2017 couldn’t get here soon enough

Welcome, 2017. We’re so happy to welcome you tonight.

We’re thrilled because 2016 has finally come to an end. If it wasn’t the worst year in memory, it has to be on the list. It may not have been as turbulent and awful as, say, 1968 — but it sure was close.

We’re optimistic 2017 will be better. It couldn’t be any worse.

We had the ugly, divisive presidential election that consumed virtually the entire year. We wound up with a tweeter-in-chief who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million, but will take up residence in the White House in three weeks because he won the Electoral College.

So many more awful things happened in 2016, we couldn’t wait for New Year’s Eve.

It seemed we had almost weekly terrorist attacks around the globe, from Belgium, to Nice, to Paris, to Istanbul, to Berlin and Africa, too. The terrorists used guns and bombs and trucks and everything else you could think of. Was there ever a more unsafe year?

We had more gun violence in America, with the worst mass shooting in history occurring at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, where 49 people lost their lives. In response, all you hear from the Florida Legislature is a desire to let people openly carry guns – and carry concealed weapons in airports, on college campuses and maybe even in the state Capitol, too.

We had police shootings of unarmed blacks that divided the nation almost as much as the presidential election. Let us never forget that way too many police officers died in the line of duty, too.

We had Zika, which remains with us as we enter 2017, though it’s joined mosquito season in a winter lull.

We had the refugee horrors in Syria, which will continue into 2017.

There was record heat across the United States, and then record cold. And we elected a president who has said climate change is a hoax.

Even when there was some good news — Hurricane Matthew scared South Florida, but passed us by — it wound up becoming bad news for many in north Florida and other states. And the people we lost in 2016 — a tough, tough year. We lost Prince and David Bowie and Glen Frey and Leonard Cohen and Gene Wilder and Patty Duke and Alan Thicke. We lost Muhammad Ali and Arnold Palmer. We lost Nancy Reagan and John Glenn. We lost George Michael. We lost Carrie Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds.

And in South Florida, we faced the horrible tragedy of Marlins superstar Jose Fernandez dying in a boating accident. His talent and smile and exuberance — along with his backstory of escaping from Cuba with his family — captured the area like no other athlete we’ve seen.

We also saw the death of Fidel Castro which, in South Florida, caused wild celebrations in Little Havana and elsewhere. It was one death that didn’t cause sadness. So we welcome in 2017 with trepidation. What will the year hold? The economy appears to be improving. The stock market has certainly been on the upswing. Florida’s economy is doing well. We should have another boffo tourism season, so long as Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature don’t wipe out the state’s advertising budget.

But there’s angst over what will happen when Donald Trump takes office. Will he continue his wild Twitter rants? Will he still enable bigotry like he did during the campaign? Or will he take a more moderate tone and truly try to unify the country and move us forward?

Maybe the world calms down a bit in 2017, after all the violence and upheaval of 2016. We can only hope.

And we can only hope that 2017 brings us 12 good months to remember fondly.

Happy New Year to you all.

Maybe the world calms down a bit in 2017, after all the violence and upheaval of 2016. We can only hope.

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