2008: IN MEMORIAM

Each year the old year dies and a new one is born with all the hope that is attached to all births; hope,ideas, projects, promises, leaders, new bosses, new jobs, new schools and the list could go on. However, even hope can die. It is up to us to keep nourishing hope in this country, support as many as we can to survive the tragic lives into which so many have been thrown, and rebuild America. As none of us can do it alone, note that even those in charge cannot do it alone, either. Obama is a man, not a God, and as such cannot perform miracles.

We will look back to the losses of people we did not know other than their public personas. We will mourn our lost loved ones and friends as we will mourn the many changes we are forced to accept and adjust to work for us. We will accept that we will spend more time trying to reach anyone in business, having to wade through a telephone maze as difficult as walking through the maze at Henry the VIII's garden, Hampton Court in Surrey.

We will continue to have to get computer program updates and spend so much of our lives reading manuals and relearning software that we have little time for things we want or need to do. We will replace our dead appliances with new ones, adding the instructions to the pile waiting for us to tackle the added learning curve. We will try to pay our bills on time to avoid the astronomical fees attached if our payment gets there 2 seconds beyond their random deadline, so that the creditors can continue to make obscene profits from the little people.

We will make New Year's Resolutions to diet, quit bad habits, be better people, save money, quit impulse buying, cook in rather than eating out so much, and all sorts of things, with good intent, and promptly start rationalizing the reasons we didn't follow through.

Some of us will rely on our Faith in God and some of us will claim full responsibility for all our own actions and chances. Some of us will pretend we still live in a democracy and speak out with our complaints about what has happened to our educational system, medical system, and all other areas in which the USA used to be a leader and accept that we no longer offer the best of much of anything for which we can be proud. We've outsourced our collective soul and it is unclear whether we will ever be able to reclaim it.

With sad hearts, struggling to maintain that hope the campaign and election fed us, we drink champagne at midnight and wait to see what 2009 brings.