unstoppable

For some reason I see my newspaper job as the BARRIER that keeps me from voicing my opinions publicly and LOUDLY. Ironic that the media silences me like a blanket. Expect letters to the editor, from a distance, about the coal ash spill...why doesn't my paper ask for outside opinions on the spill? This is HUGE.

This excitement and enthusiasm is my essence; it is time for me to exert it, effectively and with force, where ever I go.

THAT IS MY DRIVE. That is who I am.

And now, a word from Simone de Beauvoir's "America Day by Day:"

"...I notice that all the intellectuals I know talk in an animated way and discuss things passionately whenever they're given the chance. American muteness is certainly not an innate choice, but the result of numerous complexes: it is reinforced in everyone by the silence of all the others. Many people are happy when they can escape from it, and then they willingly let themselves go. Another observation seems important: L.W.'s satiric truculence is exceptional, but this critical attitude is familiar to me -- it's common to all my American friends. Yet one shouldn't be misled: there is a tradition of self-criticism in America, as there was not long ago in France. And the people who speak most harshly of the country here are not those who are least attached to it. ... The Americans who attack a certain moral, political and economic position are showing that they insist on a destiny worthy of this great land where they are citizens; their demands and their lucidity are the highest forms of love. ... To label as anti-American books, films and statements that imbue Jefferson's ideal with a living reality -- that is to mutilate America. The day America is forbidden to question itself, America will be no different from the totalitarian regimes it claims to oppose."