The Year of Living Dismally

By Jane Holtz Kay

What can you say about a year when the vague call for a “stimulus” package from Washington was the best that word-smiths could pull up to describe these hard-pressed times as the year ended?

And, worse, still, what can you say of a year when no folks seemed able to wrap their minds around Webster's dictionary sufficiently to pluck an alternative phrase: one that would either ease or dam the outflow of funds to actually, finally, kindle---or, in another verbal form—capture, the funds needed to expand the poverty of language, and find the fitting word to categorize the issue, de jour.

For everyone, it seems, this year was, at best, fit for some sorry label like, for one dire instance, "the year of living dismally?” Or, so a work-friend framed it, defining the dreariness and poor porridge of the skimmed and trimmed bill-folds and flat wallets leaving nothing much in Santa’s pouch and defining the hardships and slights in poor, or poorer, times that shrank the nation’s pay checks.

Call it what you will, the reason, or reasons for the downfall (perhaps, the ions in the air), caused dismay in this time of falling expectations and emptying pockets. And, indeed, Santa Claus offered few crumbs to relieve those forlorn souls trying to act upbeat and uplift their lives with the incentives du jour, implied in the newly-minted expression of the day i.e. the slim hopes and aspirations dominating the wishful thinkers of the day in that so-called “stimulus.”

Few fell into line mimicking the nation that we would, or could, put the economic motors in gear, for how and when would their be a hefty contribution from a larger, worried populace believing that a stimulus would work. No such package, then; few soaring bell-ringers; fewer presents reflecting good times beneath the Christmas trees in these days of living disappointedly.

In this dismal, indeed, empty-pocket time of sallying to the holidays with new, or few, expectations amid the dreary decline, the New Year awaited new thoughts, and new expectations of business aloft with equal caution, to, as the word spread “stimulate,” and no really visible chance for new times as they tried to sally into a New Year with mincing steps and expanding, but improbable, expectations.

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