It hasn’t been a great year, in a lot of ways, for many of us.
I’ve noticed a lot of traffic to the Turkey Drawing box in our lobby. Of course, there are always plenty of zealous folks who make sure they get their entries turned in to try to win a free turkey. But it just seems like the traffic has been a little heavier this last week than it has in previous years.
I was a store the other day and it occurred to me that the price on the grated cheese I was buying for my wife was double what it cost a few years ago. Fortunately (I think), the package was the same size. Food’s up. Gas is more expensive. Too many people still aren’t working, which means that those of us who do are paying to keep them afloat too.
Locally, the economic doldrums have finally hit us really hard on the public level. As anyone who closely reads this newspaper knows, the drop in property values has reduced funding to local government agencies to the point that we’re all feeling it. It’s affected us in ways that we might not have foreseen a year or two ago: police officers who have had to settle for far less than they asked for in contract negotiations, a swimming pool on the verge of closing, the possibility of closing our schools one day a week, cemetery fees that have doubled, etc.
Our society is struggling with its values, which, to put it simply, are not what they have traditionally been.
We have demonstrators in city parks whining about how they have college degrees but can’t get the great-paying jobs they feel they are owed.
A friend of mine mentioned to me the other day that he was reading his group health insurance policy and noticed that it now provides coverage for sex-change operations, as well as psychotherapy treatment for those who aren’t sure about making such a decision. Hmmm.
Our leadership, both at the state and federal levels, is suspect. Granted, times are tough, but they’ve done little to deal with the economic difficulties that have washed over us. But let’s remember who elected our legislators. We’re all struggling on many levels.
I am generally an optimistic person, which is probably a little unusual for someone involved in the news media, where you tend to know a lot more than you really want to about what’s going on. But this year, thanks to all of the above, I have to say I’ve noticed a little more gloom than I’m used to. Maybe it’s partly because I’m 50 now…
Obviously, it’s time to get some thankfulness going. A proven antidote to feeling low is to count one’s blessings. If nothing else, it’s a good discipline to focus on the positive – and we’re pretty shortsighted if we can’t find something to be thankful for, considering all the privileges we do enjoy.
So here are a few things I’m thankful for this year:
n Vehicles that run on asphalt highways (so we don’t have to walk or ride in rickety wagons over corduroy roads, like our columnist Mona Waibel writes about).
n Clothes on our backs and blankets on our beds. Heat in our homes. Food on our tables. Having said that, I realize that not everyone in Sweet Home is so blessed, but I’m also thankful for people who have a burden to meet those needs, such as SHEM and the Sharing Tree organizers at the fire and police departments, and the folks who run the coat drive at Sweet Home Choppers.
n Water. If you’ve ever lived in a desert environment, as I have, where life depends on imported water, you must appreciate moisture. This year brought some very unpleasant rainy weather, I’ll admit. My garden almost didn’t make it. The blackberries are confused. (I saw some green ones and others that were just trying to ripen on one plant over the weekend.) But when I start thinking about complaining, I remember what life was like without rain. Water is life.
n Health. If I’m not in a coffin, I need to be thankful. My nephew, who had finished college with perfect grades and had just passed his CPA exam and landed a job as an accountant with a good company, died earlier this year of leukemia. He’d beaten it once, as a teenager, and it returned.
Though his unwavering faith in Jesus Christ gives me full confidence as to his eternal destiny, it was still a wake-up call for our generally quite healthy family of how life is (as the Bible puts it) “a vapor that appears for a little time, then passes away.” Appreciate it.
n Family. Having my oldest daughter leave for college this year has been a little bit of an eye-opener. While my wife and I try not to be helicopter parents, our family has had a lot of good times together and we’re fairy close-knit. I’ve heard other people bemoaning the “empty-nest syndrome” and now I’m beginning to understand what it’s all about. There are, of course, positive things that come with the the kids leaving, but it makes me appreciate my family more.
n Our local leaders. They aren’t perfect, but I really think our local government has, for the most part, made good choices that have reduced the impact of the recession on us. They have been conservative and we’ve made it through several years of recession without the kind of cuts that other communities, that were less careful, have experienced.
n SHARE. I speak as someone who is personally involved in the Sweet Home Active Revitalization Effort, but I’m also a beneficiary, since the new paint you see on our building is a direct result of SHARE’s efforts to spruce up the downtown area and assist local businesses to be more successful. SHARE is a nearly all-volunteer effort and I’m thankful for those folks who have put in the time and effort to try to make things better in Sweet Home.
n Caring people. Volunteerism is strong in Sweet Home, exemplified by the many people who have appeared in The New Era’s Volunteer of the Week feature, which has been faithfully sponsored for years by Entek, by the way (more on that in a moment). It’s true that Sweet Home’s volunteer corps may not be what it once was, thanks to the fact that a lot of people are no longer employed locally. I’ll write more about that some other time, because it bears discussion.
But the DNA is still there. When there’s a need, people step up. It’s happening in Cascadia today, after the horrific fire that leveled the life savings of a local family on Saturday. It’s happening in youth sports. It’s happening on the first weekend of December as the holiday season kicks off with a parade, the Singing Christmas Tree, the Christmas Tree Auction, and more. People make these things happen and most of them don’t get paid. They just care.
n The cops. We’ve already commented, a few weeks ago, on the fact that our local Police Department employees decided not to go to arbitration to get the salary and benefits they thought they deserved. We also said we appreciate that. But my own appreciation for our police goes beyond that because I sit next to a scanner all day and listen to what they’re doing. Certainly, like the rest of us, they’re not perfect. But the fact is, I don’t think too many of us could respond calmly to a lot of the garbage that our local officers deal with every day – domestic disputes, kids getting in trouble, intoxicated individuals, wayward animals (and their owners), and people with generally bad attitudes.
n Faithful advertisers. I know it’s not too often that newspapers talk about their own business, but I’m making an exception. As publisher of your local newspaper, the person whose responsibility it is to keep the news coming to you when times are tough economically and the competition (Craigslist, coupon and classified publications, the Internet, etc.) seems to keep growing all the time, I need to put a shout out to the advertisers who see the value in promoting their businesses and using this newspaper to do it.
Not only is it a proven fact that businesses who want to succeed are much more likely to do so if they advertise, but these businesses have chosen to help support your local newspaper by advertising on the pages you’re looking at today. The reason we can pay our bills is mostly because of our advertisers and I’m thankful for their commitment to not only their own success but our ability to keep providing news and communication within the community.
n Faithful staff. I would be remiss not to mention our employees. They are the ones who keep this operation humming and without them The New Era would be a very sorry publication.
I could go on, but I think the point has been made. We have plenty to be thankful for, even when times are tough.
This year, let’s think past the feast and the football – and even the family – and thank God for His goodness to us. That’s what Thanksgiving is supposed to be about.