Today is Saturday, December 30, 2023.      With the new year looming just ahead for all of us, I can wish everyone a happy and healthy New Year. 

Looking back at 2023, all I can say about the year is that it had some very low moments like the Israeli-Hamas conflict that was launched on October 7 and it is still raging to this day.    It also marked the explosion of gun violence with many mass shootings popping up everywhere, and it was in the state of Maine that a U.S. Army reservist killed 18 people during a shooting rampage in October in Lewiston.  This was the year that a mercenary group attempted an insurrection against President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and for that effrontery, the leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was mysteriously killed in a plane crash several weeks after the uprising.   This was the year that a lying U.S. representative, George Santos, was expelled from the House of Representatives after a scathing report from the Ethics Committee came out that accused him of misusing campaign money on personal expenses such as Botox and leisure travel.  This was the year that extreme weather fueled by climate change stranded more than 70,000 festival attendees of Burning Man in the Nevada desert when torrential rain overwhelmed their campsites with ankle-deep mud.   (The festival name should have been renamed “Rain Man” after this event prevented those from leaving the area as soon as possible.)   This was the year that former president Donald Chump was indicted on charges in four separate cases:   hush money paid to an adult film star in New York, the classified documents probe in Florida, his attempt to overturn the 2020 election that led to the January 6, 2021, siege of the U.S. Capitol, and his efforts to reverse his electoral defeat in Georgia.  The former insurrectionist is now facing an unprecedented 91 federal charges.    (I’m sure this criminal is terrified of 2024 when he will eventually face accountability for what he’s done to irreversibly damage the republic.)

So as with all New Year’s hopes and wishes, let’s hope that the New Year will not be as turbulent and violent as the previous one.   Let’s hope the situation in Israel will come to some peaceful resolution as well as the war in Ukraine (this February 24 will mark two years that the war started!).    As for gun violence, without any meaningful action by Congress, I sincerely doubt that there will be any significant change in this area.    We will routinely mark these violent incidents with news coverage and interviews with those affected – the eye-witnesses and victims’ families, and we will sadly move on to the next incident.  

I’m sure I missed other newsworthy stories of 2023 like the appointment of two House speakers, one worse than the other, beginning with Kevin “Kiss the Ring” McCarthy who had to endure 15 votes before being finally anointed by the repugnican majority, then suffering a crushing defeat to be replaced by a worse candidate, MAGA Mike Johnson, who embodies the worst characteristics of the extreme right.  He has ties to religious extremism and is a raging homophobe, just two of those extreme characteristics.   Johnson is definitely more dangerous than McCarthy, most pundits would agree.   Let’s hope and pray this pernicious guy is gone in 2024. 

So I’m here to say that today marks my last blog of 2023 since Elliot and I are driving to Amherst, Massachusetts, tomorrow and are spending New Year’s with our friends “Michelle” and “Richard.”   Instead of staying with them, we’re ensconced at a Courtyard by Marriott in nearby Hadley.   We return to New York on Tuesday, January 2.   When we made these plans, I had forgotten that my book club meets on Tuesday, so I’m not sure if I will be able to attend the group discussion, even though I have read the book this time, Other Names for Love, by Taymour Soomro.   

Have a safe and healthy New Year. 

See you in the New Year.