A Decade of Change

This was a really tough challenge to do a LO about the past decade. I was challenged both artistically and as a writer.  Typically when we SB, we are scrapping happy things and it feels good to add bling and flowers and all those bright fun things but that wouldn't work for me on this LO.  All in all, the decade was very tragic and it was hard to gather all that and put it to paper.  I think I could work on this LO forever but I just wanted to get it done and move on.  Perhaps I'll revisit it one day or maybe make some additional pages.  Anyway, here it is, A Decade of Change.

The journaling says:

OUR DECADE OF CHANGE

2000 – We left Fairbanks, Alaska with heavy hearts. We loved Alaska so much; but we looked forward to the new challenges we would face in Denver.

9/11/2001 – There are three moments in time etched in the minds of those living to witness these events. The first event was the day President Kennedy was assassinated. I was in school and our principal came over the PA system and told us about it. I was just in the 7th grade. The second event was the explosion of the space shuttle, Challenger. I was working in Fort Lauderdale, Florida when I heard the news; I stepped outside my office and could see the split jet trail from Challenger’s explosion. It was a sobering sight. Then 9/11/01 happened, the third event. Along with much of the rest of the nation, I sat and starring at my TV as the 2nd jet slammed into the World Trade Center. I was getting ready for work.

10/2002 – The Washington DC beltway area is terrorized for 3 weeks by a sniper who killed 10 people and injured 3. The sniper was a lone man and a minor child.

12/26/2004 – One of the deadliest natural disasters strikes in the form of a tsunami that killed nearly 230,000 people in 14 countries.

8/29/2005 – Hurricane Katrina roars onto the Gulf Coast leaving behind devastation and a mass of confusion for weeks. While my heart was breaking for all the people who lost their possessions and even worse, their lives, it was the plight of the animals that made my heart ache.

4/16/2007 – A lone gunman goes on a rampage at Virginia Tech University, killing 32 and injuring many others in two attacks that were about 2 hours apart.

Fall 2007 – We decide to sell our house, retire, and move to North Carolina after learning that Dick’s job will likely go away some time in 2008. We planned to put our house on the market in the spring of 2008 but we had an incredible stroke of luck when Dick just happened to be talking to someone outside who was interested in buying a house with a view. Two weeks later, we struck a deal to sell our house with closing on January 31, 2008. We drove the motorhome to NC in November to look for a house. After looking at about 50 houses, we decided to build.

Spring 2008 – We closed on the sale of our house and moved into a rental, owned by the people that bought our house on 2/1/08. We lived in their house until 4/29/08 when we moved into our motorhome to await the completion of our house in NC. We left Denver on June 19, 2008 to close on our house in NC. Dick made several trips to/from Denver that summer to move all of our worldly possessions to NC.

Dick’s job in Denver was definitely going away. The stock market was a complete disaster so Dick decided that he couldn’t afford to retire. It only took him a couple of days to line up work in Stafford, VA working with the Marine Corp on the MRAP vehicle, the follow on vehicle to the Hummer.

3/2/2009 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closes below 7,000 for the first time since May 1997, dropping 299.64 points, or 4.24 percent, to 6,763.29.

3/9/09 – DJIA falls 79.89 to close at 6,547.05, down 53.78% from the all time high on Oct 9, 2007, down 25.37% from the 2009 open.

10/14/2009 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average breaks through the 10,000 level for the first time in a year. The index has risen 52.9 percent since a 12-year low in March.

11/5/2009 – An Army psychiatrist opens fire in Fort Hood, TX killing 13 people and injuring many more.

12/31/2009 – A decade fraught with disasters, natural and manmade, comes to an end. What will the next decade have for the world? Let us pray that there is an end to the war and violence in the Middle East and that humankind will come together embracing each other’s differences.
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