Due warning - this is personal. And yet it is appropriate for me to offer here for several reasons.
First and foremost we are a community whose members share many things besides our activism and commitment to electoral politics and social and moral issues.
Second, I have been a highly visible member of this community for a number of years. I am finding that how I participate is changing, and I feel obligated to explain that to this community which has supported and encouraged me in what I have written here, now over a period exceeding a decade.
Third, how I understand and perceive now is what actually fuels my political activities of all sorts - and for me the nature of politics is very broad.
If you are not interested, perhaps viewing me as being self-indulgent or self-obsessed, no reason for you to continue reading, although of course you are still free to do so and to post the appropriately critical or dismissive comments.
Perhaps this will speak to few, perhaps to none, perhaps to more than I can anticipate.
It is what it is.
So if interested, please follow below the fold.
There have been many things in the past few years that have perhaps finally come to a crucial and cumulative point, perhaps very late in life (I am now 68) but not too late to make a difference.
For reference - I tried retiring from teaching in June 2012. That left me very much at loose ends as I explored other options to occupy my energy. It also however briefly jeopardized the most important thing in my life, my relationship with Leaves on the Current. We had started to work through that, I had returned to teaching in a challenging environment, when we found out about her cancer. That first night of January 27, 2013 was the longest night of both of our What is important and how it has changed: