A Big Your Turn: More "People That Mattered"

Because it’s not easy keeping up the pace I do, I have come to rely on a truly incredible community of readers to send me material, lend breadth and insight to the images I offer, and essentially take over the analysis on various “Your Turn” posts as I’ve caught some down time here and there.

As I am heading out of town early tomorrow for a four day rest, I thought I would float a “Your Turn” opportunity on a larger scale.  As previously mentioned, I’ve been interested in the ritual of commemorating top political players at year end.  In my absence, I am leaving you three posts, each with images derived from TIME’s 2005 “People Who Mattered” series.  For those of you who like more data rather than less, I am also providing links to the TIME pages so you can absorb the captions.  Otherwise, I leave you these images for interpretation in the best BAG tradition.

Before I attend to the suitcase, however, I wanted to thank all of you so much for the support and encouragement you have provided over the past year.  It has been something of a leap of faith dedicating this blog to a discipline that has little precedent and is still forging its methodological way.  For those of you who have been here day in and day out, looking and looking again, I think we’ve learned quite a bit, become better at this thing we’re doing, gotten to recognize some interesting voices — and, overall, had a great time.

Best wishes for the holidays.  I’ll be back Tuesday or Wednesday.

Image 1:  Popes Then (link) And Now (link)

Image 2:  Jobs (link) Vs. The Google Guys (link)

Image 3:  Reid and McCain Brave The Wilds — link