The Best Things I Saw in 2016

Everyone talks about how bad 2016 was, and there were certainly many rotten things about it. But I enjoyed many sights in the course of 2016, eleven of which are pictured below, not in order of importance but roughly in chronological order. 

The musical, Newsies (above), at the Aronoff Center in Cincinnati with my wife, the lovely Robin, and my daughter and son-in-law. 

Henry Ossawa Tanner's Flight into Egypt (above), and other amazing pieces at the Cincinnati Art Museum (see more on that visit here).

A sermon by one of my long-distance pastors-by-podcast, Erwin McManus, at Mosaic Church in Hollywood (see more here about that visit).

Disneyland, in the company of the lovely Robin and my son, daughter-in-law, and two oldest grandchildren. I last visited at the age of ten, I think, so it had been something like five or ten years since I was last there.

A gen-yoo-wine First Folio of Shakespeare's plays (the above is a Fourth Folio; they wouldn't let me take photos of the First Folio, which was encased in plexiglass as if they thought I might touch it or turn the pages) at the Cleveland Public Library's main branch (see more here).

A couple Cincinnati Reds games at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati. Even in a rebuilding year (or decade), I love my Reds.

A second California trip in 2016 included a visit to Half Moon Bay with my wonderful grandkids.

I got to see El Greco's St. Paul, which hangs beside a Titian, at the St. Louis Art Museum (more here).

In the course of 2016, I got to see live performances of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (above), Macbeth, The Winter's Tale, and Two Gentlemen of Verona. 

Late in 2016, I saw the most adorable "Baby Alive" doll in the world--and the only redhead Baby Alive, apparently. Although the packaging was upside down. Or she was. Realistic, isn't she?

On Christmas Eve, 2016, I got to see two of my grandkids' faces illuminated by a beautiful candlelight service at our church, Cincy Vineyard.

How rich am I? And that's only eleven, out of many, many wonderful things I saw in 2016.