The new year never seems to live up to the Times Square excitement

People are still shooting each other, having sex, drinking too much wine, getting married, watching bad TV, dying of old age (so long  Glynis Johns at 100), and eating too much fast food. When will it end?

I’m more concerned about the mass shootings than the wine and the sex and the marriage–like the senseless attack at Iowa’s Perry High School. Shooters kill a bunch of people and then kill themselves. Why don’t they kill themselves first? That would reduce the amount of grief and paperwork.

We expect too much magic, it seems, with the changing of the year.  Or maybe we don’t expect enough. Or, worse yet, we expect the same old, same old. Speeding tickets, DUIs, getting fired, getting hired, texting too much, running into a tree while texting, being shot by the cops while breaking into a store, finding the Oak Island Treasure. Yes, when will it end?

I have high hopes for the human race, but low expectations. Perhaps you feel that way, too.

I don’t think “it” will end because it’s easier for all of us to sit back and watch “it” happen on TV without worrying about “it” (all the bad stuff) than figuring out how to fix “it.” Okay, most of us don’t know how to fix it, though one would think that by working on the problem as a group we could make progress with the changing of the years.

Then, New Year’s Eve would mean something.

–Malcolm