I'm moved to start a new blog. I'm not sure what I'm going to call this one: Ace of Swords? Straight From the Shoulder? The Adventures of Razor Mouth? The Crone's Revenge?

I'm a Compulsive Expressor. I'll be 60 in another 2 months and I don't feel like pulling my punches any more. In truth, I have a sunny disposition. But I also have many hot coals in my mouth which I must spit out. I tend to express along the entire spectrum of my experience and in an impassioned way. This blog's subject matter will range from the soup I just cooked, to my views on the Iraq War, to the most esoteric contemplations about spirituality, to my adventures in gardening, to the books I'm reading, and the news from the National Enquirer. The only thing I require of a blog is the right to fully articulate whatever I feel.

I lead a modest lifestyle in which there many pleasures and not much stress. At this time in my life, I don't have much to be unhappy about and I'm very skilled at self-gratification. That doesn't mean I haven't experienced deprivation, loss, insanity, physical and emotional pain, humiliation, fear, anxiety, abuse, health crises, near death experiences, and painful social dilemmas . . .in other words, the normal range of human sorrows. But at 60, I'm pretty much at peace with my Self, having removed just about every source of externally imposed misery from my life except for the handicaps of aging. I am, however, expecting the skies to rain fire into my paradise at any moment.

I'm a social recluse who works at home doing things I love to do. I have my beloved dogs, I have the paradise of the Pacific Northwest and live in a very pleasant neighborhood. I recently moved into the first home I've ever owned and I'm having a ball playing house with my husband, Robert, who is the King of All Men. I was blessed with a great education and loved every minute of it. I have an unlimited supply of fabulous reading. I earn a living by making pretty things to sell. I take ecstatic pleasure in very simple things, so delight is always close at hand. Tralala, skipping merrily down the lane. I don't get depressed about much in my personal life. But I do feel despair over many things that are happening to other men, women, and children. Or to animals. The primary causes of unhappiness for me is inhumane behavior, violence, murder, deceit, torture, rape, abuse of authority, injustice, misuse of resources, disrespect for the natural world, and . . . the intentional ignorance and emotional dissociation which is among the primary causes of all this. Naturally, I don't exclude myself from this ethical stance.

I am particularly bummed out about the possibility that humans may eradicate themselves and everything around them in this century due to thoughtless stupidity. I think it's a real possibility and I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't worried about it. That's what comes with the Baby Boomer territory for many of us who grew up in the atomic Cold War era. So I tend to think a lot about how we could stop fucking ourselves and the world along with us. I like to identify the culprits of stupidity and intentional ignorance (within myself and anywhere else I find it) and verbally beat them over the head. If you read my blog, you will find, mixed in with The Fabulous Life of Dana, the spewing of disdain and grinding of idiots under my rhetorical boot. But how meanspirited can that be? After all, I'm not bombing or incinerating anybody like some people I will mention. The key thing here is that I intend to write what I think and feel and if you don't like what I write here, don't read it. Or just skip to the pleasantries, of which there will be many. Isn't that perfect?

I might add a comment box here. I may add a forum. But what I like about blogs is that they are unilateral communications, not debates. The first 60 years of my life was for argumentation. I think I'll grant myself another 60 years of just having my say.