Year in Review 2022
I used to watch a TV show as a kid called Beyond 2000, which imagined what the world would be like in the new millennium. We were, to put it mildly, both colossally wrong and wildly optimistic in our predictions. Just saying "2023" sounds insane to me. It isn't that I never thought I'd live this long, that I'd make it to see this year, just that I never projected myself this far forward into time, never bothered imagining it. 2023! Who ever heard of such a thing?
As some of you know, I'm trying to be better at marking time, so here's some things I want to keep ahold of from this year we've just finished. Many thanks to readers and friends near and far. Happy new year!
- To start things off, this was the year my edition of Festus, a labor of some years, was published by Edinburgh, as well as this essay explaining why I bothered.
- I made these poems! I mean, I made other ones too, but these ones were published. Just to be clear.
- This is the year--the first! and may it be the last 🤞--when we took the kids to Disneyland, where we all got COVID and had to stay inside for the rest of the trip 😷.
- Later in summer, my favorite spiritual writer, Fred Buechner, died and I wrote this little recollection. RIP
- Then, Dean Young, a poet who taught me as much as anyone else ever had, also died. Geez.
- At SPU MFA we had Chigozie Obioma, Christopher Merrill, and Mark Burrows as guests.
- The tour schedule was a bit lighter this year, but I did make it down (and by “make it down,” I mean “took the 🚂”) to LA to see David Wittig's gallery show and to give a paper on Scottish travel writing in the c19 at CCL Biola with Karen Swallow Prior and the poet Paul Willis.
- Speaking of poetry, the books I was happiest to see this year were: Karen An-Hwei Lee Rose is a Verb, Nance Van Winkel Many Beds of Martha Washington, Alexis Sears Out of Order, Paul Willis Somewhere to Follow, and David Lyle Jeffrey Testament of Witness.
- In between other things, this year I gave this interview, this podcast, this artist webinar, and these radio appearances.
- Oh man, and this was also the year I first took students to England on CS Lewis business! An unbelievably rich time (I’m especially grateful to the now retired Kim Gilnett for assisting). Pictures here.
- Speaking of gratitude, this year Tom Amorose and Mark Walhout retired from the English Department. Jennifer and I wrote them funny send-off poems.
- The best events I attended were the Malcom Guite/ Steve Bell show at SPU and the epic Over The Rhine show at St. Mark’s Cathedral.
- Right, and I hosted an interview...or Image Journal hosted and I..er..asked the questions of JHH about music criticism. Singer John Van Deusen zoomed in and joined the chat.
- Partway through this year, I developed plantar fasciitis and could hardly walk. Every morning, I sorted through an awkward collection of insoles to find one that I thought would get me as far as the office.
- Sebastian started kindergarten. 👩🏫
- Our precious Lucca Maria was baptized.
- I was confirmed in the Anglican Church.
- The most memorable reading experiences of the year were Anne Avery’s Reynard the Fox, which I loved entirely, and Klosterman’s The 90’s, which was probably the most resonant (in that I recognized, remembered, every single cultural artifact or anecdote he shares therein, but from living it.)
- I watched two movies this year and they were both great: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021), a kind of stop-motion mockumentary about a snail that somehow made me cry, and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), which finally made sense of the esteem in which my fellows seem to hold the lead actor, Marlon Brando.
- We got Apple Arcade and my kids started playing Shovel Knight Dig, which brought me right back to our family's acquiring the original Nintendo when I was their age.
- Toward the end of the year, we had Thanksgiving at Whidbey!
- Then we went back to Whidbey at Christmas and it snowed!
- When I look back at this year, I’ll remember these records most. 🎧
- And then, of course and above all else, this was the year Amber began growing our new girl, whose premiere we expect in spring. 🤰
Alright friends, that's all the recall for the nonce.
Peace, to you and to this poor world in the new year.
Happy 2023 🍾
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