2023: It’s a Wrap | The 100 Billionth Person

🎈 2023 turned out to be a Michael Dukakis kind-of-year for Nikki Haley. She spent the first 45 days of 2023 running-not-running for the Republican nomination for President; then the next 315 days trying to wordsmith her way past DeSantis for the runner-up slot; then came December 27, where a strange malady gripped her vocal cords and kept Haley from saying that the U.S. Civil War was fought over slavery. The remaining few days of the Pale Year of Nikki Haley didn’t matter much, nor will her 2024.

🎈 At the start of 2023, my no-profit-website Pet-Free Hotels had about 1200 listings — at year’s end, the number is 2255. I do pet-free hotel searches while copying music CDs to USB sticks so I can play them in my car. (Who would’ve imagined back in 1983 that those sleek silvery discs would one day become boomer relics?) A recent Pet-Free Hotels visitor tipped me $24 after he/she found a pet-free hotel in Nashville. I’m no Bill Gates — my site won’t finance a cure for anything — but a handful of folks seem to appreciate my quixotic efforts, and that keeps me going. As has been the case since grade school.

🎈 2023 was not the best year in humor at The 100 Billionth Person; surprisingly, it was one of my leanest years (only five posts) in that category. I can’t blame it on my teen hero Tom Smothers dying, as he sadly passed away just a few days ago. I can’t blame it on our three cats walking over my keyboard and erasing my best joke ideas, as we don’t have cats. (Now there’s something to ponder: would I write more humorous bits if I had a cat’s anus in my field-of-view 16 hours a day? Some readers might suggest I give it a try.)

🎈 2023 marked another year in which, to my knowledge, I avoided being infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its ever-evolving strains which we no longer bother to name. It’s all boiling down to getting two shots each fall instead of one, which simplifies things. Americans need it simple.

🎈 In the same vein so to speak, it seemed like health care appointments besmirched my 2023 calendar like never before. I’m sure many of my friends and their family members felt the same. In March, I was naively congratulating myself for turning 70; but just a few weeks later, I had a fall (my first broken bone!) and it took a lot longer than I figured for Humpty to re-assemble his shell. Things seem to pile up these days like dents and dings on a car — nowadays one just hopes to avoid collisions and major repairs.

🏴 Gun violence 2023. Unless a shooting sets some new record, we hear less and less about it on the evening news (which fewer and fewer of us watch) but the guns don’t care. There were 43,000 gun-related deaths in the U.S. this year; more than half were suicides. Mass shootings were overly concentrated in Chicago and the Deep South. Here is a map:

Credit: Gun Violence Archive (gunviolencearchive.org)

🎈 While my spouse read prodigiously again this year (70 books, she claims), my count was 2 or 3, maybe a few more if you include the ones I didn’t finish. The most compelling was the autobiographical My Struggle: Book One by Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård (translated by Don Bartlett). I got so absorbed in Book One (of Six!) that upon finishing it, I promptly checked out Book Two, only to stall out after 100 pages (of 600!) of Book Two. I renewed Book Two twice but never picked it up again. The same fate befell The Origins of You: How Childhood Shapes Later Life. That title sounded interesting on paper, but was far too laborious in print.

🎈 2023 was the year I finally indulged myself and subscribed to the literary magazine The Paris Review. The Paris Review is artsy and unconventional and wasn’t it about time I embraced the world of fine (read quirky) contemporary literature, because who knows what creativity it might unleash in me. Since I subscribed, The Paris Review has reliably arrived in our mailbox every quarter; I have yet to finish reading the first issue and I have yet to open the three issues subsequently delivered. What a dedicated follower of literary fashion I turned out to be.

🎈 The only live musical performance I attended in 2023 was in our own home when my friend Rob Simbeck visited and we got out our guitars and played well-known tunes from the 1960s and 70s. (To preserve what remains of our dignities, neither Rob or I attempted to replicate Taylor Swift’s thigh-forward performances of her 2023 Eras Tour.) Our music and memories spoke for themselves — here’s hoping for more musical reunions in 2024.

🎈 2023: It’s a wrap!