New Year's Wish

• I got an email from a friend of mine at a law firm downtown. It is one of those awful chain emails and promises luck to the sender who then afflicts all of their friends by sending it on to them. And as my friend said in her initial paragraph, 2008 was not a good year for her and she hoped that 2009 would be better. In writing back to her, I had to agree and then discovered I needed to write more on the subject.

• I agree 100% with you. 2008 was a year when things fell apart for a lot of us. I am so glad you found a place at a downtown firm and I hope things will start to pick up after Obama gets sworn in. I truly do. We need more than luck. We need stable strong thoughtful calm leadership. We need to be able to trust again. We really need a miracle and I hope the Obama and his team can do that.to pull this country out of the swamp of corruption and greed that Bush led us into. I have been alive (oh, good grief, I sound ancient but...) through Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and now Bush II. The shrub (aka Bush II) was just awful.
• Bush claims he will be recalled as a good president. And just maybe he will be remembered in 2,000 years as someone who had to make tough choices. However, he has burdened the United States with a reputation we will spend years getting back, he has run us into so much debt we will not be able to pay it down in my lifetime, his legacy in every single part of his administration has been marked by a reckless abandonment of regulators keeping an eye on things.
• From slaughter houses in California and Kansas, to illegal immigration, to civil liberties being taken away, to the financial meltdown, to drugs from China killing us, to toys being filled with lead, to environmental regulators being told they could not bring up issues that needed to be addressed. He has a lot to answer for and I don't think he will be prosecuted after he leaves office.
• I don't even think Cheney will be prosecuted for making sure we got into Iraq. It is really a monumental screw up of historic proportions. Breathtaking.
• In 2009, we all will get a new start with Obama, new congress, and fresh ideas. I just hope we don't expect too much. There is so much to fix and he is just one guy. But I figure that if FDR could create the New Deal, Civilian Conservation Corp and all the other programs that eventually edged us out of the Great Depression from a wheelchair, then perhaps we can have hope.
• After all, hope was all that was left in Pandora's Box after she opened it the first time. You remember Pandora? According to Bullfinch's Mythology, the gods on Mt. Olympus created her and sent her down to earth. She came with a wedding present -- a box she was not supposed to open. The box supposedly held blessings from all of the gods. Curiosity overwhelmed her and she opened the box letting all the ills which afflict the world out -- except the one that was left behind when she hastily closed the box up again. I can only imagine how horrible that must have been for her. But the myth says that the one blessing left in the box was hope.
• My memory plays tricks on me sometimes but I remember this legend differently at this point. I recall learning that Pandora opened the box again when another of the gods came down to tell her that there was one gift left in the box which would help with all the terrible plagues on mankind. He (perhaps the god was Mercury who was the messenger to all the gods) assured her that hope was in the box and needed to be released. She opened the box again and that is why even with such terrible times as we are having now, we can reach deep inside ourselves and find hope ...
  
  Until peace, may we all know peace and have hope in new beginnings.
  Blessings