I'm suspicious, however, that because these articles are easy to prepare in advance their real purpose is to allow the harried media professional to knock off work early during the holiday season.
We here, in the Mixed Meters newsroom, want to do year-end "Best of..." lists as much as the next blog because we like quitting work early too.
We've done such lists before. Last year had an exceptionally negative tone. The 2012 entry was very misleading. In 2008 I listed things I had genuinely liked during that year . . . that was boring!
Now consider the human hand. What an amazing tool the hand is. Civilization would lack so much without the help of hands: typing, sign language, wind instruments.
Our hands are very delicate and easy to damage. They are a complicated array of bones, muscles and nerves - all designed for touching and manipulating the world around us.
Sometimes we need to protect our hands from things that are too hot or too cold, too rough, too sharp or too infectious. We do this by covering our hands.
That protective thing we wear on a hand is called a glove. Since our hands come in pairs so do our gloves (except for baseball gloves).
Disposable gloves have become very common. Workers at the deli counter put on gloves before they touch my food. Then they throw them away unless they forget. I can't decide if the glove is to protect them or me.
Humans also have feet. Our feet are no less complex than our hands but they serve completely different purposes. We use feet to walk and run, to kick soccer balls, to play the pedals on a pipe organ.
Every day I use my own feet to walk at least 10,000 steps; that's a little over 3 miles. In one year I walk about 1000 miles.
All that walking can get a little boring. To give me something to think about while I walk I carry a camera. I take pictures of the strangest stuff.
Among my favorite photo subjects are abandoned gloves. I usually don't bother to take pictures of shoes or socks or any other articles of clothing I encounter. I find gloves far more interesting; they twist themselves into the most interesting shapes.
And that's the story behind this blog post, David's Best of 2014, These are my best "lost glove" pictures for the entire year. I wonder what lost gloves 2015 will bring.
Be honest. Have you been ignoring the pictures as you scrolled through this blog post? Hands up if you've only been reading the words. Now you can go back and click on any picture for an enlargement.
The short history of previous Mixed Meters posts about Gloves:
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blue Glove
Gloves in the Wild
