What a year it’s been. I won’t bore you with the details but it had highs and lows beyond comparison.

Saw The World

This past year was all about travel. Get it in while we don’t have any children to keep the complications to a minimum. And boy, did we deliver.

1. Osaka and Kyoto, Japan – My second trip there in 15 years. Stayed with a friend and his wife and they showed me more than I could imagine in six days.
2. Reykjavik, Iceland – Our annual international vacation spot. Beautiful and alien in many ways but probably our favorite European city yet. I encourage everyone to go.
3. Leavenworth, KS – We went to visit my great aunt Tilly at least one more time. She owned us in dominos, and was unapologetic about it.
4. Martha’s Vineyard, MA – Went for an extended family reunion of sorts; neither of us had been and it was a beautiful retreat. Will have to go back.

This does not include all the places I went for work travel and was able to visit numerous friends again: San Diego (twice), Chicago, Orlando, Boston, and Atlanta (twice). People went out of their way to accommodate my work schedule so we could go out for dinner and catch up. I am most grateful for their generosity.

Politics Not As Usual

At least we have parody to comfort us…

This year’s election was nasty, brutish, and 16 months long. There’s more than enough written out there to describe how it ended and what it could mean for this country’s institutions in general and our democracy specifically. A narcissistic billionaire whose allegiance is only to himself. To be fair, Hillary wasn’t much better but at least I believed in most of her principles. But that story won’t be written. Her political career is over mostly due to her own fault.

There are a lot of fears that he’d become an authoritarian and we’d all be living in a world very close to George Orwell’s 1984. And I must admit it still worries me. But so far signs of a dystopian, illiberal democratic future are slight. He owes no allegiance to Republicans, is at odds with the FBI and CIA, and is trying to shape policy on Twitter. It’ll be a bumpy ride but I have an actual cause to fight for: to keep our elected Congresspeople in check, donate money to causes that fight for what I believe in, and refuse to lie down and take whatever comes our way.

2017 through 2020 will be a bumpy ride, but if there’s one thing that Trump’s election has done is made a lot more of us activists. That will bring a world of good.