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If you want a comprehensive year-in-review, you have come to the wrong place. We hope that bit of information somehow brightens your day/night/existence/whatever.
Looks like a good year: Playboy’s Cybergirl of the Year for 2013 Jennifer Vaughn.
If you are looking for a critique of the Chicago Bears or words about the Chicago Bulls winning a game at Memphis or the possibility of Lovie Smith landing one of several NFL coaching vacancies, you have come to the wrong place. At least for today.
For today — if the calendar on my cell phone is accurate (and I’m pretty sure it is) — is December 31. That last day of 2013. Once again, it is a year that went by quickly. Too quickly for some of us. It seems like only yesterday (OK, maybe the day before yesterday) that folks were concerned about the millennium and all the potential problems that could befall us.
Funny how time flies. Or not funny, as the case may be.
The year is a blur, especially at 5 a.m. on Dec. 31.
A lot of good things happened in 2013. They must have. They do every year, even in bad years. I just don’t recall much because this post is one I have been contemplating (yes, I actually do occasionally give thought to what I type around here before the fingers hit the keyboard) for a while. By a while, I mean several hours. Much of Monday. Some of Sunday.
End in sight: Playboy 2013 Playmate of the Year Raquel Pomplun soon will leave her reign behind. Credit: Josh Ryan
Saying goodbye to 2013 means saying goodbye again to those who will not be with us in 2014. In my case, there were several people who died in 2013 that affected me. Some more than others, of course.
[Editor’s note: If this is becoming too depressing for you, feel free to skip to the video, although there is no guarantee all the videos will be extremely uplifting]
Two deaths stand out in particular: Stan Musial and Rob Harris . Most any baseball fan knows the name Stan Musial. He was a star player for the St. Louis Cardinals when I was young. Rob Harris was my brother and always will be my brother. “Stan the Man” was a childhood hero, one whom I had the chance to meet when the Harris family went to his long-ago restaurant in St. Louis and again later in life when I was a sportswriter and he was a living legend. Stanley Frank Musial was a mythical figure. Robert Alan Harris was a real figure.
On the bright side, we have room for one more Jennifer Vaughn photo.
Rob was the kid brother with whom I shared a room growing up. The very room where I would listen to Harry Caray on the radio and pretend I was Musial with his trademark corkscrew swing that I tried to emulate, sometimes with an invisible bat and sometimes with a miniature wood one.
Musial died in January. Rob died three weeks and one day ago. Somber bookends for the year. Musial was 92; Rob was 65.
Musial left a void the Cardinals will have trouble filling — well, until someone else can play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” the way Musial could on his harmonica.
Rob left a void that those who loved him never will fill. Yes, we can look back fondly on pleasant memories. And they help. But sometimes, especially for those of us who might be predisposed to being depressed, that doesn’t seem sufficient.
I’d like to get worked up about the Bears and all the story lines that surround them. I’d like to provide perspective on this team or that, this athlete or that.
But for one day, I will step back and take a deep breath. Maybe several. And I will welcome in a new year. I will celebrate moderately with a kiss at midnight and the traditions of the evening.
When the night is over, long after all are asleep, I will go into the darkness of our living room and sit in a chair he purchased for my wife and me decades ago.
And I will cry.
Then I will recall a New Year’s Eve many years ago. And another and another. And I will cry some more. And then I will re-run those New Year’s Eves once again — from childhood through adulthood. And I will smile at the remarkable reminiscences.
To everyone out there who has provided them in 2013 (and others years, too), thanks for the memories.
Here is where to go for a daily dose of non-gratuitous video. If memory serves (and it still occasionally does), this is the last posting for 2013. Which means another year in which the extremely exceptional efforts of the editorial and video departments at ElliottHarris.com have provided non-gratuitous visuals every day of this year. Today is no exception. And if there is a little melancholy amid all the beauty, then so be it.
Enjoy.
Upon further review, we figured the least we could do heading into the new year was leave you with some sense of hope. It’s purely (OK, maybe not purely) coincidental that Hope is the name of a lingerie line:
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