2010: three or four things not to forget

We can't remember everything. Blessedly. But some things from 2010 are too good to forget: 

Why telling the truth about climate change is good politics, from David Roberts: 

No matter what derangements currently hold sway over American politics, eventually, reality will out. The crazy weather will get worse, ice fields will melt, agriculture will suffer, food shortages will get more severe. Sooner or later, American politics will have to deal with climate change -- that is a certainty.

When that day comes, the party that has spoken honestly about climate change, speaking the truth throughout the waxing and waning of public opinion, will a) look prescient and morally courageous, and b) be trusted by the American people to develop solutions.

Yes. And speaking of devastation, Wall Street deserves every lump it got last year, and more, wrote John Cassidy in The New Yorker, in a devastatingly solid piece that might actually have an effect, called What Good is Wall Street? 

Think of all the profits produced by businesses operating in the U.S. as a cake. Twenty-five years ago, the slice taken by financial firms was about a seventh of the whole. Last year, it was more than a quarter. (In 2006, at the peak of the boom, it was about a third.) In other words, during a period in which American companies have created iPhones, Home Depot, and Lipitor, the best place to work has been in an industry that doesn’t design, build, or sell a single tangible thing.

A poet wrote probably the best book of last year -- and it's a love story! 

We said farewell and I left his room. But something drew me back. He had fallen into a light sleep. I stood there and looked at him. So peaceful, like an ancient child. He opened his eyes and smiled. "Back so soon?" And then again to sleep.

So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger. 

And, speaking of rock and roll, it's a form still capable of greatness, as we heard from The National: 

  The National - High Violet - 02 - Sorrow by yovizna