A New Year Greeting for 2024 Where Hopefully Less is More

2023 was the year of over-the-top political, social, and conflictual geshtanganga.

It was also the year that brought the old P.T. Barnum’s “There’s a sucker born every minute” circus back in town. Starring George Santos, Kevin McCarthy, Tommy Tuberville (who happily won’t have to change his name. Say it fast three times, and I promise you a laugh), Robert Menendez and his beautiful wife pictured wearing jeans with ragged designer holes indicating they hadn’t cashed in their gold bars yet, to Ivy League college presidents who don’t know the difference between yelling FIRE! in a theatre and freedom of speech, to the human condition’s addiction to the Roulette Wheel of War that has landed in Ukraine, Hamas/Israel, Yemen, the Congo (to name just a few), to Trump who has proven he is smarter than Artificial Intelligence with how he has managed to juggle his many indictments without losing his audience, (not even Hitler pulled that off), to the pairing of Barbie with Oppenheimer to prove that movies are alive and relevant. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s pretty ridiculous to couple an American commercial fake doll (no matter how politically relevant Greta Gerwig made her) with the Faustian story of how we developed and dropped the atomic bomb. Those movies go together like Tea For Three. I went to see Oppenheimer and left before the fireworks that signaled to me the evolution of science that has driven us to our own Apocalypse. And this despite some mighty fine acting and seeing Cillian Murphy sitting naked in a chair. I still haven’t figured out why he had to be naked. It didn’t make the atomic bomb any sexier for me.  

On the personal side, it was a Yin-Yang year for me.

On October 8th, I celebrated my 90th birthday with friends and family. Glorious occasion.  

On November 16th of 2023, I celebrated my mortality with a  major fall, cracking my head on exposed tiles and injuring my replaced knees with colorful hematomas.  Proving I have a very hard head and at 90, an ability to heal and recover.  My whole being is suffused in gratitude and endless prayers for having dodged a bullet.  Yes, Virginia, there is a power that is greater.

Here are my New Year's resolves and wishes. All you unkind and negative characters from 2023 and before, cease and desist. Stop your exhortations and pleadings to have humanity follow you off a high cliff. I would love it if you returned to the cave you came from and went to sleep. Who knows? Maybe lack of sleep is what made you aggressively angry and emotionally constipated. Maybe a couple of years of good sleep will bring you to your senses. If that happens, I shall open an account for you on Hinge and/or maybe Bumble… does anyone know why someone thought Hinge and Bumble were good names for dating apps? All I see are images of zombies and monsters. Maybe that’s all that’s left.

Anyway, If a good sleep can change an aggressive unkind war mongering mongrel to a pussy cat, I am all for it. Imagine some Her, His, They, Their, Them will come into the cave and plant a Sleeping Beauty kiss of life on their luscious lips. Et Voila! Stranger things have happened. Hey, I used to hate fish. I still do. But then I learned to love lobster.  See what I mean?

My 2024 wish for one and all is a Universe based on kindness and gratitude for all mankind, womankind, and otherkind and a climate change that is neither hot nor cold or wet or dry but as Goldilocks, sinking into Baby Bear’s bed sighed, “Just right.”

Here I am again, beginning at the beginning one more time. Hallelujah. I am going to take a page from the Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire song and dance book and wish all of you a very healthy, happy, humorous, and “pick yourself up - dust yourself off” great New Year.