For me, last year was sort of a surprise year. I thought the pandemic would end and, somehow, the world would return to what I think of as usual, but, thinking about it, I’ve felt that the world would return to normal for a long time, and it never has. The great Ulysses S Grant said, “War is progressive because all the instruments and elements of war are progressive.” I want to add, Everything is progressive, built on the past, but new.

Today is not a new start; it is the continuation of the long line of what went before. 2022 didn’t start fresh, and 2023 won’t either. The Russo-Ukrainian War will continue, Covid19 will continue, last year will continue, hell, Tom Brady will probably continue to play football (maybe forever). But everything will also be different.

I was listening to a New Yorker podcast yesterday, and they were talking about their most memorable cultural experiences from last year, none of which I had even heard of. One writer recommended Horse by Geraldine Brooks, which, among other things, is about the long tail of racial prejudice still with us. Another is East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against Humanity” by Philippe Sands, which traces the radicle world philosophy used in the Nuremberg trials to two Jewish thinkers from Eastern Europe. The third and last one was the movie The Rescue, about the 2018 rescue of a young Thai soccer team trapped in a cave. The film is by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin of Free Solo fame.

For me, the two most memorable cultural experiences were The Patient starring Steve Carrel and created by Joel Fields &; Joe Weisberg. It is a ten-episode mini-series, each about thirtyish minutes long, for a total of about five hours. I highly recommend it. Still, my most memorable experience is listening to Ukraine: The Latest every weekday morning. It is by several writers in the British newspaper The Telegraph, and I listen to it on Spotify.

As an sort of an aside, I had no idea that The Telegraph is a conservative newspaper and I wouldn’t have known except that I read a review that pointed that out. Not knowing has been great because I have ended up judging what they are reporting on their constant rather than some preconceived idea of their slant. End aside.

Finally, I want to leave with a joke that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy  told David Letterman in a subway station ninety feet underground in Kyiv. Zelenskyy said “Want to hear a Jewish joke?” and I guess it is a Jewish joke although I’m not sure why.

“Two Jewish guys from Odesa meet up, one asks the other: ‘So what’s the situation? What are people saying?”
“And he goes, ‘What are people saying? They are saying it’s a war.”
“What kind of war?”
“Russia is fighting NATO.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, yes! Russia is fighting NATO.”
“So how’s it going?”
“Well, 70,000 Russian soldiers are dead. The missile stockpile has almost been depleted. A lot of equipment is damaged, blown up.”
“And what about NATO?”
“What about NATO? NATO hasn’t even arrived yet.”