Some New Years feel like birthdays, while others feel like wakes.  New Years 2010 in Tacoma is starting to feel a lot like a wake.  And that, of course, is as it should be.

The optimism that gripped us a few years ago is almost embarrassing to think about now as jobs disappear, buildings stand empty and four Lakewood police officers lie dead.  After a staggering series of economic and spiritual crises, the mood here, as just about everywhere, is sober - the opposite of what we normally associate with New Years.  

First Night Tacoma 2010 will be spectacular, as the annual downtown event always is, but the spectacle will be "quiet and serene," says First Night Director Patrice O'Neill.  On the Chinese calendar, 2010 is the year of the metal tiger, a theme O'Neill and volunteers have looked to for inspiration.  The metal tiger brings courage, fiery passion and steel resolve, according to ancient lore, and First Night 2010 will do its best to follow suit.  The pageant will include a 15-foot-long illuminated tiger puppet, burning trees and a 12-foot-tall fire-powered steel clock.

But for all the flash, there won't be much thunder.  Voices singing and cheering will provide the soundtrack to 2009's final moments, not explosions.  

"We just kind of want to say a thoughtful goodbye to a hard year," says O'Neill.  
Goodbye, and don't let the door hit you in the ass.

This First Night, as every year at the family-friendly non-alcoholic event, there will be a mind-boggling array of events and activities to entertain and inspire.  It's impossible to list even a quarter of them, but some highlights include a hip-hop show produced by local Grammy nomination finalist Q Dot, the Seattle Seahawks Blue Thunder Drumline, round eight of the music-art-poetry Tacoma Round series, a short films festival at the Grand Cinema, an after-midnight dance party with house music maestros Oscillator X at Speakeasy Arts Cooperative - and of course the parade.  

There will also be a "sub-scene" of interactive events, as O'Neill likes to say.  First Night guests will have the opportunity to help operate the tiger and other big street puppets. They'll also be invited to join a "movement choir" that will be coordinated by the dance group Barefoot Collective.

"It'll be sort of like that Oprah video that went viral for awhile," says O'Neill, referring to footage of the massive choreographed dance the Black Eyed Peas led at The Oprah Show's season-24 kickoff party. (No matter how tired you are of seeing Oprah's mug on the cover of her own magazine in the checkout line month after month, the video is actually pretty cool.)

Perhaps best of all, folks will have the chance to write down their hopes, prayers and resolutions and post them on "dream trees" which will burst into cathartic flames when the fire clock strikes midnight.

The fire clock, built by local artist Skip Jensen, figures to be the main visual attraction of the late-night festivities.  

Jensen, who is best known as a screen printer and the owner of Tacoma's Post Industrial Press, engineered and built the complicated clock largely as a personal challenge.

"It was one of those ‘I wonder if I could do this' kind of things," says Jensen.  "And everyone was like, ‘Yeah, you have to do that.'"

What started as a brainstorming session with O'Neill became Jensen's obsession when the fire-powered clock idea caught his imagination.  

"He's turned it into like this science project on steroids," says O'Neill.

The concept interested Jensen philosophically as well as artistically.  "When I started working on it, it really got me thinking about how we keep time, how we think of time," he says.  "If we had to stoke fires [to operate a clock] and get up all night to do it, would we even have time?"

Building the clock required skills and talents he doesn't use every day, or for that matter every decade.

"A lot of this stuff I haven't done since metal shop in junior high school." he says.

The clock, as Jensen describes it, is "essentially a 12-foot tall pellet stove."  It doesn't look much like a pellet stove, however.  The central mechanism is a balance with ballast on one side and a bucket of burning stove pellets on the other.  As the pellets burn and lose mass, that side of the balance rises; at the top of its swing, it is refilled with fuel, restarting the cycle.  

The balance drives a system of wires, solenoids and other gizmos that Jensen claims keeps pretty good time.

"My goal is to start it at six and have it reach midnight at the same time as objective midnight," he says.

Whether the fire clock strikes twelve at "objective" midnight or on a slightly more subjective schedule, it will start the pyrotechnics, the kissing and a new year and era in Tacoma.  

[Tacoma Theater District, First Night, Thursday, Dec. 31, celebration starts at 6 p.m., $10 adults, $5 children ages 7-17, free 6 and younger, families (two adults and up to six kids) $30, greater Ninth and Broadway area, downtown Tacoma, firstnighttacoma.org]