epiphany

Do birthdays lead to epiphanies? Well they do if you're born on January 1 and you're  talking Epiphany, which is today. But if you mean a lower-case epihany
Definition a (1) :  a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something (2) :  an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking (3) :  an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure
maybe yes, maybe no. You'll have to ask Hannah if she had one.
Or most of my other friends, who have birthdays in Capricorn
In other news:
My friend Bill (a college boyfriend long married to my best college girlfriend, Laura) retired from the bench in Seattle, with perhaps his best known case being the one in which he ruled that gay couples should be allowed to marry for their children's sake.
Speaking of gays, a woman I met when I rented a house on the lesbian commune Hawk Hill in Missouri is interviewed in Vice about the aging out of "women's land."
In media news, word is that my former company, Time Inc., is encouraging employees to rat on one another if they misuse expense accounts. Back in the day we were encouraged to misuse expense accounts!
And finally, if you want a snapshot of how the nation was doing in this past year, you couldn't do better than consult this pantechnicon (or do I mean portmanteau?) of charts and graphs from the New York Times. Whether it will lead to an epiphany, I don't know.


Oh, and this from a friend in case you do have an epiphany:
Want all your representatives' phone numbers conveniently on your phone? If you TEXT YOUR ZIP CODE to (520) 200-2223 you'll get a text back with your senators/reps phone numbers so you can hassle them to do the right thing. It works and takes maybe two seconds. Save them in your contacts ... you'll need them a lot in coming months!