2 0 1 9 — THE END OF A DECADE AND THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ROARING 20S

100 years since the last 19’s end is suddenly upon us!

This year’s triumphant close is upon us.. Christmas bells are ringing. Often the sad sad songs.. Outside those cold and repugnant winds are invading the landscape.

This year’s summation is not just one series of 12 months on a calendar of your choice, but a blended mess of ten years of our time..

We started this decade–yes! an entire decade–in 2010 .. Barack Obama’s new presidency was rocky while an economy blustered and recovered from a Great Recession.. War never ended even though promises were made that it would.. And hatred never ended either. It spread, actually..

For as much as this decade’s promise of ingenuity and love would prevail, what ended up winning was the old radical debates of decades’ past. Of centuries past!

The 2000teens were tumultuous.. We endured dramatic and frantic changes in technology and rapid acceleration of job shifts and economic insurrections.. We endured election cycles that seem to abound in dreadful debate and divisive rhetoric.. We survived shifts in culture that have been so dramatic, it’s impossible to even keep pace with how rapid the changes actually are.

Things used to shift slower, they once took more time to take in.. Now we have moved from the 24 hours news cycle to the 24-second attention span.

It seems like just a few clicks ago that we read the TIME mag decade in review–in 2010!

The magazine also published a ‘decade from hell’ cover, lamenting the misfortunes of the early 2000s with a promise and spin that the next would be better…

But was it better? Or worse.. or just more of the same with different numbers attached to the years?

When this decade began, smart phones weren’t that smart yet. We just started to accept the complete and total destruction of privacy. We disbelieved those conspiracy theories that phones and tablets were listening to us. And at the end of the decade, we not only knew we were being surveilled but we almost reveled in it.

We submitted.

We also have no choice but to submit to the end of the teens.. the roaring 20s are upon on. Just like that..

Common talk in elevators or around water coolers will undoubtedly include this sentence over the next week: “I remember when it just about to turn to the year 2000!” Lots of us do, indeed.. those exciting moments as Dick Clark rang in a new century, when we were not sure if Y2K would shut us all down. Remember that nonsense?

Ok boomer! You’re showing your age!

But now as we turn 20 in this century, a new generation is amongst us.. They are ditching the ‘normies’ of the famed socials and trending to a conversation of TikToking with each other.

People who were born on 9/11 are fighting endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq–still.. All of these now decades later..

At this point of societal evolution, we are now poised to have a generation of people more apt to talking to people through apps than in person. The landscape of modern life has shifted away from anything that was known prior to these past few years.

But ‘normie’ stuff still occurs.

We still have political theater–this year an historic first happened: The first impeachment of the 21st century. In 2020, America will have its landscape scarred with scorched earth politics. We will have an election.. and we will have a victor. Hopefully..

It is fascinating that in this moment of revolutionary change, the main contenders –besides Andrew Yang–are old soldiers of the past century.. they are products of a time gone — 20 years ago since their collective prime!

As this year comes to its end, we have a teenager climate change activist attaining the TIME magazine person of the year honor.. A new generation is either upon us–or being forced upon us by the collective?

If there is one theme that the teens’ ending bring to us, it’s babble..

An entirely new tower of babble across this world..

There are thousands of social media stars on hundreds of social media platforms on websites run by dozens of monstrously large companies headed by a handful of billionaires.

That is who we are..

The biggest series of events that transpired over the course of the past decade could very well be the culmination and end of the free internet as we know it..

Gone are those amazing and glorious wild west days of online anonymity.. and back in an era when we disconnected and rejoined life again. Now life is the net. Life IS online.. And while more and more sign up for the superhighway, the speed limits are enforced by multinational corporations run by an elite few..

Something with that entire equation seems off when compared to the promises of the NET from the last century..

There is a melancholy spirit in which I approach this fateful demise of the first and last set of teens I will live through. My son was born in 2011.. he’s coming of age as the age changes to Aquarius. And the dangers of the future are as pronounced as those from the past.. We already know how the past ended but we are unsure of how the future will present itself..

On December 26, 2019, the day after Christmas, a 2,034-foot asteroid will whiz by the planet earth, the massive space rock, which is known as 310442 (2000 CH59), will be closest to our planet on December 26 at 2:54 a.m. EST..

It is flying by at 4.5 million miles away.. The asteroid will travel past our planet at around 27,500 miles per hour…

Interestingly, this asteroid was discovered early in the year 2000, just after the new century’s beginning.

Another asteroid, asteroid Apophis, will close out the Roaring 20s ..On a Friday the 13th..

Friday, April 13, 2029, a large asteroid will streak across the sky..

That asteroid, called Apophis, stretches about 1,100 feet (340 meters) across and will pass within 19,000 miles (31,000 kilometers) of Earth’s surface. Scientists are positive that it will not hit Earth.

Also as we get midway through the 20s, a great American eclipse will grace our daytime skies.. Total solar eclipse of April 8, 2024 will take place over Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Totality first touches Mexico, enters the United States at Texas, cuts a diagonal to Maine, and visits the maritime provinces of Canada.

And in some weird paranormal oddity, if Donald Trump gets re-elected as President in 2020, he will end his last year in office with a total solar eclipse.. Just as he began in the year 2017’s Administration began…