A new year: Surely it won't be as bad as the one just past — will it? In King Lear and other classic tragedies, merely expressing of hope that the worst is over sets the stage for still more terrible tidings — so let us tiptoe into 2009 ...

Lost jobs litter the trail through 2008 like so many precious belongings abandoned by the pioneer trains of the 19th Century. But the work companions lost to so many of us around the country are people, not goods; they're missed, and we wish them well in difficult times.

Lost fortunes. Lost savings. Lost homes. Loved ones lost to war, to terrorism. If any of us think the past year was a good one, it's because we count our blessings where we find them and as we define them.

And there's where hope, cautiously voiced, comes with the midnight cheers and the dawn of today: Humanity is nothing if not humane — and we're tough, too; sometimes smart to boot. Miserable as many of us and our friends and relatives may be, our country has known worse times — and for people in so much of the world, things are always more difficult: survival, for starters.

They endure. So will we. So might our planet, fresh from its 600-million-mile trip around the sun with its ever-more-pressing burden of homo sapiens.

With the promising political change in store for America might come new directions for our vast and deep talent, our sometimes-dormant energy.

Might there be a whole new economy in the kind of energy that doesn't pollute our planet in the way that's happening now with outdated technology? When folks who've made their fortunes in carbon-burning begin promoting wind farms, there's reason for hope that that once-fanciful notion, as well as that of solar power, can become a reality as commonplace as the coal-fired steam generators now smoking up the Four Corners.

And from the wizards of our national laboratories, with their new leadership in Washington, what wonders might emerge to lighten humankind's footprint on this small ball shared by 7 billion of us?

Those who've despaired of the world's mightiest nation getting its priorities straight, as well as those hearty souls who've never given up on reform — environmental, economic, ethical — are holding their — our? — collective breath in anticipation of new leadership only a few days away. But as our president-elect made clear in his victory speech, he'll need help remaking this nation, "the only way it's been done in America for 221 years — block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand." His ideological model urged his fellow Americans nearly half a century ago, "Ask not not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country." Today our country's leaders will be asked to do plenty for us — but we're partners in the effort it will take to pull America and much of the world out of today's deep hole.

Can we do it? As Barack Obama so simply and resoundingly put it on election night: "Yes, we can."