Yeah. I know. Christians, Jews, Muslims, the Chinese, Hindus and Buddhists each have several kinds of New Years, and there must even be some pumped up minor revolutionary chieftain somewhere who has picked July 13th as the beginning of the New Year, the fact that it happens to coincide with his birthday mere coincidence.
Whatever your pick, have a Happy New Year. And if you are really desperate for an issue about which to become enraged, try this: On planet Earth, where some farmers are actually paid not to plant crops, over forty thousand persons die of starvation every day.
Back when I wrote my science-fiction novel Sea of Glass, featuring a world over populated and running short of resources, I needed to come up with a number of persons starving to death each day. The purpose was to underscore just how absolutely horrible things had gotten. So, what figure to use?
I was a new writer, this was before the internet, and it was fiction, I thought. So, with no research I reached up into the air and picked a number that was so incredibly high the horror of it would strain credulity. That fictional number of persons on Earth starving to death each day was "over one thousand."
Silly me.
So, if you have the opportunity to have a Happy New Year, regardless of the date, take it and begin your gratitude list there.
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