Happy New Year!

Good grief! It is the 31st already! A really, really bad year has come to an end.

I probably shouldn't say that. It hasn't been so bad for us actually. We are still happily married, both still employed... we have our health, as they say. We even still own our house. It's been a year for travel for us, and a year of taking some steps toward solving some problems. We squirreled retirement money away to the right place, fixed some things in the house that were annoying and hazardous, took action on various personal fronts. Yes, all around not as bad a year as it could have been.

And goodness knows at our age we shouldn't be wishing days away!

But Somali pirates, North Korean bluster, incredibly annoying celebrity 'news' (Jon and Kate, Octomom and Balloon Hoax Boy coupled with Tiger Woods, White House State Dinner party-crashers, Rod Blagojevich and that idiot governor who was 'hiking the Appalachian Trail') and the whole mess that TARP and bailouts and (coming incredibly fast on the heels of those monumental government disasters) the takeover of the health insurance industry are bringing down on our heads... Well, it just makes you want to go back to bed.

Honestly? Where is my motivation any more? The whole 'who's doing well vs. who isn't' is backwards.

(Ayn Rand once said that the greatest evil in the world - the worst 'story' of them all - was Robin Hood. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor takes from all of us not just our motivation, but our integrity, our drive, our ingenuity, our caring, our self respect and respect for others... our very 'human'-ness. Think of it, Nancy Pelosi, who, interestingly is one of the very rich who is not likely to have anything taken away from her.)

Yes, 2009 was a pretty sad year. I'm not sure I can muster a lot of enthusiasm for 2010.

I have a few suggestions though:

• Let's make sure we call it 'twenty ten' not 'two thousand ten' - I don't know if anyone else cares about that but I'm finding various media references to 'two thousand ten' to be incredibly out of step with our history. We all know that the Normans invaded the Saxons in 'ten sixty six' not 'one thousand sixty six' and that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 'fourteen ninety two' and George Orwell wrote about 'nineteen eighty four.' Why let the first 9 years of this century throw that all out of the window? Try to pay attention people! It is Twenty Ten!!
• Let's all resolve not to 'click' on all the stupid internet news articles about stupid people doing stupid things in order to attract stupid attention to themselves. If we don't read this crap they won't keep trying to pawn it off on us as news.
• Let's also resolve to look for and shout out about all the 'unintended consequences' of laws, policies, lapses and 'change' that are threatening our society, our economy and our way of life. And we HAVE to find a way to get pork out of politics.
• Hmmmm... that's very grim.
• Let's laugh every day, in spite of it all.

Happy New Year!