Happy Holidays 2020

Today is our wedding anniversary, which annually marks the beginning of a period of reflection from now until January. With the coronavirus pandemic, it will last longer than it has.

While the COVID-19 vaccine arrived in Iowa this week, it could be a while before I get vaccinated, and even longer before 70 percent of the U.S. population is, which experts say is needed to declare the pandemic over. The pandemic dominated much of what I wrote this year.

Mine has been a life lived in forward gear, without much reflection on the immediate past. Focused on the future, I endeavored to avoid the rear view mirror. That is, until this year when work on an autobiography began in earnest. I’m finding out who I was. It is not much different from who I am today.

The pandemic had me reading more books this year, 50 so far. The Reading List tab on the menu takes viewers to a list of what I recently read beginning with the most recent. The five best books I read this year were:

• Wildland Sentinel by Erika Billerbeck.
• Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones.
• The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene by Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin.
• American Primitive by Mary Oliver.
• Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Anne Case and Angus Deaton.

I appreciate visitors to this site, especially those who return often. I follow WordPress statistics and observe the most popular posts are those that offer something different. Politics, my autobiographical work, and the story about the black man found burning in rural Iowa got the most views this year. I wrote Autobiography in 1,000 Words in 2013 and it continues to get more views than any new post every year. I write often about cooking and gardening, my kitchen garden, yet that work does not garner as many views. I plan to continue posting next year.

Thanks for reading. After 46 straight days of posting I plan to take a break. If something big happens in my world, I’ll return to post about it. Otherwise, I hope to see you again in 2021.

Best wishes for happy holidays with hope for a better 2021.