Happy New Year?

It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is not an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment.

- Elie Wiesel

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If someone that faced what Elie Wiesel suffered through and witnessed (the epic horror of the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald) is able to live a life from which such sentiments spring then I suppose I have little to complain about.

But I must say that today's world is entrenched in a spreading insanity far different than the blatant and isolated terror of Adolf Hitler.

And with the recent suicide death of young Leelah my beliefs hinge on the hope that it is my children's generation that has the urgent duty and the spirit and resolve to change it.

It has taken me over a month to actually find a spot to jump back into blogging. So many issues, so much happening on so many levels in so many places in the world. So after some delay, here I am... *waves*

My old eMac was a workhorse for over a decade. But running a 40G computer in a terrabyte world really put me behind the social/cultural curve. I was seriously overwhelmed when I replaced the old Mac and traded over a decade of having only a dial-up modem to having the high speed capabilities of WiFi, especially when I returned to Facebook.

I mean, like, omg... I was at least several years behind. But once I did start to catch up I found that as much as things had changed... nothing had changed.

Some things that are new and are deeply disturbing to me?

- Men that shoot little girls and call themselves moral authorities.

- The degree to which law enforcement in the U.S. has gone from Sheriff Andy to any of these guys just boggles my mind.

- People believing fracking is a good idea.

- People believing that Fox News IS really news.

And I'll leave that there, bad news is in no shortage. I have discovered that there are good things happening still - people helping people, good cops still exist and, via a FB post from my son that led me to Prince Ea, the arts aren't dead. I'm one of those that believes that music is healing and that music and the arts are redemptive social movements, exposing both the glorious and inglorious to a depth that lies deep in the human psyche and capable of triggering great change.

So, dear friends, I shall leave you with this moving piece from Prince Ea.

Happy New Year!



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As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

- John Lennon

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the return... da da da dum!

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“Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.”

- Thomas Merton

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Well, gosh. I've been away from blogging because technology passed me right by. The world of course hasn't gone away, I've just had to step aside for awhile so I didn't get run over on the information highway. What does Info Hwy roadkill look like? See, the questions are just boundless!

First some shout outs:

To my classmates from San Pedro HS, class of '69, I swear I'll make it for the 50th! I'm really curious... :)

To my couchmates over at Pete Guither's Drug WarRant. If you are interested in drug policy that's the place to go. If you support drugs prohibition, we'd love to have you, be it for breakfast, lunch or dinner/supper. I've been hanging out with some of these anti-prohibition scalawags for over a decade. End the drug war, Damitol!®

And a shout out to a young woman that provided inspiration to me for months while she rented a room in my house here at the farm. Courtney Appleseed is a gorgeous and talented young woman and it was truly a pleasure to have her in my home. I had no idea that muses are real, but they are! I had one and I will forever be in her debt for her friendship and her inspiring work as a model.

My first digital camera went belly up (more than less) and I had to find me a new one. Bought a Pentax K5II. Lovin' it. As always I'll be sharing images once I hit my stride on this blogging thing.

Oh and a shout out to Kevin Sabet and Calvina Fay... NANNER NANNER! It takes a real creative loser to call an ass-whupping a victory. But Prohibition IS coming to an end, again.

I'll be having a whole lot more to say on a lot of things, so please, grab your coffee, pull up your chair and share with me in hopefully providing something of value to our world.

*cough* whew...

good golly! look at the cobwebs in here...

It's funny (not) how modern technology just zoomed right by me while I was raising two kids as a single dad. Decisions were easy, do I feed the kids, or buy a new computer?

Well Damitol!® After almost 20 years on dial-up and over a decade on an old 40GB eMac I've entered the world of the high speed wwweb! Yay for me!

So stay tuned, I will be back shortly, need to get this place aired out and swept and mopped, then I can get back to coffee and donuts.

a