10 years of the good, the bad and the ...

• Position: NEWS

Byline: Lisa Eckelbecker

We thought we had it made, didn't we?

We held our collective breath on New Year's Eve 1999, anxious about whether our computerized world would unravel as digital clocks advanced to 2000, and when nothing happened, well, we thought we had it made.

Then came payback.

Ten years of terror and war, two recessions and one pandemic. Time magazine has already labeled the years 2000-2009 the "Decade from Hell." Looking back, we probably should have sensed trouble when people couldn't even agree on what to call these years. The aughts? The 2000s? The ohs?

In Central Massachusetts, we grieved with those who lost loved ones on 9-11 and bid a worried farewell to our friends and relatives as they deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. We watched the value of our stocks plunge in 2000 and 2008.

It wasn't all bad, of course. We cheered as loud as any fans when the Red Sox finally reversed the "curse of the Bambino" with a World Series championship in 2004. When the long-shuttered Loew's Poli Palace in downtown Worcester reopened in 2008 to show off a glittering renovation, we dressed up and went to a show. Auburn's Paul Giorgio successfully scaled the world's tallest peak four times, and a...