Balance Every Joy with a Grief - 2020 wrap-up

 How do I start talking about the last year? The surrealistic dread that hovered above me like a guilt-complex. The death of a patriarch. The death of a friend. The threat implied in breathing the air near another person. The unpaid, unqualified, un-asked for frustrations of at-home learning. The concern that cherished watering-holes might dry up before the rains come back. The irritation generated by a demagogue, a charlatan, a spiteful child. The tears shed over being unable to break bread with friends and family.

It is not without relief that I await the final moments of a year I failed to predict. Yet hope rises in my soul. A low bar is not as hard to surmount. Maybe this year will be better. 

Here's the list of lists I've spent all year accomplishing, accumulating and collating, starting with a list of subjectively notable deaths.

Neil Peart
Sean Reinert
Christopher Tolkien
Terry Jones
Jim Lehrer
Kobe Bryant
Kirk Douglas
Orson Bean
Clive Cussler
James Lipton
Max Von Sydow
Breonna Taylor
Kenny Rodgers
Tomie dePaola
Bill Withers
Arlene Schnitzer
John Prine
Brian Dennehy
Little Richard
Jerry Stiller
Fred Willard
Jimmy Cobb
George Floyd
Christo
Ian Holm
Hugh Downs
Pete deJong
Cody Fowler
Charlie Daniels
Ennio Morricone
Regis Philbin
Peter Green
John Saxon
Wilford Brimley
Chadwick Boseman
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Eddie Van Halen
Sean Connery
Alex Trebek
Diego Maradona
David Prowse
Chuck Yeager
Sean Malone
Alexi Laiho

These albums came out 20 years ago. They represent a time both objectively and subjectively where radio became less important as a vehicle for album sales. Making this list was a strange feeling, as many of the albums evoked a very specific time, while others seem to fall outside the confines of memory and development.

Modest Mouse - Building Nothing Out of Something
Morphine - Night
Soilwork - The Chainheart Machine
The Cure - Bloodflowers
Air - The Virgin Suicides
Jimmy Page and The Black Crowes - Live at the Greek
Dashboard Confessional - The Swiss Army Romance
Disturbed - The Sickness
Nickelback - The State
Eels - Daisies of the Galaxy
Death Cab For Cutie - We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes
Project 86 - Drawing Black Lines
Doves - Lost Souls
The Hives - Veni Vidi Vicious
Elliott Smith - Figure 8
Relient K - Relient K
The Crown - Deathrace King
A Perfect Circle - Mer de Noms
Belle and Sebastian - Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant
Queens of the Stone Age - Rated R
Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica
Deftones - White Pony
Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour of Bewilderbeast
Coldplay - Parachutes
The Weakerthans - Left and Leaving
Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker
At the Drive-In - Relationship of Command
VAST - Music for People
Cold - 13 Ways to Bleed Onstage
Radiohead - Kid A
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Children of Bodom - Follow the Reaper

Reflecting more of the times, and of personal consumption, the purchased albums list is much shorter this year than previous, and I expect it to stay that way as most future purchases may be made with the intention of keeping this list alive.

Vince Guaraldi Trio - Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus (LP)
The Ramones - Road to Ruin
Vince Guaraldi Trio - A Charlie Brown Christmas (LP)

Books, on the other hand have not fallen from grace. Admittedly, many of them are children's books, but I hope the time spent will have a positive effect.

Rainer Maria Rilke - Where Silence Reigns
Daphne du Maurier - Classics of the Macabre
C S Lewis - Prince Caspian
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman - Dragons of Spring Dawning
Victor Hugo - Toilers of the Sea
Robert Jackson Bennett - Foundryside
R A Salvatore - The Crystal Shard
Beverly Cleary - Ramona the Brave
Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart
R A Salvatore - Streams of Silver
George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London
Laura Ingalls Wilder - By the Shores of Silver Lake
R A Salvatore - The Halfling's Gem
O Henry - The Four Million
J M Barrie - Peter Pan
Henry Fielding - The History of Tom Jones
Willa Cather - My Ántonia
Rick Beyer - The Greatest Music Stories Never Told
ed. Dave Eggers - The Best Nonrequired Reading of 2002
Jean Craighead George - My Side of the Mountain
David Rose - Mulgara: The Necromancer's Will
Steven Hyden - Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me
Colin Meloy - Wildwood
Christopher Phillips - Socrates Cafe
John Fante - Dreams From Bunker Hill
Marcel Proust - Swann's Way
Beverly Cleary - Ramona and Her Father
E M Forster - A Passage to India
Noelle Stevenson - Nimona
R A Salvatore - Homeland
C S Lewis - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
R A Salvatore - Exile
R A Salvatore - Sojourn
Mark Twain - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The list of board games acquired was a little shorter this year, but still impressive. I expect a shorter list in the future as the prevailing mindset at home is, "Dad, why are you always looking at new games? We should focus on playing the ones we have"

Dungeon Petz
Race for the Galaxy
Escape: The Curse of the Temple
Spirit Island
Deep Sea Adventure
Fox in the Forest
Galaxy Trucker
Tigris and Euphrates
Cockroach Poker
Lost Legacy: The Starship
Lost Legacy: Floating Garden
AuZtralia
Coup
Coup: Reformation
Terraforming Mars
Terraforming Mars: Preludes
Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle
Five Tribes
Nusfjord
Broom Service
Dixit
High Society
Santorini
Citadels
Mice and Mystics
Stuffed Fables
Bang
Bang: Dodge City
Bang: Fistful of Cards
Thurn and Taxis
Village
Village: Inn
Yspahan
For Sale
Coffee Roaster
Underwater Cities
At the Gates of Loyang
One Deck Dungeon
One Deck Dungeon: Forest of Shadows
Barenpark
Architects of the West Kingdom
Carrom/Crokinole
Dixit: Odyssey
Dixit: Quest
Dixit: Journey

The final list on this list of lists features the Word of the Week; a list I couldn't maintain when it started to feel more like a burden than a joy. It went for about two years, and I was a little sad to see it go. While the list of words to define and dissect continues in my own notes, I don't see Word of the Week coming back. 

01/05/20 Verisimilitude
01/12/20 Dissemble
01/19/20 Gambit
01/26/20 Fiat
02/02/20 Gish
02/09/20 Fugue
02/16/20 Dudgeon
02/23/20 Matriculate
03/01/20 Specious
03/08/20 Salient
03/15/20 Ersatz
03/22/20 Bastion
03/29/20 Bathos
04/05/20 Anodyne
04/12/20 Sinecure
04/26/20 Astroturfing
05/03/20 Facetious
05/10/20 Concatenation
05/17/20 Menhir

Self-found at last, the joy that springs
Being thyself, shall once again
Start thee upon the whirling rings
And through the pilgrimage of pain.
- George William Russell