New Year's Eve gone, Year Zero of New Albany's bicentennial end times begins now.

A quiet, conversational and largely impromptu New Year's Eve was spent with friends, food and beer. Thanks to the gang for making it happen. It was an unexpected pleasure, even if I couldn't find a single slice of white bread in the whole damned house.

We went outside at midnight, and no church bells, chimes, carillons or gongs were audible, not even a tintinnabulum, although we heard plenty of gunshots toward the sky like in the Balkans and Yemen, cheap imported fireworks and what may have been a meth lab explosion.

There's nothing like ringing in a new year in wonderful and delightful New Albany, where we're as far North as the Deep South ever gets.