Year in Review: 2020
This is my first year in review. I have thought about writing one over the years, but what would I say. 2020 was literally a plague upon everyone’s house, but did anything good happen? Hmmm. I don’t know. I guess. Maybe.
*I had one Sherlock Holmes article published: Aho, Melissa. 2020. “Holmes and the Internet.” Explorations Newsletter 79 (Winter/Spring): 9-10.
*I had one fictional Sherlock Holmes work published: Aho, Melissa. 2020. “The Games Are Afoot: Word Search Puzzle” in The Norwegian Explorers 2020 Christmas Annual, No. 19: Games Are Afoot, by Ray Riethmeier and Phillip Bergem, Editors. Minneapolis, MN: The Norwegian Explorers of Minnesota, pages 19-20 and 80.
*I had one scholarly article published: Barry, Todd J. and Melissa K. Aho. 2020. “Up or Down! House Management and Public Finance Theory from America’s Era of Hastert.” International Journal of Public Policy and Administration Research. Vol 7, No 1: 44-57. http://www.conscientiabeam.com/journal/74/abstract/6026
*I attended a ton of zoom lectures, talks, and conferences for fun.
*I worked on the dissertation. I was doing so well when the year started – January and February were very productive, then March and the pandemic hit and my brain turned into a Covid mushy brain. Later in the year I hit a few walls when my data did not work and plodded along.
*My family and friends survived the toilet paper famine of Spring 2020, as well as the wildfires (remember Australia, California, Brazil, etc.), record number of hurricanes/tropical storms including one (Tropical Storm Cristobal) whose remains somehow made it up to Minnesota, the pandemic, quarantine, the economy sucking and everything closing down, racial injustice and rioting, an impeachment, the craziest election in US history and a failed attempted coup by the orange soon-to-be-former president.
*I expected to have read more books in 2020, but no. Just kept steady at the 100 yearly books, but I seemed to have started and stopped more books then I care to count.
The 2020 reading statistics
The 2020 reading statistics (have I ever mentioned that I have statistics trauma? Two classes in a PhD economics statistics will do that to a person):
Total books read in 2020: 101
General nonfiction: 21
Fiction: 80
Books started and not finished or just abandoned: a few dozen
In Memoriam 2020
-My great aunt Cecilia Gulczinski
-My friend and PhD classmate Dr. Dave Davis
-My uncle Gary Lockard
-My aunt Linda Aho
-340,000+ dead Americans due to the pandemic
-1.82+ million global deaths due to the pandemic