Yesterday was Sunday, a peaceful day of promised rest from the great gigamaflanks (yes, I made that word up) that define the usual politics of newsmaking the other six days of every week in 24/7 mediated America. But on Sunday, no. It is a day of rest. Attend services or go for a long walk. Maybe both. Make a proper pot roast, watch some NFL football. Think about whatever. Spend time with the family. Tinker with the furnace before winter arrives. But, alas, as is my nasty habit, I begin each and every day with large cup of black coffee and a perusal of several online news sources.

And so it was that my eyes were assaulted by a series of headlines about Sarah Palin and the 2012 presidential race. These headlines were not good signs. I read on. Surely some modicum of sanity would prevail among my favorite columnists and reporters?

“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year.

It is that we should have a new soul.” -  G. K. Chesterton

Probably I have been spending too much time reading and listening to “end of the year” reviews, “best of,” “worst of,” and other tributes to 2011. That must be it.

Surely it is their unfortunate influence that urges me today to join in the timeless habit of gossips, town criers, old farts, bar cronies, grannies, and purveyors of real and imagined newsprint everywhere and develop my very own version of “The Year in Review.” It’s taken me some time to formulate a way of telling it, given that the genre of such year-end reviews necessitates at least some mention of world affairs and my year has not exactly been about much of that, at least not the last six months of it, wherein my attention was deflected by cancer. But as you will see, that deflection into Cancerland led me to think quite differently about what was important and what must be done now to honor what I’ve learned.

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