The New Year

Well, the year is not quite brand new but it's still fresh and hopeful. Today is Friday the 13. My grandmother, born on March 13,1899 always said it was a lucky day.

Monday I'll say Happy Birthday to my son, Sam, here in a birthday card he and his friend, Vanessa, made for me when Lucy was a puppy.

Here he is, a little more mature, again holding something precious.

Monday we also celebrate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Here he is on this week's New Yorker cover by Pola Maneli titled "Family Man."

In recent years The New Yorker has remembered Dr. King almost every January.

Here's 2022.

2020

2018

2017

2000

1999

1995

I read that Dr. King once said to a man who was threatening him with a baseball bat, "Hey, Man,

you're too good-looking to be so full of hate." I never found out how the man responded.

"Human beings are made for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful, and you don't teach people these things. It comes with the package of being human, and all of us are given the task of trying to make the world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things-to love, to compassion, to caring, to sharing, just to being human."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Let's make this a beautiful year.

January 12, 2023