Happy New
Year loyal readers! I usher in the infant 2017 with high hopes. Then again, the
new year is only about two hours old as
I start this report. I just watched the ball drop in Times Square, and now it’s
time to sweep up the confetti. Honestly, I think that merely surviving 2016 is
cause for celebration. Today marks the
25thanniversary of the day I began to write this weekly report. At
the time, in January of 1992, my New Year’s resolution was to write a weekly
commentary on current events for one year,
with the hopes that this discipline would improve my writing skills. It started
out as a printed post card which I sent out to about fifteen friends and
family. For that year, the weekly writing exercise was called The Hyman Report. After the first year, it
evolved into the one-page Miscellaneous
Grumblings, and finally became The
Oppenheimer Report. I’m not sure whether or not my writing has improved
much over the years, and I’m pretty sure my readership is about the same, but
after 25 years, but it has been therapeutic to write one page a week about the
world as I see it. In two and one half decades there has been a lot of water under
the bridge, and while I don’t presume to suppose my little writing exercise has
any mainstream appeal, I'd like to compile 150 of
my favorite reports and publish them. In the last year, I managed to cross
another item off my bucket list: I recorded an album of my original songs. It’s good
to have goals.
I hope you
all celebrated the New Year in whatever fashion suited you. There were plenty
of musical performances going on in the local area, but we have for the past
fifteen years generally elected to stay home on New Year’s Eve. Shauna and I
had a pajama party, which is how we celebrated last year as well. In our pajamas we prepared a hearty home-cooked
meal and switched back and forth from radio and television for our
entertainment. I don’t actually own a pair of jammies anymore, but I’ve become
somewhat attached to Shauna’s pink Big Brother Canada onesey. I
know, that’s weird right? I think perhaps I am
channeling with my inner 3 year-old. No,
I don’t love the color pink, but those onesys are sooo comfortable. What
I did not expect on New Year’s Ever was that Harvey, our 70+ year-old snow plow
guy, would be plowing our driveway. He did, and as I usually do, I paid him
immediately. Was I a little embarrassed
to be wearing a hooded, pink onsesy as I handed this man his money? Perhaps a
little, but I think it has long ago been established that I have no shame.
It likely gave him a laugh, and the older I get, the less I care about the
judgement of others. While Shauna and I disagree on this particular subject, to
me form is far less important than function, and I have never been particularly
concerned about the clothes I wear. I would not be at all surprised to hear
oneseys are making a big comeback in the adult market. Regardless of the fact
that I looked a bit like a Smurf, the onesy was very comfy.
While the political
upheaval in America continues to hijack the headlines of 2016, last year marked
what some pundits are calling “The Death Of The 80s”. I was astonished to read
the long list of people in the entertainment industry who passed away in 2016. That
list includes Glenn Frey from the Eagles, Prince, Leonard Cohn, David Bowie, Merle
Haggard, songwriter Guy Clarke, Keith Emerson and Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, John Berry of The
Beastie Boys, Maurice White of Earth Wind and Fire, Lemmy Kilmister from
Motorhead, Paul Kantner, one of the founding members of The Jefferson Airplane,
and singer George Michaels, on Christmas Day, at 53. In the last week alone,
actress/author Carrie Fisher passed on, followed by her mom Debbie Reynolds a
day later. In a news story reporting Reynolds’ death, I learned that she did
not even know how to dance before starring in her big debut “Singing In The
Rain”. She learned to dance in less than two months and somehow managed to keep
up with the likes of veteran hoofers Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor. The rest
is history, literally. It’s when these celebrities go that we learn how much
they’d accomplished in their lives. Canadian actor Alan Thicke, who passed away
suddenly a few weeks ago while playing hockey with his son, was multi-talented.
I learned that, in addition to his television and movie career, he was a published song writer.
His credo, and one that both Shauna and I found notable: “Live life so
completely that when death comes to you, like a thief in the night, there will
be nothing left to steal.”
While 2017
is just a little over one day old, I end this report without tongue in cheek.
In the coming year I resolve to “do more good than harm”, as my self-help guru
classmate Bob O’Connor put it. Maybe this will be the year when we all try to
do the same. Happy New Year to one and all!
Written by Jamie
Oppenheimer c 2017 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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