Okay, I am going to try to regain my normal equilibrium, if not optimism, when thinking about 2026.  To start that process, I thought it important to figure out what has thrown me off.

Of course, Donald Trump is part of it. But we have been dealing with him a long time now. So that can’t be all of it. What else?

I think it was, first, Rob and Michele Reiner and, second, to top it off, Tatiana Schlossberg. Murdered by your own son. Killed by a virulent and rare version of a deadly disease when you are 35. Three people who deserved so much better. Gone so suddenly. How can one not feel down?

I don’t know if my daughter remembers this, but at the ages of 6 and 7, she had to face the deaths of two grandparents within abput a year and a half, which she handled very well. But a few months after my mother passed away, Fred Astaire’s death was announced, and my daughter (already a theater person) fell apart completely. Perhaps my reaction now is the same.

At any rate, we were able to start out the year at the annual open house of our down the street neighbors, the Cohens, and commiserate with some old friends.

When we came home, I wanted to divert myself (and certainly didn’t want to hear any news), so I decided to pull out my collection of bookmarks. (I know, you say “collection of WHAT?)

So when you spend a lot of time scouring used book stores, you find a lot of old bookmarks. Most people just ignore them, but I tend to put them in my pocket. Then, I bring them home and put them in a box with all my other purloined bookmarks.

Today, I decided to look through some of them. I divided them into categories: American bookstores, foreign book stores, not book stores, and not paper. I went through about half of them.

The foreign ones are of most interest to me, I think. The ones I pulled out come from Canada, England, Scotland, Ecuador, Ireland, Turkey, Australia, Lebanon, Brazil, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, France, Mexico, Spain, Colombia, India, Israel, Kenya, Poland, Belgium, El Salvador, Peru, Paraguay, Russia, Thailand, and Chile.

I don’t know exactly how many bookmarks I have. Probably about 1000, although I culled about 100 today that I didn’t feel the need to keep (all from the “not book stores” category). Maybe, one day when I don’t know what else to write, I will show pictures of some of the ones I like the best. Here is one as a sample:

This Strand bookmark is at least 50 years old. You can tell that by the GRamercy phone number. And by the way, except for changing the GR to 47, the Strand phone number remains the same.

Of course, I admit this is a strange collection, and each piece in it is priceless. Yes, priceless. Literally. But put them all together and what do you get? A priceless collection to be sure.

So, with all this in mind, on New Years night, I turned on CNN, and what did I watch? An excellent hour long show on Rob and Michele Reiner.

And to answer your question? No, I don’t think it brought closure. In fact, what is closure, anyway? I have never recognized it as a real thing. Still don’t.