You may recall, depending how many rings encircle your trunk, an irreverent prime-time “news” program titled “That Was the Week That Was.” Also known by its shorthand of TW3, the NBC version had an across-the-pond pedigree, by way of BBC.
The show mashed up the news of the week into a pungent, sizzling satirical stew. This was the mid-Sixties, mind you. Before Laugh-In. Before Saturday Night Live. Before Jon Stewart.
Needless to say, TW3 would have had a mountain of material to distill to 50 minutes each of these past 70-something weeks.
We’ve finally arrived at the point when we can take stock, and say, “That Was the Year That Was.” So, raise your hand if you’re eager to look back and rehash the fraught phantasmagoria we’re only now escaping from … Yep, that’s what I thought. No takers.
TW3 had a theme song. It began, “That was the week that was, it’s over, let it go.” Amen to that. OK, I know as well as you that it’s not fully over. Nothing this debilitating ends that precipitously. It’s fading, though; sunsetting, as it were. Go. Good riddance. Buh-bye!
I certainly am no Sir David Attenborough, but my home school professor Dr. Google tells me that when bears hibernate during winter, they aren’t sleeping the whole time. What a coincidence! Neither were we. I also learned that Fozzie, Smokey, Yogi and their ursine pals hibernate for about 180 days, or less than half the time that we’ve been acting bearish.
Another thing about bears that we now can relate to more readily: After hibernating, they immediately look for food.
We’ve endeavored to be of some help with that, as a-foraging we all go. See our brief guide (on page 8) to local bistros where you can dine with your pet bear – I mean dog.
Has a summer ever been so welcome, and cause for celebration. It’s a rhetorical – and rhapsodic — question. So, what are you doing sitting there reading this? Summer beckons. Go out, greet it, then stop to smell those fulsome, fragrant roses … at long last.
