If nothing else, I hope that in seven days’ time the world will start to transition to a state in which my usual emotional state is not some form of anger.
Recent Adventures, indoors and out
“Common Ground”
Of all the images from the failed coup the other day, there’s one that I can’t stop thinking about. I especially think about this image as I consider all the people who keep telling me that we need to “come together” and we need to find “common ground” and that both sides need to figure each other out if we’re to prosper as a nation.
That image is this one:
It’s just one of the rioters, right? Scampering through the House chamber. We’ve seen lots of images like this, and a whole lot of folks have tried passing all of this off as the adult version of the fantasy we all has as kids of getting free and unsupervised access to the school.
But…look closer.
That guy is holding a bunch of cable-tie handcuffs.
This is what law enforcement uses as hand restraints nowadays.
This guy showed up for the riot prepared to take prisoners.
And he wasn’t alone. Among the other images from that day that stick in my mind? One, which I’m not sharing here, is of a gallows that these people set up near the Capitol.
It doesn’t take the creative mind of a writer of space operas to imagine what might have transpired if these people had managed to corner a member of Congress someplace. It doesn’t take a major feat of imagination to think of what might have happened if they’d managed to get hold of, say, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Or Ilhan Omar. Or Nancy Pelosi, or Bernie Sanders, or Adam Schiff. Or, believe it or not, Vice President Pence, whom many of those rioters now view as a traitor for his failure to wave whatever magic wand they think he has to stop Congress from recognizing the Electoral College’s election of Joe Biden as President.
These people stormed the United States Capitol and at least some of them were thinking in terms of violence: capturing lawmakers, and maybe killing them.
There is no common ground to be found here. There is no basis on which they and I can unify so we can work together to build a better nation. These people don’t want a better nation. All they want is their nation, and they literally do not care how much of a shithole their nation is, so long as it’s theirs. Well, they are not welcome in my nation…or in the nation belonging to many, many millions of us.
To hell with “common ground”, and to hell with anyone who showed up in Washington to riot, and to anyone who stayed home to sympathize with them.
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“We are who we were.”
Longtime readers know that one of my main ways of processing the world is through movies and teevee shows I’ve seen, and books I’ve read. I often find in the creative works of others a prism through which I can crystalize my own thinking on the issues of the day.
Today’s attempted coup* in Washington is no exception.
I found myself thinking about the great John Quincy Adams speech that comes at the end of the movie Amistad. If you haven’t seen the film, it involves a major court case that arose from a property dispute where the property was human lives. The captives aboard a slave ship somehow get control of the ship, but they are soon captured by another vessel, and what ensues is the legal fight for freedom. The legal case, being a bellwether for slavery and property concerns as America is heading toward the Civil War, ends up before the Supreme Court, and one of the lawyers working the case is John Quincy Adams, current member of the House of Representatives and former President of the United States.
It’s quite a movie speech (historically, it’s not terribly accurate, but so what?), and it ends with this remarkable passage after JQ Adams (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins six years after he played Hannibal Lecter, and you can see nothing of the previous performance in this one) has described how in the African tribe to which the man Adams represents belongs, in times of deep difficulty they invoke their ancestors, thinking them as great a force in their lives now as when they were alive.
James Madison; Alexander Hamilton; Benjamin Franklin; Thomas Jefferson; George Washington; John Adams: We’ve long resisted asking you for guidance. Perhaps we have feared in doing so we might acknowledge that our individuality which we so, so revere is not entirely our own. Perhaps we’ve feared an — an appeal to you might be taken for weakness. But we’ve come to understand, finally, that this is not so.
We understand now. We’ve been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding, that who we are — is who we were.
It’s that one quote there that gets me: “Who we are is who we were.” We don’t escape history. Nothing happens without precedent, without its first principles being established years, decades, even centuries past. The road we walk is the one our ancestors paved, for good or ill. It’s a road that leads to amazing things: a nation that helped defeat Fascism on opposite sides of the globe, and a nation that built itself on the stolen labor of some and the stolen land of others. We’re a nation that visited the Moon and questions if we did. We’re a nation that elected a black man President, and then turned around and enabled a four-year tantrum by people who hate that this ever happened.
“Who we are is who we were.” We were racists and white supremacists and violent conquerors of people who lived here before us. We weren’t just those things, but we were those things…and who we are is who we were.
But we were also something else. At least, I hope we were.
In the movie, JQ Adams continues, closing his speech:
We desperately need your strength and wisdom to triumph over our fears, our prejudices, our-selves. Give us the courage to do what is right. And if it means civil war, then let it come. And when it does, may it be, finally, the last battle of the American Revolution.
I suppose now we’d have to rephrase that: Let it come, and when it does, may it be the last battle of the American Civil War.
(You can read the entire JQ Adams speech from Amistad here, and there’s a clip of the whole thing, so you can watch Hopkins deliver one of the best movie speeches in history.)
* Yes, it was an attempted coup. I will entertain no counterargument on this.
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My Letter to Chris
Tonight I did something I haven’t done in quite a while. I e-mailed my Representative in Congress.
Unfortunately, I happen to live in a district that is currently as reliably crimson as any small town in Alabama, and my current Representative, Chris Jacobs, has thus far in his short career (he was only first elected in a special election last summer) proven to be a pandering empty suit, but today he managed to irritate even me by being not just a rubber stamp for the right wing, but a gutless one. He announced today his intention to join the chorus of Congressfolk who are “objecting” to the Congressional certification of the Electoral College results. Today. On the very day those results were to be certified, and on a day when he knew that there would almost certainly be violence.
Chris Jacobs took a cowardly stance because he knew that his base would demand it, and he took that stance when he knew the light would shine dimly on him if if shone on him at all.
Here’s a rough paraphrase of what I wrote, since I didn’t think to copy-and-paste it until after it was sent (via an email form on his web page):
As a liberal Democrat in your district, I have had no illusions that you would represent my beliefs or values in Washington much at all, but even so I was surprised to learn how cowardly you are in your service to those constituents you do claim to represent. I see that you have waited until the very last possible moment to announce that you, too, will object to the certification of the Electoral College’s ultimate election of Joseph R. Biden as the next President of the United States.
I am sure that you know, as well as I do, that not a single shred of proof or actionable evidence of any voter fraud at all, much less a sufficient degree of it to swing an entire American Presidential election, has been advanced in any court in this country. I am sure that you know that this notion is simply delusional, and I am sure that you know that your endorsement of it is nothing but cowardly pandering to your base. What was surprising in your cowardice is that you waited until today, on the day the votes were to be counted in Congress, and on a day when you surely knew that many thousands of the current President’s supporters would be in Washington to “protest”, to make your announcement. You waited until you knew the light would not be on you, and then you stepped up to bravely say, “Me too.”
Again, I know that there is zero chance of you advocating in Congress for MY values, but know that I will work tirelessly at home to oppose YOURS. While this district is currently as red as it gets, there is no law of nature requiring it to remain that way forevermore, and whatever the future holds, this moment will pass and you’re young enough that you’ll likely live to see at least some of history’s judgment of you and those with whom you have made common cause. Your grandchildren will know what kind of man you were, and people like me will work hard to make sure that they know.
Sincerely,
and so on and so forth.
Maybe this was intemperate? I don’t know. But I do know that what’s happening now is not tenable, and that this country cannot long survive so much of its population being off its collective rocker. And it likely cannot survive so many of its elected officials being in thrall to such pure craven irrationality.
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What to do with Wodka!
For Christmas, a good friend gave me a bottle of cranberry vodka. This confused me, because my experiments with mixology have to date made very little use of vodka, which is not my favorite spirit, in all honesty. I’ve only even bought one bottle of vodka in my life! It’s a 375ml bottle of Smirnoff which I have had in the cupboard for several years. I only bought it because I wanted to taste a Vesper in the actual recipe invented by Mr. Bond (though in reality, you can’t even taste that anymore, because Kina Lillet no longer exists, but that’s a rabbit hole for another time).
This Cranberry vodka is quite lovely, though! Cranberry is a favorite flavor of mine, and this stuff tastes strongly of it. While I’m not about to drink this vodka straight, I will use it in the occasional mixed drink, because it is tasty. I may feel the need to look into other flavors; the brand is Deep Eddy, a distillery from Austin, TX.
For example!
I mixed in my new Boston shaker cup the following:
Ice
1oz Cranberry vodka
1oz Orange liqueur
Juice of one lime
All this I shook up, and then strained into a glass with ice; then I topped off the glass with club soda and gave the whole kaboodle a stir. Here’s what all that looks like (videos have sound, beware!):
And, here’s the result!
I found this a delightfully sour and fizzy drink! It actually wasn’t that fizzy at all, since by the time I went to top it off with club soda, there was only room for about two ounces of it.
Oh, by the way! The Wife gave me a new bartending set for Christmas, after she noticed that my existing cocktail shakers were starting to get a bit worn out and dingy. I’ll make many a fine drink with this set (though I’ll need to grab another shaker, because one shaker is a bummer when I’m making drinks for two).
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An ANNOUNCEMENT!!!
I could stretch all of this out, but instead: On January 21, I shall relaunch THE SONG OF FORGOTTEN STARS, by re-issuing the first three books in revised editions with new covers, and by releasing Book Four, THE SAVIOR WORLDS!!!
So, what’s involved in the revised editions? Glad you asked! Here’s the rundown:
:: Nothing has changed in the body of the texts. This is not a George Lucas type of “Special Edition” wherein I change that one scene so Princess Tariana does not shoot first.
:: I’ve made some different choices with typefaces within the books themselves. Stardancer‘s first edition wasn’t in the same typeface as The Wisdomfold Path or Amongst the Stars, which has bugged me for a while. Also I changed chapter heading fonts and tweaked the opening words of each chapter, employing an “Art Deco” kind of font that I think pays small tribute to the old-school sci-fi adventure tales that are a part of the inspiration for this series.
:: Each book will now have a Dramatis personae inside, which I always find helpful in novels, and after Stardancer, each book contains a summation of the entire story to that point.
:: The covers are revised to have more visual “pop”. On the original covers, the choice of fonts and colors led to the titles and my author credit not really leaping off the paper, so I’ve redone that. I have retained the original art I commissioned, though! I shifted them down slightly to make more room for title copy.
Here’s how the books look now!
Title page:
Chapter beginning (from Amongst the Stars):
Dramatis personae (from Stardancer):
And, all four new covers!
More to come, but set the calendars for January 21!
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“Once more unto…unto the thing into which we go once more!”
In other exciting news*, after a really long time not producing any new fiction copy, I have at last returned to drafting. It’s time to get FORGOTTEN STARS V done. I decided some time ago to start drafting it on January 1, and start I did! I spent December thinking about the story and drawing up notes, because this series is now at a point where I really can’t get away with “winging it” each time out, as I’ve previously done. With each previous volume I’ve had a vague idea of what I wanted to establish in each book, in terms of the larger story, but no more than that. However, in Book V we reach (and pass) the halfway point in the series, so it’s time for me to figure it all out. Or at least most of it.
OK, I’ve figured out more than I knew before.
I’m actually considering drafting each of the next three volumes in succession, because I don’t like the slower pace at which the books have been coming out. If that’s what I end up doing, I’ll likely be working in the FORGOTTEN STARS universe for the next two years. I’ve not spent this much time in one world of mine, all at one stretch, before, so we’ll see how this goes. Wow!
As for my actual writing session, it went pretty well, considering I haven’t actually written any new fiction copy in a long time. My last drafting was on Lighthouse Boy, Book II, which I had to set aside when I ran into a narrative rut that will require revision of Book I to untangle, and meantime, I really need to get the FORGOTTEN STARS series back on the front burners. After some hesitant initial typing, I got into the familiar rhythm again. It reminded me of this passage from Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, in which he discusses coming back to writing after he finally achieved sobriety:
Little by little I found that beat again, and after that I found the joy again. I came back to my family with gratitude, and back to my work with relief–I came back to it the way folks come back to a summer cottage after a long winter, checking first to make sure nothing has been stolen or broken during the cold season. Nothing had been. It was all still there, still all whole. Once the pipes were thawed out and the electricity was turned back on, everything worked fine.
Of course, that’s how it went today, and that’s just Day One of writing what is always quite a long book. We’ll see if I still feel the same when I have one of my inevitable days when I have no idea what’s happening and I feel like the whole thing was always just a terrible idea and I’d be better off selling shoes. (Do they even sell shoes anymore? The way they used to? With people who measure your feet on the little thingie and disappear out back to find the shoes in your size? Is that a thing?) But for now, I’m off to a decent start.
I want to get this book drafted by my birthday, which is in late September; so setting my goal at 180,000 words, this puts my quota at a manageable approximately 700 words a day. Of course, the story might enlarge in the telling, because…they usually do. Anyway, onward and upward! Zap! Pow!!
* Wait, I didn’t even post the first exciting news yet? Sheesh! Look for that sometime Saturday. It’s also about the FORGOTTEN STARS series….
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2020: [sigh of not really relief, but not defeat either]
It’s time for my annual wrap-up quiz. Warning: I’m writing about 2020 here. Trigger warnings galore! And some political bluntness, for which I’ll say, if you disagree with me, well…I do not care. For a taste of how I’ve been seeing the year just gone by, consider this tweet:
A lot of folks acting as if 2020 has just been a string of bewildering bad luck, rather than what it truly is: a concentration of widely and reliably predicted and interconnected disasters that advanced nations of the world could have mitigated or prevented but chose not to.
— Kane Wishart (@kanewishart) September 11, 2020
It’s been my view for some time that everything going wrong for America and for the world, all of it, consists of self-inflicted wounds, and I have seen nothing to make me think otherwise for even a second.
But now, on to the quiz.
Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My resolutions never change much: “Read a lot, write a lot, eat healthier, walk more, listen to more music.”
As these go, not bad! The toughest one is “eat healthier,” which is a back-end kind of thing: I have no problem finding newer healthier foods to like. It’s staying away from the less-than-healthy ones that tends to trip me up! This is something I need to work on big-time.
As for the rest, it was a decent year. I wrote a fair amount (though a lot of my writing time this year was spent on editing existing manuscripts, so drafting was on the backseat for a chunk of the year). Reading was a constant, and I really have made effort to listen to more music!
Did anyone close to you give birth?
Nope.
Did anyone close to you die?
I suppose it’s almost miraculous that in the Year of COVID, my answer to this is, No. But I know of people who have died, and people close who have suffered a lot of loss (and not all of it COVID driven, since the rest of Death didn’t exactly go on holiday because of the pandemic).
What countries did you visit?
In my mind? Tons.
What would you like to have in 2021 that you lacked in 2020?
A Federal government that isn’t led by a delusional authoritarian grifter whose appeal is distressingly wide.
What was your biggest achievement of the year?
It was 2020. I got to the end of it without having contracted COVID-19 as of this writing. This was not a year for grand accomplishments, I suspect…though I did get a book ready for release, and more! Detail to come in another post.
What was your biggest failure?
I took entirely too much random delight in chucking rocks at online trolls.
What was the best thing you bought?
I probably bought way too much stuff this year–adding to the overalls collection and purchasing books, of course–but the thing that’s brought the most direct happiness to my ongoing existence is the pair of Bluetooth ear buds I picked up in June. I had watched a YouTube video that was randomly recommended by that platform’s algorithm (why, I’m not sure, it was just someone’s “day in the life” video diary thing), in which a person put on earbuds that had hooks to go over the ear, and I thought, “Wait, they make those?” A bit of Googling turned up my Soundcore buds.
Whose behavior merited celebration?
Anyone who wore a mask and socially-distanced themselves, no matter how hard it may have been to do so.
Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Not even my skills with the English language can convey my disappointment at how much farther the Republicans can descend in this country. As I write this, a bunch of them in Congress are gearing up to “object” to the certification of the Electoral College results, based on zero concrete evidence of any “fraud” whatsoever. It’s pure banana-republic dictator shit, this business of “We respect the election as long as the guy in charge wins” and it’s just appalling. Add to that the QAnon lunatics, the science deniers, and the ones who refuse to wear masks or maintain social distance because of “FREEDOM!”, and you’ve got a deeply dangerous state of affairs in this country. We can’t long survive this large a percentage of our citizenry being completely off its collective rocker.
I’m also disappointed in what I see as America’s rejection of collective thinking and its growing lack of imagination, but that will have to wait for another post.
Where did most of your money go?
Books, booze, food, gifts, and vintage overalls. And I paid down some debt, which was nice.
What did you get really excited about?
In 2020? Day trips to Ithaca and Letchworth and the Finger Lakes area. New flavors I’ve tried. I’ve made green tea a part of my daily routine of late, and I’m loving it! (I also discovered just this week, when the last of my Christmas gifts came in the mail, just how much tea is in a pound of the stuff. Note to self: order the stuff 8oz at a time, moving forward.)
Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
Oh, who the hell knows. On a personal level I’m pretty happy and doing fine. When I start thinking societally, though–ugh.
On a political note, I’m really increasingly disappointed by my country. Maybe I’ll write more about this later, but re-electing the Joni Ernst’s and the Susan Collinses and the Mitch McConnells of the world is a staggering failure of citizenship, and the fact that more than 70 million of my fellow Americans looked at the current state of affairs and decided that they were fine with it is horribly depressing.
Thinner or fatter?
A bit thinner! No idea about the poundage, but I own overalls for which I have never been able to fasten both sets of side buttons–and now I can. This amazes me. Now, my progress in that regard has probably taken a small beating the last few weeks, but I did develop some healthier eating habits in 2020 that won’t be hard to replicate. I can still do the “gluttony” thing on occasion, but I’ve finally reached a point where doing so is fun for a very short while, but then my brain goes, “Oooog, gimme salad and fiber and lean protein, please.”
Richer or poorer?
I’m doing better than a lot of Americans. And we all should be doing better, shouldn’t we? I really hope I live long enough to see this country finally start to pivot away from the trickle-down, “If we just let rich people have more and more money they’ll eventually rain it down upon us all” bullshit that’s been the economic wind in America’s wings since 1981.
I’ll say this for American conservatism: when it managed to convince most of America that the major factor holding them back was what government was taking out of their paychecks instead of what their employers were never putting in their paychecks in the first place, it won a rhetorical victory for the ages.
What do you wish you’d done more of?
As always, reading, writing, and walking. (Same as last year.)
What do you wish you’d done less of?
Chucking rocks at right-wing trolls online. Yeah, it’s fun to mute them and watch them reply anyway, but still…it’s not a terribly productive use of time!
How did you spend Christmas?
With family. We used FaceTime to include my sister, which was…well, obviously it’s not the same, but it was actually a fun way to manage to include someone who wasn’t able to be around due to circumstances and shit. Other than that, Christmas was what it always is for us: a quiet time spent with family. I don’t come from a large and close extended family, and The Wife’s family lives far away as well, so Christmas has never been about large gatherings and traveling around to multiple houses to put in appearances. It’s always been about home, and I expect it always will be. I hear people complaining about how their holidays were ruined by COVID, or how they were going to defy the Big Bad Government to go to their giant get-togethers, and I reflect anew on the degree to which this particular crisis has forced an awful lot of Americans into my lifestyle. I haven’t yet figured out to what degree their reactions to this amuses me or depresses me, but it’s definitely some of both.
Did you fall in love in 2020?
She’s from the Niagara Falls area, you don’t know her.
(Yes, that’s a quote from The Breakfast Club.)
How many one-night stands?
Come on. I never had one-night stands when they were an option.
What was your favorite TV program?
ABC canceled Bless This Mess, which was a hilarious fish-outta-water sitcom about two NYC liberal hippie-types who inherit farmland in Nebraska, so eff you, ABC. (The show was not about “Let’s make fun of the hicks!”, if you’re thinking along those lines. It was a collection of zany weirdos and full of character-driven comedy that was some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen in years. If you watch it, the short first season–only six episodes, if I recall correctly–is mildly amusing, but the show didn’t take off creatively until the second season, which was sadly the last.)
ABC also had a cool detective show called Stumptown, set in Portland, OR, that I liked a lot. They renewed it for a second season…and then when COVID shut down production, they ended up canceling it instead. Curse you, ABC!
CBS has a sitcom called The Unicorn which we like a lot. This follows a widower as he starts to emerge from grieving; he has two teenage daughters and a wonderful support system of friends around him. This show is in its second season and is worth checking out. It’s sometimes bittersweet, but it’s never depressing.
Oh, and we like The Mandalorian a great deal. We’re slowly watching Season Two now, rationing it out for maximum enjoyment. Of course, the Internet has already seen to it that I’m spoiled and know what happens at the end, so thanks, Internet. Sheesh.
Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
I really don’t like hatred and I try to avoid it.
What was the best book you read?
I refer you to my Books Read in 2020 post from the other day, where my five-star reads are highlighted in bold.
What was your greatest musical discovery?
Oh, music! Music might have saved me this year, to the point where this blog was almost exclusively a music blog for a whole lot of the time. Aside from my year-long deep dive into Beethoven, I also did a lot of listening to the work of Black composers, which often featured in my semi-regular Tone Poem Tuesday posts. This was a partial response on my part to the Black Lives Matter movement, because surely one way we can start to acknowledge the importance of the Black lives that we whites have for so long completely marginalized and ignored is to engage with Black art. This will remain a focus of mine, moving forward.
As far as specific Black composers go, I’ve really become a fan of Florence Price, whose music I featured several times.
Non-classical? Well, none of these were “discoveries”, but I’m discovering a real fondness for ELO, which I am starting to consider one of the most underrated bands in history, and Taylor Swift, whom I am starting to consider simply a genius.
What did you want and get?
President-elect Joe Biden.
What did you want and not get?
A United States Senate not ruled by Mitch McConnell, whom I believe to be the single worst American of my lifetime. (Though, if Georgia voters manage to come through, I still may get this.)
What were your favorite films of this year?
2020 was the first year of my life that I never set foot in a movie theater, and I only watched a single movie new to me, courtesy of Netflix. That was Enola Holmes, which I enjoyed greatly.
I love film and I wish I had more time to watch them. I suspect my retirement, when it finally comes, is going to be a big film-fest.
What did you do on your birthday?
I don’t remember specifically what happened on my birthday, but my sister was in town and we did some antiquing and visiting comics stores. The next week was our annual trip to Ithaca and the Finger Lakes, which took on a very different tone given that the annual Apple Harvest Festival was canceled due to COVID.
How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2019?
It’s a struggle, every morning: “Which shirt do I want to wear with which overalls?”
What kept you sane?
Books and music and dogs and cats and overalls. Walks in the woods and by the water. I cope best when I’m allowed to focus my energies inward.
Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I’ll give a shout-out to author and podcaster Dana Schwartz, who is a fine writer and the host of the wonderful podcast Noble Blood, which focuses on the sordid and grim side of history. There have been episodes on each one of Henry VIII’s wives (not all of whom were beheaded!), and a particularly effective episode about King Leopold II of Belgium and how he spearheaded some of the bloodiest acts of African colonialism. My favorite episode focused on one of my favorite stories from the history of science, the life of Tycho Brahe. Schwartz focuses that episode on Brahe’s life, instead of coming at it from the standpoint of Johannes Kepler, as most commentators do.
What political issue stirred you the most?
God, so many to choose from…but Black Lives Matter remains staggering to me. That a cop could just casually kneel with his knee on the throat of a black man until he died is one of the most appalling things I’ve ever seen, closely followed by the ability of so many white people to argue that there was really nothing at all wrong with this.
And there’s also my country’s response to COVID-19, a response so perfect in its malignant incompetence and rejection of science that it truly makes me believe that whatever greatness lies in store for humanity, America will no longer be much of a factor in driving it.
Who did you miss?
The geeky people who frequent the local cons! I was just starting to get comfortable with the idea of hanging out at local conventions and trying to market myself there (I was even going to release Book Four of The Song of Forgotten Stars at Nickel City Con in May), but that’s gone. I miss festivals–Ithaca’s Apple Harvest Festival, the Sterling Renaissance Festival, various others that we like to frequent. I miss some favorite local restaurants that we pray manage to hold on long enough for the vaccine to finally start beating back this virus.
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2020:
The same ones as always:
Read a lot, write a lot. Listen to music. Go for walks and look at sunsets. Take all the pictures you want. Learn new things and try new stuff. If you have a dog, take him for walks. Buy books for your daughter, even when she complains that she likes to pick her own books (let her do that, too). Nothing fits your hand so well as your lover’s hand. Eating out is fine, but learn to cook things, too. Have a place to go where they know you and what you order. Don’t be afraid to revisit your childhood passions now and again; you weren’t always wrong back then. Overalls are awesome, it’s OK to wear double denim, and a pie in the face is a wonderful thing!
To all of this I would add something that wasn’t really a lesson I learned in 2020, but which I saw illustrated in events so stark as to have it all be writ large in the fiery letters in the sky: The United States of America desperately needs to re-embrace rational and collective thinking, and ditch its mythologies about rugged individualism and the eternal wisdom of “the Founders”.
I’d sum it up with a quote from the afore-mentioned Enola Holmes: “Our future is up to us.”
If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:
Yeah, I’m doing eight, because I can.
Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
Boy, have I been dreading this question. A song that sums up 2020? How could there possibly be a musical expression of how this awful year was and the effect it had…but maybe, just maybe, 2020 was sufficiently calamitous to provoke at least a beginning to a long-needed reassessment of the American paradigm of life, business, and profit?
This made me remember the last episode of House MD, which ended as Dr. House, having faked his own death, took off on a motorcycle trip with his best friend Dr. Wilson, who at this point was dying of cancer and had only months left. As they motor off into the hills, this song played out the end of the show, and if this is a bit morbid (and maybe sexist in one verse), well…these are the times in which we live.
So here’s Guy Lombardo.
You work and work for years and years, you’re always on the go
You never take a minute off, too busy makin’ dough
Someday you say, you’ll have your fun, when you’re a millionaire
Imagine all the fun you’ll have in your old rockin’ chairEnjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you thinkYou’re gonna take that ocean trip, no matter come what may
You’ve got your reservations made, but you just can’t get away
Next year for sure, you’ll see the world, you’ll really get around
But how far can you travel when you’re six feet underground?Your heart of hearts, your dream of dreams, your ravishing brunette
She’s left you and she’s now become somebody else’s pet
Lay down that gun, don’t try my friend to reach the great beyond
You’ll have more fun by reaching for a redhead or a blondEnjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you thinkYou never go to night clubs and you just don’t care to dance
You don’t have time for silly things like moonlight and romance
You only think of dollar bills tied neatly in a stack
But when you kiss a dollar bill, it doesn’t kiss you backEnjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink
The years go by, as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
Let’s make 2021 better, shall we? I’d love to be able to post some optimistic and more cheerful answers to these questions in one year’s time. Remember Ms. Holmes’s quote above: Our future is up to us.