You don’t hear it all that often, generally because the people of an age to use it are too polite to do so in public, but on occasion you may come across someone who will say to an antagonist something to the effect of “can’t wait to see the back of you.”
Quietly hissed, usually by one of those sweet grandmother types at some social function, it is an effectively cutting dismissal as in, “Don’t let the door knob hit ya’ where the dog shoulda’ bit ya.'”
Looking back on these past 12 months, we can’t imagine we are alone saying how glad we are to see them go. This was a hard year.
On the first business day of 2010, Jan. 4, around 7:30 a.m., even as Lincoln County Publishing Co., employees were arriving at the office, First Responders were racing to the scene of a family tragedy in Bremen.
That one accident, we dare say, set the tone for the months that followed.
This past year, it seems the ups, and there were many, were all too quickly followed by downs, and there were many.
We finally have a designated bypass route: whoops, no, we have a new eagle nest. One of our local guys is named Maine school Superintendent of the Year…and he’s retiring. Wiscasset and Penobscot students reach out to bridge the cultural divide; a Penobscot visit to Wiscasset is scratched due to perceived racial intolerance. Sigh.
Against the backdrop of the ongoing, increasingly divisive political discourse, struggling state and national economies; budget holes left and right, and the generally deafening din of the information age we live in, it is easy to feel like the downs had the edge this year.
We may honestly feel that way, but this year gave us much to appreciate.
The Damariscotta steeple is back up; the Round Pond parade was another chaotic hit. The Damariscotta Pirate Rendezvous and Pumpkin Festival and Regatta each grow bigger and better every year.
We are still blessed to live in America: in Lincoln County, Maine, no less. Most of us actually know our neighbors, if not by name, at least by sight.
Select any one of dozens of local roads, and if your car can take the potholes, you can easily take in some of the prettiest scenery in the country. We particularly recommend a short stretch of Rt. 32 connecting Chamberlain and New Harbor. It’s good for the soul.
No, we don’t have the snow capped 10,000-foot mountains and wide-open vistas of the Great American West. Those things are beautiful, too, but we don’t need them. There is a reason people plan their year around a Lincoln County vacation and we enjoy it so much and so often, it is easy to take it for granted.
Sure, we are facing hard times, economic difficulties; geo-political and environmental uncertainty but we, Mainers, Americans, have been through harder times than this and not only survived, but eventually thrived.
All that said, this week, this coming year, we have hope.
We hope Governor-elect LePage proves himself to be the leader his supporters believe he is; the one the State of Maine so desperately needs.
We hope our elected leaders on the left and right of the aisle in Washington put aside the hard line partisan posturing and get down to the kind of pragmatic deal making that actually makes a democratic government work.
We hope our local leaders; our commissioners, our selectmen and school board members, enjoy success defending us from the onerous stupidity of ill thought out regulations handed down from the state and federal levels above.
We hope our local volunteers, our firefighters, and our police officers and emergency personnel enjoy a safe, quiet year.
We hope we go an entire year without having to report the untimely death of a high school student.
We hope this coming year is brighter and better than the last.
We have hope.
