Happy New Year!

Happy 2024 Everyone! Last night people all over the world rang in the New Year with fireworks, and here in the U.S. a record number of couples scrambled to get married on New Year's Eve, making sure their wedding would be on 1-2-3-1-2-3, no doubt so they will not have trouble remembering the date of their anniversary. Makes perfect sense to me. In Denver, there were fireworks on the 16th Street Mall at both 9:00 P.M. and midnight. In years past, I have sometimes attended this event, which lasts only about 8 minutes, and because of the size of the crowd, several times I could not get to a place where I could even see the fireworks. All this before the 16th Street Mall was torn up for a major renovation. It must have been very cozy indeed down there last night.  Which no doubt helped keep everybody warm in the freezing cold. Do I sound like an old curmudgeon talking, or what? Needless to say, my sister Susan and I decided to skip the fireworks this year and have an early dinner at the Old Chicago Pizza and Taproom in suburban Lakewood. The photograph above, by the way, was taken many years ago of my mother Mary (on the left) and her cousin Marie (on the right) at Marie and her husband Ed's home in Evergreen Park, not far from Chicago's South Side Brainerd neighborhood, where I grew up. I suspect they skipped the fireworks that year, too. Happy New Year Everyone!