Change for the worse

I have more shortcomings than a room full of jockeys. Still, I don't make New Year's resolutions. The way I've always figured it, why dwell on defects when a person could watch college football and eat potato chips?

But if ever we could benefit from some resolve, now seems that time. Here then are some bad habits I hope to see kicked in 2009:

Quit trading secrets. If we learn nothing else from the eight long years of the Bush presidency, it ought to be that some people believe being elected entitles them to do whatever their hearts desire, and that if they don't want to tell the electorate what they're up to, they don't have to tell them.

Neither is true.

When a school board names a school, the public has a right to know all the other names the board considered. When a state passes a law allowing its citizens to gamble, the public has a right to know the identities of the people who are profiting and exactly how much they are pocketing.

If transparency and public scrutiny make you uncomfortable, join the Masons. It seems every corner of government is suffering from a bad case of abuse of power. The best remedy for that is a bright light.

Quit blowing smoke. South Dakota bartenders and waitresses risk death whenever they go to work. That's wrong.

Other states ­– even some of our neighbors – have banned smoking in bars and restaurants, and guess what?

Those states still have bars and restaurants.

South Dakotans don't like it when government butts in. It is an admirable trait. But earning a buck in this state shouldn't mean having to choose between your life and your livelihood. That, too, is wrong.

Quit wanting it all. One of the city streets I travel was redone this summer. The contractors did a wonderful job. It is like driving on ice cream.

Before it was repaved, though, the road wasn't that bad. It was no place to be drinking a full cup of coffee. But it didn't knock your fillings loose.

Life is no Norman Rockwell painting. Everything cannot be perfect. Sometimes a person has to make do.

The next time it snows a couple of inches and the city chooses not to plow, instead of throwing a fit, maybe we should thank them for saving money.

Quit mistaking change for progress. It is possible to ruin a good thing. It happens all the time.

The North Central Conference was the best – or at least one of the best – Division II sports conferences in the nation. Today, the conference no longer exists because some people couldn't control their egos.

Sanford Health and Avera McKennan can knock down all the old neighborhoods and in their places put up all the sparkling medical buildings they want. But if no one can afford what goes on in these buildings, what's the point?

I still listen to the Beach Boys, still carry the shotgun I always have, still live in the town in which I was born.

Change comes hard for me. That is no benefit necessarily. In a Facebook world there is not much need for postcards.

But not all change is for the better.

The trick in 2009 – and in the years to come – is to know the good from the bad.