgeous!) and my phone in my lap. I jumped out, ran around and took the wheel. I steered in reverse, while he pushed us out of a predicament.

Only when I got to the restaurant a little while later and got read ty take photos, did I remember that my Iphone had been on my lap!

Mark dutifully went back to the car to, hopefully, find it on the floor.

We got worried when he had been gone for more than 20 minutes.

Suddenly, he walked in and handed me an Iphone. I said “This isn’t mine.” LOL! Silly me. Of course it was mine, minus one Otter Box case that had kept my phone from being destroyed when it landed in in the street and was run over.

Yes, run over.

When Mark didn’t find the phone in the car, he dialed my number, and a Marriott-Crystal City Gateway employee who had found it on the street answered, saying “Is this your phone?” Mark drove over to get it.

Phone is FINE!

Two lessons: 1) Everyone should use an Otter Box to protect their Iphones.

2) Everyone should have a friend like Mark.

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I’ve heard it said that whatever you’re doing when the ball drops, when the year changes, when the moment comes is what you’ll be doing for the rest of the entire year.

In 2012, I will not be partying. I will not be drunk. I will not be focused on the crowds around me.

2012 is the Year of Me.

And as Beyonce sang, in a beautiful moment that Dick Clark broadcast from an old concert, I plan to focus on making sure the world knows that I was here.

I’m working on my footprint.

We spend years finding ourselves, which leads us to believe that we were lost. We spend years listening to others’ suggestions for our life path, meaning that we let others determine our direction.

This year, I’m determining everything.

At 11:59, I was letting a re-broadcast of “The Italian Job” watch me as I slept. By a stroke after midnight, the calls and texts began coming in.

In 2012, I will be joyed by surprises. I wish for the unexpected, the acts of love that come unplanned.

At 12:05, I turned the phone off and went to bed because in 2012, I plan to have a more regular schedule filled with exercise and predicted sleep.

And even though I threw the delivered newspaper into the house when Desi and I went out for our morning walk, I did not read it first when I came in.

No, I picked up a copy of the giant-print, King James Bible that I gave my mother on April 2, 1983 – the one that we traded for a new model a few years ago – and I read the first chapter. And I plan to read a chapter each day until I’ve read the entire book, again.  There are 66 books and 1,189 chapters, so some days, I will read more. But it dawned on me during the last week of 2011, that, for a Christian who was raised in church and attends church, I don’t really reflect on that book enough.

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This Christmas, I am working harder on holiday gifts than ever. This year, I’ve decided not to buy them. This year, I am writing letters, notes of admiration, realization and reflection, for my dearest friends.

The decision really made itself. I just returned from a trip to Dakar, and just didn’t have time to spend in stores trying to decide which thing that my friends already own I should try to replace. I imagined strolling down aisles and through department stores and the very idea gave me a headache.

Which one could use another sweater? Which one might like another pair of earrings that are more my taste than theirs? How many more ties can I buy?

Nope, this time, this year, I am using the gift God gave me to create a unique gift for each of them: notes of encouragement and gratitude, words to let them know how I feel about them, how much I appreciate them being in my life.  If they take them in the right spirit, they won’t think I’m dying and saying goodbye, but will understand how much I love them.

I made three exceptions: my friend, Shelley, who is among the smartest, funniest and most practical people I know. I got her a picture frame. She’s already decided what to put in it. my friend, Phyllis. I had decided before I left that I wanted her to have something tangible that she could show off; and daughter, sister, brother, aunt and cousin, who comprise my nuclear family, the core that is left back in North Carolina. I knew before the plane took off for Senegal that I would bring them something back from there.

Everyone else gets the best of what’s inside of me, what I think of them and feel about them.

I hope they appreciate the words as much as I appreciate them.

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There are many reasons why I love Betty White, why millions of people love Betty White, why 317,000 Facebookers LIKE her static fan page that says nothing more than she is.

It is because, for almost 90 years, she has been who she is. She is funny, irreverent, risk-taking and consistent. Whether it was Sue Anne Nivens on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (the perky secret slut who was host of “The Happy Homemaker”)  or Rose Nylund, the naive and unaware to right before the point of being dumb – or Elka Ostrovsky, the caretaker of the house that three fish-out-of-water urban divas land in on TV Land’s “Hot in Cleveland.”

The bottom line is this: Betty White has been working for 70 years as an actress, comedienne, game show celebrity and for several years now, successful author. Her career began the year that “Gone with the Wind” was released – 1939. She has made herself at home in seven different decades, and I was never more excited than to be one of the 500,000 on the FB campaign to get Saturday Night Live to let her host. She did. The show as a hit. She won an Emmy.

Now I want her back.

So while we’re gearing up to get her back in Studio 8H in New York City’s Rockefeller Center, here’s a recent interview:

http://tv.msn.com/betty-white-hot-in-cleveland/story/interview/

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Folks – you know, those people who determine pop culture – will say that the best moment of “The Muppets” is when Academy Award-winning actor Chris Cooper breaks out into rap, sort of like that moment when Tom Cruise, playing nasty studio exec Les Grossman, begins rapping in “Tropic Thunder.”

But there were two better and more important moments for me when I saw it Saturday evening in a theatre full of parents and kids – and one grumpy couple.

One, near the movie’s end, was when Kermit sat in a sliver of moon and began singing my favorite song . . .

“Why are there so many songs about rainbows
and what’s on the other side? . . .

I couldn’t believe the lump that rose in my throat as I listened to a song that was more than three decades old.

“Rainbows are visions, but only illusions,
and rainbows have nothing to hide.”

I had gone to see the movie for the same reason that I had dragged my daughter to “Aladdin” and “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King” and “Finding Nemo” – because I love fantasy and magic and the color of rainbows – even if she just tolerated them.

“So we’ve been told and some choose to believe it.
I know they’re wrong, wait and see.”

I wanted to connect her with the beauty of escape and to feel what I did as I’ve gone to the movies for so long: Film can take you anywhere you want to be and some places you didn’t even know you wanted to do.

“Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection.
The lovers, the dreamers and me.”

The great Paul Williams and Kenny Asher co-wrote the “The Rainbow Connection” for the first “Muppet Movie.” It was nominated for an Academy Award in 1979 for Best Song. Williams later spoke with great reverence about the song, which opened and closed the film:

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