Yearly Recall Takes
a Blurry 2015 Picture

It was a year of record refugee waves, with boatloads of heartbreaking stories landing en masse on European shores. Greeting them, equal parts of compassion and vile political pettiness, and a stunned world reacting as it usually does: with violence.
As usual too, there were plenty of staggering deaths – massive, laser-focused, or undiscriminated – due to terrorism, war strikes, stampedes, and in the U.S., racism and too many guns. And, of course, a fair share of encouraging news about climate change, for instance.
This post hardly covers them all, though. For these Colltales stories we’ve picked are more of a counterpoint to what was going on then. Rather than rehashing what was on everyone’s devices in 2015, they run a parallel track of commentary, criticism, and even comic relief.
Just as global temperatures kept rising, our pulse on the year’s events was better reflected on the weekly editorial Newsletter/Curtain Raiser. So we were free to report another kind of news, neither Pollyanna nor downright depressing. You know, the Colltalers preferable way. Enjoy.

ELVIS, CATS & RIO IN WINTER
The terrorist attack that killed nine journalists at the Paris offices of the Charlie Hebdo, on Jan. 7, was arguably the biggest news of the first three months of 2015. But the following day, we featured Elvis Presley‘s 80th birthday. And never looked back.
Stories about crows, unemployment, that old fave Voynich Manuscript, and a quirky take on Valentine Day followed. A personal darling was the 450th anniversary of Rio, our city of birth. Bandit Maria Bonita, cats, caturally, and life after death, online, completed the bunch.

A SPRING OF RACE & TIME
By then, the biggest refugee crisis of our era was already creeping in, but within the U.S., an old scourge was robbing the headlines: racism. Our own second quarter, though, was deep into

recollection, as we honored American Standards and had a go at immortality.
Black youth got fatally shot by law enforcement as if the 1960s hadn’t even happened, while we added pointers on memory, imaginary heroes, dates out of synch, orbiting dirt, and lost seconds, along a ‘retake’ on those who simply checked out of the whole madness.

BLOODY SUMMER & CUBA LIBRE
The U.S. embargo against Cuba is over, and to millions, only an outspoken Latin American pope could mean better news. Out of duty, we wrote of the Fourth, a full year of shame for Brazil’s soccer, and stunning Pluto. But Cecil, the Lion, held our biggest grief.
Somber anniversaries of Hiroshima and Katrina, with a Bukowski tossed in the mix, plus another rain check for the Amazon, grace not to be so bad, a repost on suicide, and a blog about blogs closed a summer that went too fast. We could’ve used the record Christmas heat back then.

A FALL CHOCKFULL OF TALES
The City of Light was revisited by carnage in an even larger scale of horror, while we grouped the 3-month cycle with a twisted combo of posts. From Poe and Lennon, to a transgender model, a repost, no less, to fairies, we’ve got busy at diverting our aggravations.
Six-word stories, an Einstein remembrance, the day of the turkey, retold, and Sinatra‘s century all came into focus here. And so did the damned harvest of illicit money, and the drought that got drowned by the year’s other storms. The books are being closed on 2015, but lest no one forget it.

MORE THAN MEETS THE HEART
There’s so much more left out here. The Iran Nuclear Agreement, the Paris Climate Change Summit, the Nepal earthquake. But these had plenty of (possibly better) coverage elsewhere. The ones to regret not being included, though, we simply couldn’t.
Billions of individual tales, a tiny fraction of which we’ve witnessed or heard of, have likely held more transcendence and power to change the world than most of those big stories above. And yet, it’s part of life’s miracle that knowing about them may suffice.
Even for dilettantes like us, it’s foolish to expect to add anything to their power, even if, yes, we did discuss some of them through the year. We don’t know how much time we’ve got left, only what’s close to our heart. To honor that is our most valuable duty as humans.