The Writing Life Too

Night is settling in on the first day of 2009. I wish you and your family a happy, healthy, and peaceful New Year.

So what are your doable or impossible dreams for the new year? Here are a few of mine:
I hope that no matter how trying our times that we can all muster a dose of optimism and more than a dose of laughter.
I hope that children everywhere are safe and beloved.
I wish that children everywhere would spend less time with video games and more time reading.
I hope that my aunts will thrive this year after dealing with radiation treatments, heart surgery, and other health issues.
I hope that people (especially my students and friends) who were born to write will sit down and write instead of surrendering to their fears.
I hope that poetry and poets will thrive.
I hope newspapers will find a way to survive while continuing their necessary tradition of investigative reporting and other services to communities. And may they find readers, especially younger readers, who appreciate good journalism.
I hope that news organizations everywhere will devote more ink and air time to the catastrophic effects of the economic crisis on people who were low-income before the current downturn.
I hope that family farms continue to thrive and become more numerous, and more people will grow gardens and teach children where food comes from.
I hope that a college education can be made affordable for low and middle income students.
I hope that independent film makers continue to make intriguing films.
I hope that global warming will stop being a political issue, and become a fact of life that must be combated with rationality and worldwide cooperation.
I hope that things start shifting so that our sense of community and mutual responsibility grows. Which might mean that people who collect friends on Facebook and other such places, might instead start nurturing friendships in the real world, as in face to face, as in I’ll bring you chicken-soup-when-you’re-sick and hold-your-hand-at-your-mother’s-funeral kind of friend.
I hope that fake memoirs will no longer be published.
My greatest hope is for peaceful solutions in the world’s craziest trouble spots. Let’s all hope for lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians; for the suffering people of Zimbabwe, Congo, Sudan and other African countries ripped to shreds by hatred and violence; for Pakistanis and Indians, also, people so often on the brink of hostilities.
Along these lines, I hope that a more rational and creative policy for Afghanistan is reached. Perhaps the folks in government and the military will realize that if Alexander the Great, and the Soviet Union and Great Britain at their military peak could not conquer Afghanistan, that neither can we and we should get the heck out of there. Perhaps a modern, functioning democracy is simply not viable there…..Or perhaps we can help them rebuild their agriculture instead of supporting the current narco economy.
I hope that a flag lapel pin will never again be equated with patriotism.
I hope that the phrase “war on terror” is retired.
I hope that the Obama administration has great success in 2009—although this takes into account the daunting tasks ahead. Universal health care would be a fine start.
I hope the Detroit automakers return to profitability, this time selling cars with fuel-saving technologies.
I hope that as promised, we begin the troop withdrawal in Iraq along with diplomatic envoys, and work with the Iraqis to establish a working, trusting, long-term relationship. And fix the electricity system for the Iraqis on our way out the door.
I hope that stem cell research is once again funded.
I hope that Guantanamo will be closed down.
I hope that a Special Prosecutor is installed to investigate the Bush administration war crimes.