A wish for 2013

Frank Cerabino, a newspaper columnist I used to read, once made an observation that offers solace to us amid all the unsettling events in today's world:

“In times of trouble, one of the most comforting things to discover is that things have always been screwed up.”

OK, this was written before one Middle Eastern country after another descended into civil war, before mass shootings became once-a-month affairs, before everyone in Congress seemed to be coming to blows, and before the national debt reached a sum we have no foreseeable way of paying off.

Still, Cerabino's words wouldn't be lost on those old enough to recall a Depression that cost millions of Americans their jobs and life savings, a world war that cost tens of millions their lives, a cold war, segregation and successive assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK.

Through it all, life went on, and goes on. It's still early enough in the year to wish for better times in 2013.