And that, my friends, was 2022.
I know, I know. Still three weeks left, but with the publication date for the next issue falling too close to Christmas, we are, as always, not publishing a second issue in December.
Besides, it gives me time to spend with family and friends, as well as work on a couple side projects that I’ve been thinking about for quite a while now.
For instance: 2024 marks 40 years since the doors to the town was officially opened, and I’ve been thinking about doing a book on those 40 years. And, while 2024 seems a long way off, that time can go like that in the publishing world. If you were around back then, or know someone who was, I’d love to talk. publisher@tumblerridgelines.com.
I’ve also considered taking some of the editorials that I’ve written over the last … wait? Ten years? By George, this year marks ten years of me editing the local newspaper in Tumbler Ridge, and I missed the anniversary, back in … February? Yes. Feb 7, 2022 was the first time my byline appeared as “Trent Ernst, Editor” In the Tumbler Ridge News, which at the time was the paper of record for Tumbler Ridge.
Of course, to call it a decade would be a bit of a misnomer, as there was the better part of two years after Loraine Funk, then owner of the Tumbler Ridge News passed away and January 2019, when I decided I had no real skills to offer the town other than as a newspaperperson and started up this fine publication you are now reading.
Man. Time. It just keeps going and going and going. Like the Energizer bunny. Or a Timex watch. Or, if you are a Mark Heard fan (and you really should be) like a lost platoon.
A number of years back, I wrote a song called Killing Time, featuring the line: “The seconds seem to creep/but the years just seem to fly.”
I still feel like that, sometimes. I blame Einstein. Time, he said, was relative. When you sit with a pretty girl for two hours you think it’s only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity. (Einstein never actually said this in public, but it appears that his secretary—most likely based on a conversation with old Al—did.)
Right now, the last few days have taken forever. On Friday, I took my eldest in for an Emergency Eye Examination, as she was complaining of blurry vision. It wasn’t anything to do with the eyes, so they sent her to the Dawson Hospital. They in turn sent her to Prince George.
And, after three days that subjectively seem to have lasted three years, the prognosis has come back: multiple sclerosis.
All I want for Christmas is an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system, said no one ever.
Time, in the immortal words of They Might Be Giants, keeps marching on. And time (they say) keeps marching on.
And it doesn’t get any easier. Things change, sometimes for the best, but mostly it seems for the worse.
But then again, that could just be as viewed through the lens of my own biases.
Globally, incomes are growing. If you take away the whole Covid thing, the median U.S. income was at an all‐time high), and absolute poverty in the poorest countries is declining.
On average, we live longer lives. More mothers are actually surviving pregnancy and more babies are surviving past the age of ten.
We have more food and access to better education, cleaner water and safer sanitation. Fewer people are being murdered. Despite what you might think watching the news, there are fewer wars and fewer people are dying. And the gap in both education and pay between men and women is closing.
Fewer people are dying from cancer and more people are being vaccinated. There are fewer slums.
Capital punishment isn’t being used as much anymore, nor is child labour. People are making more and working less. There are fewer nuclear bombs.
According to research, people are happier, over all, richer overall.
And yet…
And yet most people think the world is getting worse. Five years ago, the Pew Research Center asked people around the world whether life had been better or worse in their countries fifty years ago. With the notable exception of China, everywhere people said it was better in the past. 55 years ago was the Vietnam War. People were protesting the war, while race riots were raging in the states. North Americans lived in smaller houses, ate worse food, worked more hours, and died, on average, seven years earlier.
At the same time, it was the start of the apollo program, and in Haight-Ashbury, people were taking the Beatles song ‘All You Need Is Love’ quite literally, launching the Summer of Love.
Truth is, memory is subjective, and when things are going bad, we tend to self-select memories about how good it was in the old days, forgetting the fact that 55 years ago, the donair didn’t exist, and that we didn’t have access to every single song ever recorded with the Internet.
So, was 2022 a better year than 1967 or a worse one? Yes. Both. Neither. It depends, as in all things, by which metrics you are measuring. (For me, 2022 was a better year by simple dint of the fact that I wasn’t yet a sparkle in the old man’s eye in 1967. Then again, the old man was still young and alive back then, so ….)
Our tenancies are to start each new year off with a list of ways we are going to be “better.” Exercise more. Lose weight. Eat better. Drink less.
But better, as we have discovered, is subjective. So be…gooder. More kind. More loving. More understanding. Spend more time with the people you love and find ways to let them know how important they are to you. It’s a message for the holidays, but also for everyday.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
