The online popup ad for a sweatshirt reads: “Wine (noun). The glue holding this 2020 sh**show together.”

It seems a safe bet that no one wants ever to see another year like this. Maybe not even Jeff Bezos, whose Amazon corporation has piled up tons of profits as people shun stores so they don’t pay with their lives for buying a new slipcover.

Still, a few good things have happened this year, and a couple of days after our annual ritual of gratitude and self-engorgement, it may help to pause, think about that for which we are grateful and to offer thanks.

Amid the general gloom that 60% of us feel over national politics, our democracy has held. So far. Some of that is because newspapers continue to report facts. If only the internet “platforms” were forced, through libel laws, to back up what they publish as are newspapers, radio and over-the-air TV. So, for the Sun Journal, the Bangor Daily News, the New York Times, the Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, NPR, I give thanks.

David Brooks, a conservative columnist for The New York Times, has written that our politics and culture are nobler at the local level than inside the D.C. beltway. We see evidence of that as the president has dragged us through his hissy fit of denying the truth of the election. Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state and a Republican, oversaw a laborious hand recount of nearly 5 million votes. And, Aaron Van Langevelde, a Republican member of the Michigan Board of Canvassers, voted to certify the election outcome despite pressure from the president’s team. For state and local officials who do their jobs honestly and make our democracy work day-in-day-out, I give thanks.

You see a few yard signs around here reading “My Governor is an Idiot” or “Impeach Mills.” Gov. Janet Mills is a local, as she notes, the first governor from Franklin County. The COVID-19 row has been tough for her to hoe, but Maine has the country’s second-lowest infection rate and, despite recent spikes in cases and deaths, has moved up to second-lowest death rate. Difficult as these past eight months have been for all of us, Mills is doing a lot right. Note: She is the first Democrat for whom I voted for governor. For Gov. Mills’s actions to keep us safe, I give thanks.

And Dr. Nirav Shah, head of Maine’s Center for Disease Control, has carefully and calmly explained to us in countless hours of briefings just what scientists are learning as the virus assaults the world. For his steady hand and patience with those of us who don’t do science every day, I give thanks.

There may be as many responses by businesses to the COVID restrictions as there are businesses. Some people, myself included, are making shopping decisions at least partly on the basis of the safety measures we see in stores. My fellow old fahts and I shop early in the day at Hannaford in Farmington. Management has set aside an hour primarily for elderly and vulnerable people. On this week’s shopping trip, I saw only one person not wearing a mask, a young woman breezing through the store as if nothing were out of the ordinary. I noticed a couple of other masked people who turned their backs on her as she walked by, as I did. She seemed unfazed. For the overwhelming use of masks by employees and customers and for Hannaford setting aside those hours, I give thanks.

Nobody doesn’t like Dolly Parton. It came out recently that the buxom — can you say understatement? — songwriter and singer has been in the quest for a vaccine against COVID. She donated $1 million to the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine for vaccine research. Writing a check for a million bucks shows once again that Dolly Parton is a national treasure, which may come to more than being a hero. Disclosures. I love my Dolly Parton albums, and I am proud to have attended grad school — I didn’t finish — at Vandy. For Dolly Parton and Vanderbilt University researchers, I give thanks.

While we’re in Nashville, Maine Public television has been rerunning Ken Burns’s “Country Music” film, this time one episode a week on Sunday at 3 p.m. The final episode is tomorrow. I watched every minute of it first time around, two-plus hours a night for eight nights in a stretch of 11. Great stuff, and I’m not even a huge Ken Burns fan. The country music episodes are even better spaced out a week at a time. Catch the finale tomorrow, if you can. And rest assured, this being PBS, the series will air yet again. For the work Ken Burns did to tell the story of America’s Music (good and bad) and of all the types of people who have created and sustained it, I give thanks.

Though we didn’t get down to the Stone Mountain Arts Center in Brownfield this year for any concerts — since March, the shows have been canceled because of COVID-19 — we did get down there a couple of times to eat. In a flash of Yankee ingenuity, owner Carol Noonan began offering dinner-only nights and a few socially distanced shows. The food is outstanding, and it lasts for a couple of days, some in your belly and some in the big doggie box you take home. (Because of my age and cardiac history, we don’t risk going to the shows.) For Carol Noonan, her stage and her kitchen, I give thanks.

You’ve probably never heard of Nora McInerny. I hadn’t either until I heard her talk on the radio about grief. It was less than a year after my wife had died, so the subject was at the top, bottom, front and rear of my brain. And heart. McInerny had lost her young husband to brain cancer. She gave me and my girlfriend, whose husband died 26 days after my wife died, a perspective to help guide us through grief. McInerny said she tired of people asking her if she was “ready to move on from” from her late husband, Aaron. You don’t “move on from,” she said. You “move forward with” your lost loved one. That bit of wisdom has meant a great deal to each of us. For Nora McInerny and her insight, I give thanks.

Bob Neal has hunkered down at home in New Sharon since COVID-19 hit. He’s hoping we can soon start counting the days until vaccines are widely available.

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