Dec 31 2021 - Top FIVE things for 2022

 

What if there were only FIVE things to watch in 2022?  What's the first?   It is the Pandemic and its persistent set of rolling waves.  Everyone is asking if 2022 is the year it moves into an endemic which somehow seems less scary than the past two years of pandemic.  That's the active word right now.   I am looking past the waves that roll into endemic and on to the aftershocks that impact the health care system itself.  That seems to me to be the actual thing to keep track of in 2022.  And it is going to be close-up and personal for those of us who are older and more dependent on the health care system. On to Number Two:  Would you think climate change, climate events, and climate actions might be the second thing?  Not according to the media.  Nothing there on climate change as the key trend.  It is things like inflation, The Big Resignation, electric vehicles and space travel.  These are so much easier to write about.  And the news organizations have been very low on expertise on climate, just as they were low on expertise on the pandemic when it started.  As an aside, I think the space travel trend in 2022 might bring the first big space accident, given the near misses of 2021.  I don't see anybody else making this sort of prediction, but then it is macabre. So climate change is likely to have even more climate events that impact more of us, and personally. A growing swell of weather gone wrong.  I am attentive to the weather forecast as never before, and considering the worst scenario is where I live. And the other three things?   It seems it is up for grabs, but it is actually easy to see.  It is our attention to U.S. politics and the state of democracy in America.  The US news media and social media players have a hold on us.  They want to rekindle the comedy and tragedy of the Donald Trump days - that Trump frenzy. And what about  the gladiator hand-to-hand combat of the "Republican problem?"  Be ready for it to play out on January 6th. So we're down to what are the remaining two things to watch in 2022?  What are you considering?  What compels your attention?   It is time for a new calendar - but I don't seem to have Kim Klassen's New Years templates.  I'll have to go find out if she produced them this year. Here's a New Years greeting from a few years ago.  What a different time that was, and doesn't this image demonstrate it.  A magical Longwood Gardens' Himalayan Blue Poppy welcoming the New Year into a welcoming Blue Starry Sky.

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It's New Years All Day Long...Somewhere

The New Year's Eve of our lifetime occurred in the year 2000.  We likely all remember the celebration that year, and enjoyed fireworks from around the world.  Of course, we think of Sydney with its spectacular opera house and bridge.  There's a live feed at the Guardian with greetings from each country as it heads into 2019.  You can check out the feed HERE. Fireworks are underway in Sydney where the time is 10:39pm.  Samoa and Christmas Island are the first places on the planet to enter into 2019.  Chatham Islands, New Zealand has joined them, and shortly a small part of Russia will be there at 7:00am our time.    The New Year finally ends Tuesday at 7:00am when US Minor Outlying Islands - Baker & Howland Islands bring in the new year.  Samoa and American Samoa are a day apart in time with only 64 km of ocean distance between them.  At the Guardian feed, New Year's Resolutions are flowing in, and a month by month look ahead is included.  Canada has its own entry in October - we have Canadian elections. You can read the fast-forward of 2019 HERE.  And what about resolutions   There's a chart of what American's think Trump's resolutions should be - at the top of the list 22.8% of respondents think he should resign, 10.4% think he should tweet less, and so on. In keeping with these woefully out of touch resolutions of what Trump would consider doing, I found a series of  sad and useless resolutions from the creative and funny sadanduseless.com website: 1. Take a walk every day or at least briefly consider it 2. Don't spend too much time wearing pants 3. Maybe gain 5 lbs 4. Take every disappointment as a reason to give up 5.  Don't let anything get in the way of eating an entire pint of ice cream in one sitting 6. Something something saving money 7. Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and just focus on butts 8. This year I will live up to my full potent..oh look a shiny object 9. Don't waste time learning 10. Spend time doing what really matters:  watching Netflix 11. Forget a foreign language you only vaguely learned in high school 12. Read more book...takeout menus 13. See the world through the magic of internet 14. Maybe try to be nicer to other people but only if you feel like it 15. Hold someone's hand at sunset... just kidding, that's dumb 16. Avoid adulthood by spending more money on videogames 17. Forget past mistakes and press on to greater mistakes 18. Stop making resolutions, just get out there and start eating cheese This is a funny website - you can check out another of their posts of a Dad who turns his 6-year-old son's drawings into reality  - HERE. These are line drawings that are then turned into hilarious photo images. I've included the first one to encourage you to jump over - they are all very funny and make up for the useless resolutions. Have a Happy New Year's Celebration!