Awakening Jan. 1, 2010, I gave thanks that the difficult 2009 was really over. As one of the herd, I had dutifully welcomed the New Year in at the stroke of midnight, but even as the ball dropped in New York’s Times Square, it seemed like a dream. Or, more accurately, like a nightmare.It was if 2009 were a railroad train; though the little red caboose had passed by, I could still see the lanterns swaying to and fro as the old year slowly receded into oblivion.There have been rough years before — 1963 was rough, the year John F. Kennedy was assassinated; 1968 was rough, the Tet Offensive in