That was the question I posed last week as we were sitting around the table in Creative Loafing Tampa’s windowless conference dungeon, trying to plan our Year in Review issue.
Silence. Bowed heads. Morose expressions all around.
Which was not exactly surprising. Because — well, you know the litany.
The shootings. The bombings. The hurricanes. The wildfires.
North Korea’s missiles. Famine and civil war in Yemen. Ethnic cleansing (aka genocide) in Myanmar as a Nobel Peace Prize winner looked the other way.
Men we thought we’d admired, destroyed by their own despicable confusion of power with sex.
Artists whose deaths came too soon, or maybe just seemed to, from Mary Tyler Moore to Sam Shepard to Tom Petty.
Russia’s interference in our political process — and the president who refuses to accept it.
The administration’s attacks on public education, on social programs, on healthcare, on environmental protections, on equality and civil rights. And, of course, the GOP’s Christmas present to the wealthy, who get to keep their tax cuts — the rest of us, not so much.
Most disheartening for journalists: the incessant attacks on facts, on newspapers, on truth itself, engineered by the bloviating narcissist in the White House — and at the same time the shrinking profile of legitimate print media outlets, newspapers and magazines both mainstream and alt.
So yep — not much to cheer about.
But wait. We couldn’t leave it there. Two of us in the room (Kate and Cathy) had gotten married in 2017. That was good, right? We could come up with a few more good things, couldn’t we?
“Emmanuel Macron!” (Imagine: a leader who leads, and in complete sentences.)
“Frances McDormand in Three Billboards…!” (Damn, she’s good.)
“Lady Gaga and Cam Parker!” (The mural, the concert shout-out…)
“The Impossible Burger!” (Our vegan/vegetarian staffers swear by it.)
“Kriseman won!” (St. Pete’s mayoral and city council elections were victories for both progressive thinking and female leadership.)
“The Women’s March!” (Among other triumphs, it helped pave the way for #MeToo.)
So, it didn’t all suck. Elsewhere in our review of 2017, Scott Harrell talks about surviving a breakup; Cathy Salustri recalls the joys of a perfect wedding day and the best in local A&E; and Kate Bradshaw reports on the contradictions in a year that brought her much personal happiness as the world was going to hell. Meaghan Habuda surveys the year's best bites, and Ray Roa makes an excellent case for the year's best local albums.
We also reached out to readers on Facebook, asking what was best and worst for them this year both personally and globally. (You can probably guess the most popular Worst.)
As for my own personal bests? I saw this publication grow more and more necessary to its readers, and more and more fun to work on. I celebrated 25 years of coupled bliss with the man I got to call “husband” in 2012 (so I guess we had a fifth anniversary, too). I took a bucket list trip to the Shaw and Stratford festivals in Canada with some of my best friends in the world. I got to tell stories at Keep St. Pete Lit and American Stage, and I got to act with fun and talented people at Gulfport Community Players and Radio Theatre Project. And, to quote Roxie, the murderous heroine of Kander & Ebb’s Chicago, “I turned older than I ever intended to be.”
But I won’t leave it there. Here’s a lyric that was sung by another fabulous Broadway broad, Lauren Bacall, in Applause (find it on YouTube, she’s amazing). It just might be the perfect epitaph for sucky ’17.
I feel twitchy and bitchy and manic
Calm and collected and choking with panic
But alive, but alive, but alive!
In other words, we survived you, 2017. You’re on the way out, and we’re moving on.
This article appears in Dec 28, 2017 – Jan 4, 2018.
