Today is the penultimate day of only the first month of the year, and 2025 is already promising to be a total shitstorm: wars still raging in Ukraine and Gaza; wildfires still raging in California; antisemitism rearing its ugly head in Australia, of all the unexpected places; total chaos in America’s White House (not at all unexpected, really); and last evening, to cap it all off, a horrendous crash between an American Airlines passenger plane and a U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter over Washington’s icy Potomac River.

With all of that, it’s no surprise that — already being in a thoroughly gloomy state of mind — I was drawn to a news item yesterday commemorating the 180th anniversary of the publication of arguably the preeminent work of that master of doom and gloom, Edgar Allan Poe.

I refer, of course, to none other than The Raven.

And it occurs to me that . . . while ordinarily I might have turned to Shakespeare to sum up the year thus:

“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
(Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5) . . .

. . . Mr. Poe better expresses in a single word my view of the world’s loss of innocence, joy and honor, and the chances of their returning during my lifetime:

“NEVERMORE”

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
1/30/25