Ringing in the New

Tonight as I hear the sounds of fireworks, champagne corks, and bells resounding from the ridge tops and echoing through the hollows and across the valley, I will usher out 2007 and happily welcome 2008. The old, no matter how staid and comfortable, must always give way to the new.

2007 was a terrific year in so many ways, fraught with opportunities, new friendships, the forging of solid bonds, and so many other good things. New contacts were made and some old, moot ones were dropped. I honestly can't think of a single bad thing that happened in 2007, other than perhaps a small mishap here and there, some crossed signals, a couple of disappointments, and a few minor inconveniences, all of which were outweighed by good in the end; i.e., I'm ending the year with reasonably balanced Yin/Yang and some pretty good Feng Shui. Oh, yeah, there was the brief troll resurgence. That was bad. Not for me, but for the instigator and for the person who got hurt. So her victim pissed her off. Big whoop. Nobody deserved such vitriol and malice so vicious that it bordered on insanity. It actually turned out to be a quasi-good thing, though, in that everyone who matters now knows who it was. If she ever dares to show her face again, it'll be good for some head shaking and maybe a few laughs, but not much more. And ... why she reads me every day is wholly beyond my ken.

But none of that matters when there is so much real trouble in the world, chaos of all varieties all over the globe, not the least of which was the recent reprehensible assassination of Benazir Bhutto. I would think there will be continuing global repercussions from that cowardly act. There is war and terrorism and famine and drought in many parts of the world, all of which cause incalculable human misery. Let's hope that there will be some relief from all of that in the coming months. The eyes of the world will be on the American political arena this year. The U.S. needs a strong, stalwart leader, perhaps more so now than at any other time in its history. Let us hope we elect one -- and that we get it right. There is too much at stake to screw it up.

And if I may say so, let us also hope that Blogger pulls its act together a little tighter. I only say that because I've had to sit here and reconstruct from memory an entire lengthy post because -- Blogger ate it. Grrrrrr!

We lost a number of well known personalities in 2007, among them Anna Nicole Smith and Dick Wilson (Mr. Whipple), singers Beverly Sills and Luciano Pavarotti and Dan Fogelberg, pianist Oscar Peterson, writers Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, and Art Buchwald, actors George Grizzard, Charles Nelson Reilly, Tom Poston, and Roscoe Lee Browne, journalist David Halberstam, filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, Jack Valenti, Merv Griffin, Tom Snyder, mime Marcel Marceau, actresses Alice Ghostley, Yvonne De Carlo, Jane Wyman, and Deborah Kerr, Sidney Sheldon, and many more.

Here they are, the last bunch of Words Gone Wild of 2007 as hunted down by TWISTED LINGUISTICS and put up for your defining pleasure. Have fun with them!

critism
business nitch
PDF flie
certantily
newcommers
spend your doe
elete
wither by mail or internet

And for Monday dressup, I'm not working on this last day of the year so I'm wearing ... black sweats and pink fuzzy slippers. And you?

You know I love you all, and I wish you a very
Happy New Year!