The Year Has Begun

It is once again a time of reflection and renewal.  I like to think about all the things that are good and beautiful about life on this amazing planet of ours.
I started out the new year a bit under the weather, so not the most joyful beginning, but I was able to have apples and honey and since I have a good job with good benefits, I was able to take the time I needed to recover. 
And that is not a given in the United States.  Something that has been true for a very long time, our whole time as a country, in fact.  The thing that briefly fooled us into thinking that we might have progressed in a significant way as a society was that our legislators passed laws that made a very flawed system of insurance available to a broader group of Americans who previously could not afford health care and did not get it through their jobs.  We are a strange people, where the majority of people want health care, and they want to retain it for themselves and their family, but they do not realize that in doing so, many of them require government help to do so.  There is yet another threat in the Republican run Congress to dismantle health care coverage for most, and hopefully this is not the year where we take a giant step backwards.