Just start a blog

Today I received an e-mail from someone (don't remember--they might have scooped my e-mail address from another FWD list) which extolled the wonders and benefits of their workshop--and I'd only have to spend a few hundred dollars and leave the country! I was told I could. . .

+ Believe in your creativity
+ Stimulate your perceptive abilities
+ Find inspiration in the world around you
+ Get over creative blocks and the fear of failure
+ Engage your curiosity
+ Recognize and use your creative instincts
+ Give yourself the time, permission, and nourishment to do creative work
+ Develop a daily practice to accomplish these goals
+ Work collaboratively
+ Use your memories to engage the imagination

I can do all that for free by blogging. I post my memories, my poetry, my paintings; I comment on my volunteer activities and promote programming that I admire; I research the topics pretty carefully--after all that was my profession--information; I pull a lot of material off my own bookshelves or go to the library when I don't trust what I find in pixel dust; I leave a lot of material in "draft" until it has time to settle and percolate a bit.

And still. And yet. There are people--friends, family and total hit-and-run strangers who come in anonymity--who disagree with me. And that's fine. This is my diary (web log), and I'll write from my own perspective. Just like the paid reporters from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal that these same critics are willing to pay for. They will praise me for my memory or humor pieces, and then turn around and chastise me for caring that my country, under a new president who is trashing our former leaders and our history, destroying our economy, and high fiving and bowing to communist and despot leaders abroad, is going to hell in a handbasket of their making.

Hypocrisy and short sightedness are not in short supply. Common sense and knowledge of history are.