2016

OK this past year was not all bad. We made several nice trips to our condo in Mammoth Lakes and to Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez. We consumed a lot of really great wine and some great food. In March, we went to Phoenix to spend a week watching spring practice, and that was fun. This summer, we took a Viking river cruise on the Danube and that proved to be a lot of fun and very interesting. Then we flew to Ireland and spent two weeks in our favorite places. Five times in Ireland! Why don’t they just give us passports! We also spent a week going from Boston to Chicago and seeing my Chicago relatives was wonderful. and, finally, our Christmas week in the Seattle area was great. I should mention, too, that we bought both a new dishwasher and a new refrigerator and think they are both incredible. 

So what made 2016 seem so bad? Well, the presidential election of course. The whole period of advertisements and debates was terrible. We wondered how the political process could become so debased in a country that is supposedly the world leader. We shared the general optimism that Clinton would be elected right up to the evening of election day when it became brutally obvious that she was going to lose. Of course, we were then traumatized by the fact that she won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes and, also, that Russia seems to have had a major role in turning the process toward Trump. But alas Trump will become president of the United States this month and his selections of cabinet members foretell a disastrous destruction of our national government, something Republicans have been wanting to do for years.

So I cry for my country. It is not the country I thought it was or hoped it might be.