On the year that was
Looking back at 2020; Plus Moore on Maumelle along with this week's headlines and sports
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The Headlines
Sports:
Moore on Maumelle: My Take
I’ve got a whole list of New Year’s resolutions that I don’t intend to keep: lose weight, drink less, exercise, read more, blah, blah, blah. Most of us make them every year with the best of intentions but they’re obviously dishonest.
I do have a list that I DO intend to keep: try to be a better home-school teacher, exercise (maybe), read some, drink moderately more often, avoid Covid-19, take the vaccine and live till this time next year.
Hope your Christmas was good. If we’re keeping score and trying to live for the next holiday, you need to hang on until midnight this Thursday. No parties for me this year. No wild, manic kissing people you barely know. I had planned my New Year’s Eve party around watching the Hogs versus the Frogs in the Texas Bowl. But, alas …
I will buy a bottle of cheap champagne for a toast at around 10 p.m. I doubt I can make until midnight. Black-eyed peas, cabbage and cornbread are on the menu for the First along with a slew of football games. And then I’ll start on that diet on the Second, Third or Fourth — (Probably not.)
If 2020 didn’t suck enough, a dear friend of mine lost her battle with cancer on Christmas Eve. I know many others who lost loved ones during the holidays. 2021 can’t be any worse, but it might be. Hold on to your hat. Keep doing all those safe things. It’s too early to get numb or dumb.
Happy New Year, Maumelle.
Who Is the Banana Man?
There have been several incidents of a masked Banana Man leaving bananas on front porches or in mailboxes at homes in Maumelle. Here’s one report from the Nextdoor app: “We live in Osage on Manitou in Maumelle and last night around 1:00 am before going to bed, my husband was unplugging the Christmas lights and noticed someone had left a banana on our front door handle. We checked our doorbell video and it happened at 11:59 pm. He was dressed in khaki pants, had a face mask on and a purple top hat!” According to another report and by watching the video, he also has a getaway driver.
I saw the video and as weird as it sounds, there he was in living color. Strange but enjoyable. Who is that masked man?
What are you watching?
Here are a few quick reviews of recently released streaming movies and series:
“Flight Attendant” (HBO Max) — B plus. Kaley Cuoco is surprisingly good; good supporting cast and compelling story line.
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (Netflix) — B minus. They basically filmed the stage play; but enjoyable with a good performances by the late Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis.
“Prom” (Netflix) — C minus. A totally formulaic movie; forgettable music and over-the-top, annoying performances
“Let Them All Talk” (HBO Max) — C plus. Some interesting performances, but they do talk way too much. It does make me want to take a ride on the Queen Mary 2.
“Soul” (Disney +) — B. You can’t go wrong with a Pixar film. Interesting story line with an intriguing look at living life before the afterlife.
Word of the Week
I ran across a word that seems appropriate for Maumelle: Boulevardier ("bool-ah-vard-ee-a"). It is more commonly known as a cocktail composed of whiskey, sweet vermouth and Campari. But it also refers to a man who frequents the boulevards; thus, a man about town or bon vivant.
Hopefully, one of the bars will add this to their offerings and maybe Mayor Caleb Norris could create a special award for the Boulevardier of the Year.
“You’ll never get bored when you try something new. There’s really no limit to what you can do.” — Dr. Seuss
See you on the Boulevard.
Neal Moore is a public relations consultant and resident of Maumelle. Send your Maumelle news or comments to neal.moore@sbcglobal.net.
The year that was
Everyone says, jokingly, that when you turn 50, the world ends.
In this year of years, though, it wasn’t a very funny joke, especially when you’re the punchline, the person who turned 50.
The writer Luke O’Neil, who has a terrific newsletter that you can read here, has been doing an ongoing series on the Last Good Day, which he determined to be March 13.
That day wasn’t my birthday, but it was when I had a very subdued birthday party that was shared with my mother-in-law, who was born on March 16.
Had I known what I know now, maybe it would have been a little more elaborate, or maybe I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
It was nice. My father-in-law grilled hamburgers, and there was cake and cards and a present or two, including a little bit of cash to fund as part of my ongoing quest to visit all 50 states by 50. At that point in time, the count stood at 44, a number that has since grown, but more on that in a bit.
The plan was to spend the night at the in-laws, motor back to Little Rock for a book club meeting, see where my consulting and freelance work stood and, maybe, just relax the next week with some March Madness basketball.
My favorite time of the year.
Then everything went south.
The first step was a group email to the book club. I had picked the book, so it was my call on where the mighty Escobarians, the book club named in honor of Ramon Escobar, would gather. I had been thinking maybe that Indian joint off Rodney Parham. The book, Winners Take All, was by Anand Giridharadas, a native of Ohio but with family roots in India.
The first email went like this:
So, thoughts on postponing book club? I don't want to be a nervous ninny or anything but this coronavirus thing seems to be picking up speed and it might be good to push it back a few weeks into April.
It was Amanda Ferrell, a radiologist in Little Rock, who responded first:
This has been on my mind, too. Social distancing. EW ran into Kirk at Sam's today but that was for emergency V8.
I'm for holding off
The next exchange then went like this:
Okay, sounds like a push then.
The Escobarians shall gather in April? Maybe?
It was Amanda who had the last word:
I think we will just have to wait and see to reschedule. 6 cases today. It may blow up or blow over, but I am not sure which right now. The case reports out of Italy are pretty bad on med Twitter. We don't have the population density of either China or a European city but still
Six cases.
Six!
What a simpler time it was back in March.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the case count now stands at 219,246 in Arkansas, per the Department of Health dashboard, a site with which some of us have become all too familiar.
Deaths in Arkansas are at 3,603, and the book club hasn’t met since.
The consulting work also took a turn south. A job that required site visits didn’t seem like a terribly good idea with travel curtailed, and there’s still an indefinite pause hanging in the air.
The following Sunday was a multi-city, mostly fruitless search for toilet paper.
Toilet paper!
On March 17, a very unlucky St. Patrick’s Day and a day before my birthday, the NCAA made the decision to cancel March Madness. The day after my birthday, March 19, a group of lifelong friends, who live from California to Maryland, with Nebraska, Missouri and Arkansas in between, started doing a group call on Skype. Every Friday night at 9 p.m., those calls continue to this day.
As the year moved forward, I made a very conscious decision not to delete the various things on the Google calendar I share with my wife. It was full of life’s little joys: High school baseball games my nephews would be playing in, an annual camping trip with friends, Easter, the days I’d serve as liturgist at church.
Even a trip to the dentist.
I kept them all, and as the reminders would pop up on my phone, I’d look, grimace and swipe to delete.
At first, the lockdown was more like a snow day from elementary school. I got to sleep in, eat what I wanted, watch TV until I fell asleep on the couch and do it all again the next day.
I also got to know my neighborhood exceedingly well, as I walked miles and miles daily, making loops over hill and dale.
Various jobs, the things I did for money, were put on hold, or outright cancelled, or, even worse, those assigning types just didn’t return calls and emails.
All the walking made a tricky ankle get extremely fussy, and hobbling around is not good for being outside. Life became the snow day routine, plus missing the more important things in life, our anniversary plans for one, along with tallying up the people we knew who got coronavirus, as that circle seemed to draw ever tighter, like a hangman’s noose.
Or not being able to communally grieve for those who lost their lives.
That was a mighty weight.
And thus started a spiral down into depression.
I stayed there for a bit.
My ankle got better, and the return of summer meant the neighborhood pool opened up.
The truth of the matter is, though, I don’t know what knocked me out of that dark place.
Maybe it was the pool, or maybe it was planning for or taking a six-day, socially distanced, masked-up driving excursion to South and North Dakota, along with Montana and Wyoming, that also gave bucket list checks by seeing Mount Rushmore and Badlands National Park.
Regardless of the reasons, I’m very much glad I’m not in that dark place anymore.
I’m also hopeful 2021 will be better.
It has been, after all, a long December, and we have real reasons to believe that, maybe, next year will be better than the last. Vaccines are on the horizon, and hope seems abundant.
Plus, I’ve still got Utah and Idaho left to visit and a $50 bill is still in the wallet to spend.