And a quiet Happy New Year 2022 to you

Photo by Anastasiia Rozumna on Unsplash

The second New Year’s Eve of the pandemic was a lot like the first. In the sense that many of the massive public parties that count down the last hours of the waning year were cancelled.

Auckland, the first city on the planet to officially see in the new year, didn’t have its planned fireworks display. So too Singapore. And London. And Los Angeles.

Omicron, a fast-spreading new strain of the coronavirus, is swarming across the world, causing a fourth wave. Unlike the first New Year’s Eve of the pandemic, no one is now confidently predicting its definite end.

That has made for a quiet start to the new year, but hopefully 2022 will pick up the pace as it gets going.

Here’s American youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman new poem, ‘New Day’s Lyric’, lays it out exactly. In 48 lines on struggle and healing, she says, “even solace can be sourced from sorrow./ We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,/ But to take on tomorrow.”

Here’s the whole poem:

NEW D…