It makes us not take things for granted, though I wish as I write this at the end of January, 2006, we were not facing the endless drain of treasure, resource, and lives in a "war of choice", the continued assault on the environment and the natural world that gave birth to us all.

There is so much more for us to explore, to see, to feel, to experience as a people and as the world, but we in the United States are dealing with one of the most skillful regimes in terms of the attainment and enhancement of power, wielding in their power the combined weapons of fear and (in the periphery), of hate, in the unmentioned but actual agenda of just plain old greed.

For me, I am even more at unease in how many of these people I have broken bread with, despite throughout my entire adulthood trying to change it as best as I could from within.

I will say, Perfect Pitch, all is far from lost, and keep on smiling, even when it hurts sometimes. As for myself, I am far from finished.

Re: women's rights. Is it any wonder our favorite red-headed friend has more or less gotten the shaft from those who hold her as trademark?

Off my soapbox. As a one-time aide to a Republican politician and a once very active Republican activist, I now have the same attitude and relationship for most Republican politicos right now as Abe Lincoln's quartermaster general during the Civil War--Montgomery Meigs did against the South--and he was a Southern gentleman from Georgia who in the end held in great contempt anything southern. And in my case, I will say again, familiarity breeds contempt.

Sorry, I'll write something nicer next time, my fellow JGMB'ers.

Caveman

I'm in love with the little red-headed girl!