That was last year. Today it’s 2024! I’ve just been looking through a big sheaf of Martha Sez columns from years past. Judging from these columns, much has changed and much has stayed the same.

In 2003,The town of Keene modernized by adopting standardized addresses: “Yes, Keene and Keene Valley residents finally have street numbers, thanks to the recent 911 requirements. (That’s nine-one-one, not nine-eleven.) All roads, great and small, must be named, and all buildings must be numbered. They are designed to help emergency medical technicians, firefighters and police, but they are a boon to people who drive delivery vehicles as well.

“Or would be, if residents would display their house numbers.

“Until this year, when the town clerk sent us all our house numbers, it was rough dealing with mail order. The person in the catalog department would explain, over and over, ‘UPS requires a street address.’ “‘But we don’t have house numbers here.’ “Silence, presumably stunned. Or maybe a standing-my-ground kind of silence; hard to call.

“‘This is a very small town, you see.’ “‘Yes, ma’am. UPS requires a street address.’ “People would make up addresses for the sake of convenience. Mine was number two Main Street. I thought that had a good ring to it. Number one sounded just a little presumptuous.

“If we didn’t have Randy, the UPS guy, our town would be in big trouble. Randy pays no attention to fake addresses. He knows where you live. And where you work. He could go into detective work when he retires. Except we can’t let him retire. Unless we give in and put up our house numbers … I like Number two Main Street better than my new address, and may just continue to use it, at least until Randy retires.”

Here’s an excerpt from a year later: “2004! How time flies! With so much going on every day, we forget the events that boggled us not so long ago.

“Remember when the millennium freaks predicted that, as the New Year rang in for 2000, everything would blow up?

“It had something to do with how computers weren’t calibrated to accept a year beginning with the number 2 … computers around the world … were expected to go berserk and start launching nuclear weapons. Jumbo jets would rain from the heavens like ripe plums, or cluster flies. Chaos would ensue. Anarchy would reign.

“Remember how we ran around in a snit like Cinderella at the ball, knowing her coach was about to turn into a pumpkin? We were buying generators and stockpiling water, food and medical supplies.

“At least some of us were. … I just couldn’t get into it somehow. It all seemed so sci-fi, and besides, there was Christmas to prepare for. Who had time to get all worked up about survival when we had presents to buy, stockings to knit, pfeffernusse in the oven and a 20-pound turkey to defrost? Very few women bought into the millennium hysteria, I’ll bet you.”

In 2004-2005 I wrote about Rover spacecraft Sojourner and Spirit on Mars, and how people were already talking about colonizing the red planet: “I say we should look to Earth before taking on a whole new planet…even though Mars does look a little like Afghanistan from the rovers’ photographs, that doesn’t mean it’s ready or willing to adopt our way of life.”

In 2006, I reminisced about my early days at the Lake Placid News.

“When I wrote my first school budget article for the News, my editor, Andy Flynn, patiently requested me to rewrite it approximately 100 times, according to certain formulae which he knew, and — I sincerely believe this — actually understood. … Later, after Andy went on to pursue other work, journalist Lee Manchester and Keene Central School treasurer Brenda LeClair were a great help to me as I tried to fake my way through several pages of notes I had scribbled during a school budget workshop.”

In 2001, Flynn took a 12-year break from Adirondack Publishing, returning to the News in 2013. In November, 2023, Ogden Newspapers named Andy Flynn editor and publisher of Adirondack Publishing’s Adirondack Daily Enterprise and Lake Placid News. Congratulations, Andy!

Happy New Year!

(Martha Allen, of Keene Valley, has been writing for the Lake Placid News for more than 20 years.)