A long time ago we decided we should try Florida for a couple of weeks in the winter. Other people seemed to like it. The place we are staying has drop-dead beaches, beautiful shells, a plethora of wildlife and an ocean that varies its shade of blue hour by hour.

While all of you have struggled with snow, ice, transportation woes, loss of work, inconvenience, discomfort and wasted time as you’ve tried to get kids to school or family members to jobs, I’ve been walking the beach, collecting shells, training my binocs on a snowy egret and listening to the raucous call of the ospreys that live atop the telephone poles.

I prefer Florida to the Caribbean, which never has shells or wildlife as good. And it’s quicker and easier for a Bostonian to get to.

There’s the rub. I’m a Bostonian. I feel as if I’ve deserted my city in its time of need. I would be out there shoveling not only my walk but also the corner, where it can be tricky to get out to the street.

Even though we’re not there, we’ve followed the situation closely. It’s easy. So many Bostonians come to this part of Florida that the Boston Globe lies beside the New York Times, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal at the nearby news stand. Boston’s drama is also being closely followed by all the national news outlets.

So we know about the city’s poor snow-clearing abilities, the too-late call-out of the National Guard and the implied criticism of the MBTA’s Beverly Scott, who has been the most entertaining public official. The rest have looked just hapless.

I felt sorry for Beverly Scott. It was disappointing to see Baker skirt around scapegoating her. That was Mitt Romney’s pitiful management style—to find someone to blame if anything went wrong and to try to make himself look blameless. I had more confidence in Baker’s management skills, and to his credit, he backed off from blaming Scott.

If I were Scott, I would have resigned too. She looked ahead and saw no way to make the system work. Baker has proposed slashing her budget—he says it won’t affect T operations. Baloney.

She saw her workers out in the ice trying to fix outmoded third rails, switches, and forty-year old trains, impossible tasks on any day. Direct current? I hadn’t realized we were running on 19^th-century technology. In the “Innovation State.” Shame.

Many individuals are to blame for the T’s poor performance, and none of them is Scott. First is House Speaker Robert DeLeo. It was only last year DeLeo, etc. shot down Deval Patrick’s aggressive transportation funding proposal. Second are the other legislators and former governors who haven’t had the gumption to fix the T’s awful funding problems and invest in a system the region can’t do without. Half the MBTA’s board should fall on their swords and leave. Outmoded secrecy and a few unsavory financial practices don’t make it in the 21^st-century. Old-style union leaders are another culprit.

As for those officials from the rest of the state who think all the money’s going to Boston? You won’t have state-funded resources in Pittsfield if Metro-Boston isn’t successful.

Interestingly, this is the time certain city leaders are trying to persuade the Olympics committee that Boston is up to the task of hosting the summer games. An outsider might see the T’s collapse over the past few weeks as a sign that, despite its winning sports teams, vaunted universities, world-famous hospitals, highest tech, yada, yada, Boston is really a third-world city that can’t handle a bit of weather. Certainly not “world class.”

On the other hand, the T’s collapse could be the disaster we’ve needed to finally find the political will—and money—to tackle its modernization. The Olympics give us the time line.

A city cannot be successful without up-to-date, fast, reliable public transportation. Without it, a city’s economy weakens, its environment is degraded, its tourism declines, and its citizens waste more time in traffic, affecting their well-being.

An MBTA spokesman once gave me the excuse, “It’s the oldest system in America.” That only means we’ve had longer to keep our system up to date. London’s Underground is almost 50 years older than Boston’s, and it is in far better condition with at least ten times the service and convenience as Boston’s.

By the way, you think Boston has problems? Be glad you don’t live in Florida. Get away from the beaches and the wildlife and you’re in unpleasant-ville. The roads seem worse than in Massachusetts, and this place doesn’t even have freeze and thaw cycles. Traffic is bad, probably because there is little public transportation. There are pretty neighborhoods and wild swamps with their own kind of beauty, but the place is about 80 percent strip malls and parking lots.

I’m wishing I were back home, coping with the snow along with everyone else.

Most readers probably think 2014 has been a year of bad news and more bad news. I won’t bore you with the details. You know what they are.

But there have been a few bright spots for Bostonians that should help 2015 be more satisfying.

Cleaner streets are the best news. This has been a long time coming. In the early 2000s, city officials finally decided to tow cars blocking the street cleaner. Downtown neighborhood leaders had been pestering them to do this for a long time, but transportation department officials were afraid of the backlash. And there was a backlash. Inattentive drivers set up a hue and cry about their cars going missing. And then things settled down.

Next, city officials finally extended the street cleaning dates through December in some neighborhoods. So we now have those big cleaners grinding down our streets nine months of the year, as long as snow doesn’t impede their progress.

Finally last summer, in some downtown neighborhoods, one recycling day was added and one trash pickup day eliminated. So now instead of trash bags sitting on the sidewalk and spilling out their contents for up to 19 hours three times a week, legally they can now sit out only twice a week—still for up to 19 hours each day, but who’s counting.

Getting trash off the sidewalks on only that one day has made a difference. The rats and the bag pickers have one less opportunity to strew around the stuff inside the bags. Perhaps it is only my imagination, but it also seems that the doggy doo has been reduced too. Maybe doggy doo is subject to the broken windows theory of crime fighting—less trash on the street has made those dog owners with low IQs more aware of how their dog’s mess dirties the sidewalk.

Another interesting development that could make our lives better if Boston’s Olympics bid is successful is the focus on walkability and public transportation. The Olympics bid is a first—usually plans for big events or large real estate developments focus on cars, even when the organizers are taking walkability into account. If Boston is chosen as the 2024 Summer Olympics location, I hope such a focus will improve walkability and public transportation in the long term. No promises yet, but nevertheless promising.

Finally, Market Basket’s situation has resolved in a way that provides welcome lessons for other businesses. I have yet to enter a Market Basket store, since the long fight between the Demoulas brothers’ families put me off. Maybe now, however, I’ll give them a try.

Not only did the workers prevail, but the head of the company, who is now carrying a big debt burden from buying out the other part of the family, apparently gave his workers a holiday bonus. It must have been a stretch for him.

I’m still not sure I’d like to be friends with any of the members of this belligerent crew, but on the surface at least, this is a company that has decided that doing good will help them do well. It’s such a relief from companies that reduce services to customers, shrink package sizes gradually so customers won’t notice, and replace local service companies with national companies requiring long-time employees to take pay cuts. Such steps may be legal. They may be “good” business. But they are immoral—and they may not even be good business. Market Basket has shown there is another way to profitability and good management.

I’m still wondering, however, how much Market Basket had to pay those supposedly brilliant “co-CEOs,” who, over the summer, allowed things to get so screwed up.

Finally, on both the city and state fronts, affordable housing seems to have entered the realm of a crisis, and funding seems to be appearing. Will someone actually make that happen? If so, that will be good news for next year.

Charlie Baker won the gubernatorial race in November fair and square. I do not necessarily believe he won because he was a different candidate than he was four years ago. I do not necessarily believe he won because Martha Coakley was a weak candidate. Maybe she was, but maybe she wasn’t. Conventional wisdom is often not wisdom, just conventional.

If some of my Democratic friends were any indication of a broader trend, it was that many Massachusetts voters saw him as less of an ideologue and more of a fixer.

I thought that about Mitt Romney too, but was sorely disappointed when his fix-it skills turned out to be highly over-rated. Worse, his character turned to mush and he repudiated everything he had stood for when he asked Massachusetts voters to support him first for senator, which we didn’t do, and then for governor, which we did.

So I was having trouble with Charlie. Would he become another Mitt?

So far, so good. Charlie seems focused on practical matters. He seems to be comfortable and genuinely enjoying himself as he visits the sick and homeless and puts his administration in place. You don’t hear any hate messages from him toward either immigrants, women or the 47 percent.

The friend who most strongly supported him worked in the social services sector, which sometimes suffers under Republican leadership.

But she emailed me about her experiences with Charlie when he worked in the cabinets of governors Weld and Cellucci.

“He made things better for those most in need of a supportive government,” she wrote. “Social services benefited from Charlie’s work within an administration where there was little help and guidance from the top. All of a sudden kids were getting adopted, kids were unstuck, moving through the system as appropriate. State hospitals closed and good, appropriate small programs were created.

“A new system of medical insurance was created, a model for the nation…not perfect, but passable. Our work had to be evidence-based and data-driven. It was harder, but thrilling.

“Charlie was tireless. He met with every group who had anything even marginally reasonable to say. He argued, he questioned, he vetted. He changed and improved state services based his observations and loads of input. Who is behind Charlie most passionately? Those who were closest to his work.”

What my friend describes is competency. It is engagement. It is a belief that government can be smart and solve thorny problems. It is a throwback to those Republican members of my family in my youth—people who did not reject government. In fact they took pride in it. They just wanted it to be good government.

My friend admitted that sometimes the Republican nutcase wing got to Charlie—most frequently in his first gubernatorial campaign when he said he wasn’t smart enough to judge whether global warming was a fact.

“Why does he say these stupid things at times?” she wrote. “I can’t answer that question.”

Now that he no longer has to pander, however, he has not been quoted saying one stupid thing.

He behaved with dignity and respect, cautioning his supporters to stop gloating, late on election night and early the next morning, when the results were going his way, but still not obvious. That was a contrast to Martha Coakley’s unexplained and awkward absence from the podium at her election night party, when she apparently went home, leaving her supporters looking—well, stranded.

I am fervently hoping that Charlie runs state government as my friend describes his work. I am also hoping that his competent and inclusive style, not that of the bullying Chris Christie, the IQ-challenged Rick Perry, or the women and immigrant haters, becomes the hallmark of a new Republican party.

If so, some of us who left the fold many years ago, would take another look at the party that deserted us. Meanwhile, we will wish him well as he undertakes a difficult job.

When our children were young, they asked what their father, a lawyer, did at work. I told them, “He gives advice to people.”

But that was hardly an adequate explanation. They eventually learned what lawyers do through family discussions, visits to his office, and their expanding notions of the world as they grew older. I tried to find books on the subject, but there were few written for children about adults’ jobs, professions or careers.

There still are few books written about such matters. I began thinking about how needed they are when our grandchildren started contemplating what they might be when they grew up. It was easy for a boy who wanted to play for Arsenal to know what soccer players did. The girl who wanted to be a children’s book illustrator also understood what that job entailed. But other professions, not part of a child’s world, are mysterious.

So I found some books, not many, on the Internet that address careers and could be good holiday presents for children. Two, by Jacqueline J. Buyze, a lawyer herself, explain what lawyers and judges do. A Story of Lawyers, written in verse with legal terms highlighted and defined in a glossary at the back, tells how lawyers are trained and how different kinds of lawyers practice their profession. Her books, while not perfect, are among the few that children might find interesting.

With only two, sometimes four lines per page, the book might seem as if it designed for a young child. But many of the explanations are abstract and seem more appropriate for a ten-year-old. Some explanations might not answer a question a child might have. For example: What exactly does a corporate lawyer do that helps companies buy, sell and merge? The author provides no answer.

The author’s description of estate lawyers seems to apply more to financial planners than the kind who create wills and help clients plan for passing on assets—a term she explains.

The need to rhyme sometimes forces the author into sentences of little relevance as in the description of civil lawyers: “They work hard for the clients and frequently worry.”

The illustrations are strong in both depicting scenes of a law practice and lending character to the people portrayed. Some of the faces are priceless—the hapless criminal sitting behind bars, the court officer trying to stay awake, and the jury, a motley collection of humanity. Buyze’s other book, A Story of Lawyers with Views from the Bench, is a description of the courts. Adults who are vague about civil procedure would probably find this book helpful.         Architecture is another profession that may need some explanation for children, who intuitively grasp that buildings are built by carpenters, electricians, plumbers and ironworkers, but may be fuzzy on the architect’s role. The Future Architect’s Handbook by Barbara Beck, tries to clear up some of the behind-the-scenes work that architects provide. Beck takes us on a tour of a house with its site plan, floor plan, elevation and other architectural drawings. The problem with this book is the typeface. The designer chose a san serif font and packed the text into confined spaces. It is hard to read. Despite this flaw, the book is a good introduction to the profession for children.

Architecture and law are old, traditional professions. What about the new ones? Computer programming is now about 50 years old, but operating a computer provides few clues about the job of a computer programmer.

Few books give straightforward clues as to what a computer programmer does. But one does address programming and the mathematics behind it in an intriguing way.

Lauren Ipsum: A Story about Computer Science and Other Improbable Things by Carlos Bueno, a engineer at Facebook, chronicles the adventures of Laurie, in her Alice-in-Wonderland-like quest for home as she wanders through Userland, as quirky a place as Wonderland was.

In Laurie’s story the word play and fantastical creatures have to do with math, engineering, thinking straight or computer programming. Graphic designers will recognize the title’s play on words that describe the Latinate, gibberish filler text they insert before they get the real text.

Other terms — Hamiltonian path, recursion, different meanings of infinity — all come after creatures called “Jargons” chase the lost Lauren. She meets such characters as Fresnel Goodglass, Trent Escrow, Kevin Kelvin, Hugh Rustic, and Winsome Losesome, names referencing scientists, situations or silliness. Laurie gradually becomes expert at figuring out passwords, solving puzzles, and untangling mathematical knots.

Kids of a philosophical or mathematical bent will probably like this book. I found it interesting for adults too —especially those who know little about computer programming and math. If you’re a novice, I recommend that you read the book while checking Wikipedia for every ninth word. Or check the glossary at the back of the book.