Year in Review

It's been a year of ups and downs here at Flippism is the Key and in real life. The new year started with The Weaver, me and our newborn grandson recovering from serious medical issues. Everything thing turned out for the best, thankfully.

I began a memoir, Search For A Dancer, on New Years Day, giving a detailed look at one of my Reykjavík excursions. TMI for some, YMMV. In February I began experimenting with AI imagery, coming to the conclusion that it had some limited uses, but also some real dangers (note: I always label all AI on FITK.) I also (finally) got a pair of hearing aids which definitely help in conversations (and in listening to music) but can become a bit of a nuisance in the noisy world. Sometimes silence is golden.

A return trip to Santa Fe in March was a delight, plenty of places to explore, as was a return to Seattle in May. At that time my site-meter began logging dozens visits from one location in Singapore. What that meant is still a mystery, perhaps an AI bot scraping the site for material? A similar flurry of activity in FITK in November quintupled interest in the site for a week but its meaning was just as baffling.

In June I began a series of posts about “My Back Pages” that took on a special significance when my life-long friend and inspiration, Rich Lewis, had passed away.

Our summer vacation to Grand Marais, Minnesota, was ill-timed in that it was THE ONLY PLACE IN THE WHOLE WORLD where temperatures in July were below normal. Despite a drought, the rest of the summer was good, especially a family reunion in August with a whole new crop of little kids! A photo of mine made it into the State Fair Fine Arts Exhibit, where I even got to meet one of the subjects and both their mothers! My old pal Nicole also had a print there—a fitting scene seeing as it was the summer of Barbie™.

October found me back in Iceland, perhaps for my last hurrah. I can’t overstate how I have enjoyed these trips: the people there have been so kind to me over the years and Icelandic culture has enriched my life immensely. Iceland was a major impetus for the start of FITK and I’ve gotten a lot of material for the blog from these visits, but after experiencing a couple of earthquakes and narrowly avoiding an accident, those omens made me begin to think that my good-fortune there may be finally running out  (to say nothing of the volcanoes!)

The decline and demise of my big sister Jean in December put a damper on the holidays and made me reflect on my own mortality. Her last words to me were: “I love you, baby brother.”

Finally, here is a benediction I loosely paraphrased from Ingmar Bergman’s great film Fanny and Alexander:

“My dear friends, for 19 years, in the capacity of site administrator, I’ve existed here, making posts without really having any talent for that sort of thing. My only talent, if you can call it that in my case, is that I love this little world inside the thick walls of this playhouse, and I'm fond of the people who visit this little world. Outside is the big world, and sometimes the little world succeeds in reflecting the big one so that we understand it better. Or perhaps, we give the people who come here a chance to forget for a while, for a few short moments, the harsh world outside. My blog is a little room of orderliness, routine, care and love. I don't know why I feel so comically solemn this evening. I can't explain how I feel, so I'd best be brief: I wish you all a happy and joyous holidays. I Hope we meet again on New Years Day, strengthened in body and soul!