January 2021:
Under the Cold Moon, the End of the Beginning?

By Corey Sandler

In many cultures, at midnight on the last day of the calendar, the old year is ushered out the back door and the new year welcomed at the front.

Last night, we did just that. Good riddance to 2020, a year that for most of us brought (almost) nothing worth celebrating.

A long, long year ago on New Year’s Eve, we were at sea, sailing north along the coast of Baja California from Mexico, headed for San Diego and eventually Los Angeles. (You can read about that trip by scrolling down to the entry for 3-4 January 2020.)

When we disembarked on 4 January, we were looking forward to a few months’ break before heading back to cruises in Norway, around the British Isles, and South America. It was going to be a busy year.

Instead, 2020 became the Year When Time Stopped.

By March, one after another cruise contracts were canceled and after 15 years of globe-trotting we have instead stayed home. Literally.

From our home high in the sky over Boston harbor, we can see the Black Falcon cruise terminal where not a single cruise ship visited in 2020. On my early morning walks, I find Downtown Crossing, the heart of Boston, scarcely crossed. And Boston Common is uncommonly empty.

But there is hope in the form of the painfully slow rollout of an exceptionally speedily developed vaccine.

If all goes well…

…we can hope that sometime soon–perhaps in this new year–we will once again be able to venture far and near.

As British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said in 1942, as the tide of World War II seemed to be turning, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Recent Photos

Boston’s Faneuil Hall. Photo by Corey Sandler

Boston at Dawn. Photo by Corey Sandler

The Final Full Moon of 2020, early 30 December. Known in New England as the Cold Moon, it was (how could it be anything else in this year?) the 13th full moon of 2020.
Photo by Corey Sandler

Photos by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved. To purchase a photo or obtain rights to use an image, please contact me.