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I was listening to The Anthropocene Reviewed's take on Auld Lang Syne and was stunned to find out it was a tribute to Amy Krouse Rosenthal - stunned to find out she was killed by cancer in 2017.

I loved her work on 15 Megabytes of Fame a charmingly hand-drawn miniblog from way back when - plus her Book of Eleven was lovely. She introduced me to concepts like Wabi-Sabi and almost everything she wrote was brimming with wistful, thoughtful beauty. I met her in person at Porter Square Books during her book tour for "Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life" and we corresponded a tiny bit - turns out she also went to Tufts, but I guess I missed this loving tribute in the alum magazine.

(Oh and here is a nice personal plug for her final book for grownups "Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal")

That Anthropocene podcast mentioned Amy reviving and reframing a simplistic set of lyrics for Auld Lang Syne that British soldiers created during the Battle of the Somme:

We're here,
because we're here,
because we're here,
because we're here...

The soldiers were sardonically drawing attention to the unfairness of being asked to sacrifice so much for such an uncertain cause, but Amy recasts it, and finds the elegant universal existential brother- and sisterhood it can hold.

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Death may be knocking on my door, but I'm not getting out of this glorious bath to answer it.

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Best Movie Posters of the Last Decade via this metalist

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Fun banding for NYE!