The year that presently has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel began with the bookend reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton – the reigning world co-champions of professional hustling – finding something new to be offended about in Harvard University’s diversity policy. It was a reassuring signal that, although time does indeed march relentlessly onward, when it comes to the aberrant behavior of the species things don’t really change all that much from one year to the next.

A few days later a would-be Florida bank robber, rejected by a teller in one bank who couldn’t read his written demand for money nor understand his verbal broken-English translation of it, threw up his hands, said the hell with it, and went off to stick up a less picky financial institution across the street.

The judge’s charge to the jury hearing the case against a Massachusetts hockey dad accused of beating to death a hockey coach seemed to last longer than the trial itself, suggesting that the judge learned well the law school lesson that when it comes to explaining the law one must never use three words when a couple dozen will do the job. A Columbia University professor conducting a study of how businesses react to customer complaints figured a swell way to get restaurant reaction would be to mail out letters phonily complaining of food poisoning. He was right. Six restaurants immediately slapped a $100,000 million lawsuit on the university.

Meanwhile, plans for a World Trade Center memorial based on a famous photograph of three white New York City firefighters raising a U.S. flag amidst the rubble were dropped after public criticism of diversity promoters’ efforts to make the statue politically correct by changing the firefighters’ ethnicities to white, black and Hispanic.

The A&E cable television outfit aired a documentary on the murder of Dr. John Malmstrom of Bangor. In his best funereal voice, the narrator assured us that Bangor is, as long suspected, “the last outpost of civilization at the edge of Maine’s wild north woods” and anyone numb enough to venture farther north is not covered by their manufacturer’s warranty, no exceptions allowed. A convicted sex offender who violated this cardinal rule spent several nights in the Mattawamkeag woods after fleeing from a Penobscot County sheriff’s detective. Frostbitten and exhausted when he was nabbed, the formerly fleeing felon never lost an ounce of gall in the misadventure, threatening to sue the detective for taking his sweet old time in making the arrest.

The University of Maine Black Bear hockey team dedicated its season to its late head coach, Shawn Walsh, and came up 52.4 seconds short of winning its third national championship in a game played in Minnesota. That produced little joy amongst the natives, but six months later a tradeoff made things right here in Red Sox Nation: Despite spending more money on players than it costs to fund the space program, George Steinbrenner was unable to buy yet another World Series title for his insufferable New York Yankees. God has a sense of humor, after all.

A mid-year poll showed that John Baldacci would be Maine’s next governor, and that his competition would do well to save its money to invest in Enron stock. The usual suspects called the poll bogus and Baldacci presumptuous. Nowadays they mostly call him governor. And just in the nick of time, too, for the lame duck congressman has recently taken to calling himself a “congressperson.”

The U.S. Supreme Court came down on the side of a Texas death row inmate who said he had not had a fair chance to defend himself because his lawyer had slept through much of his trial. The sleeping wasn’t so bad, the court seemed to imply, but the snoring was a bit much. Elsewhere, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decreed that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is unconstitutional because it contains the words “under God.” Politically correct counterfeiters immediately began gearing up to crank out C-notes minus the phrase “In God We Trust.”

As the days dwindled down to a precious few, Gov. Angus King said that any governor who locks up 3 million acres of his state and turns the key over to Washington – as advocates of a northwoods national park would do – is flat-out nuts.

Since Harvard expressed basically the same opinion about Jackson and Sharpton nearly 12 months ago, we’ve come full cycle just in time to kick off a new year. May yours be as bountiful as the human foibles that amuse.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.