Grab some fabric and let's felt our feelings about 2023

If 2023 taught us anything — the jury's still out on that one — it taught us how hard it is to cram all the wonder of Minnesota onto one scrap of fabric.

Although the laser loons came close.

This will be the last full year the old state flag flies, unnoticed and unloved, over our heads. "Meh" at a distance, "yikes" up close. On statehood day 2024, Minnesota should be flying something newer and bluer.

So let's gather one more time to look over the new flag and look back on the year that was.

I like the new flag. They crammed plenty of wonder in there — a north star, some blue and a silhouette of Minnesota that might just, if you squint, also be a loon.

I pay it the highest Minnesota compliment: Not too bad.

Maybe you don't love the flag. Maybe you loved a flag that didn't make it to the end of the year. The North Star. The Starflake. That flag that was just a photo of somebody's dog. The many, many flags of loons with laser beams shooting out of their beady red eyes.

Step 1: Take an index card and place it over a piece of fabric. This will give you the proper flag dimensions and the proper appreciation of just how little detail people can spot once they're looking at your design from the base of a flagpole.

Step 2: Review the final draft of the final flag and assemble your own version.

Step 3: Tweak flag with your own personal take on what makes Minnesota, Minnesota.

Hot dish?

Minnesotans' complete inability to zipper merge, because if you wanted to be in this lane, you should have gone to kindergarten there?

Step 5: Maybe it would be easier to scrap flags in favor of a felt salute to the top news stories of 2023? No. Most of the news would break your heart if you tried.

Minnesota decided to feed all the hungry schoolchildren. That was nice. We came up with some excellent new snowplow names. Minneapolis got renamed Swiftieapolis for a day, but it didn't stick. The pickle popsicles at the State Fair were surprisingly tasty. Most of the candidates who wanted to ban school books lost their school board elections this year. Donald Trump thinks pledging to be a dictator is a winning campaign slogan and so far he's not wrong. Our backyards are cougar habitats now, but our highways, sadly, are not.

Step 6: Enlist my mom to help re-sew the flags on deadline. Bounce a few end-of-year column ideas off her: "Maybe the real 2023 was the laser loons we met along the way."

Zip your new flag together, watching as a divided fabric is made whole. There have always been more things that bring Minnesotans together than pull us apart.