Each year at the end of March, we offer our annual Progress sections, included in today’s paper. The sections take our community’s temperature along six separate topics — Education and Government, Health and Safety, Business and Industry, Sports and Leisure, Arts and Community and Poultry — over the last calendar year. In recent years, our Progress sections have included a combination of good news and bad, with hopes the economic downturn that began in late 2008 would give way to better days.