By Frank Bennett
It has been a long time, hasn’t it? My last post was in early December and here it is five months later already. Interestingly enough, I only remember four of those. You don’t get to put that into conversation very often without drugs or alcohol being involved and in my case, my absence had to do with both.
It can be difficult to be a “Grizzly Flats Veteran,” as Katrina calls us in her wryly funny (and true) piece called, “You Might Be a Grizzly Flats Veteran If…” I am not nearly as veteran as some and I have had to wonder when a person actually becomes one. Is it after the 10 year point? If so, I am in the club. I did not actually make my home here until early 1996, in the middle of a huge snowstorm, as I recall. I had visited friends up here and fell in love with the place. There are many around here, however, who have lived here for most of their lives.
No, I am not dying. Not that I know of, anyway, any more or less than the next person who doesn’t think they are dying. Because I gave mention in one paragraph of one column of being a “No on 8″ person, I was brought into engagement of the topic on a couple of different levels, both here in the comments and via e-mail. I do not post my email address here because I know that it invites a tremendous amount web-crawler spam to have one’s email address on a website and spam is a tremendous irritant of mine. Fortunately, I had folks write to Katrina, who then forwarded the letters on to me. I want to applaud Tom Rogers for being the only one to discuss opposing views in public, which takes a fair amount of courage and self-confidence.
We have heard it all over the nation, people saying that this is the most important election in a lifetime. It has been a time of many firsts. It has been a critical turning place for how to handle extremely significant issues that affect every person in this country: the war, the economy, the housing crisis, the medical coverage crisis (which I do see as a true crisis), our world image problem, the environment and taxes, just to name a few.
I expected to have to put on my very best asbestos lined suit after my last column regarding the elections, but either no one reads this (a very distinct possibility) or people are more generous minded than I expected. Of course, my hope is the latter.
I do not expect to make any friends with this column, but then, I’ve never been one to try and tailor my opinions and words to what is going to soothe the masses or garner roses and accolades thrown my way. Those who know me, know that I “tell it like it is” more than Dr. Phil ever dreamed of doing. I have plenty of friends and while I don’t ever mind if more come along, I’m no more desperate for companionship than I am for approval, which is to say not at all. (more…)
Hello Grizzly Flats! My name is Frank Bennett and I am what I guess you could call a reasonably long-term resident of Grizzly Flats. No, I was not born here. I am a Jersey boy, born and bred, but I found this place around 12 years ago after my divorce and it felt like home, so I stayed. I tend to be an “off the grid” kind of person and like to do for myself as much as possible without involving outside influences into how I live my life any more than is absolutely necessary. I will confess to being not much of a socializer or an organizer. It has been my experience that as soon as something gets organized, it goes to hell pretty quickly with there suddenly being regulations and red tape and outside entities telling people what to do. I had enough of that in my life, so I just removed myself from that influence as much as possible. (more…)
…will be here soon with a straight-shooting, no holds barred commentary column for you.