I’ve never much cared for New Year’s Eve. My father referred to it, with humor and scorn, as “amateur night.” It’s a contrived holiday that tends to be the focus of too much partying anticipation. I can’t remember how many New Year’s Eve parties I went to during my college years, but I can remember that none of them met my ridiculously high expectations.
What’s a year, anyway? It’s a rough approximation of how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun, marked according to a calendar decreed by a long-dead Pope. Logically, calendar years mean little. They help us account for the seasons, and plan our activities, and look ahead to when we hope it will be warmer — but that’s about it.
And yet . . . years often have a consistent vibe to them, don’t they? We recall good years and bad years. We especially remember the bad years, when loved ones died or personal failures occurred or some other adversity dominated our intimate little worlds. If we’re having a bad year, we hope that the change to the calendar that arbitrarily occurs at midnight on December 31 will similarly mean a change in our fortunes. It can’t, obviously — but sometimes it does, just the same.
So, if you are having one of those bad years, I hope that your fate changes in 2013. I hope that, as that calendar page is torn away, you start to realize your personal goals and experience satisfaction in your personal lives and feel contentment with your circumstances. If you have had a good year in 2012? Well, then I just hope that calendar years are as meaningless as our rational brains dictate they must be.
Happy New Year!
I say a pox on all their houses. By that I mean the White House and both Houses of Congress; I mean the President and Congress, Republican and Democrat, “progressives,” liberals, conservatives, and “tea partiers.” Congratulations to you all! You’ve maneuvered us into a situation where tax increases and spending limits that were consciously designed to be so foolish and draconian that they would force a compromise look like they might actually take effect unless a lame duck Congress and a disengaged President strike some poorly thought out, last-minute deal that the American public has no opportunity to consider or voice an opinion on — just like the deal that got us into this stupid “fiscal cliff” predicament in the first place. Your little plan about a “supercommittee” to reach a grand compromise failed, you frittered away the intervening months raising money from your pet interest groups and electioneering without doing anything to make meaningful progress on the tax policy changes and spending reductions that every conscious American knows must occur to avoid enormous impending debt problems, and now you are frantically trying to avoid the imminent, painful consequences of your years of stupid politicking, indolence, and irresponsibility.
What’s sad about this is that the President and the Republican and Democratic leadership probably all think they’ve got the other guys just where they want them; they likely think the opposing side is bound to knuckle under today and give them a huge, last-minute victory. Here’s some news for you all: we shouldn’t be governing through a process that sees us lurching endlessly from crisis to crisis. Your failures to do things like propose, debate, and pass meaningful budgets, hold hearings on spending, tax and budget proposals that allow citizens to comment and thoughtful changes to be evaluated, and engage in the standard activities of government as our Constitution contemplates reflects badly on you all. Even if an eleventh-hour deal is reached and everyone declares they won, you’ve achieved no victory. The American people have come to realize that, unfortunately, we have no real political leaders — just political hacks, buck-passers, and pipsqueaks who don’t have the sense or courage to put the interests of the country ahead of their personal political interests and the narrow perspectives of the pressure groups that contribute to their campaigns.
I sat in the window seat on our flight from Antigua to Miami. As we approached Florida, where the plane’s altitude allowed us to see the arc of the world, I was treated to a spectacular, fiery sunset behind the clouds on the western horizon.
It’s cold here, but the recent snowfalls have outlined everything in white, creating many pretty scenes on our morning walk. It’s amazing how a few inches of snow can make the world that you see every day look different — like this curving gate to one of the neighborhoods here in the New Albany.
The reporter was a 30-year veteran who worked for The Cape Cod (Mass.) Times. She had covered the police and courts beats tor the paper and was held in high regard by those she’d covered. However, she wrote an article about a Veterans’ Day parade that struck her editor as just a little too pat, yet unbelievable. When the editor tried to identified the people quoted in the article, she couldn’t. The newspaper, to its credit, then undertook a careful review of the reporter’s human interest feature stories, found other indications of non-existent sources, and reported the fact on its front page as part of an apology.
Yesterday morning Kish and I walked for one last time on the beach at Cocobay Resort in Antigua, where I took the above photo. It was a beautiful, warm day, with gentle tropical breezes and temperatures in the 80s. We sat at the open-air poolside bar, drank beverages served by the vivacious Sasha, and said farewell to friends we made during our weeklong stay.
I rarely endorse things on this blog, but I have to give a strong recommendation to the Cocobay Resort in Antigua, West Indies. This lovely place, located on a promontory overlooking a turquoise bay, is staffed with some wonderful people. It offers two beaches, two infinity pools, two great bars, and two good eating establishments.
Today we leave beautiful Antigua and head back to Columbus and its wintry reality.
The dawn breaks hard down here in Antigua, at about 6:30 a.m., Atlantic time. This morning was the first time I was up early enough to see it.
While we were at a cocktail party tonight on Antigua, a fully lit cruise ship sailed past in the distance. I’m not sure whether it looked more like a Christmas tree or the Mother Ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but either way it was an awesome sight.
It seems like every hour you are on a beach vacation is cocktail hour, but on Antigua — which is on Atlantic time, and therefore is an hour ahead of our standard Eastern time zone — cocktail hour is actually here.
The weather moves fast here in Antigua. You can have blazing sunshine one moment and torrential rains the next. Sometimes you experience rain on your face and hot sun on your back. It can be confusing for the rum-added traveler.
There are some very interesting pieces of buried driftwood on one of the beaches here at Cocobay Resort in Antigua. But then again, I tend to think that every bit of buried driftwood is interesting. We tend not to see much buried driftwood in Columbus.
Russell says sunsets are boring. I say that, on this subject at least, he doesn’t know his butt from a cracked pumpkin.
Webner House 