The last blog of the year, the last blog of the decade. What a decade it has been. For many of these past 10 years, I have had the pleasure of bantering back and forth with many of the members of this blog, and the other blog from which Four Freedoms rose. It's hard to believe that this time has flown the way it has.

This decade has had as many highs as it has had lows. It's fair to say that in 2000, the most formidable event that happened that year in our nation was the election, but also in that year, Elián González, 6 years old then, was reunited with his father. The USS Cole was attacked that year as well. The Yankees and the Mets met in the world series. in 2000, the Human genome was deciphered -- we still have not reaped the scientific bounties from that discovery.

I was going to write a brief summary of each year and a few events that the decade has brought us, but I will leave that to those who are better pontificators that I. I sit in wonderment of this decade. It started out in chaos, that never seemed to end, but we all plugged thru and made it to the other side. Here is a great site for your year-by-year breakdown.

It's hard to believe we didn't have the Google 10 years ago. We didn't have iPhones, iPods, Blackberries, or HDtv. We were infantile in our electronic communications. We didn't have progressive radio and we didn't have the voices that we do now. Perhaps we had that all along, but lacked a way to come together.

All of these things brought us together, here on this blog and other places. I have made lifelong friendships because of the events of this decade, and as bad as many of them were, what I gained far outshines anything the events that the decade tried to take away. Fate brought me to Georgia and now Virginia with a loving partner. Never in a million years would I have dreamed such a thing possible in the beginning of this decade. Our joys and sorrows were met with compassion and humor as we supported each other the very best we could. People have come and gone (such is the mercurial ways of electronic communications) but each person has meant the world to me, and left me a better person.

So as we say good by to this year, and this decade, know that as bad as things were, there were a few bright and sunny spots along the way. It's for those moments that make everything worth going forward. Call me a hope-monger, but I know that even in my darkest moments of this decade, things would get better. It may take as long as possibly the next decade, and I hope that we will still have the pleasure of communicating with one another, in whatever form that may be. Then we can do it all over again!

Goodbye Aught's. Hello Teens!

and
Raine