2022 may go down in the history books as a year when events thousands of miles from where we live had a definitive and prolonged impact on our lives.
The Russian assault on Ukraine — with its repercussions across financial markets, impact on the world food supply and oil and gasoline prices — hit Americans’ pocket books and sharpened the threat of nuclear annihilation.
Few of us are suffering the deprivation and terror the resolute Ukrainians have experienced for 10 months. But a country that, for most Americans, was once a blurry blob on Europe’s eastern edge has barged its way into the center of our conscience.
2022’s final days brings the curtain down on moderate Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s tenure in office. Repeatedly scoring high popularity marks in polls, Baker exits stage right as a semi-anachronism — an elected official capable of walking the middle ground in a nation where a Republican lied on his resume to get elected and Democratic progressives pretended, albeit briefly, that peace can be made with Vladimir Putin.
Gov.-elect Maura Healey and Lt. Gov.-elect Kim Driscoll bring a liberal agenda writ large to the State House. Both women also bring practical administrative skills in their soon-to-be-former roles, respectively, as Massachusetts attorney general and mayor of the City of Salem.
They are likely to prod the overwhelmingly Democratic state Legislature into taking serious steps to combat climate change and wrestle with realistic ways to end Massachusetts’ housing crisis.
But if you’re going to work next week on an MBTA bus or train, you may well wonder if Healey and Driscoll will join a long line of state executives incapable of solving the T’s problems.
Just as the Ukraine war refocused us on how dangerous the world can be, the COVID pandemic will continue to shape how we live in 2023.
The pandemic keeps spawning variants that strain medical resources even in the richest country in the world.
A quick head count in a shopping mall or grocery store tells you maybe 20 percent of us are wearing masks in public. Just because COVID is no longer locking us in our homes and out of Starbucks doesn’t mean the pandemic, now approaching its fourth year, isn’t redefining the way we live.
Healthcare, the office and schools will continue to be reshaped in 2023 by a global killer.
The long shadows cast by war and disease may make 2023 the year when the expression, “Think globally, act locally,” evolves into a call for action in every community, every neighborhood — for all of us — to bring about change.
We can all do our part to banish hatred, war and fear.
Happy New Year.
