PACKET EDITORIAL, Jan. 1
By: Packet Editorial
If there is any justice in the world, 2002 will be a relatively uneventful year. Given what happened in 2001, especially the final 111 days, we all could use a nice, quiet period to recover from our collective trauma of the year just passed.
But if history is any guide, 2002 will be anything but a tranquil, serene, inconsequential year. Years that are the same backwards and forwards never are. They have a way of getting you (you’ll pardon the expression) both coming and going.
Consider the last palindromic year 1991 which started with the Gulf War and ended with the breakup of the Soviet Union. In between, South Africa ended apartheid, the Warsaw Pact dissolved and Clarence Thomas managed to get on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Or the one before that 1881 when President Garfield and Czar Alexander II both were assassinated, a tidal wave in China killed 300,000 people, Clara Barton organized the American Red Cross, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the income tax constitutional and Louis Pasteur developed (how’s this for irony?) the anthrax vaccine.
By a quirk of the calendar, we’re the first generation in a millennium to witness not one but two years that are palindromes. The last time this occurred, in 999 and 1001, the Vikings and Danes were attacking Britain, Hungary was converting to Christianity and Leif Eriksson was off discovering America. But nobody was able to memorialize these events much less leave a lasting commentary on the historic happenstance of experiencing two palindromic years out of three because the printing press wasn’t invented for another four centuries. (The printing press may, in fact, have been invented in yet another backwards-and-forwards year 1441 but nobody knows for sure.)
In any event, unless it’s the turn of the millennium, it’s always 110 years between palindromes. The next one won’t come until 2112, so we had better savor the one before us.
Therefore, in the true spirit of the palindrome, we offer the following wishes for the new year to some of our favorite people:
A target for President Bush: Mad dastard, a sad rat Saddam.
A description of the Princeton Borough Council and Princeton Township Committee: Star comedy by Democrats.
A reminder to Bob Bruschi, Jim Pascale, Barbara Evans, Donato Nieman and all the other municipal employees who must divine what their governing bodies are telling them: Some men interpret nine memos.
A motto for Township Attorney Schmierer: Ed is on no side.
A goal for Tony DeNicola and his White Buffalo team: Ten animals I slam in a net.
A warning to West Windsor Township Councilwoman Roeder: Rae! Bite yon no yeti bear! (Or, alternately, a question for Ms. Roeder: Are we not, Rae, near to new era?)
A slogan for the Princeton Triangle Club: Satire:Veritas.
A saying for bartenders at the Ivy Inn, Alchemist and Barrister, Conti’s and other noted area drinking establishments: Lager, sir, is regal.
Advice for the Momos, or anyone else who might be planning a new eating establishment: Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog.
A plan for investigators tracking down the perpetrator of the anthrax scare: And DNA and DNA and DNA …
Our final wish, though, is for all mankind. May we truly ring out a year of painful memories and ring in a new year that recaptures our generous spirit of goodness and humanity. Or, to put it another way:
Live not on evil, 2002, live not on evil.