I started this website five years ago with the intent that it would be all things me: my art, opinions, feelings and life in general.  I think I’ve done a good job translating those things to HTML over the years.

It’s funny how five years can feel both like such a long period of time and also feel like it was only yesterday.  In those five years my life has changed more than it ever has before.  I got my A.A. (finally), lost my Grandmother to cancer, transferred to a new school and started a new job.  Nevertheless, change is good.  This is a big departure for me because in the past I hated change.  Not only hated it but really feared it.

The biggest lesson I can take from this five year period is the lesson my Grandmother taught me best... life is short.  I remember how she would say that if she had the money she would eat at a restaurant everyday.  She enjoyed life and never let fear get in her way.  In the year since her passing I’ve tried to be more like her.  I don’t believe she feared death towards the end, but rather faced it like she faced everything in her life, with faith.  I see so many people that broadcast their faith, but when push comes to shove that faith flies out the window in favor of superstition.

My faith has changed to one that I feel passionate about from one that I only paid lip service to.  I understand now that true faith can never be tested.  I saw that kind of adamantine faith in my Grandmother, and it is something I strive for with my faith.  I believe I am there because the tests on my faith have come and they have not wavered one bit.  The tests have been like a speck of dust, and have created as much of an impact.

Five years seems like such a long time while still being relatively recent.  Our lexicon didn't have the term "9/11" or "War on Terror" when I started this page.  Now it's strange to think of a world without those terms, coined in the period after the horrible attack on the World Trade Center.  Next month will be the fifth anniversary of those attacks and the subsequent state of terror we have mired ourselves into.  In that time this country has changed, but often not for the better.  We have become a scared bunch of myopic people, scrambling to find our center while being afraid of our shadows, while not fearing the real terror.

The real terror is fear.  Franklin Roosevelt said it best, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."  Sixty years after he spoke those words and galvanized a country into action and bravery history has placed a man that knows nothing of these things into office.  Instead of galvanizing a country he has created an atmosphere of fear within all of us.  This president and his administration has used this fear to their advantage at every turn.  Anyone that questions their actions is automatically labeled as sympathetic to those who would revel in our destruction.  Anyone that speaks up and wishes to exercise their right to speak is chastised as being trader to the “greater good.”

What we are being feed by this administration are lies.  It is hard to find anything that this president has not lied about.  He cares for the environment, yet he rejects the notion that the Earth is slowly dying.  He speaks of leaving no child behind, yet he does not fully fund the program he so highly touted.  He was absent during one of the worst natural disasters to have ever befallen this country.

The list goes on and on, but has anyone been able to challenge him?  The answer is no.  Because people are sheep, and believe that there is good in the man’s actions because he is supposedly religious.  But it is ironic that he refuses to fund stem cell research on the basis that it is morally wrong to kill a human being.  All the while hundreds of our solders die in an illegal war in Iraq; while thousands of Iraqi civilians also die.  It would seem that if killing is a moral absolute that it would not be tolerated in any form.  Yet it would seem that this president does not deal in absolutes, except absolute lies.  The ends justify the means in every case with this administration.