Every year we try to decide if we're going to publish the Pictures of The Year or the Year in Pictures — the best of what we've done or the best representation of what was. When we get lucky, these amount to the same thing. This year, we got lucky.

Not that things were, or are, simple. The stock market goes up. The stock market goes down. Unemployment goes down, but not enough. Europe can't seem to dig itself out of debt. Congress can't seem to dig itself out of anything. The business of the business of our country seems stuck.

What once seemed natural, like graduating and getting a job and starting adult life, has become an ever-more-complicated series of challenges and choices.

All eras end. And what seems easier in the glow of memory may have been harder than it looked. After all, the "Father Knows Best" fantasies of the 1950s were already nostalgia when they arrived.

And yet.

Even though the community feels frayed around the edges in these hard times. Even though we're drowning in a sea of change with information bombarding us and little time to discern its meaning. Even though our sense of well-being seems to be sitting on shaky ground.

Lost daughters come home when they can. Little boys still love dinosaurs. Heroes emerge. People play, pray, celebrate family and nature. They get born, get sick. They help each other when they can.

Life rolls on.

— The editors