Books are fun. Music is fun. People are fun (lots). Pictures are fun. Lists are fun. This past year was fun, for the most part.

Here are a few things that gave me hope in 2015.

“Whitman has the photographer’s eye, but no camera,” says Wright Morris in his essay “In Our Image.” The (vastly vastly underappreciated, in my humble opinion) singer-songwriter Victoria Williams has the photographer’s eye, too, and in spades, but even better I think she has the photographer’s heart.