One of the great joys of running a small newspaper is the end of the year issue. It's a chance to scan the year and pull out the highlights in whatever fashion seems suitable.
This year, I was struck by how much the presidential race found its way into the life of our small community. We've always been a rather active place politically and so it figures that this year in review would feature the election prominently.
Going through the old issues it was pretty interesting to see just how many events had taken place. In North Carolina this was the first time since the Carter campaign where the Democratic primary was a key contest. This was also the first year since 1992 that the presidential race was close. Still, it would have been hard to predict that we'd see so many music and politics rallies (Arcade Fire and Superchunk and James Taylor among others played shows for Obama) and watched so many candidates and surrogates make their way through town. And locally-organized political events organized filled up our comunity calendars.
I am wondering now how much of this will go on and how much was driven by that once-in-a-generation meme. There will be another round of celebrations and rememberences next week. And then I don't know. There's elation here, but also a lot of worry about what's to come. My hope is that the fire witnessed in the recent past is not extinguished by the trials to come.