Well, thank god that’s over. The year, I mean. 2020.

I’ve had just about enough of it and I suspect you have too. Not that 2021 will start off so terribly different. Well, there is the regime change, an inauguration, and the eradication of four years of shitty people running the country.

It will take time, lots of vaccinations, still more wine than we should be consuming, and a Democratic majority in Congress — up to you, Georgia.

Was 2020 really all that bad? Yes. Yes, it was.

It was so bad that when I sat down to make my photography calendar for 2021, I just couldn’t do it. Who wants to look back, month after month, on the good old days of 2020? I need only look at my 2020 calendar — jammed with photos from the previous year — and tabulate all the things that did not happen.

The main thing that did not happen? People.

Up until March, we hung out with friends, took group trips, enjoyed gatherings for meals and celebrations, made plans to visit family, bought airline tickets. We planned monthly trips, short ones to explore other parts of Mexico.

Next thing you know, we’re all trying to figure out Zoom, online shopping, face masks, and Facebook. I started photographing flowers and statues, murals and sunsets — instead of people and parades, street people and concerts, and food porn in crowded restaurants.

Has the pandemic made us better people? Some, maybe. A lot seem crazier than they did in 2016. Crazier and better armed.

The problem is, I can’t let 2020 go without doing something.

I did write a lot and I took a lot of photos in 2020. I’m going to sort though it all one more time and post some of it here. Maybe I’ll discover something about myself that I missed in the heat of the moment. Maybe you’ll find something to enjoy. I hope so.

Then we can all step back to the ledge and wait for 2021, knowing that nothing will change. Not yet, anyway. But change is coming and hopefully we won’t be going back to the old world we once knew. Hopefully we all learned something good, something precious, something about ourselves in our various levels of isolation, something that we can apply to the future.

Here’s to a new era in which we’re all a little smarter, more compassionate, thirstier for justice and equality, more open to listening, more curious about the lives of others, and willing to reduce our spending at Amazon by 50 percent because we didn’t need all that crap in the first place.

Read the sequel! These are a few of my favorite things, Part II

(Spoiler alert: Part II contains months July through December.)

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“The Divine Energy is listening to us when we speak to other people, but also when we are still and silent and able to accept solitude as a blessing.

“And when we achieve that harmony, we receive more than we asked for.”
―  Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

The almost empty museum of beautiful flowers and cobblestone streets

Grateful on the preternaturally calm Sunday morning, I ask myself, ‘Isn’t this just enough?’

MAY

Come, walk with me in the magical garden of earthly delights

JUNE

Bonus: Parque Juarez: On the outside, looking in

Read the sequel! These are a few of my favorite things, Part II