Every
year I try to print a new year's mailing that captures the spirit of
the time, or at least gives a sense of how I'm feeling about the year
just past or the one that lies ahead. I generally aim, with varying
success, to get the card out by mid-February. For the last two years I
have been unable to make even this deadline. I just haven't known how to
greet the year. Since 2016 I have oscillated between mild and feverish
on the sad and discouraged scale, and I did not want to print another
sad, discouraged card. For 2017 I printed the last stanza of W H Auden's
"September 1, 1939,"
and for 2018 I printed a large, pleading "HOPE?" So this year it was
with relief and excitement that I could print a card that captured my
sense of relief for the coming year, and to do so in a way that might
not make anyone sad.
