You don’t have to drive far around the area to know that our streets, road ways and highways could use some serious attention.
 Every spring we lament the sad conditions of our roads as they shed their icy coatings of snow, ice, salt and sand, cracking in many places from the thawing of the frost underneath.
 If there is any joy to this annual tradition, it is knowing that ensuing potholes will be small enough not to engorge the entire car, hopefully.
 You also don’t have to speculate very long to known that your stretch of road probably won’t be on any municipality’s priority list.

Working at a newspaper, we tend to be appropriately interested in, well, words. So it’s always a treat when Lake Superior State University comes out with its annual list of banished words for 2012; words or phrases that are overused, abused or just plain silly or meaningless.
 I’m still wrestling with “iconic,” which was on the list in 2009. It still hasn’t been effectively banished, as it still burdens people, places and things as a misused, overused adjective.

 It’s always sad to see a good friendship end. Especially when the end comes for no good reason at all.
 Regardless, it appears Iron County cable TV viewers will have to move on without WLUK, Channel 11 from Green Bay, a Fox Network affiliate. As 2012, WLUK will go off the air for many cable systems. And the people at the cable companies are just as upset as you are.
 WLUK is owned by LIN Media, based in Providence, R.I. LIN operates 32 TV stations in 17 markets. Maybe we better explain what a “TV market” is.
 Technically, it’s a DMA—designated market area. The entire U.S. is split up into DMAs. Iron County is part of the Marquette DMA, as is most of the western and central U.P., except Gogebic County (Duluth DMA) and Menominee County (Green Bay DMA). Florence County, Wis., is part of the Marquette DMA, too. There is a Fox Network affiliate in the Marquette DMA—Fox UP.

And I guess we could add, good riddance!
 As 2011 ebbs into its final days, we would like to write a few lines about what the past year has brought to many of us both in this nation and in this county, but more talk about the past will only conjure up more painful memories of a year that could have been and ended up another “wasn’t even close.”
 So, let’s write a few lines about the hope for 2012 and the bright future we can all look forward to.

Late last week, I wandered into our composition room, where our ad comp supervisor was working on some Christmas ads.
 “Thank goodness for holly,” she said. Holly? We don’t have anyone working here named Holly.
 Holly, she said. It makes such a handy clip-art element on an ad. It’s small, fits in nicely into corners with its neat, triangular shape, and provides a modest, but important accent to the final advertisement.

 A wistfulness pervades the air this time of year. The old year is nearly over, and we inevitably look back. We do a lot of thinking about what has happened in the last 12 months, both the happy memories and the sad ones.
 Some people we know spend their lives gazing at the rear-view mirror of their memory. We have always preferred the view out the windshield—after all, how are you going to get anywhere if you’re not looking forward?

This week marks the 70th anniversary of the “day of infamy,” the bombing of Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941, marking this country’s entry into World War II.
 Shortly after signing the declaration of war against Japan (Dec. 8, 1941), President Roosevelt signed the declaration of war on Germany and Italy on Dec. 11, 1941, entering this country in a two-front war with theaters of operations in both Europe and the Pacific.

With all the “Cyber Monday” and beyond deals out there, the next few weeks promises a flurry of Internet activity, in all likelihood, unsurpassed in recent history.
 The hype is also unprecedented. Commercials depicting cyber-consumers with “hand cramps,” virtual tours of all your favorite big box stores and a demand to know “what’s in your wallet” as you key in your credit card number and expiration date assure online shoppers with unlimited choices and high pressure offers.

 We have been hearing a lot lately about “Small Business Saturday” this weekend, Nov. 26. We are being asked to “Shop Small” on this day.
 Small Business Saturday follows by one day the national shopping mania that has become known as Black Friday—when the ***-marts and the big box stores and other national retailers hope to sell plenty of pricy items so their finances will end up “in the black” in a persistently pessimistic economy.

Welcome winter… although it’s still officially autumn on the calendar.
 Of course, anyone who’s lived in the U.P. for any length of time knows that winter can show its face any time of the year, and sometimes has done so… remember those cold, parka-wearing Fourth of July fireworks we watched from inside parked cars?
 Early winter weather is hardly a surprise in this neck of the woods, and I’m sure that every hunter, skier, snowmobiler, ice fisherman and other outdoor enthusiasts gave one big “Hurrah!” when old man winter dumped several inches of snow on us last week.