Once again we find ourselves standing on the brink of a new year, wondering what 2012 will bring. It’s impossible to know what the year holds for us, and while we sometimes think we would like to know, in reality, we probably couldn’t handle it.
There’s no way for us to know if we will witness another tornado, earthquake or tsunami. We don’t know if we will get “the big snow” this winter or if the more moderate temperatures will persist. We can’t tell what joys or heartaches will come our way, and indeed, we don’t need to know. Actually, the mystery of the future is what makes life exciting. It is not ours to know.
There are a few things we do know are coming in 2012, however.
The summer Olympic games will be held in London in July and August.
We will also “enjoy” the excitement of primary and general elections locally as well as the election of a president in the fall.
The Highway 60/65 construction in south Springfield is to be completed this year and there will be Cardinals baseball without Albert.
Madonna will perform at the Super Bowl and we’re pretty sure the Missouri Fox Trotters will hold two shows in Ava, in June and September.
We will have periods of heavy rainfall this spring, and it will be hot and dry in the summer. We can’t be sure how much rain we’ll get or how hot or how dry it will be. But this is the Ozarks. Some things we just might as well expect. That doesn’t mean we have to like it, but there’s one thing for sure: we can’t change it. All we can change is how we deal with it.
As the current year comes to a close, it is customary for the Herald to do a review of the news events of the past year. This “backward glance” begins on Page One this week and will continue as many issues as it takes to cover the entire previous 52 weeks.
As we read through these paragraphs taken from issues of the Herald, we are reminded of things that we have already forgotten, although we declared at the time that we would never forget.
Of course we remember the Joplin tornado and sports fans remember the Lady Bears’ back-to-back undefeated SCA seasons. You may also remember that Pete Leonard scored 46 points against Blue Eye to set a new single-game scoring record as well as reaching a new career scoring record in basketball at Ava High School.
I bet you remember that the Cowskin and Beaver bridges were replaced this year, but did you remember that in a two-week period in late July and early August, the temperature was over 100 degrees on 10 of the 14 days?
Douglas County was reprimanded by the Missouri State Auditor for poor handling of money, but locals pulled together to build a community playground. The community had its share of violence, with homicides and burglaries, bad car wrecks and house fires taking a toll on families’ lives.
As we make the transition to 2012 and consider what resolutions might be made for the new year we would turn to the advice of “The Preacher” in Ecclesiastes chapter 12: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”
