Hi

Jonathan invited me to blog here at Dead Horse. He's commented a few times at my blog, South of Heaven (which doesn't have anything to do with the movie or the song; I stole it from the title of a Jim Thompson novel), so I guess he's found some of my observations interesting enough to post here.

Briefly, I'm in my late fifties, I live in a town along the coast of Northern California a couple of towns south of San Francisco. I've been in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1974, but I grew up on the Jersey Shore. I'm retired from a career at the Post Office now because of a number of circumstances (an on-the-job injury/condition, being covered under the old federal pension system which allows you to retire at 55...). I've been involved most of my postal career with my union either as a shop steward or a branch officer. I take the expression "Honor Labor" seriously. I was in the army way back during the Vietnam War because of circumstances (I was #1 in Nixon's draft lottery) where I eventually was an instructor in the military's race relations program (someone in command realized it wasn't good that soldiers were fighting with each other when they were supposed to fight the Vietcong).

I've always been pretty liberal, maybe really, really liberal, but not necessarily knee-jerk liberal. Every idea should be examined to see if it's any good. Still, my idea of justice falls along that border between an individual's rights and what's good for society as a whole. Profits don't enter into it.

I'm not sure how often I'm supposed to blog here. I've got a pretty steady output over at South of Heaven and may end up cross-posting or at least rewriting things from time to time. I spend chunks of my time hiking or trying to make music when I'm not on the internet. And I try to read books here and there, although my eyes get worse every year. We shall see.

So hello.