First Post

Korea inaugurated a new president on the same day I inaugurated this blog. Both milestones had been anticipated for a considerable time; both were accompanied by the best of intentions, although the president is considerably more highly motivated than I am, and expectations of him are (mercifully) greater. I wish him the best of luck, because we have a lot in common despite very different purposes and challenges. Mainly, we both hope that most of those we influence will benefit in ways both tangible and abstract; I won’t be able, most likely, to remove people from positions of public office which give them the power to screw up other people’s lives, much as I would like to be able to help everyone out in that way. If I’m careful, only the lives of people who deserve it will be screwed up by anything I say here.

All my words will be well intended; I don’t fear the road to Hell. Support for strong, healthy interpersonal relationships between creative, intelligent persons of good conscience and character, like ties in the happiest of families, are the goal of of this weblog. When I was young, it seemed many older people were clueless. That was then. Now it often seems that many of the young are also mostly clueless. It could be, then, that just about everyone is essentially clueless, and only those of us who accept it as a fact have a chance of reaching clue one.

I belong to a big family. Our matriarch is Mitochondrial Eve, we imagine, and we wish she had been given a less biblical, and consequently misleading name. Some of our DNA in this family is a very close match with others, sibling close. Others of us would have to look back a thousand generations for the so-called “blood tie”. To those, we turn in our search for potential mates. Our wives and husbands are also our sisters and brothers, but we don’t dwell on the implications of that, lest traditional taboos come into play.

So the blog will consist of stories told in terms of the ways they play out in the lives of family members, mine and the readers’. I know sentences like the last one make it seem like I’ve already confused the line I drew earlier around both groups in order to present them as one. I’m counting on intelligent readers’ ability to sort out the differences whenever they explore these thoughts. I invite the same readers to share their own thoughts on the subject. I hope it will all be civil, but I’ve spent enough time online to know it probably won’t. I guess the rule will be, “Criticize anything you want, but don’t insult anyone unless you’re positive they deserve it. Wreak on!