Goodbye 2009!!!

As you read this, I am preparing for our annual New Year's Eve party for those who would otherwise sit at home on New Year's Eve. If you recall from last year, this is our annual geriatric party with several widows and widowers present, octogenarians abound, and this year, I believe the age range will be 18 months to 88 years!

We will eat, sit and talk, and I am sure that there will be discussions of the economy, health care, Medicare changes and the direction of the country. While I am not advocating that our party become a political free for all, I am sure that this year, unlike years before, there will be discussions of this kind.

There has been a change in the tenor of the country and the willingness of ordinary people to be engaged in political discussions and actions. This year, my husband and I stopped for lunch at a Hardee's while we were Christmas shopping. There were only about 5 people there when we arrived and took our seat to eat our meal. There were two men next to us who engaged us (total strangers) in a discussion of the wrong track that our country is taking. This happened without our saying anything to these gentlemen and without my husband and I having any conversation in that vein that would have sent them a clue that we were of a like mind. Last year at this time, I am pretty sure that this would not have happened. Or at least before engaging a perfect stranger in conversation about the government, there would at least have been an overture to let them know that the topic was "safe."

But then, last year I would not have been standing on a street corner holding up signs on Sunday afternoons. I would not have been emceeing a health care reform protest rally, and I would not have even heard of a Tea Party. 2009 has indeed been a year that finds many of us in roles and situations that seemed impossible only a year ago. I have to say that I am not sorry to see 2009 close and the possibilities of 2010 are very appealing. Those of us who have found ourselves more politically active than we could ever have imagined can relish the prospect of a chance to change the direction that the current administration has taken our country and perhaps right the ship of state, or at least block the legislative tsunami that has swept over our country.

So here's to a better and brighter 2010, or at least a New Year that begins to show us the promise of a return to the values and principles on which our country was founded.