In this year's traditional New Year's Eve Trivial Pursuit game with friend Elaine Hubbard, a strange question came up, probably not for the first time, but who can remember from one year to the next! It was, "What is the origin of the word 'news'?"

It was my question, and I racked my brain, finally offering some vague reference to "neo," the Latin root for "new." In all their wisdom, the compilers of this delightful game were pulling our leg, so to speak. The answer was, "It is the plural of new." Well, duh.

In our Sunday School lesson just two days later, that familiar verse from Ecclesiastes was quoted, "There is no new thing under the sun." So nothing is actually new, except our knowledge of those things as we discover them. It's all new knowledge, not new things. It's happened before, but the current happening is new to us, or "news" to us.

Two newspaper and TV headlines from Nov. 18 caught my attention. Both had to do with situations that seemed hopeless, much like those nightmares we've all had where we were lost in a jungle, or running from a wildcat, or caught in a burning building. One read, "Mars rover attempts to escape sand trap." The other involved real people, "Icebreaker stuck with 100 aboard." According to reports, the Antarctica icebreaker-turned-cruise-ship tourists enjoyed their delay, using the time to take tours of the area in the on-board helicopter and perhaps watch emperor penguins, which was the main attraction of the cruise. No nightmare there except for sunburn! Eventually the ship broke loose and all was well.

However, the Mars rover predicament has yet to be resolved. The rover, named Spirit, has a twin named Opportunity. They were launched three weeks apart in 2004, Opportunity landing in a lakebed where there was first-time evidence of water on Mars, and Spirit settling on rugged terrain near a crater, hindered by hills, but managing to become the fist robotic craft to climb an extraterrestrial hill as tall as the Statue of Liberty.

Two of Spirit's six wheels have major problems, making it immobile, yet still able to snap photos and relay them to Earth. Winter on Mars does not lend itself to maneuvers to tow the Spirit "out of the ditch," and officials may be forced to change Spirit's title from Rover to Lander. A stuck Mars rover becomes a Mars lander, no longer capable of performing science experiments, but quite adept at studying its surroundings while stationary. Like the icebreaker cruise passengers, NASA can make lemonade from lemons.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the South is caught in its own ice pack/sand trap. We anxiously await the annual January thaw, but forecasters don't seem to know about that. We add layers of clothing, we constantly check the thermostat, we feed the birds, we snack too often. On the job or at home, the weather forecast somehow overshadows other news, much of which is connected to the weather.

Talk, talk, talk, but little action, according to Mark Twain. Patience is the password. We feel like we should be on a first-name basis with the Mars rover Spirit and the Antarctic cruise passengers, caught in an icy cold situation with little hope for a speedy warm-up. If there were no sunshine, it would really be dismal. The bright sunshine gives promise that the weather will get better. We often tell newcomers to bear with us if they don't like the weather. Just wait a few hours and it will change. That hasn't worked lately. We seem stranded in a frozen landscape, a frozen nightmare.

That description of the meteorology climate might hold true for other situations as well... economic climate, spiritual climate, educational climate, cultural climate. Reading the headlines sometimes triggers flashbacks; the headlines all sound much the same, the same news over and over. It's old news as opposed to new news.

I've also been following stories in neighboring cities where the political climate is frigid as well. In one town, poultry owners must now limit their flocks and get rid of all roosters to abide by a new ordinance that somehow broke a log jam to become law. In another, newer, town, Peachtree City, home of golf carts, where action plans were stuck in neutral, an election has put the new officials in gear to preserve their hometown feel by putting brakes on new developments. Sounds familiar. Those same headlines could easily have been in the old Woodstock Star 40 years ago. Good luck.

As the song goes, "Everything old is new again." Old robots need new parts, global warming is late coming to that one spot in Antarctica ... and to the South... and roosters and golf carts await their demise.

Juanita Hughes is the retired manager of the Woodstock Public Library.