Thankful for soon being able to say: ‘Good riddance, 2023’

THIS holiday weekend is devoted to the noble sentiment of gratitude. So before passing around the cranberry sauce, give thanks that 2023 experienced no repeat of the Great Cranberry Scare of 1959.

Three weeks before that year’s Thanksgiving, the government announced that a small portion of a Pacific Northwest cranberry crop contained traces of a herbicide that caused abnormal growths in rats stuffed with it. President Dwight D. Eisenhower substituted apple sauce for cranberry sauce. This episode presaged subsequent panics, dietary and otherwise, and today’s apocalypse fatigue, when everything poses an “existential” threat to this or that. This year — the 10th anniversary of a Cambridge University scientist saying the Arctic might be ice-free in two years — has been replete with reasons for saying good riddance to 2023. Bud Light heartily agrees.

Some Colorado school officials, with no sense of irony, cracked down on a 12-year-old whose backpack had a “Don’t tread on me” patch. A Florida charter school principal was forced to resign for not notifying parents that she planned to illustrate Renaissance art by showing her sixth graders Michelangelo’s “David.” A northern Virginia playground’s 21 rules include “no loitering” at the slide’s bottom.

Progressive criminology blamed cars for being stolen: Several cities sued Kia and Hyundai for making cars that are too easy to steal. In Maryland, the guardian of four teenagers arrested for car theft picked them up at the police station in a stolen car.

California’s third draft of a new K-12 math curriculum toned down the progressivism of the first two but still urged instructors to “teach toward social justice” and “focus on complex feelings.” Oregon recommends teachers attend a seminar on “ethnomathematics.” Perhaps Oregon is influenced by nearby Seattle’s math framework, which asks, “How important is it to be right?” (Implied: Not very.) A Maryland test found that 40 percent of Baltimore public high schools had no student proficient in math. The authors of Rhode Island’s social studies standards think the Russian Revolution happened before World War I.

In 2023, “citation justice” involved scholarly articles subverting white supremacy by citing research from marginalized voices. According to Pronouns.org, International Pronouns Day (Oct. 18) celebrated “people’s multiple, intersecting identities.”

After being expelled from a Denver production of “Beetlejuice,” Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-colo., said, “I simply fell short of my values,” when she (who says God called her to Congress) continued vaping, taking flash pictures, singing along with the cast and being friskily affectionate with her date. A former (and perhaps future) president, whom Boebert adores, explained in a deposition that he once said “stars” can grope women because “historically, that’s true.” Provided with 40,000 hours of video from security cameras on Jan. 6, 2021, Tucker Carlson concluded in 2023 that, aside from “a small percentage” of “hooligans,” most of those who smashed their way into the Capitol were actually “sightseers” who were “orderly and meek.” (Approximate number of injured police: 140.)

Discovering something not yet subsidized by government, some planet-protecting communities in 2023 offered tax rebates and vouchers to purchasers of e-bikes. Kansas City’s “Barbie”-themed pink streetcar was supposed to increase ridership, which is free.

An indispensable 2023 book, “The Canceling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott, reports that Yale has “one administrator for every four students. That’s the same ratio the government recommends for child care of infants under 12 months.” Northwestern

University’s student government offered “mental health support” for students traumatized by news that a conservative speaker was coming to campus. After the Supreme Court declared race-based college admissions policies unconstitutional, the Boston University School of Law student government assured students that BU’S “wellness resources,” aka therapy, could help them “navigate these times.” Perhaps related: A Yougov survey in June found that more than one-third of American adults under age 45 sleep with stuffed animals.

Finally, in 2023, Howard “Ken” Potts, 102, the oldest known survivor of the Japanese sinking of the battleship Arizona on Dec. 7, 1941, died in Utah. Traute Lafrenz, 103, died in South Carolina. She was the last of the small White Rose resistance group whose young members risked, and often lost, everything by distributing anti-hitler leaflets in Germany. Some resisters were among the estimated 5,000 beheaded after Hitler revived use of the guillotine.

On this weekend of gratitude, remember these two, who lived bravely in testing times. It is unlikely that, as adults, either slept with stuffed animals.