MEDIUM RARE If you believe your wise old grannies and elderly aunts, the saying is that any year that ends in 9 is bound to be associated with events sad or bad. Last year, crowned by an annular solar eclipse, was not one to end on a note of collectively gladsome memories. On a mountain of natural disasters wrought mostly by climate change, the summit of disaster headlines read earthquakes here there and everywhere. Two wrathful typhoons followed within weeks of each other (one named after a guy, the other a girl). All that water falling from the sky, yet drought and water shortages joined a flood of crises that did not spare private business and the state agency whose reputation for competence, public trust and confidence has not improved one drop since the bad old days of its predecessor, Nawasa. Decades ago, Nawasa’s name -- and nothing else -- was changed, only because it provoked jokes of its brokenness, Nawasak. We were not alone in bearing the brunt of extreme climates. A deadly volcanic eruption in New Zealand, wildfires raging in Australia, haze fogging up countries in Southeast Asia. The environmentally conscious could only ask, “What’s the world coming to?” Right on cue, an old documentary replayed on cable TV asked, “How will the end begin?” The docu centered on what Christians have come to know as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: famine, pestilence, war, death. It’s an old recurring theme, which doesn’t make fearsome epidemics, violence, terrorism any less fearsome. The world ended in 2019 for so many friends and acquaintances when they passed on to a new state of existence. A year of widows and orphans it was, the more tragically as the dear departed included those in their 40s and 50s. Among the elderly were the rich and famous with a legacy to leave behind. A business editor lamented the near wipe-out, one by one, of their weekly eating club. (The editor quickly recovered, “Everyone dies!”) At another newspaper office, as 2019 wound down to a close, they lost four journalists all within the last quarter. Life is short no matter how long you live. To quote Rabindranath Tagore, “A butterfly lives not months but moments, yet has time enough.”