The End

A year ago I started writing this blog. It took me places I never would've predicted. It introduced to me people I'll never forget, and will always treasure. Now it's at an end. I haven't run out of stories to write, or opinions to express. I'm tired. Not bored-- tired. I'm moving on to something else. Maybe it will be another blog, maybe not.

I didn't start this project with a specific theme in mind. I'm a writer, and I wanted to write, and since I had no editor or publisher looking over my shoulder, I was free to write about whatever or whomever... I chose my subjects; they weren't chosen for me.

If there's a theme that ties all these posts together it's this: all the people I've written about are off the beaten path. "Eccentric" they might be called, as someone in a homeless shelter said-- "if they were rich." But since they're all poor and/or working class, they get other labels: rebels, misfits, bums, mentally ill...

Someday, in a more enlightened future, the people I wrote about here--the homeless, the street artists, the disabled, the impassioned activists, the cutting edge health care visionaries--will be regarded in a more favorable way, with compassion and empathy, instead of ridicule and dismissal. Someday, these times we're living in will be looked back upon as a time of darkness and ignorance, when children lived in poverty, squalor, and violence, and former soldiers returned "home" to homelessness and medical neglect, and people died because they couldn't afford decent medical care, and the government we elected to govern democratically instead beat us over the head with their exclusive (as opposed to inclusive) religious beliefs, and sold our country and our countrymen out to corporate interests.

For those who read this blog, and liked it, I'm glad you enjoyed. For those who didn't, well-- why didn't you speak up?

Peace Out.