So Long 2013

What a remarkable year it has been.  For me, personally, it has been a year of profound changes.  My oldest graduated from college and landed a great first job, stopping that cash outflow.  New passions and friendships were ignited and reconnected.  My new and revitalized passions included an increased zeal for the game of golf, culminating in a trip to Pinehurst, North Carolina, one of golf's great Meccas for a wonderful 3 day trip in November. And, alas, the year was not without great pain as I lost my longtime friend, hiking partner and mentor Jim Hopper in June.  Jim introduced me to the economics department at the University of Chicago, helped me greatly throughout my career, and encouraged my writing and my intellectual growth throughout my life.  I was honored to deliver one of his eulogies and I shall miss him greatly.

I have taken a short sabbatical from blogging and one of my New Year resolutions is to resume on a more frequent basis and there is not a better way than to resume by my annual year end summary of the best and worst of 2013.  Interestingly, the main character of both my favorite film and book of the year this year is a strong, independent woman.

Best Film
Gravity.  While it was considered by many to be overrated, and contained some factual flaws, Gravity was my favorite film of 2013.  Both Sandra Bullock and George Clooney put forward outstanding performances and the special effects were outstanding.  I am a sucker for survival movies and I thought that Bullock's character was well developed.  Other strong contenders were the comedy The Way, Way Back, Blue Jasmine and Inside Llewyn Davis.  I confess, however, that I missed The Butler and 12 Years a Slave.

Best in Fiction

Mary Coin by Marisa Silver.  Again, this novel was basically a survival story involving an independent woman.  But this was a fictionalized account of real survival of a single mom during the Great Depression.  The story revolved around the life of the woman depicted in the famous photograph, "Migrant Mother."  The uneasy intersection of the lives of the photographer and her subject was well developed and the strain of the life of this woman as she fought to survive and care for her children made for riveting reading.  Mary Coin was a close call as a choice as I also loved Canada by Richard Ford and Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walker.

Best in Nonfiction
Antifragile by Nassim Taleb. Many people disregard Taleb as not academically rigorous enough and arrogant and there is some truth to both charges, but I found Antifragile to be interesting and full of little anecdotes that caused you to pause and think a little differently.   The real message of Taleb's book is that sometimes unforeseen events occur which, on the surface, appear to be disastrous, but often turn out to be positive in the long run.  This is not necessarily a new concept, but Taleb says it in an interesting way.

Best Album
I thought this year was a little thin.  Last year, we had The Lumineers, Of Monsters and Men and Mumford & Sons.  In a weak field, I liked Night Visions by Imagine Dragons followed by a dark horse selection of Barton Hollow by The Civil Wars.

Best Live Concert
Bob Seger.  Hands down, Seger was the best.  It was with great dismay that I looked around at the crowd, and thought, "This is supposed to be a ROCK concert, not an Englebert Humperdink concert.  What are all these old people doing here?"  But Seger delivered.  Unlike some of the other old rockers that have lost a step or two or several octaves, Seger put forward an outstanding performance.  Being grey and dumpy didn't slow him down a bit as he belted out versions of "Hollywood Nights," "Against the Wind," "Like a Rock," and "Turn the Page" that were indistinguishable from albums that are over 30 years old.  And his warmup act was Joe Walsh, who, by himself, was phenomenally entertaining.

Most Interesting Figure
Pope Francis.  Within a couple of months Pope Francis both gave me hope for a renewed Catholic Church by his humility and his de-emphasizing sexuality as a centerpiece of morality of the church.  I also saw his willingness to begin to start to loosen centralized authority as a positive development.  But then he undermined his standing by his frontal attack on the "tyranny of markets" and capitalism with no corresponding criticism of the tyranny of the state.   He appeared to fully understand Christian humility but then failed utterly to understand how capitalism has lifted millions of people out of miserable and hopeless poverty worldwide.

So I am back, hopefully with some interesting things to say from time to time and I will endeavor to blog more frequently, even if they are just short and random thoughts.