When we take the near view, sometimes it seems like not much is going on.
Our steps seem ordinary and our journey seems unremarkable. In our haste to move forward, we forget our accomplishments.
This special review, "Decoding the Decade" is here to remind you.
This two-sided city and the extended region have done amazing things this decade and there are still a few months remaining.
The 2010s have been a busy time around here.
We've torn down old roads, replaced them with new and better ones, added new ones.
We've built schools with style like they were going out of style.
Community effort saved our oldest college and expanded the most aggressively growing one. A college campus muscled in and joined our ranks.
We have seen our Northeast Texas woodlands consumed by deadly fire and done much to protect the region's water rights.
Both efforts took local leadership and coordinated action by citizens.
We've expanded alcohol sales in the city and the region and will soon have medical marijuana dispensaries in our midst.
We've added new businesses, places to eat, a splash pad and water park.
Can anyone say "capital improvements"? Can anyone say say "$2 billion power plant"?
Can anyone remember life before they built the Texas turnarounds on the access roads, or the towering Interstate 30 traffic exchange that has yet to get a cute name like Texarkana Twister?
Aluminum made a comeback and breathed new life into a Nash plant; Ashdown's paper mill spent multi-millions converting to fluff pulp to meet market demands; Cooper rolled out another milestone tire; and neighborhood markets just kept popping up like Jonquils in the spring and red Tiger Lilies in the fall.
All these things are touched in these pages, and more.
Far too much was accomplished to fit in this section. Certainly things of importance were left out. Pages are finite, progress isn't.
But if you want to trip through the highlights of the past nine and a half years around here, this is your place to be.
We suspect you will be pleasantly surprised by what you find.