Thank God, Denise Swidey made us some Workshop pralines. They came all the way from Boston via Boston Globe magazine man Neil Swidey.

Hey, nobody said this was going to be easy.
Above, Chris Mele of the Pocono Record. Below, Rachel Dickinson, freelancer for The Atlantic, Smithsonian, others. They’re in the Writing Room at the Shandelee Lake Inn for the Mike Levine Workshop 2010.

After running the gauntlet of work and obligation and stress, the end of 2006 leaves many folks feeling nothing but weary. We stumble to a finish line only to get up and start a new race. Will 2007 be the same stuff, different year?

It doesn’t have to be. Look back on the journey of 2006 and remember all the tiny gems and miracles of the year gone by. The small kindnesses, the welcoming hand, the unexpected laughter. Look back and we know not only what was, but what can be.

Today, we can feel it in our bones. It pounds in the heart. There’s a new year coming and its name is possibility.

So may this be the year when you seize each day. The year when you start something big. Go on, make a promise to yourself you can keep and light up a dream.

You’ll need to travel lighter. Drop that baggage dragging you down. This will be the year when anger turns to forgiveness. When couples who once saw the best in each other see it again. When parents and children reunite. The grudge is over, for in case you haven’t heard, life ends in a blink.

In the next life, our sages say, we will be called to account for all the good things on this earth we did not enjoy. May this be the year when a new song makes your heart race. When you get up and dance. When you rediscover passion in your work, your play, your partner.

Loosen up. Shake off old habits. Take a walk in new woods. This can be the year when we connect ourselves to something greater than ourselves. When we escape the prison of self and loosen the shackles of envy.

This will be the year when the age of polarity recedes. The looney tune of the conspiracist and the screed of the name caller will fade as their mean season has passed. Sing a song for civility. May we call on something better from ourselves and each other. When we live less as childlike consumers and more as citizens who give and engage.

May this be the year when we stop blaming others for our failings. When we hold our tongues from malice and open our mouths in praise. Praise for the seasons. Praise for Life. Praise for our loved ones. Praise even for those who have done us wrong.

Most people are aching to do the right thing, the kind thing. We want to leave the world a better place. So may this be the year when we each do something to repair the damage, when we band together to see that no teen’s life is snuffed out in a crash of twisted metal.

We know there will be storms and heartbreak. May we roll with the haymakers. This will be the year when we do not shrink away from our pain or the grief of the bereaved. For some in our Times Herald-Record family, this has been a year of crushing personal loss. May shattered hearts everywhere begin to heal. Weeping may tarry for the night, we are told, but joy cometh in the morning.

And for all who feel stuck, beaten down or stressed out in taken-for-granted situations, who feel ground down by toil or worry or loneliness: Hang in there.

This will be the year when the long shot comes roaring down the backstretch. When someone discovers the wonder of you. Come out of your shell, for the parade’s about to begin.

Here’s to 2007. A child will learn to read. Someone will fall in love for the first time. There will be weddings and celebrations. An elder will spin stories that connect the generations.

They know the night will pass. There will be light. There will be morning.

It is the first day of a new year called possibility.

“It’s almost like Mike has given me a gift: the connections, and you allowing me into your conversations and thoughts about writing and your own ideas about the world. I love being here.”
Today is Mike Levine’s birthday. He would have been 58.

But the act is repeatedly sabotaged by a plain embarrassing fact. “My hands are too small,” Conti says.
The prize was within reach but his hands might be too small to grab it.

She pauses collects herself, begins again.
“Hate is a terrible word. Hate is a cancer that eats away at your soul and makes you a terrible person.”
Matt would forgive.

Despite these uncertainties, the merchants of Main Street shrug about the future.

They’ve already scrubbed the muck left by the mud waters. They still pay their rent, but now to lawyers ..

No matter, they’ll bounce back.

On a faded blue couch, in a tired Colonial house, Emily leans up against Betsy. Her legs are curled on the couch, her head is nestled in a nook.

Here, for a few moments is home.

They sit like this a lot in the shelter, the younger one leaning on the older. Ten minute here, 20 minutes there. Then it’s goodbye…

Friends is too weak a word for what they have seen together and done together.

Taz closed in on Pinky. At age 12 he was younger than Pinky but his 80-pound frame gave him a slight advantage

….

Taz saw the blood that had dripped on his pants his stomach felt warm…

The girls flailed with bookbags…

“He got me too,” 17 year-old Levi King Flores said.

Matt Bollinger pins up a blank piece of paper as tall as a person. The paper is about 5-feet high white, very wide, very blank it’s unfinished, something will come of it just as something will come of his life.