Good news everyone!

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
Sinclair Lewis

Unfortunately, the above quote is coming truer and truer as the days go by. The truly sad aspect of this is that people seem unaware and unconcerned that the principles that have made this country great have been severely eroded and we may not ever get them back.

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin

I consider myself religious and conservative, but I do NOT believe either of those things give me any right to force others into my view points. My brother has a sign on the back of his truck, which says "Keep Church and State Separate" and it is something I wholeheartedly agree with. The religious right is far scarier to me than the extremists on the liberal side.

Here are some links I found particularly informative recently, first on where the presidential candidates stand on a number of issues, then an overview of the subprime/investment debacle that will get worse before it gets better.

Link #1

Link #2

While this outlook on the world may seem grim, I do hold tight to my belief that God does have an ultimate plan for the universe and IT IS GOOD. And with that, I'll leave you with two of last weeks panels from "Garfield Without Garfield":

Keeping my head above water

Our house looks like a bomb (more like several bombs) went off inside. The necessary task of sorting through all my dad's paperwork, accumulated through 67 tremendously productive and efficient years, has provided us with the impetus to clean house in more ways than one. It is a very bittersweet undertaking: I keep finding 'gems', cards from people telling him how much they appreciated him/things we had given to him as little kids that he kept/letters to my mom, and also mountains of data from his 35 years with Bechtel, that only he would even have any interest in. So the vast majority is going away and it is somewhat hard to make the distinction between throwing out his old things and throwing away his memory. It feels so illogical to even write that, but I keep catching myself with that in mind. With my brother's upcoming wedding added to the mix, it is a wonder we are not more frazzled. Surprisingly, things are moving along quite well.

I have moved half of my things to my new room, which will be easier to close off while on my extended travels and also affords my brother's soon-to-be-new family the entire lower level of the house. We are also moving forward with some much needed repair work to the exterior of the house - long overdue painting and stucco repair.

I took some time to do a few other things this weekend. I was asked to do some projections/visuals for a benefit for the St. Helena Teen Center. There were five bands (mostly/all? local) playing at the Tucker Farm center, including Tear It Down, Sam Vega, and 33. I haven't done visuals in a while and it was fun. I enjoyed the music, although it was getting too loud for me by the time TID was finishing. Our location for projecting was great and the screen well positioned. I appreciated the positive comments I had while running stuff like Appleseed/Rivers&Tides/The Great Dictator/skating videos/Fragile Machine/others. Sunday I ran a load of recyclable paper to CloverFlat, listened to the final Giants game of the year (and Lincecum's bid for the Cy Young for which he has to be a strong contender and I hope he wins), picked up the pottery I bought last weekend at Nikki and Will's OPEN STUDIO (I'll post pictures), and hung out with good people at an Oktoberfest celebration in St. Helena. The weather was perfect to be sitting around outside and it was fun to spend time with new acquaintances/former and current coworkers/bocce teammates. I will miss many of those people when I'm on my trip.

And, just because I like unusual things, here is a picture of the woman with the longest legs and the shortest man from the Guinness people....

You will buy a seat, BUT YOU WILL ONLY USE THE EDGE! I like the sound of that phrase, but unfortunately this is not the post that it really applies to. For the people that had been checking this blog, most of you know why I stopped. I've missed it and will begin again here shortly. For those that don't know, my father died. It was not expected and has taken some time to deal with (obviously, I'm not done dealing with it, but there were more important things than posting here). The only constant in life is change, so we have to learn to deal with things as they come. More soon.....