Your Decade And Mine

2020 calendar New Year's getty

(Getty Images)

Opinion editorial by WBZ NewsRadio political analyst Jon Keller

BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — By now, if you’re unlucky, someone has given you the lecture about how midnight tonight is not the end of one decade and the beginning of another, because the 2020s don’t begin until New Year’s Day 2021.

This is obviously false. 

When we refer to “the Twenties,” for instance, we mean the ten years that end in twenty-something. 2020 is the first such year, with nine more to follow, and 2030 will be the first year of that new decade.

Have we had enough of that debate? 

It’s almost as tiresome as the tortured efforts of writers and thinkers to contextualize the decade that ends tonight.

To do this persuasively is not as easy as it might sound. I heard snippets from the top five pop music hits of the decade on WBZ yesterday and all five sounded alike. 

And you’re going to need a lot more than a newspaper column to summarize the politics of the past ten years.

Locally, two events stand out to me. 

The Boston Marathon murders and aftermath, both the horror and the civic unity, will never be forgotten. 

The winter of 2015 – and the collapse of the T – won’t be either.

But the problem with ranking the decade’s top stories is that everyone has their own personal list, including good news and bad that no one sees on the news.

The death of a close friend, an aging relative’s struggle with illness, the birth of a new child, the charitable action it felt good to take. 

Those kind of things make my top ten, maybe yours too. 

Let’s just hope for more of the good news and less of the bad in the new decade that starts tomorrow.

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday mornings at :55 minutes past the hour. Listen to his previous podcasts on iHeartRadio.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

Follow WBZ NewsRadio: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | iHeartmedia App


Sponsored Content

Sponsored Content