If you're talking birthdays, 10 and 20 are celebrated as markers of attainment while 60 and 70 are more often looked at with a feeling of dread. That dichotomy aside, milestones that end in an ought usually offer a reason to at least take notice if not have an outright celebration. When your car hits 100,000 miles you may cock your head and smile, while a baseball player hitting 500 homeruns in his career is feted with champagne. Conceding this marker is somewhere between those two extremes, I shall pause this week to recognize if not luxuriate over the simple fact that the column you are now reading marks the 1300th outing in this space.
One three zero zero may be a round number even if it carries no real significance per se. Yes, the most popular Alfa Romero model was the GT1300, and the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington is located at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue. But by itself 1300 lacks the sexiness of 1000 and the inherent achievement of 1500. It even pales next to the evenness of 1200, though it's probably equal in gravitas to 1400, or at least no worse.
Still, as the father of each of those incremental building blocks en route to this point, I pause to note that the hill has at the very least been climbed. At a rate of one a week, the math works out to a continuous slog totaling exactly 25 years. While by itself that's a solid run if not a record setting one, longevity like that is not as common as it once was. In fact, any number of other things that debuted in 1995 with high hopes are long since gone, like zip drives, Dolly the first cloned sheep, and the marriage of Lyle Lovett and Julia Roberts.
In that quarter century, knowing how much competes for my attention and interest, I have tried hard not to take the few minutes you give to this space on a weekly basis for granted. The goal, if that's not too lofty a word for what is happening here, has been to amuse and inform. My aim is not to report on the above-the-fold headlines: there are countless observers focused on those important topics, be they climate change or gun control or racial justice. Nor do I aim to offer opinions or arguments designed to sway your thinking from one way to another. Rather, there is no end to things that catch my eye, stuff that I think others might also find worthy of their attention. The trick is to find it, shape it into a cohesive narrative, then share it and hope it tickles you as much as it does me.
To do that I keep looking in the corners for the stuff that almost gets left behind, but I believe warrants a brief moment in the center of the floor. Rarely are they earth shattering revelations, but for some reason they attract my attention. It might be corporate bands (#408 "Rockin' the Boardroom") or celebrity perfumes (#541 "Sweet Smell of Success"). I've cast an eye on people (#806 "In Praise of Lyndon"), technology (#1096 "Plug It In") and language (#1048 "A Linguistic Hat-Trick"). And food, always food (#1139 "Onion Ash and Burnt Corn" and #1207 "The Chocolate War" to name just two).
As to what the future holds, the world just keeps handing us lemons, and well, you know what that means. While a number of recent columns have indeed focused on the current situation (#1268 "Pandemic Pantry" and #1289 "Maskccesories"), there are so many more things just begging to be talked about. And so I see notes to myself to explore our addiction to Amazon Prime, advances in pizza boxes, and how Girl Scout cookies and beer have become a "thing." No, I don't know why, but I promise to try and find out.
They say a good house guest entertains themselves during the day and you at night. In the vein I try on a weekly basis to invite myself into your space, do my homework when its light and keep you amused once it gets dark. And with that, break's over. I'll meet you here next week, and while I can't promise the vintage, you won't be able to say that I didn't at least bring a bottle of wine.
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Marc Wollin of Bedford will keep writing if you'll keep reading. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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