Now we’re in that week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve and Day. It’s a week that has no purpose except maybe for the start of purging your house or office of calendars that will soon be worthless. The toughest calendars to dump when I was a kid were the ones we got from the kosher butcher. They were a little weird. Each month’s grid was adorned by some sort of artwork apparently created by a blind guy who worked in a matzo factory. The subjects were generally joyous rabbis looking like they solved the Fiddler on the Roof-themed Word Search puzzle, or an assortment of farm animals such as chickens, turkeys and cows that could be slaughtered and eaten and still be kosher.

The butcher’s calendar was also very fair, showing both the Hebrew and Gregorian months. The Hebrew year is based on the moon so each month is about 29 days and during leap years an entire month is added. Plus the Hebrews, hoping to get a table at Wo Hop’s after Yom Kippur fasting ended, started long before the Gregorians so we’re up to year 5776. I always thought it was a nice touch that the butcher’s calendar had little line drawings of fishes every Friday to remind our goyim friends to eat fish on that day and leave the lean cuts of beef for the more worthy Jews who enjoy a nice brisket at the end of a long work week. Plus, the butcher’s brother owned a seafood shop down the street.

As I was writing this I stumbled on the craziest calendar yet, and one which I must have. For 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin is going topless for a calendar produced by “Stars and Advice” magazine. A pub evidently popular with the “devoted to depraved despot” set. It’s called “All Year With the Russian President” and cost 78 roubles, or, as the article says, 70 pence. Being the end of the year I’m a little short and have neither roubles nor pence. It’s a shame, because our kosher butcher died many years ago and I’ve had to live with freebie calendars from real estate and insurance agents which mainly just give you the date and sincere, smiling photo of the agent… and never include topless photos of heartless heads of state or delusional rabbis, or drawings of little fishies…which is what  I’ve come to expect in a calendar.

I launched this blog about a year ago as a way to stretch a muscle that’s been too long constricted by my corporate duties, and as way to have a little fun, entertain and sometimes be thought provoking.

It was also the start of a long-range project that I hope will grow over time with more content that might include videos, podcasts and other material.

What I’ve found out in the past year is that it’s very difficult to get folks to read full-length blog posts with a few exceptions. I was extremely gratified by the reaction to my post about the passing of Melissa Kitchens and how it is possible to have true relationship with someone you only knew through Facebook and to feel a real loss when you’ve lost them forever.

The post summing up the CNN 35th reunion did pretty well too.

There were a few others that managed to capture the attention of a few readers but most won a pretty paltry audience.  That’s pretty humbling and tells me I need to work a lot harder to convince folks they wouldn’t be wasting their time by reading a piece longer than a Facebook post or Tweet.

Suggestions are always welcome because everyone needs an editor and I consider every reader an editor.

I do have to say that just because I may toss a joke or a pun on Facebook I’m not a laugh-a-minute in my real life, so I’m sure I disappointed those who thought I would be “that guy.”

I also find that overtly political posts are a dangerous gambit since too many people have thin skins and can’t accept even mild jibing.

So I write what’s on my mind without trying to guess what’s on yours. I fully accept the fact that some posts will be more successful than others and some are duds. Hell..the best hitters in baseball are only successful about one-third of the time.

I’ll keep pecking away because that’s what writers do. Videos and podcasts may come but I promise you, if I ever start singing, I expect WordPress to void my account. I’d never do that to you.

Thanks a lot for reading and let me know if you find something you like. I find it great fun to shake my head in amazement.

Oh Lordy…we give thanks today for our good fortune…good fortune that has manifested itself in many different ways.

We give thanks that Bobby Jindal has dropped out of the presidential race causing a precipitous and fortuitous drop in the Looney Lousiana rhetoric index.

We give thanks that despite Hostess going bankrupt a guardian angel company swept in and saved the Twinkie.

We give thanks that we can get away, most of the time, with nudging annoying bicyclists who drift out of bike lanes into the paths of our giant SUVs. This just makes me SO happy…and thankful.

We give thanks for the never-ending array of free food samples offered at Costco, making it possible to ingest nutrition without ever divesting ourselves of hard-earned cash.

We give thanks to Caitlyn Jenner who instantly gave credibility to men wearing kilts

We give thanks to Hillary Clinton for showing us it’s OK to plead poverty even while pulling down 7-figure speaking fees.

We give thanks for Daylight Saving Time which provides us an extra hour one day a year to post self-centered esoteric dribblings on social media.

We give thanks for gefilte fish which gives the lowly carp purpose

We give thanks to the makers of Bluetooth devices who make it possible for us to look like we’re insane singing along to devices to which we’re not physically attached.

We give thanks to Nicki Manaj for proving once and for all it is possible to create an inflatable person.

Finally…we give thanks to Kentucky Fried Chicken for using Colonel Sanders’ cadaver to advertise its product thus giving us all hope that even after the chicken kills us we have careers as pitchmen.

For all that we thank YOU from the bottom of our backpacks.

Sixth grade was boring as hell, and our teacher at P.S. 186 in Queens, NY had a terrible nervous nose twitch which earned her the nickname “Twitch.” She also had the personality of plywood.  Her idea of interpersonal communication was to announce which page in the math workbook we should complete, QUIETLY! That way she wouldn’t have to talk to us.

Another way of avoiding an actual conversation with the class  that masqueraded as learning experience was having the class listen to a radio program broadcast by WNYE, the New York City educational radio station.

We were listening/dozing through one such program when it was interrupted by static, then an announcer shouting seemingly incoherent things like “we don’t know what’s going on yet!”

Since one of my jobs in the class was “radio monitor,” or the guy who pulled a 15-minute shift pumping WNYE programs to the various classrooms, Twitch sent me down to the principal’s office to investigate.

As I walked into the office I saw our principal, Henry H.C. Poliakoff, at the radio panel adjusting switches and knobs with a sense of urgency. He turned to me and in his South Carolina accent directed me to return to my classroom immediately.

My classroom, 319, was on the third floor and as I emerged from the staircase I could hear the horror booming from every loudspeaker in every room, echoing off the walls with the announcer who previously seemed incoherent, now speaking quite clearly as he intoned, “The President is dead! I repeat, the President is dead!”

As I made my way to my room, doors flew open as teachers reflexively left their classes for a moment to catch their breath and some began sobbing, shaking their heads, a few murmuring “No, no, no, no, no….”

When I returned to 319 Twitch directed me to my seat. The class was raptly listening to the continuing news coverage being piped into each room’s loudspeaker.  For the first time Twitch spoke to us as if she was each of our moms. “Do you all understand what is happening?” she quietly asked us. We did. “Are any of you feeling ill? Can I help you?” There were two girls quietly crying and asked to be held for a moment. Our teacher complied. Otherwise we simply sat there. Numb from the news.

Presidents were only assassinated in history books. Lincoln murdered by John Wilkes Booth in Fords Theater. William McKinley shot in Buffalo by an anarchist. But JFK. My God. JFK! As kids we connected with his youth, his children, Caroline and John Jr. Little girls wanted to be grown women as glamorous as First Lady Jacqueline. President Kennedy espoused “vigor,” youth, hope, a peaceful future without the threat of Communism.  But now he was gone. We heard it on the radio.

What do you do next? We were simply told to go home. Along the one-mile walk from P.S. 186 to our apartment there was none of the usual school gossip, or stupid dirty jokes or bragging about a new bike or recent raise in allowance. We walked silently and uncertainly.  Presidential assassinations were no longer just pages in history books. There was now one that would become permanently inscribed in our own life stories and affected every future chapter.

What are the questions? Why it happened? What happens next? How do you recover? Where is the world headed? Is this proof evolution is selective and skipped an entire sub-human species? How do we defend ourselves? How to we prevent a re-occurrance? Are there really any plausible answers? Is the world simply screwed and this is the new normal? The opposite of the big bang…the desperate implosion.