By some mechanism I no longer remember, I became a subscriber to the Gates Notes mailing list a year or so ago, and on December 20th I received an e-newsletter from Bill Gates titled A Year to Remember.  He begins, “Looking back over 2016, I had some incredible experiences” and goes on to highlight amazing people he met and books he read.  “Seriously, Bill?” I thought to myself, “2016 was a year I’ll be happy to forget.”  Then I relented.  After all, I’m not the center of the universe (surprise!), and 2016 featured a number of earth-shaking events.  If Bill can play the long game, I thought, I can do that too.

In fact, when I reached an age milestone not so long ago (I won’t mention which), I started writing my autobiography in the form of a timeline.  Year by year and month by month, I listed my own life events, but I also picked out world events which I thought were important enough that I ought to recognize I lived through them.  I haven’t updated my autobiography recently, so today I decided to review the past year’s world historical events and then incorporate these into the impersonal part of my life in 2016 (and no, I’m not going to list any personal milestones this year).  For past years, I limited myself to one or two events per month; that’s what you see below.

• Jan:  WHO confirms outbreak of Zika virus.
• Feb: Pope Francis meets with Patriarch Kirill.  LIGO discovers gravitational waves.
• Mar: AlphaGo wins match against human Go master.  ISIL carries out terrorist bombings in Brussels.
• Apr: ICIJ leaks the Panama Papers from Mossack Fonseca.
• May: Iraqi Army battles ISIS for control of Fallujah.  State of emergency declared in Venezuela.
• Jun: Britain votes to leave the European Union.  Gun and bomb attack at Istanbul Airport produces many casualties.
• Jul: Solar Impulse completes circumnavigation of the globe.  Coup in Turkey fails.
• Aug: Brazil hosts successful Olympic games.  Earthquake measuring 6.2 damages central Italy.
• Sep: US and China ratify the Paris Climate Agreement.
• Oct: Peace deal with FARC rejected in Colombian referendum.
• Nov: Donald Trump elected 45th president of the US.  India demonetizes 500 and 1000 bank notes.
• Dec: Syrian government forces retake Aleppo.  Italian Prime Minister Renzi resigns.

Good-bye, 2016.  Have a safe and festive New Year’s Eve, and ring in 2017!

I don’t know when the hash tag caught on, but today is designated as #GivingTuesday for 2016.  What with the days following Thanksgiving now named Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, it was inevitable that someone would try to come up with more reasons for spending money.  At least today we get to part with our hard-earned dollars for a good cause, one of our own choosing.  As I understand it, #GivingTuesday is a global day for giving back.  From Twitter, I learned that $168M was raised online on #GivingTuesday. That’s up 44% from 2015.

Here’s what I did:

The East Quabbin Land Trust, whose mission is to conserve our land and preserve our heritage, set a goal of raising $5,000 in a day, and with the enthusiastic participation of many individuals, they exceeded that goal.  An anonymous donor will match each donation up to the $5,000 goal, which means the organization raised over $12,000 on November 29th.

I often wonder about the impact of charitable giving (I suppose that’s a topic for another post), because sometimes the numbers, even when they’re very specific, seem so abstract.  For example, I’ve been a supporter of the University of California-Berkeley for a number of years, for no good reason, in the sense that I did not attend school there, I don’t live in California, and I don’t really know anyone who is associated with the university.  They came up with the idea of a “Big Give” a few years back, so I decided to participate.  This year, the Big Give took place on November 17; in 24 hours, they raised $11,679,693 from 9,672 gifts.  That seems amazing to me.  I suppose I should feel good about my donation and believe them when they say:

This effort supports students, faculty, and research, keeping Berkeley the No. 1 public university in the world. From the smallest gift to the biggest, your generosity to Berkeley holds truly transformative power on campus and in the world at large.