Good morning, everyone... I couldn't help but sit here in the early-morning darkness feeling the impact of old memories, some of which have been mentioned earlier. This is my "quiet time" and, as such, old memories and reflection, itself, are the order of the new day.
Each day, I rise about 3:30 in the morning out of necessity, or at least that is what I tell myself and my family, because I am responsible for a number of Linux-based servers that, each morning about 4:02 AM PST, tell me via e-mail what business they have done in the previous 24 hours. If the previous day was busy and brisk, there is a lot of tedious reading of log files to do; if the previous day was slack and lackluster, I get to spend a fair amount of quiet time which I would otherwise never have, to contemplate, to write, or perhaps simply to otherwise be creative within the confines of my life. Someone just mentioned holding a meeting of like-minded spirits, and my memories immediately flashed to approximately 1989, when I first met Frank Reichert for what I had termed "A Gathering", always held at the Pancake House on West Francis here in Spokane. Those meetings continued for nearly two years, more or less once or twice a month, although in some cases we met more often. John King, Roger Erdman, Frank and various other luminaries all showed up to discuss everything under the sun, but despite the variations in political outlooks, no one ever was uncivil. In fact, speaking for myself, those discussions were some of the finest moments in my life, for I felt surrounded by friends and the vast world of ideology. I felt then, as now, that so long as I have friends such as these, despite what the government hands out of their vacuous state mandates, we will always be free men and women. In retrospect, I spent nearly $10,000 in legal fees this year to pay for the justice for Roger Erdman's family that the government denied them, thus concluding the debt. I broke every law in the book to get at the truth, and eventually lost a few good friends in the process, including a few good cops I thought were friends for life. Boy, was I misled! At least I can now slope toward the rest of my life, and can face myself in the mirror of life and say I did my very best for justice in the fact of what turned out to be very dangerous and tedious events. One of the primary reasons late in 2004 I began setting the stage for Liberty Northwest (spk.liberty_nw) to be carried back to Usenet, where it belonged always, was out of respect for those many friends, through good times and bad, who have always stood by what they believe, for if we do not have belief, regardless of what that represents to each of us, we are merely hollow empty shells, are we not? It has taken me nearly two months this year to really get things to working between The Kharma Lot, the spk.* news hierarchy and the Usenet backbone, and although I have repeatedly run into roadblocks, our connection to the world Usenet news servers seems to be working fine, at last. <wry grin> I check every day or two just to make certain it's still functional. However, not *all* news servers carry the once-vibrant spk.* news hierachy, no more than they carry the quasi-legal used_kharma hierarchy. However, those news servers who *do* carry newsgroups outside the Big 8 carry them both. Of course, you know what *this* Usenet exposure means, don't you? All of us that use our true e-mail address and righteous names get constantly bombarded by lots of those "free offers" from various unrighteous bastards from around the world. Fortunately I have a database of their IP addresses linked to a firewall, so I get hardly any SPAM, despite having been on the Internet for over a decade. I hope they enjoy the silence. 8-) The memories of years past, and particularly of this year, come to greet me in my quiet time each morning, and I reconcile who I try to be with whom I have become, and increasingly, I am comfortable with what I see. That, to me, is the test of the New Year, to see if next year at this time, I will still be able to face the mirror without compromise or discomfort, and that my friends will still be here, banging on their keyboards for all they're worth, as conscious acts of freedom in the presence of a government that neither encourages nor tolerates free-thinkers. It's been a tough year, but here's to hoping everyone else had a good year, and that God will continue to bless us all with life, humor and the ability to remain free. Dave -- Dave Laird ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) The Used Kharma Lot Web Page: http://www.kharma.net updated 11/24/2004 Usenet news server : news://news.kharma.net Fortune Random Thought For the Minute Diplomacy is about surviving until the next century. Politics is about surviving until Friday afternoon. -- Sir Humphrey Appleby _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list Libnw@immosys.com List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
