What Is And What Will Never Be

The Schloss-Blog is looking ahead to its crystal ball and seeing a year of resiliency approaching and a year of disbelief fading.

We're in a year of hope - we will conquer the coronavirus before it conquers us, at a rate of 4,000 per day.

We're in a year of honesty in government - Biden will tell us the truth, no matter how painful. And it will be painful.

We're in a year where Donald Trump fades away, his credibility destroyed. His neighbors in Florida don't even want him living in the community.

Even though they voted for him for president.

We're living in a year of women. Biden has stocked his Cabinet and his administration with more women than ever. It's about time. We need that women's touch now more than ever before.

Yet, we're living in a year where Republicans in Congress not only fruitlessly keep trying to overturn the presidential election results, but as the "Unmasked Singers." Research shows they are 3 times more likely than Democrats to NOT wear a mask in Congress. How wonderful.

But speaking of the year of women, we are in a year where a woman, for the first time, scored points in an NCAA Division-I football game (Sarah Fuller, placekicker for Vanderbilt). And a woman, her head coach tossed out of the game, took over as head coach in an NBA game (Becky Hamann, San Antonio Spurs).

Beyond overdue.

Yet, we're in a year where almost 350,000 of our fellow Americans died from the coronavirus, or almost 4,000 a day now. The score of that game is still COVID-19, America-0.

We're practically at a point where some of us, maybe most of us, know someone who had COVID, or maybe even passed from it.

Sad.

Yet, we're in a year where our kids and grandkids continue to show the resiliency which will become the signature of their generation.

They've shown it in school. And out. In doing schoolwork in a living room, a kitchen, a den, a basement. Could not be prouder.

We're in a year where my family, God bless them, has shown the kind of stick-to-it-iveness that has kept us together, coast to coast, communicating as best we can, sharing memories, old pictures and videos and using new software to share these old memories.

I imagine your family has too.

And we're in a year where my fraternity brothers refuse to let go of our college daze - uh, college days. Our monthly Zoom calls are a reminder of the camaraderie we shared. And maintain.

We're in a year where college athletes continue, without compensation, to risk their lives and those of their friends and families by continuing to compete, COVID notwithstanding. They should be paid, at the very least, for helping their schools collect TV revenue while they collect concussions and exposure to the coronavirus.

We're in a year where we learned to work from our new offices. In our basements. Our kitchens. Our dens. Sacrificing our in-person companionship.

So we could watch over our kids as they did their schoolwork while we did our work.

We will likely never get back to whatever is considered normal.

But I can't wait to try.

Good night, Mrs. Calabash. Here's to you Mrs. Robinson.

More Sunday night on my Radio Free Phoenix rock 'n' roll show.

Happy New Year, everybody. (Please note, the name of the President of the United States is not mentioned here, but his initials are S.O.B.)