AS THE YEAR 2008 ENDS

It seems that many of the political talk shows which can't do anything new, are repeating the year, the campaign, and all the sound bites they can find. It has gotten pretty boring when my own knowledge of history is as broad as theirs. Having seen those shots in video form so many times that I can play them in my head without a TV, I decided to try to do the same with my own year.

Having just spent an hour on the phone with an old friend, whose wife (an even closer old friend) died yesterday, I was reminded that there were many other personal losses this year. Losses come as death, life styles, health, separations, security, constancy, and too many more elements of our lives to identify and mention. Each person in one's life who dies takes a big chunk of your own life with them. You no longer can talk to that person, get hugged, laugh with, learn from, play with, debate with, or share the past. At this age, as one's friends keep dying, the only way to survive is to make younger friends. They will never replace the old ones because they don't share the same history but they can sure fill your life and drag you into a new experience of life and the world.

Politically, this year's denouement allows hope and visions of change from the feelings of helplessness we have lived with for the past eight years. It is a sharp contradiction to the pain and suffering we will still have to muck through to bring our country back to the way it once functioned for its people. It has been totally gratifying to hear Barack Obama speak intelligently, coherently, grammatically, and on a topic.

We have all had the opportunity to see what Fundamentalists can achieve if they work long enough and hard enough at goals that were unintended by our forefathers. Our country has been held in hostage by them, and others even more destructive, for too long. We must work hard to keep this country out of the control of bigots, racists, self-serving lying politicians, religious zealots, sociopaths and thieves. The media should also learn that ratings don't trump truth and honesty in reporting.