Another Year Over…

By: Andrea Trapani

It’s that time of year. Time to reflect, I guess. For the media, it’s a time to rehash the year’s best and worst stories. And they all do it…television, magazines, newspapers, radio…ad nauseum.

For years, I’ve been trying to figure out why I dislike these retrospectives so much. I still can’t figure it out, but they’ve bugged me for years, and I’ve done everything I can to ignore and avoid them. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t seem right or meaningful to group news and events into somewhat arbitrary 12-month calendar periods. Or maybe it’s because news of April 2008, say, doesn’t seem like that long ago, or worth remembering as a piece of history. Or maybe it’s a feeling that news that occured as recently as six months ago can’t yet be understood or categorized in the prism of history (as these retrospectives try to do). Or maybe it’s because it’s this time of year that I prefer to look forward, not back. Whatever it is, I hope to some day put my finger on it…or get over it.

But as we do turn the page on another year, I do want to look forward. For many in Michigan (and beyond), the year 2008 will be one worth forgetting. So it resonated when I received a very forward-looking, very optimistic holiday wish this year, one that I felt was pitch-perfect. It is too late to change 2008; but we can do everything in our power to make sure that 2009 is new…and improved, to borrow a trite marketing slogan.

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