Bonus Blog: Reflecting on 2017

2017 was a difficult year. It seems that we say this often, annually, in fact. Every year is a difficult year. But every year also has promise and hope, and as I look back on this one I already am looking forward to the next. Perhaps that is how it should be. New Year's is an arbitrary cut-off from one cycle to the next, with each cycle being only 365 days long, roughly matching the time it takes our planet to make one complete orbit around the Sun. I often contemplated the different amounts of time it gtakes to orbit the sun: Saturn, for example, takes about 29 and a half earth years to complete one rotation; Mercury, on the other hand, hurtles around the sun once every 88 days. Is time itself different on these locations? Would a human being age only a year every 29.5 on Saturn, but also age one year every 88 days on Mercury? Or, if a human lived on Saturn would three Saturn years constitute a long life; would a human live 320 Mercury years if he could withstand the radiation? I know, this is basic science 101: speed does change time but it has to be massive speed, much greater than the orbital speeds of the planets in our solar system. The “what if” posturing is fun but elemental. And I digress. I began 2017 in recovery from hip replacement surgery. The surgey took place on our 42nd anniversary, three days before 2017 began. I ended the year with a new knee. During recovery, I lost a combined four months where I could not do my part-time janitor work, but we managed without the extra income. I published one book in 2017, Rhymes and Reasons. I saw my late 2016 effort, Custer's Last Stand, sell steadily if slowly throughout the year—monthly royalties, however meager, are a wonderful encouragement to a writer. There are at least a dozen more books to write if I have time. Friends and family came to visit us up in the Big Sky. Our eldest grandchild grew from a reluctant student into an eager one, while our other two simply grew with charminbg personalities and clever imaginations. In a sense, the world swirled around Diane and myself, while we sat back and watched. The outside world in 2017 has been a disaster—one disaster after another. Massive storms and wild fires dominated the news; once again, humans with guns proved deadly to their fellows in terrifying numbers; and the United States has been plagued by a President who may be a laughing stock to much of the world but represents a clear and present danger at home to democracy itself. A third of you will not agree with that last opinion, but the world is watching us and America's prestige and position are slipping, and it all took a quantum leap in 2017. Looking ahead to 2018, I am filled with hope. Optimism is too strong a word: I have hope, but I have an equal measure of fear. The storms will be bigger and more frequent. The fires will engulf drought-plagued regions. The rich will continue to line their pockets while people in America and all over the world face shortages of food, water, and adequate health care. It is a broken record. I often think I should stop commenting on it altogether, but I cannot help myself. All I have is my words, right now, and to remain silent when you see something wrong is to allow the wrong to grow. I did not mean for this reflection to travel down this path, but I have lived a good many years and I have seen good things happen. I have seen progress and I have seen resistance to change. I have seen momentum shift from one to the other and back again. My hope for 2018 is that the momentum shifts to progress and maintains itself through November. For myself, Diane and I start the new year with a trip back to the Netherlands. Some of our dearest friends live there and we burn with the need to see them. We have another grandchild coming in April. And there are books to write, projects to finish and time to spend watching the universe at work. Of course, like honey badgers, the universe don't care. The solar system don't care. The planets will spin around the sun and the sun will spin around the Milky Way, and the Milky Way will fling itself farther and farther away from the center of the universe, regardless of what any of us do. Oddly, there is a peculiar comfort in that.