I looked at my statistics this morning:
Terry
Joined 11 years ago
________________
I look back on the topics I started and posts I made and see a life journey, like an errant roadmap leading from smart-ass to Senior knucklehead.
It has been quite a trip!
I miss the wonderful people who passed through these gates who watered at our oasis and went on their way. Great characters no author of fiction would dream of creating, one and all.
More and more folks arrive each month like refugees from a tyrannical overlord purging a fiefdom of dissent.
It is good to keep in mind, these new people are collateral damage in a kind of silent warfare. Newbies are stunned, wounded, angry and bewildered.
They have, what is to the rest of us, the SAME OLD questions, POV's and complaints we here have already hacked our way through with steel-sharp machetes of inquiry and debate. But for them, it is square one.
I just wanted to say on this topic, I think a lot of healing can be done in this place.
I was an angry, chip-on-my-shoulder antagonist when I arrived full of piss and vinegar and very full of myself.
I've been softened into more of a normal human being because of the wonderful patience and love found here.
People come and they go. This is as it should be. But, for those of us who have remained after a decade, we've found something greater than virtual fellowship and social conviviality.
There is something more. . .
the cream rises to the top.
