Just posted this on the Big Bad Blog, but I actually think my audience here is larger, at this point, than there. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That some are so impoverished they believe that what once existed here was not ever a community, I feel sad beyond sad. How small and boring their lives must be. How sparse and barren. How small and bland their minds.

This blog used to be a place to meet friends, to chat, to discuss action, inform, find information from everything from computer glitches to chairing a meeting. From dealing with discouragement to new sources for flyers. To exclaim over successes and weep over failures.

The action that has turned into DeanFest was created on this blog during the long hours of waiting for DFA to come into existence. The community that IS this blog was created because Howard, at least, recognized something, SOMETHING, phenomenal had happened. Something that had never happened anywhere else on earth before, and he declined to walk away from it.

Alas, the people who know about computers are gone. The people who make flyers are mostly gone. The activists are slowly turning to other venues.

My world has expanded enormously through associations created on this blog. There are people that I love in LA, SF, Seattle, Oregon, Utah, Arizona, Chicago, Michigan, NH, Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, Vermont, New York, Connecticut,*Louisiana, all of whom I met first here. Some I've hugged, some I've sung with, some I've eaten and drunk with. Some I've "merely" exchanged email with.

How large your community is, and how you create it, is up to you. To be unable to do so begs, indeed sobs, for compassion. That this venue is dying, indeed is being murdered, grieves me deeply. It's sad for us, and for Howard Dean, whose legacy it is. Was.