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Our blessings
Sume folks in the newsroom were offering suggestions
tor our lead headline tor next week's paper. the tmai
issue of the ye«m
Uood riddance, 31KW, was one.
Thank heavens it‘» uvw, another suggested. ♦' It has been tin horrthc year? but not without its merits, tt seems safe to say that we mt* nil counting our blessings this Christmas ns w have twit tallied the sum in tunny years, perhaps over — those who have escaped !A)UhV mt eiest blows, ns well ns those who have twit.
We sttU live in the greatest nation on earth, we haven substantial social safety net, ami we have lenders who tire aware of the scope of the problems feeing us ami tire hmd at work, we trust, on new and innovative ways id addressing: them.
More than anything dOOh has leveled the held, and we believe there is a national sense of community as the year ends that was twitably lacking when *&M)B began, And that's a blessing, too.
How long tor instance, has it been since you heat'd folks bent# slammed tor mm unit into mortgage problems? Usannsamg peoples problems with ajudgmentai snifftea little more tlifficult when plummeting teal estate values are having a substantial affect on us ad,
’there is a much keener sense, as the year ends, that we are all sailing the same craft over the some choppy waters.
It’s become slightly more problematic to wtmder why some folks didn't read the tine print in the mortgage ^ does font sixe really matter when it comes to legal mumbo^umho? — when others of us chose, with equal myopia, to trust the market, or to assume tout the Bernard Madotfe uf the world would keep us in the chips, through good times and bad.
If -00b has been a harsh taskmaster, the lessons it has imparted have been valuable. Bud mortgages lead to declining home values which lead to construction slowdowns which means the hardware merchant sutfers which means the malaise speeds to the car dealers and the restaurants, and un and on, down our Main Streets, down the bypasses,
Sorry, Virginia, but there is no Santa Claus, at least mil the one who keep lists that separate the naughty hum the nice,
We are all in this together That's the onthohyear head' line, And coming to a bettor understanding of what that means, and the many positive ways we go forward with that understanding, is the blessing that we ail ought to be putting at the top of our lists,
’the year is coming to a close un a sobering note. Please don’t let it deflate the intrinsic joy and promise of Christmas.
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