While there is much more discussion about the 2010 Census than is really necessary, and while I still can’t figure out why a mailed form is any more secure or accurate than doing it on the Internet and saving a few million trees, there is one thing that is significant to me.  What has changed in 10 years.

Ten years ago things were pretty good.  We had hope of a great new century and we had all survived Y2K…remember, planes were going to fall out of the sky, banks were going to lose all the data, and anarchy was going to descend.  But it didn’t happen and life was good.

Then came the election of 2000, 9-11-2001 (planes did fall out of the sky), War in Afghanistan, War in Iran, Space Shuttle Columbia exploding, Enron, a deteriorating economy, $4 billion/mo. in Iran, a tsunami that killed approximately 250,000, Bush re-elected, Hurricane Katrina, the Surge, $4.00+ gas prices, the economic disaster,  massive job cuts, home values plummeting, banks failing, and a Republican party trying to sabotage America so their failures don’t look as bad….and we were worried about a computer problem?

This decade brought fear and hate to a new level in the world.  It may be remembered as the worst decade since the 1960’s for unhappy people and negative world events and yet we all survived, somehow.

But the Census doesn’t count events, it counts people and on that score things were pretty good.  The 2010 Census will report three new lives:  my son, my granddaughter, and my grandson.  It will also show that both my daughters married in this decade.  It will also report one less life, my mother, and there were other losses, but for the most part they were people who lived full lives.

I can’t say that this decade was a great decade, but personally it was a good decade and that’s enough for me.

(Another Recent Paul Blog:  A Better Parent, not Perfect.)