New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. — Mark Twain
You have to admit it: 2010 was a strange year.
- The economy’s not much better for us little folks, even though Wall Street is having a banner year (with banner bonuses, no doubt)
- We witnessed the largest oil spill on record in the Gulf of Mexico this year (please, God, keep disasters away from Louisiana and Mississippi in 2011 — they’ve had enough!)
- Haiti got hit with a deadly earthquake — and is now struggling with a cholera epidemic
- There was that volcanic eruption in Iceland that messed up both the air and the air traffic for quite some time
- We’re still at war on two fronts after nine years and nobody has given me a really good reason why
- At least the Chilean mine disaster had a miraculous, happy ending
- Then there was the Tea Party
- And Sarah Palin shooting Alaskan animals on TV
- And WikiLeaks
- And, of course, Silvio Berlusconi, the “teflon” Prime Minister
What can I say?
My husband, being the child of an all-English father and a half-English mother, inspired me this year to include Christmas crackers (“bon bons”) on our dinner table on December 25th. It was very cute to see Tim and his mother and our friends wearing colorful tissue paper hats and opening their little toys. What was not so cute was the fact that I had to present my i.d. to the check-out lady at my local Target in order to buy them — Christmas crackers are considered to be in the same class as weapons! My driver’s license is now on file there. Happy Christmas! I’m not amused. A strange year . . .
I made it to Perugia!
But 2010 brought some very good things for me, too, a lot of it involving travel of some kind:
- I went back to Salem (MA) twice and realized how much I miss it and how much it has become home for me
- I got to stand up for my friends Sharon & Jerry at their brilliant wedding in Williamsburg, Virginia
- I spent 10 days in San Francisco with Tim; we got hooked and now claim it as our own
- I got my ESL/TOEFL certification — and even an advanced certification in teaching Business English (anybody in Italy need an English teacher??)
- Alain de Botton wrote to me to thank me for my review of his grand book, The Art of Travel
- I gifted myself a long weekend at The Porches writing retreat — and wrote!
- Thanks to My Mélange, I won a copy of 30 Days in Italy — I’ve never won anything before!
- I had a great time working for my old company, Thomson Reuters, doing a full-time contract gig (which extends through January — yay!)
- Finally, I got to fulfill a long-time dream and took myself to Umbria, going as part of the Dream of Italy Umbrian Harvest Tour
So all in all, a strange year, but with some terrific highlights for me.
Here’s to hoping that 2011 will see us being a little kinder to each other, a little less contentious, a little more receptive to other points of view. Here’s to hoping that the unemployment rate improves, that more people find affordable housing, that no one goes hungry and that we learn to share better. Here’s to lower gas prices, shorter lines at the airport, cleaner air, less greed and more love in the world. Oh — and of course, here’s to more travel and exciting destinations!
Buon viaggio e buon anno!
Linda Dini Jenkins is a card-carrying Italophile, travel planner, freelance writer, and amateur photographer. Travel is her passion, so writing about her travels just comes naturally. She hopes all her travelers find a way to express their joys, surprises, and fears as they travel and gives every traveler a nifty journal to help smooth the way. Learn more…
