Tuesday, December 30, 2008

New World A'Dawning

We’re almost there folks, the end of 2008 is around the corner, peeking at us from behind a veil.
Tomorrow I deliver a bunch of my pictures to an art show in Salisbury for an art show. Who knows, I might even sell some. Stranger things have happened. But that’s for next year. Tomorrow we toast to the ending of one of the nastier years on record. I know, I know, we need to look forward, and I am doing just that. Many have remarked at how The Shrub is walking away with nary even a nod to the troubled times. He’s done just fine thanks. He has even enjoyed himself. Huh! I wonder when?
Still, he will be gone soon. He’s really already gone from our national psyche. No one pays any attention to much of what he says. They/We are all looking to Obama for guidance and for intelligent leadership.
How to toast? Well, I recommend a traditional ending to this very untraditional year. What tradition? Well, yours, anything that suggests continuity within your own life and family. For us, we will celebrate, just the two of us, as we have done many times throughout our 53 years of marriage.
We will prepare some good food—clams sautéed in garlic butter and wine, Swedish meatballs, some shrimp, homemade sourdough bread. We will open some fine wine, and at midnight pop open a bottle of champagne. But before that, we will watch our traditional film – Casablanca—the most romantic film ever made. We will time the film, so that we can watch it as we graze on our splendid repast, and then, as the film ends, we will switch to Times Square. We will watch the craziness taking place there, in the Square, and we will, like the assembled throng, await the falling of the ball, signaling that the year has really come to a close.
At that moment, we will toast each other, and toast all of our loved ones., and toast the friends who have brushed our lives, but whom we rarely see. It’s good to know they were once part of our lives, and many remain so.
And, so we will move forward into the Brave New World of Tomorrow, with its fresh beginnings, and bright promise.
We’re ok. So are you.

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