I was one of those, speaking of 2016 with woe and lamentations.\u00a0 Celebrity deaths, police shooting and being shot, terrorism, mass shootings, and, as it has been for every single year of my life, no peace in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
O, and there was this presidential election thing, which made all of America feel like their toilets were backed up.<\/p>\n
I was ready to anoint 2016 as a Terrible Year until someone reminded me of 1994, when \u201cHootie and the Blowfish had a #1 album.\u00a0 Those were dark days.\u201d<\/p>\n
I countered with reminding him that 2016 also had a Blue Bell ice cream shortage, at which point he reminded me of 1977, when Kanye West was born, and 2007, when Keeping Up With The Kardashian\u2019s first aired.<\/p>\n
So, there\u2019s all that to consider.<\/p>\n
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That It Felt Like A Bad Year Don\u2019t Mean It Rates<\/strong><\/p>\n 65 million years ago a giant asteroid hit the Yucatan Peninsula.\u00a0 Shrinking as it burned through our atmosphere, it was still six miles wide on impact.\u00a0 Scientists use the word \u201cincinerated\u201d and they mean it literally – bugs, beasts, and broccoli – each and every, over a chunk of North, Central and South America, and that was just Day One of a seriously bad year.<\/p>\n Some of you are expecting me to mention the Black Plague, like woo-wooo-wooo, but a far worse year was less than 100 years ago, 1918.\u00a0 We had the First World War, where as usual, old generals used old strategies against new technology.\u00a0 The flower of youth, obeying orders, charging machine guns and more accurate cannons, both sides losing thousands in the time it would take a wino to put a dent in a bottle of two buck chuck.<\/p>\n 1918 also had the Spanish Flu pandemic.\u00a0 Every population, from New Zealand to Zimbabwe, Eskimo to Aborigine, from every continent, just a great mass dying, somewhere between 2 and 5 percent of the entire human population\u2026\u00a0 Children, adults, future this\u2019s and former that\u2019s, the best of us, the worst of us, the average of us, cough, cough, fever, fever, one after the other, and in some places, nobody left to build the caskets and dig the graves.<\/p>\n 1863 was a big year for tragic news in America.\u00a0 North and south, women are walking behind mules, because the able bodied men were off fighting the Civil War.\u00a0 In little towns, cries and crumbling, people gathered near the telegraph office, to find that half of the boys that survived the last battle didn\u2019t survive the latest one.<\/p>\n 1943 was a big year for dying.\u00a0 The fulcrum year for a world at war, and deep inside the dark, the trains are unloading at Auschwitz.<\/p>\n 1968 was pretty dramatic.\u00a0 Vietnam, and it\u2019s not going well.\u00a0 We like to think of ourselves as good guys, but here comes news of the My Lai massacre, where we wiped out a village of women and children, and then\u2026the Tet Offensive, where we\u2019re like Mike Tyson in the ring with Buster Douglas.\u00a0 Martin Luther King shot in May\u2026and we get a few weeks to get over that, and then in June, Bobby Kennedy\u2026<\/p>\n Going historical makes 2016 go from rattlesnake to garter snake.\u00a0 As bad as it was, at least it wasn\u2019t 2013, when twerking and selfie were the top two new words of the English language.<\/p>\n _ \u00a0 _\u00a0 _\u00a0 _\u00a0 _\u00a0 _\u00a0 _\u00a0 _ \u00a0 _ \u00a0 _<\/p>\n As For 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019d like to face 2017 like an actual grownup.<\/p>\n Dying will occur, like it always does.\u00a0 I was surprised at how rattled I was last year about celebrity deaths.\u00a0 It\u2019s not like I\u2019m some kid that doesn\u2019t understand why the goldfish is swimming upside down.\u00a0 I think it honorable to swallow hard, and reflect on lives that have affected us, but I\u2019d like to take bad news with a stiffer spine this year.\u00a0 (*I don\u2019t want Jimmy Carter to go.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t a great President, but he is a stellar human being.\u00a0 Please not this year, Lord\u2026)<\/p>\n Appreciation is always a good start to a new year and a good daily practice.\u00a0 Being alive gives me a reason to wake up every morning.\u00a0 Whatever health above that is blessed art thou.<\/p>\n Hillary and Trump wasn\u2019t like choosing between FDR and Lincoln.\u00a0 It\u2019s just the choice we had.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to choose to watch how it plays out, be a good American and trust that America is filled with even better ones than me.<\/p>\n The new year doesn\u2019t owe me anything.\u00a0 I know it\u2019s just a mental game, to go from 365 back to 1, and pretend it\u2019s all blank slate, but it\u2019s a nice game; even if I never win, I like all the mulligans and do-overs.\u00a0 As I think every January, many good things are possible, as I think every December, some of them came about.<\/p>\n _ \u00a0 _\u00a0 _\u00a0 _\u00a0 _\u00a0 _\u00a0 _\u00a0 _ \u00a0 _ \u00a0 _<\/p>\n 2016 and 2017 Walk Into This Bar<\/strong><\/p>\n 2016:<\/b>\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019re buying.\u201d<\/p>\n 2017:<\/b>\u00a0 \u201cWhatcha gonna do now that you\u2019re retired?\u201d<\/p>\n 2016:<\/b>\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m gonna mic up some popcorn and follow a certain Twitter feed.\u201d<\/p>\n 2017:<\/b>\u00a0 \u201cYou got any advice for a new year?\u201d<\/p>\n 2016:<\/b>\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t let the internet go out.\u00a0 Use winter to put a lick on the mosquitoes.\u00a0 And make sure there\u2019s always a station that plays the Andy Griffith Show.\u201d<\/p>\n 2017:<\/b>:\u00a0 \u201cWhat if I have a worse year than you?\u201d<\/p>\n 2016:<\/b>\u00a0 \u201cJust remember, you aren\u2019t making the news.\u00a0 You\u2019re just time, and the diary they write it down on\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n _ \u00a0 _\u00a0 _\u00a0 _\u00a0 _\u00a0 _\u00a0 _\u00a0 _ \u00a0 _ \u00a0 _<\/p>\n This edition of Uncle P\u2019s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where our favorite number is somewhere between 80 and 82.<\/i><\/p>\n Uncle P\u2019s Bedtime Stories can be found on the Eighty-one Facebook page.\u00a0 People wishing to put him in their will may reach him at 81creativity@gmail.com.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was one of those, speaking of 2016 with woe and lamentations.\u00a0 Celebrity deaths, police shooting and being shot, terrorism, mass shootings, and, as it has been for every single year of my life, no peace in the Middle East. O, and there was this presidential election thing, which made all of America feel like [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[1354,59,894],"yoast_head":"\n