New look
– I have a new look — no, not because it’s a new year; nothing so trite and obvious as that! It’s because important people — Tim Blair and Jim Dwyer — told me they could not read this blog because it crashed Netscape 4.7. Now perhaps that was a convenient excuse for them but now it’s gone. I borrowed a new template from Blog*Spot, got a lot of HTML and CSS instruction from my 9-year-old Web genius son, and here’s the new look. Hope you like it. Hope it works.
Also note that I’ve added more links to the right. And I have a new email address: jeff@buzzmachine.com.
Hour Zero
: I don’t know when I’ll start marking my years from January 1 again, instead of from September 11, as I now mark my weeks and months. I don’t know when I’ll finally look back and fully calculate the impact of this date on our lives. I don’t know when I’ll measure life from “normal” again without wondering what the hell that means.
In this weblog, I have catalogued just some of the ways in which we’ve already seen changes in America and some of the ways in which I have changed. But this is just the beginning. It is the beginning of a new era in our lives.
So it is too soon to look on this new year as the start of anything truly new.
In fact, nothing is new from yesterday to today. And apart from doing the people of Afghanistan the tremendous favor of ridding them of their fanatical fundamenalist despots, the horizon is still clouded:
– We still do not have bin Laden and his key henchmen.
– We still do not know who the hell murdered our neighbors with anthrax.
– Bin Laden’s flunkies are still trying to blow up our jets.
– Our homefront security is still frightfully lax.
– India and Pakistan are still getting ready to blow each other up.
– Israel and Palestine are still getting ready to blow each other up.
– And now let’s add financial collapse (again) and its shockwaves in Argentina.
I don’t mean to be grumpy about the state of things. And don’t go accusing me of being a quagmirist just because I see the empty half of the glass. It’s just that I feel compelled to explain why I’m not celebrating the new year with lists of momentous events from the last year or predictions for the next. I tried to celebrate Christmas to look for hope. I tried to celebrate Thanksgiving to remember how thankful I had to be. But new year’s? Just another day.
One good reason to be glad for the new year is that all the vacationing (read: lazy or lucky) bloggers will be returning: Layne, Welch, Relapsed Catholic, Holy Weblog, Solent, Hartung.
