Happy 2024

We’re headed to a New Year’s Eve party in a little while, so this is the end of the blogging year for me.

I see and hear a lot of people eager to be shut of 2023. Some of them have visible reason: it’s been a tough year to be unemployed, or sick, or heavily into cryptocurrency. It’s been a bad year to be anywhere near Ukraine or Gaza… or lots of other places we hear less about. It’s been a bad year to be one of the many species that vanished.

But in my own circles it seems almost a fad to lament the awfulness of everything. I guess the glass usually has a full part and an empty part, and you can talk about either.

Here in the Shire, here in our house, we’ve been able to avoid nearly all that horror. Instead, I’m constantly reminded that we live in an age of momentous change, an age of science fiction techno-magic. How cool! And also scary… but how cool!!!

If there’s a lord to be praised, and if praising them has any influence on bending the course of events to my liking, then all praises to the most high! Stay the course, o holy one!

But if the world works in some other way, I hope it keeps working about the same here in the neighborhood. Maybe, World, you could just nudge our politicians ever so slightly leftward.

I wish you and yours all the best for the coming year. I hope your glass is full enough that you can look away from the empty part and take joy from the world’s many wonders.