O Brave New Year!

I grew up watching the New Year's Rose Parade from Pasadena. Even though I was watching on a black & white TV, there was still plenty of oohing and aahing about the bee-yoo-ti-ful flower-covered floats and the pretty cowgirls on palominos.

The parade is, of course, a lot better in living color. But at my age a lot of the oohing and aahing has been replaced by shock and awe at the nutty effort that goes into creating those bee-yoo-ti-ful flower-covered floats. And the pretty cowgirls on palominos? They seem to have been replaced by zaftig middle-aged bleach blondes who look like their next stop is the Republican National Convention.

Nonetheless, I'll probably put the parade on for a few minutes later this morning.

I was surprised that the parade wasn't on yesterday, on New Year's Day. But it turns out that the Rose Bowl football game - a bowl game that doesn't factor in to this year's college championship playoffs - will be played today. And/or observance of Sunday proprieties. And/or the NFL scheduled Thus the parade is today and not on New Year's.

Other than the Rose Parade and, I believe, the other bowl parades (Orange? Sugar?) of my childhood, and the follow-on games, I don't remember all that much about New Year's Day when I was a kid.

It was a Holy Day, so we went to Mass. And the next day - unless, like this year, the holiday/Holy Day fell on a Sunday and was observed by government and business on Monday - meant back to school.

Did I stay up on New Year's Eve to listen to Guy Lombardo and countdown to the big calendar turn? Not that I remember. I do recall being excited in 1959 that we were heading into the sixties. 

As an adult, New Year has never been all that interesting to me.

I think I've gone out once or twice. Some years, I've watched the First Night Parade that passes nearby. And/or watched the kiddie fireworks from Boston Common, which I can sees out my front door.  Some years, I just go to bed early. My late husband liked to watch the Three Stooges Marathon. Those were definitely early-to-bed years for me. (Nyuck, nyuck, nycukc.) Some years, I go to my sister Trish's, as I did this year. And we even made it to midnight.

Mostly, New Year's Day means take the tree down - it went out with this morning's recycle - and gearing myself for the long, cold, dreary month of January.

I may make a half-baked resolution, but typically the only resolution I ever stick to is the implicit resolution I make to ignore any resolutions I've made.

Still, I enter 2023 guardedly optimistic that, on the personal front, I will get more writing in. More reading. (Stay the f' off of Twitter.) That I'll clean out all my cabinets, drawers, and closets and haul whatever I don't need and/or want off to Goodwill. That I'll do a bit more travel than I did during he peak covid years. (Assuming 2023 doesn't turn into a peak covid year.)

And I'll try to stop worrying about what 2023 will hold for the country, for the world.

How will Ukraine fare? The immigrants who, despite all, keep coming to this fractured, fractious, unwelcoming nation of ours? Will The Law finally catch up with Trump and his minions? (I don't need to have Trump in prison. I just need him to STFU.) Will the weather get crazier? Will there be more bomb cyclones? Will covid finally play itself ou?

And what about the Red Sox?

Sure, this is more personal than earth-shaking, but for anyone who lives in New England, living and dying by fortunes of the Olde Towne Team, what happens with the Red Sox produces a pretty universal threat. 

Will I hold fast to my boycott, or get sucked back in to paying ticket prices that are among the highest in baseball, to watch a last place team devoid of star power?

O Brave New Year! 

I wonder what wonders it will hold for us.