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A word of introduction.... You will notice the Southern California perspective at this site. But it was not always so. I have New York roots. Just before the ‘50s began I was born in Western New York (so far upstate it is nearly the Midwest), a land of humid lush green summers and horrid winters the severity of which my mother did not take into consideration when measuring the amount of time a child ought to spend out of doors. Autumn in that part of the country is exquisitely beautiful, the stuff of frequent and sweet contemplation for a man over half a century old. I confess my mother was wise in pushing us out the door, and I did like being out in the wilds, even in winter. Now I am an inside person, I suppose. Bring me some storms here in Los Angeles, make all the leaves color and drop, make them fly in swirling gusts and smell that good, bring me snow over my head and bury my car with it -- then we will talk. My fundamental belief system formed before the age of fourteen. It was always about one thing -- the glory of thinking and acting as a sole agent, to make one’s own way, to achieve, to be free to take in life and breathe out even more. As such, my enemy has always been compulsion. It is not hard to understand how this view found its champion in the American Revolution; it's practically a literal translation. I am to the right of Jefferson and not even a Deist, but rather fully atheistic. Later I discovered that many voices shared this paradigm. And certainly it was unavoidable that I would find numerous others that hate it. Thus, my battles. I have no advanced degree, nor a university diploma of any kind. By the time I was twenty I had begun a street education in entrepreneurship. I have been the owner of a manufacturing enterprise, a consultant and worker in the fine food industry, a computer database systems designer in aerospace and nearer the present an Internet site designer. In my spare time I am a father. That is, it takes all the spare time away! This is a private adventure, but the reader must always be aware that the deep emotions and insights into life thrown off by it are in between the lines of everything I say and do. I welcome you to this public posting of writing I have done in the last few years that bespeaks my glorious support for many things and a rather unalloyed vitriol, I admit, against all that I hold dangerous for our Nation and for Mankind. John Donohue, |