What Can You Say About 2004?

Over the past three years we have transcended the boundaries of homeland and national identity only to find ourselves perpetual outsiders. Those who live in two cultural worlds are always aware of being at home in neither.

Yet life is always concerned with straddling two separate worlds.

We’ve just experienced the German custom of New Year’s Eve. Apparently, the national tradition is to set off fire works - Fourth of July style - as midnight approaches on December 31.

Ilmspan, our small farm village just outside Wurzburg, is small and the surrounding communities may qualify as towns – but the populations do not exceed 2,000 people. In the early hours of today, short bursts of light emblazoned the skies. At first, the spectacle suggested a summer lightening storm over the nearby hills. No: just fireworks.

Ilmspan offers loads of tranquility; that’s about it. No stores, no post office, no gas station. There is St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church and a guest house (inn) directly across the street. Actually, Ilmspan boasts two guest houses. Germans do love their beer.

New Year's Day I awoke around 5:15 am. – there’s not the excuse of being disturbed by an off-key mullah warbling the call to prayer, like in the Middle East … I just start the day early.

When I stepped out the door of the master bedroom to allow the Yorkies time for that necessary morning run, I could see in the faint late that my immediate neighbors were outside – still socializing. Not long afterward, my 17-year-old son arrived home from an all-night New Year’s Eve party – at “the butt-crack-of-dawn,” as he says.

I’m proud to report this year his Irish heritage did not take over; he arrived home safe and sober. To his credit, the sight of his contemporaries passed out in various rooms of the host’s house, many clutching small dishware in case they hurled during the night, prompted him to avoid the same sordid plight. Last year’s lesson remains with him.

In fact, last year when we lived in Bahrain, the boy was home before 11 p.m. – escorted to the front door by a cab driver from India. He was visibly plastered and moon-walked like a new-born colt on a rocky incline. The distance from main door-to-front door was less than a hundred feet, and completely flat. Of course the boy had mixed his drinks, a mistake of the novice, and consumed too much too fast.

The dicey part of parenthood is dispensing knowledge without admitting first-hand experience.

What a difference a year makes; cliché yet true.

Life has changed dramatically for us over the past 12 months; we are no longer in the Middle East, now Central Europe is home. This is certainly that point for reflection. What happened?

As CNN’s Todd Leopold asked:
“What can you say about a year that spent more time and indignation on a 38-year-old pop singer's accidentally exposed right breast than the vapidly violent dance routine, erection ads, capitalistic orgy (and football game) that surrounded it?

What can you say about a year in which the two most talked-about movies of the year -- and two of its biggest box office hits -- were a violent film about a man of peace and an effectively manipulative polemic about a president at war?

What can you say about a year that got some of its sharpest news from a fake news show?

What can you say about a year that glorified both a bright man who won 74 "Jeopardy!" games in a row, and also glorified a shallow, inexplicably famous hotel heiress/party girl who became even more inexplicably famous thanks to a Fox reality show?

What can you say about a year that made a self-aggrandizing, strangely hair-styled tycoon with an edifice complex into a TV star and put the queen of domesticity behind bars?

What can you say about a year in which the Federal Communications Commission levies a record fine for that aforementioned 38-year-old pop singer's bared breast -- but the violently graphic details of "CSI"-type shows were met with nothing but high ratings?

What can you say about a year that lost its Genius (Ray Charles), its Superman (Christopher Reeve), its Method man (Marlon Brando) and its "Friends"?

What can you say about a year in which wizards were featured in a top five-grossing movie, a major best-selling book, and the film named best picture of 2003?

What can you say about a year that featured Britney Spears getting married more times than Jennifer Lopez, and Jude Law appearing in more movies in four months -- six -- than a studio contract player in his prime?

What can you say about a year in which Howard Stern's best-known competition for sexually suggestive talk was Bill O'Reilly, and "Monday Night Football" was better known for a silly locker-room skit than a fourth-quarter comeback?

What can you say about a year in which "moral values" was revealed as some kind of bellwether, yet put "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star" on the best-seller list, made a cleverly soapy show about "Desperate Housewives" its breakout hit and can't seem to get past a pop star's breast-revealing finale?”