I’m getting old. So is the Slope of Hope. It seems hard to believe, but in just a few months Slope will begin its 20th year. That fact is on my mind because every time I do one of these end-of-year round-ups, I ask myself: how much longer are you going to do this? Sometimes I wonder if I’ll be clicking a Publish button when I’m on my death bed (which is, as Norm told us years ago, a piece of furniture you should never buy).

My mood at the end of 2023 is vastly different than it was at the end of 2022. In fact, looking at some of my posts that year, I am dumbstruck and embarrassed at how arrogant some of those posts were. Let’s just say 2023 has cured me of that illness, at least for the foreseeable future. Having mentioned the sin of arrogance, however, I will now immediately say one or two things that will sound decidedly in that category.