I am sure that in the moment and even more in the near future, the apocalyptic associations of the year will evaporate, replaced with stauncher stuff and remembered for what’s important. While most of the fretting and hand-wringing involved issues of less cataclysmic proportions, there was still surely a bit of vanity in being the height, the end, or possibly final straw of humanity, the Holocene age, and maybe the shadow of rush or procrastination (else, of satisfaction and contentment, too) in the back of people’s minds. Here’s a poorly remembered selection of just a few moments of the past year. It is a little early for superlatives, maybe, but no one is writing 2012 off just yet and it is certainly not a diminishing but rather the opposite as events past into the chronicle.
January: The European Union and others levy trade embargos against Iran over the countries continuing efforts to enrich uranium and nuclear research in a process and debate that has lasted through the year.
February: Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Diamond Jubilee on the throne of Great Britain and the Common Wealth States. We had to say goodbye to Whitney Houston.
March: After 244 years of publication, the Encyclopรฆdia Britannica is no longer in print—that is, in book form.
April: World stock-markets drop precipitously in reaction to talk of euro-zone debt realities and rumour. China unpegs the yuan from the US dollar and threatens the dollar’s status as a world reserve currency. The Arab Spring continues with uprisings in Bahrain and Syria. We had to say good bye to long-time Band-Stand and New Year’s Eve gala host Dick Clark—well-played, Mayans, well-played.
May: There was spate of bizarre and gory attacks in the United States that invoked both cannibalism and zombies. We had to say good bye to Vidal Sassoon and Donna Summer.
June: We had to say good bye to visionary author Ray Bradbury. Germany rejects proposals to pool EU debt, arguing it is an individual responsibility, while Greece elects an anti-austerity government.
July: CERN laboratories isolate the Higgs-Boson particle. Electricity blackouts in India leave more than a half-a-billion without power for days.
August: The rover Curiosity lands on Mars and begins exploring. We had to say good bye to astronaut Neil Armstrong.
September: A number of terrorist attacks are coordinated against Western interests overseas, including American embassies in response to outrages over contemptible portrayals of culture and religion.
October: A sky-diver plunged from the stratosphere and descended faster than the speed of sound. A hurricane caused death and destruction from the Caribbean up through the eastern seaboard of North America.
November: Barack Obama was re-elected for his second term as US president. The United Nations voted to grant the Palestinian territories with cadet status. We had to say good bye to Larry Hagman.
December: A horrific school shooting happened in a Kindergarten in Connecticut. We had to say good bye to architect and incubator Oscar Niemeyer, sitar-man Ravi Shankar, and jazz innovator Dave Brubeck.
We will see what the close of the year and the new one to come bring. A lot of the matter of 2012 appears to be continuation of old business, only to out-do itself and be more glorious or notorious.
And though attention and tolerance usually seek out familiar shores right away, it might be that some of the incidents and accidents of the past chapter of months make their consequence known and bring about reform and inspection, like in terms of managing violence and protection or environmental stewardship, in the next.
