"They say that these are not the best of times, but they're the only times I've ever known!"

Billy Joel's words as a young man transcended his age and are as relevant now as the day they were written in Summer Highland Falls (1975). I would imagine they will be a hundred years from now as well.

I remember as a kid I would think about how old I would be in the year 2000. Wow, 39 seemed old. Feels young now.

We're in a state where we don't need the flux capacitor to project ourselves into some DeLorean future we can't understand.  In many ways we are already there, or here. 

We are living in a time where, sadly, we have turned our oceans into a combination toilet/landfill.

Consider the irony as we make great headway curing the cancers we caused the environment to cause in us. 

We went to Alaska last year, an unforgettable trip we highly recommend. I think about it almost daily but not always because of the beauty of places like Denali, which we have a wonderful picture of in our sunroom. 

In August of 2015 we decided it was right for Mt. McKinley to be named Denali, which is the name it was given to by the Alaskan Native tribes that were there first, for thousands of years. In the late 1800's a gold prospector, after hearing William McKinley had won the Republican presidential nomination, declared it should be called Mt. McKinley. He must have known Alaska would become the hot bed of political power. Since then we have endured Sarah Palin and no sitting president has felt it was worth his time to ever visit the state until last summer.

See, Obama did do something over the last eight years. To complete the action of fairness I suggest we pay the Native Americans the delta on what they paid for Manhattan. Let's see Manhattan is estimated to be worth $3,000,000,000,000 - $24 (which is what they paid for it) and you come to $2,999,999,999,976. Let's expand the balance sheet one more time. 

Back to our trip. I can't help thinking about how loud the sounds are of the huge chunks of ice cracking from the glaciers and plummeting into the waters of Prince William Sound. The cruise ships go in close and everyone stares in amazement as you witness the destruction of the environment right in front of you. Again, ironically, no one is discussing why chunks of ice the size of cars to small buildings are breaking off into the water all day, every day for years past and in the future. Instead, we are taking pictures and gasping at the spectacle of it all...smiling, as the environment erodes and dies in front of us without even a wave goodbye. I can still hear it and sense I will never silence that horrific sound. 

In 2016 we have prolific demons we are dealing with. Seems like the bad guys in the Middle East have perfected demonic activity at the expense of the majority of us on the planet who, though not pure, are in the end, a pretty good lot.  There are so many more of us than them but somehow it feels like we are losing. 

To add to the circus we are entering an election year. On the Republican side we have the 21 gun salutes of candidates led by The Donald. Man, can you imagine it is becoming likely the next First Lady will be only slightly less hot than her smokin’ hot daughter? I wonder if a White House calendar is in our future. Sign me up. 

For the Democrats we have none other than Hillary embroiled in email chaos and the everlasting hangover from giving Bill a box of cigars back in 1998.  

Bill, Hillary, Donald, Monica, man the anonymously named ones are not the exception but the new norm. Let's throw Caitlin into the mix as well. I am sure she will do something to make us all feel something in 2016. 

At the end of it all I remain bullish on the future. I tell my kids I want to live forever as I believe mankind and Mother Nature will come together and make things right. People will live longer, healthier lives which will give us more time together to entertain ourselves, fix problems, clean up the earth, spread hope and denounce fear. 

In the end it ends with Peace!

My best, Chris