{"id":31806,"date":"2023-12-30T21:37:58","date_gmt":"2023-12-31T02:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=31806"},"modified":"2023-12-31T00:10:10","modified_gmt":"2023-12-31T05:10:10","slug":"2023-its-a-wrap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2023\/12\/2023-its-a-wrap\/","title":{"rendered":"2023: It’s a Wrap"},"content":{"rendered":"

\ud83c\udf88\u00a0 2023 turned out to be a Michael Dukakis kind-of-year<\/a> for Nikki Haley.\u00a0 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<\/a> and kept Haley from saying that the U.S. Civil War was fought over slavery.\u00a0 The remaining few days of the Pale Year of Nikki Haley didn’t matter much, nor will her 2024.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf88\u00a0 At the start of 2023, my no-profit-website Pet-Free Hotels<\/a> had about 1200 listings — at year’s end, the number is 2255.\u00a0 I do pet-free hotel searches while copying music CDs to USB sticks so I can play them in my car.\u00a0 (Who would’ve imagined back in 1983 that those sleek silvery discs would one day become boomer relics?)\u00a0 A recent Pet-Free Hotels visitor tipped me $24 after he\/she found a pet-free hotel in Nashville.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 As has been the case since grade school.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf88 2023 was not the best year in humor at The 100 Billionth Person<\/em>; surprisingly, it was one of my leanest years (only five posts) in that category<\/a>.\u00a0 I can’t blame it on my teen hero Tom Smothers dying, as he sadly passed away just a few days ago.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 (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?\u00a0 Some readers might suggest I give it a try.)<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf88 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.\u00a0 Americans need it simple.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf88 In the same vein so to speak, it seemed like health care appointments besmirched my 2023 calendar like never before.\u00a0 I’m sure many of my friends and their family members felt the same.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Things seem to pile up these days like dents and dings on a car — nowadays one just hopes to avoid collisions and major repairs.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udff4 Gun violence 2023.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 There were 43,000 gun-related deaths<\/a> in the U.S. this year; more than half were suicides.\u00a0 Mass shootings were overly concentrated in Chicago and the Deep South<\/a>.\u00a0 Here is a map:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Credit: Gun Violence Archive (gunviolencearchive.org)<\/span><\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf88 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.\u00a0 The most compelling was the autobiographical My Struggle: Book One<\/em><\/a> by Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausg\u00e5rd (translated by Don Bartlett<\/a>).\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I renewed Book Two twice but never picked it up again.\u00a0 The same fate befell The Origins of You: How Childhood Shapes Later Life<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 That title sounded interesting on paper, but was far too laborious in print.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf88 2023 was the year I finally indulged myself and subscribed to the literary magazine The Paris Review.\u00a0 The Paris Review<\/em> 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.\u00a0 Since I subscribed, The Paris Review<\/em> 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.\u00a0 What a dedicated follower<\/a> of literary fashion I turned out to be.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf88 The only live musical performance I attended in 2023 was in our own home when my friend Rob Simbeck<\/a> visited and we got out our guitars and played well-known tunes from the 1960s and 70s.\u00a0 (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.)\u00a0 Our music and memories spoke for themselves — here’s hoping for more musical reunions in 2024.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf88 2023: It’s a wrap!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf88 As I said, it’s a wrap!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf88 I insist, it’s a wrap!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83c\udff3\ufe0f OK, I give up.\u00a0 Sorta.\u00a0 Best wishes for 2024.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\ud83c\udf88\u00a0 2023 turned out to be a Michael Dukakis kind-of-year for Nikki Haley.\u00a0 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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31806"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31860,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31806\/revisions\/31860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}