Good 2010 to all of my fellow Hollow Souls.
I’ve been in a particularly reflective mood in this New Year, and I want to explore some of those reflective moments with the rest of you, if possible. It’s been a decade since the calendar flipped over to the year 2000, a lot of fears never materialized in flipping over and a lot of fears we never realized we should have materialized in the haze of the past ten years. The more I ponder it, the more I realize we’ve seen a lot.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’d like to post some conversation starters in the articles and have people contribute to the main idea with thoughts of their own.
For this one…I’d like to hear from you all about the things that have happened in the last ten years that have been memorable. They can be significant or trivial, just something worth noting.
Ten years ago, I felt like I had been in Kansas City for ages. Nursing a broken heart made things go unbearably slow, even though I had only been here about ten months. I actually remember wondering on New Year’s Day of 2000 where I would be in 2010, if I’d even be alive to be cognizant of it. Happy to say, I am.
What happened for you in this decade in the making?
We had our 10-year class reunion in 2002. I have to say, it seems like 2002 to 2012 is a shorter time period than in between graduation and 2002.
Yes, the ten-year reunion was memorable and, of course, forgettable.
As for the turn to the last decade, I remember spending New Year’s Eve with Jerod Morris on December 31, 1999. We had pizza and beer at The Scheme in Salina, saw the movie Man on the Moon, and then rang in the year 2000 on top of a very cold Coronado Heights with a bottle of Scotch and a couple of cigars. We could see fireworks exploding from Salina, Lindsborg, and McPherson.
It both saddens and heartens me that Jerod will be forever remembered every time anyone asks “What were you doing as the calendar turned over to the year 2000?” That feels like a very long time ago, and I was mixed up in disappointing times, though I didn’t know just how disappointing. Of course, there’s still some ghost of me standing up there, taking a swig, taking a smoke, and watching the trails of sparks.
Looking forward to more of your posts on the decade, Peters.
Just some quick input here to clarify, I authored this post. I was delving through the photos I had from ten years ago, and I had this one of Peters I took somewhere. I showcased Jeff to provoke him a bit (in a gentle best-intentioned sort of way).
It’s an unintended consequence that people assumed it was Peters that was the author. And I was for sure that the use of paragraph returns would be a dead giveaway that it wasn’t Peters (another gentle best-intentioned sort of jab).
More coming up tomorrow…..
Also, in the last decade, a majority of us got married. J.E. just a little long of ten years. Ned’s old man experience, now. There’s been four children that have been born in the past decade (and one nearly there).
Career shifts, city shifts, financial shifts…it’s been pretty dramatic for all of us. I wonder if we’ve all achieved a relatively stable existence, and if the next ten will be even 50% as exciting.
This decade is going to be my best.
It is weird to think that by the time most of your children are Eliot’s age now, he will be a teenager.
Yes, 13 and 1/2 years of marriage here.
Next year ties my time in WI with my time in NY. Memories of NY will always be with me, some of my very favorite times (and worst: 9/11. the ferry crash, and the Eastern Blackout). I always recall good times with Toby and Jeff in NY as well as other family and friends.
I’ll be going to NY twice this year. Once on a service trip, and once on an art trip with the U.
Sara and I took in Agnes in 2000. She’s getting old.
I was disappointed, but not surprised, to miss seeing any of the HM guys over the holidays. I suppose seeing Toby active on the blog is the next best thing.
Funny how I thought this line came from Peters. You did a good job with the camouflage, Tob. Thanks to YOU for posting on this decade.
Yes, personally, this was the most significant decade I could have imagined–a graduate degree, a revitalized publishing career afterward, dating and marrying Jen, welcoming Beckett. Extraordinary.
Looking larger-scale, however, this was probably the most violent, the most backward, the most conservative, the most intellectually stagnant, the most divisive decade we have endured in our lifetimes.