Happy New Year! Let's Dance

Traditions in Russia and Spain

I’ve posted this before—an old video of Russian friends in upstate NY screaming out the old year, to let in the new one.

It’s close to midnight in parts of North America, there’s still time to wish you a happy New Year, and thank you for 2023.

I don’t know what I would do without all of you.

One of the things you all have given me is a place I never had before where even when I don’t “make sense” you seem to understand. And forgive.

There’s a forcefield here where everything that was always (in me) strange, sad, and messed up, winds up becoming something less strange, sad, and messed up.

I think we are all indescribably exhausted and shell-shocked, yet we must never say so.

Tonight I was at a party with family (my daughter in law’s family, and a second family) about 15 minutes outside Granada. It was incredibly fun. Dance, music, singing—

Covid gained nothing on these people, I thought with a smile. Not an inch.

I have no rational explanation. The great attack by-passed them, even though they were on the short list for the worst crackdown in Europe.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Wzz2QcVPpMw?si=7KQZCePvbmsfjCuW

I truly think dancing could be the antidote to the Covid Op. It could repel it, make sure it leaves us alone, if people really really took it seriously.

In fact, this is how my son and his friends, his wife Paula and her grandparents, survived Covid—they were locked in their homes, they pushed back the tables, and they danced.

It could become a new craze.

It could start in Andalucía and spread to the rest of Europe, then cross the Atlantic to the US and Canada. The whole world so busy singing and dancing they can’t hear what Tedros or Trudeau or Biden or any of them are saying when they start braying about impending death again.

Even the statues are dancing here.

Please do not mistake me for somebody who suddenly figured out how to be happy.

But I think we can repel the better part of the Anaconda’s evil plans for us to never have fun, by having fun, with a ramped up determination.

Remember this?

Lastly, something I wanted to tell you.

They have a very charming New Year’s tradition here in Spain; Just before midnight, there is a countdown of 12, and everybody eats 12 grapes from a cup—one on each count. Then you put your right foot forward, while clutching a cash bill. This is said to increase wealth and good luck in the new year.

Love to everybody, and here’s to sticking together through thick and thin, in 2024.