Whether you live in Tucson, Des Moines, Los Angeles, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, Washington DC, Muncie, Indiana or New York City (as I do),  this year has been a difficult one for all of us, and in all likelihood, the next few may be, too.

There’s a lot on our plates as citizens: making decisions about what kind of country we want to be (which most people thought we had already done, once, during the Civil War - though some people weren’t happy about the outcome), making decisions about what kind of citizens we want to be (we’ve come a long way from the kind Jefferson envisioned, but the Internet gives us a tremendous opportunity to reverse that trend and achieve that vision), and about what role we want our country to play in the world.

Eight years of one kind of vision brought us here; a single year of another isn’t enough to get us out.

But it’s a start.

I hope the New Year brings with it all the happiness, love, security, excitement and joy that each of us, as human beings, deserve. And those hopes go, as well, to all the other citizens of our Earth.

RoughAcres/RL McKee