Well, the countdown to midnight on New Year's Eve. There was a litle segment from Sydney, Australia, where it's already been the New Year.

What a year! Benazir Bhutto's assassination, the Iraq War is still raging, North Korea continues its nuclear policy, Kenya is having riots....

It's very depressing. But it's been a very vital period for the arts. And that does seem to be typical: crises seem to really provoke creativity. Last night, i spent a lot of time online, looking up fragments of books by Yvonne Rainer, Sally Banes, Kenneth King, etc. (Nowadays, you can always find sites where sections of chapters are available for perusal.) It made me nostalgic for that period of my life when i was in the midst of all that activity....

And i have to say that i miss so many of those people. There was the time when there would be the marathon readings of Gertrude Stein's "The Making of Americans" (then it alternated with Joyce's "Finnegans Wake"). And there were always those people like Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles... Kenneth King was someone who usually read, there were other people as well....

There was the year when Christine and i decided to plan a big New Year's Eve, and we wound up going to see the Salzburg Marionettes, and then going to Michael's Pub where Anita O'Day was singing, and then we wound up at the Copa where we danced until it was time for breakfast. (In between, there were things like drinks at Top of the Park.)

And i remember one New Year's Eve where we had a dinner party... William Dunas came... i think that Jane Comfort and her husband came... it's hard to remember exactly....

I'm glad that i lived through the 1960s and on... i'm glad that i got to see a lot of the things that i saw, and i'm glad that i met a lot of the people i did. But i think that there are better times ahead.