Never a Better Time

It is the time for taking stock of 2007 and making a guess at 2008. From my perspective everything in 2007 makes the change possible in 2008 all the more alluring, useful and necessary.

The economy has shown signs of recovery and the Euro changeover will be celebrated as some sort of certificate of economic strength. It is certainly a long way from the admission of deliberate deception in 2003. Thank God we joined the EU.

Had we not joined, that fatal admission of economic recklessness might never have happened until it was too late. We have been obliged by the EU Commission to provide an acceptable account of the administration of our public finances and bound to a path of economic discipline. Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech will bask in the light of success thrust upon them. So be it.

Would it not be wonderful if the EU Commission could poke its nose into everything else binding our governments hand and foot, delivering them like parcels to the next celebration of success? Unfortunately this is not possible and we remain solely responsible in very many areas where the EU Commission cannot and will not be our nanny. We are responsible for choosing a government that will act reasonably and sensibly in order to succeed

In a few days’ time we will be paying and being paid in Euros. For a while we will suffer the disorientation to which we are exposed at Christmastime when the holiday season makes it a little harder to make out which day of the week it is: a temporary need to keep our bearings a little more deliberately. A week or two into the New Year and we will behave as though we always dealt in Euros.

And then we will realize that getting into the Eurozone does not change the fundamentals. It will be very similar to joining the EU. There are benefits and significant ones for those who realize them and are in a position to take advantage of them. For the population as a whole there are advantages but they hard to perceive. There are also disadvantages and risks which must be recognized and dealt with. The Euro is not a magic wand which will take all our troubles away. We will still have to earn our living in a highly competitive world.

The New Year will be precisely like the old year, as it always is. The sun will rise and it will set, there will be rain and it will shine again. Even the general elections will come and go. The question is what will we make of it all? Just like EU membership and joining the Eurozone, it is a matter of what we will choose to do once the opportunity to choose has been secured.

The pattern is almost identical. The hype and frenzy of an election campaign preceded EU membership. With the Euro there is less controversy and less opportunity for hysterics. In all cases we are wound up for the event and distracted as to the unfolding of events afterwards. We are focused on a target and everything beyond it becomes blurred. It is extremely difficult to speak of the world beyond the target while we are about to shoot, to make the final choice.

Then, even as we fire, it dawns on us once more that hitting the target is the briefest of events in an infinite series. It is the stroke of midnight on December 31st. The party might not be over but the tension is gone. We will soon be back at work.

If the opposition had not bent over backwards to make itself an also-ran, the government would be in serious trouble. After twenty years in office, the PN could not seriously expect to win the next election if it faced anything like a reasonable alternative. It should be a foregone conclusion that Labour will win the next election but nobody has any reason to feel that way. The early months of 2008 should be a confident, almost majestic march to office for the Labour Party but nobody believes that they will be.

Nationalist spin doctors have had a hard time pumping up the fear factor. The dose of election campaign adrenaline prior to Christmas is not a sign of desperation as to the outcome but evidence of the need to gain time: to build up steam in an engine that will be hard to get going. There really is no Devil on the other side, so the spin doctors have to invent him. It does not help them at all that the Devil does everything possible to be a clown.

Still, they will persuade thousands upon thousands to vote in fear and safeguard the status quo….. from what exactly? A Labour government having run the country in the past few years would, more than likely, be stretching out to bask in the warm light of success on entry into the Eurozone if it had been bound hand and foot as ours has been. No matter who runs the country after the next election, the EU Commission and the European Central Bank will not tolerate the level of tomfoolery that were inflicted upon us by our governments prior to 2003.

If I were to choose just one achievement of the very many which Alternattiva Demokratika has secured for the Maltese through its very active, if short, political life, that would have to be EU membership. The taboo imposed by the Gonzi government on giving the Greens merit for their part in securing that epochal change certifies the efficacy of our key contribution prior to the 2003 Referendum. Our prediction has been proved right. The PN wanted to join the EU as some sort of insurance against the MLP. The MLP did not want to join because the PN wanted to. Neither of them has acclimatized to the EU environment.

The PN clocks up infringements of EU laws as though it had opposed EU membership and the MLP tries but fails to forget that it had opposed joining. Thankfully both are bond hand and foot to the mass of legislation which is a certain guarantee for citizens and endless trouble for recalcitrant politicians. The Greens in 2003 determined the future for the PN and the MLP.

In 2008 we have an opportunity to secure an even more fundamental change. This time, unlike 2003, the PN will be doing it utmost to prevent us. From here to the election the PN will scare the living daylights out of its supporters predicting cataclysm if the MLP is elected to government even though it knows full well that this is already a very remote possibility. It has already won over the MLP, what it wants to secure is victory over the Greens, over change.

Only the Greens can change Malta’s political landscape and everybody knows it. The PN leadership is challenged only by the Greens and the awesome possibility of the Greens being in parliament in a few months’ time to shake up the place for good. It is the one scenario they truly dread: for the first time in four decades they will have to do politics and not merely rule like sultans.

Beyond the target we are being invited to focus upon, lies to possibility of a completely new political landscape, something that we can all achieve in 2008 which we could not enjoy in previous years. As you draw your bow and hold your breath and squint it would add to your chances if you envision what you want to achieve. Do you really want everything to stay exactly the same as it is? Are you quite sure that the best thing to be had is a PN government free of any checks and balances, free to extend development zones illegally in a country possessed of 53,000 vacant properties?

Imagine an election result in which neither the PN nor the MLP can take over the streets in celebration after the election? Imagine no olé olé and no red flags. Imagine the settling down to form a coalition government requiring not consensus within a party but consensus between political parties, just as happens every time in almost every country in the EU. From that moment politics in Malta will change forever. It will begin to change from that very first moment. Everything that comes afterwards will be different and we will not return to winner-takes-all and governments held unaccountable thanks to the awful prospect of the alternative.

Since May 2007 I have been visiting people in their homes every day. It was a long, hot summer. The Greens did not wait for the PN spin crew to start the election fever, we opted for slow but sure. Nobody I spoke to assumed that Labour would win. Nobody. Yet another PN victory is as certain as it could possibly be at this point in time. The PN will return to power once more surprising their supporters who were made to believe that everything hung by a thread.

Never was it a better time to change the course of our history. Never was it a better time to have Greens debate in parliament to challenge and propose, to bring in a wealth of ideas attuned to the times, to take responsibility and to decide. It is time. It was never a better time.

My proposal for 2008 is for us all to take our time, to resist the pressures to focus on the stroke of midnight. It could be the worst thing we could do. The clock does not stop then. What do we want for New Year’s Day and for the days, months and years that will certainly follow? If we refuse to be rushed, panicked and stampeded, we can choose a better, calmer, more reasonable future in which ordinary citizens will have far more influence on the political class. The choice we have is between making our future and sticking to our past.

picture

Eyes Bright at Christmas Time

It was about this time some years ago when my son came home from kindergarten and announced that Father Christmas is a fraud and that God does not exist. A friend who had only just shed his own diaper had given him these certainties. My own upbringing seemed even more like a series of events in the late Neolithic.

It was not hard for my parents to have me believe in Father Christmas, the world conspired with them. Far from anybody contesting the existence of the Almighty, there seemed to be a wall to wall belief. We acquired our faith by osmosis simply by being exposed to the religious practices which permeated our daily lives long before we were formally prepared for our First Holy Communion.

We acquired religion and associated traditions just as we acquired speech. Did I even ask how Father Christmas broke into our house and delivered gifts for six children without the benefit of a chimney? Why should I? There were four angels guarding my bed every night and a guardian angel followed me around all day. All grown ups spoke about them so it did not matter much that I had never set eyes on them.

God was something like my grandmother who ruled a vast clan simply by being there. Her unspoken decrees were obeyed by the apparently infinite tiers of grown-ups towering above me. She was loved and respected by all the uncles, aunts and cousins who gathered at her house. Everybody was at pains not to incur her displeasure although I never heard her speak an angry word.

Nanna died in 1965 and it seems like a whole world died with her. Christmas was never the same after that. The vast clan had lost its focus, its five branches set apart to face the novelty of a world which combined the Cold War and the Cuban Misslie Crisis with the Vietnam War and Biafra with the mini skirt and the Beatles, the bomb, the pill and psychodelia. My guardian angel and all his mates had a hard time of it. I never asked him how he coped with Vatican Council II.

Malta went from misery to wealth. Emigration petered out as tourism picked up. Fortunes were made in the building industry and everybody waited his turn to scoop up the takings from a fabulous property deal. Politics was always a nasty business but it then turned deadly. All landmarks seemed to be gone forever. All certainties were gone.

Malta remains more Catholic than the Vatican but there is sometimes good reason to doubt whether it is even Christian any more. Christmas is good for business, indispensable for some businesses. Midnight Mass will be a standing room only affair as always with plenty of restaurants making a buck on Christmas breakfast. There are still plenty of intricate cribs to visit but can children be fascinated by a slow moving mechanical donkey when their own toys transform, squeal and pop to wireless command?

They will have to make their own way to belief or to the lack of it in a world with plenty of both. Wherever they get to, it will not be because everybody else did the same as far as the eye can see. They have something like a choice and they are brought up knowing that some do and some don’t believe. Their convictions will be their own.

One thing remains amid all the distractions: a child was born 2007 years ago and grew up to bear a message inviting us to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek. Sheep and shepherds may no longer be a part of our daily lives but the birth in a manger still calls us to something better than the fattest bank account of all.

Every year, we are reminded of our own mortality by all the ghosts of merry Christmases past. Even as we feast we realize that time is more precious than money and that the twinkle in a child’s eye is worth more than anything we could buy.

We may rant against the hypocrisy and the exploitation of Christmas if we choose, but heart of the matter remains no matter how deep it may become buried in tinsel and crackers, puddings and macaroni: there is happiness to be found in touching somebody’s heart, a reward far greater than the cost of any gift.

It is a Christian message which has been taken up by non-Christians the world over because it was always theirs also. Christians may believe that He came to remind us of the best part of our humanity, all others can experience the truth of it directly. Christmas provides an excellent annual opportunity indiscriminately. If we realize that nothing can make us happier than making others happy, we may have saved our souls even if we have come to doubt their existence. Nobody can doubt that the world becomes a slightly better place for it.

Ironically the absence of wall-to-wall Christianity allows its essence to shine brighter. Perhaps the commercial hullabaloo provides a sharper contrast to the peace promised on earth to men (and women) of good will. Christmas remains impervious to it all, pouncing out upon us when we least expect it: in “the ghastly tie so kindly meant” or in the taste of mince pies which remind us of somebody who loved us well. The more we are urged to rush about to spend and celebrate, the more poignant it is when we are reminded that we too have a heart and that we need not be ashamed of showing it.

May your hearts be touched this Christmas and may your eyes shine in reflection of the joy you bring to others.

Not A Moment To Spare

Listening to Martin Scicluna giving a Strickland Foundation lecture on climate change and how it affects Malta was both novel and deja vu'. He described Maltese politics as trench warfare: a noisy, bloody business with the combatants yards away from one another but completely lost in the fog of war, unable to see the whole picture, unable to consider anything but the immediate; prevented from leading the response to a universal challenge. It was nothing new to me. It was new to have somebody of his calibre speak so clearly.

My job as leader of the Greens in Malta is to drive a wedge in between the other two parties and to drive them into taking a look around them before they proceed with their trench warfare. All my energies are now dedicated to gathering the support of 2,500 of the 23,000 or so voters in an electoral district in order to give Malta a Green presence in Parliament and hopefully in government. It is all I can do.

Meanwhile, I must concentrate on what I have to do immediately. If the Greens are not elected to Parliament, the post-2008 eco-consciousness of the next government will be governed by the need for their financiers to make even more money: climate change panic will be used to provide them with more millions; a Sarkozian conversion to all things ecological as part of his global sales pitch of everything nuclear.

All we need are 2,500 votes in any district to begin to bring the change about. Then we can negotiate and cajole, we will be able to raise awareness and inform public policy. We can then begin to influence events to head us in the right direction and force the positive exploitation of Malta's privileged voice on an international level. It will be backed by convincing action at home.

Greens have been far ahead of mainstream politics on climate change awareness; we are still ahead of most on the post-awareness era. Having been optimists in the face of cataclysms unrecognised for decades, we are confident that we can continue to be optimists and hold on to a far more encouraging vision than those newly arrived to disaster view.

The world has just begun to react. We must envision success because failure does not bear contemplation. All our ingenuity will definitely be devoted to providing us all with an excellent quality of life to be achieved at a tiny fraction of the energy we require today, with far less consumption of materials and very little waste creation. Climate change will bring about not only political change but also profound economic, social, technological and cultural changes. The very real threat of climate change puts us on the threshold of a new era.

Silenzio

The view from the Franciscans' garden in Floriana is breathtaking. It had never been my lot to visit their little heaven before. It also came as a complete surprise at the end of a mass marking World Environment Day which I attended on invitation of the Church Environment Commission. The bishop of Gozo celebrated mass and gave a longish sermon.

I was treading a fine line I have set myself. As the leader of a political party which makes a clear distinction between religion and politics, attending masses and religious celebrations on formal invitation because of my post is always tricky. I am also a private person entitled to the wrestle with or to the surrender to God and to walk away from it if I choose. Generally speaking I avoid the religious bit simply to be there as a politician. Somehow it is much easier with faiths which are not my own. I have been to mosques, synagogues and Hindu temples, Bahai faith meetings and Buddhist events, where being a visitor is much easier. The terms of my presence are clear. In fact the hospitality offered to a stranger always creates a strong positive feeling, a definite warmth. There I represent politics, green politics and the respect it shows to all faiths and to philosophies of no faith.

As a catholic in a catholic religious celebration, the overlap with politics is uncomfortable. I do not want to be swept along, taken for granted to be one of the community or even under pressure to be seen to be so or risk coming under suspicion of being an apostate to the dominant faith. The fact that I am catholic is a complete accident as far as politics is concerned. I have no wish to secure votes on the basis of religious allegiance. I find the thought of it repulsive. Still, I feel the pull of those who are disgusted by the exploitation of religion for political purposes and of those who demand an obscene mingling of religion and politics. I know that almost nobody will understand what I am doing there: doing my job as a politician and acknowledging the immense social, cultural, political and now environmental potential of the Catholic Church in Malta.

Then again, this was special event. There have been few developments in recent years as positive and encouraging as the setting up of the Church Commission on the Environment. It is competent, prudent, precise and also courageous, above all it is authoritative. There can be no question of its enormous potential to create awareness of the environmental challenges we face to an extent we could not begin to hope for if it did not exist. The presence of the Bishop of Gozo rather than of the Archbishop is also very positive. So far the Gozo diocese does not have a Church Environment Commission of its own while Gozo faces an onslaught on the environment like never before. There is hope that the bishop of Gozo will avail himself of the services of the Maltese Commission and extend its positive influence to events in Gozo.

I definitely wanted to be there if my presence would be seen to be an encouragement to the ongoing process. It turned out that I was the only politician present and I enjoyed the experience all the more. Not least the surprise vista over the harbour with its twinkling lights. I will certainly accept the monks' invitation to return, to visit them privately, to learn more of Francis, their saint who called the sun his sister and the moon his brother, of his challenge to the nascent modern world eight centuries ago and of its relevance gaining strength with every passing day. Perhaps they will let me meditate in their garden, reached through the door marked Silenzio.

picture

Fighting Extiction

P is a boat builder. For some people it could be a job, for him it is a passion. He is driven by an ambition to restore traditional Maltese boats and to build some of the crafts which are no longer around. He is a precious piece of a puzzle I have been dying to solve.

Traditional Maltese boats are on the way to extinction. How many new ones have been built in recent years? Will fishermen replace the ones they still use or will they opt for craft less unique but cheaper or more cost-efficient? I have gone from interest to concern and then to near panic as I have been asked to champion the interests of groups of fishermen over the years.

In St Julian's the fishermen of this once traditional fishing village have come under pressure from the tourism industry. First their boathouses were taken over and transformed into restaurants then the quays became promenades and spaces for outdoor restaurants. They have become guests in their own house restricted in the times they can bring a boat ashore for maintenance or repair, hassled for leaving tackle on the quay.

It is the same everywhere from Marsaskala to Mgarr. Fishermen are poorly organised and rarely unable to withstand the combined force of restaurateurs, the local council and the police. ironically their boats are icons par excellence of everything Maltese. Enter a souvenir shop and count how many separate items showing a Luzzu or a Dghajsa you can pick out in five minutes' browsing. It is hard to believe that anything so iconic is so heavily persecuted. the latest has been the takeover of the PO Customs Shed in Pieta with no alternative offered to boat owners.

The reasoning is that other businesses make more money. Nobody stops to consider that together the fishermen and boatman keep alive a feature which is absolutely essential for the "real" businessmen to make money.

The boats may be dead already although they last for long ages individually. When people like P give up or fail to pass on the skills they safeguard, the boats will be dead even if several examples remain. Every one that is left to rot on a quay is more than just one less if no new ones can be built.

For these boats to survive an economic justification must sustain them. What is the number of new constructions per year needed to keep the craft of boat building alive? Is there a demand for such a number? If not how can demand be increased and sustained in a permanent manner? can the MTA, local councils, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and all other responsible get together and form a binding policy to sustain the traditional boats? They need more than rhetoric. if the republic of Malta claimed a right to royalties for the use of any picture containing a traditional boat even if it meant collecting a fraction of one cent per postcard, significant funds could be found. If sponsors could be found to build a large Speronara, the link between Malta and the outside world for many centuries, it could be Malta's roving ambassador in the Mediterranean. Perhaps we can persuade one of our more affluent citizens to commission the construction of one of them for use as his yacht. Perhaps others can be persuaded to use a fregatina as a tender. How about a race between traditional crafts rigged with sails? Would they not make a fine start event to the Middlesea Race and other major nautical events?

My jigsaw puzzle is still far from taking shape but meeting P has been a special boost. Now how to link him with the friends I made in Cyprus who built a classic warship, with other groups seeking to safeguard their own nautical traditions around the Mediterranean and beyond, with the Cottonera waterfront project and with the Grand Harbour regeneration idea? Do the people very slowly rebuilding a Gozo ferry in Mgarr want to play a part? How can I find the time to get this thing together? Who can help?

Having a dream is great. It is even better when you find that it is shared. Who else has a passion for sailing, for sailing history, for our traditional boats?

picture

Fado

Yesterday I enjoyed one of my privileges as Green Party leader attending on invitation the performance by Fado Singer Cristina Branca at the Manoel Theatre in Valletta. It was a magical evening of traditional Portuguese music courtesy of the Portuguese Embassy. Cristina’s passion for her craft is evident and it was not only her skill, her talent and the music that attracted the massive applause every time. She seemed to be responding to the place and the people. Had such music been heard in Pinto’s theatre? Was this an echo from a forgotten past? Did some in this audience have ancestors who were similarly enthralled centuries before? Listening carefully one can make out some words in Portuguese if Italian and French are familiar. But not a lot more. I must have missed much and yet it seemed so familiar, like the sound of a language one knows well following the cadences one hears every day. Perhaps this was part of the magic of Fado in Malta taking back its audience to a distant past which is still alive in us, a facet of our character we share with other Mediterraneans. Between the songs Cristina spoke of destiny, that she felt like it had been her destiny to perform in Malta. She spoke of the mysticism of Fado. For those who had ears it was more than that: the easy assumption of ownership of a music which should be unfamiliar, it tells of origins distant in time and which none of us may ever fully explore. Here were the voices, the hearts and minds of peoples from every shore of the Mediterranean coming together to produce something at once beautiful and awesome, clearly antique and so very much alive.

Five Days of Blessed Nothing

Once a year I sail away to Sicily with some friends. What we do there should be a great secret. We are sworn not to divulge any detail to our wives. In fact there is nothing to divulge to anyone except our growing expertise in il bel far niente.

The whole point is to get away from it all and do blessed nothing in good company for five days or so. I recommend it. Some drink, some don’t. Some wash with admirable scruple and others don’t bother. We are a tolerant crew.

For a while we are allowed to forget that we are husbands and fathers, that we have professional responsibilities: five men all over fifty leaving it all behind for a short while. On the eight hour passage out, everything is set right by the night sky: time and space regain their true meaning under an infinity of stars reflected in an endless sea. I enjoy my four hour watch: the sound of the wind in the sails and the sea rushing past.

Syracuse has become our home port away from home. We know what we want and where to find it: great restaurants and the open air market where we shop for our feast of fish and seafood. There are superb cooks among us.

On just one day we concede to tourism and have ourselves driven to some part of Sicily we have not yet visited. Nothing strenuous, no rush: a stroll here, a coffee there, sometimes a volcano, sometimes a temple, a lake or a forest. All viewed gently, with mild curiosity. If a plan has to be changed or simply goes phut, it’s never a tragedy.

In no time at all we must think of the return passage. Back to business but first the passage itself. Heeling over in bright sunshine doing a steady seven knots is nothing short of glorious. I could do that forever. The Sicilian coast disappears and then appears once more for a final farewell before the open sea.

The dolphins don’t seem to mind the loud music in the cockpit. They came to play in the bow wave this year also and turned the conversation to talk of their growing numbers and of whales in the Med. It’s not all melting icecaps.

Malta blazes its lights forty miles out to sea. I wonder what for. It seems very small indeed when one can make it out from end to end. In harbour the wind dies down, the boat sails on an even keel and the engine takes over. Five tanned and tired men disembark in various states of disarray and smugness. We’ve done it again. Back into the fray.

Politics Aborted

Most days of the week I would find it hard to imagine what it would be like for me to be a woman. Tony Mifsud writing in The Sunday Times drove me to make the attempt. More than that he drove me to imagine what it would be like to be a woman considering abortion.

It must be said, with the greatest humilty of course, but no feat of my imagination could allow me to picture the female version of me making ship-to-shore phone calls to procure an abortion in international waters in Dr Gomperts ship patrolling off the Maltese coast to keep Tony Mifsud awake nights.

How could he think anything like that out loud? Write in beside the leading article in the Sunday Times? He very well knows that abortion is far more easily available to Maltese women in Sicily and in the UK combined with the privacy required to preserve appearances and our precious double standard. Who wanting an abortion would be so indiscrete as to give Dr Gomperts such a triumph and the Tony Mifsuds the resulting hue and cry? Unbelievable.

Raphael Vassallo’s crie de coeur in Malta Today for the establishment of a liberal lobby in Malta stands back to back with Tony Mifsud. And jolly good for him. Raphael made the clarion call and I hope that many will flock to his banner. Well a few at least.

The battle is joined but not on abortion. The issue is whether or not any Maltese citizen is free to hold opinions not made sacrosanct but the present political conjuncture. In fact anyone may spout anything but at the risk of being demonised by a provincial culture aided and abetted by blackmailed political parties.

Which brings me to the soul-searching political debate within the Greens of England and Wales on whether or not to appoint a party leader. There are political parties which are not into practical politics. Both sides of the debate have respectable arguments.

But politics is not theory alone. This is not an ideal world the rules of the game are not set by those with the highest democratic credentials nor do the people who vote have the time to analyse and weigh arguments to any significant depth. Politicians are shallow and politics is a virtual world because people do not have time for anything else. The politicians are simply meeting what little demand there is.

A party without a leader simply does not have a face. It has been possible for the GPE&W to carry on without one because they have not been a practical proposition in their mad first past the post electoral system and it may be a moot point whether appointing a leader will change much unless their country achieves a better level of democracy. For Greens in jurisdictions where they can achieve decisionmaking positions the risks to sainthood involved in playing the game are simply necessary.

Lobby groups without political savvy may be great fun but may be a great big useless merry-go-round if they do not have a target and the means to hit it. Our homegrown anti-abortionists have created their campaign out of nothing and made such a storm so early on that interest has now faded. Their focus on constitutional change has become a little suspect when there is so much to do in practical terms in protecting mothers, their unborn children and their offspring from the effects of pollution and sheer ignorance. Would it not make much better sense to have a wall-to-wall campaign to prevent spina bifida than to make such a hoo haa about constitutional change which will not prevent a single abortion?

Theoretical liberals are not much better. How, in the context of Maltese politics, will it help to theorise, flatter or condemn? Can either the blues or the reds be made to suffer from any pressure brought to bear by a liberal lobby? Only the Greens for not being as liberal as the lobby would like them to be in the most ideal of worlds? Now that sounds very clever indeed.

Sometime soon an election will be held in Malta. In fact there will be thirteen separate elections. It would be a real and remarkable change if the Greens achieved representation in one or more of these elections. It is possible. It takes just 2,800 votes from the 23,000 available in each district to make it happen.

Imagine that there would be no scope for any lobby group to make the unnecessary attempt to jam up the constitution because it would be politely turned down. Imagine that liberals have someone to develop citizens’ rights far and away from the fantapoltical abortion issue. It is far easier for me than to imagine phoning Dr Gomperts.

Picture.

Journey into the Unknown

"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties". - Francis Bacon

This blog creates a space that didn't exist before where my public and private lives as well as all the people who relate to me in various ways will have a moment of exchange. This I find to be an awesome thought and I am in no way sure of what the outcome will be.

I know love, admire, envy, like and respect a huge variety of people whom I know in separate realities and truly wonder how they would relate to one another here. Add to these the people I will only meet through cyberspace and the possibilities can only be exciting.

Picture