Happy New Year! Some folks celebrate its coming with champagne; others with yawns. My sweet Eddie is of the yawn variety. And even though I'm usually a night owl, I'm barely going to make it to midnight myself. But before I take myself off to bed, I want to say once again how much you mean to me. Finding PBase was one of the most serendipitous occurrences of my life. Not only have you taught me so much about the artistic and technical aspects of photography, but the global community we've formed here gives me hope for our world.
As a longtime peace activist, I've attended innumerable rallies, marched on countless U.S. and Canadian streets, made more signs than I can count, listened to hundreds of speakers, spoken myself at national and international rallies and gatherings, created and sold original peace postcards, T-shirts and posters, written and sung peace songs with the Raging Grannies, organized and coordinated peace groups, facilitated peace workshops and retreats, and had my drawings and writings about peace appear in publications across the globe. All this to say that I've been working for peace in every way I could think of for a long, long time.
So now that I've allowed myself to follow my creative passion and focus almost exclusively on photography, I've found myself in a community of persons from around the world who are already living the dream of peace that I'd almost lost hope could ever exist. What I experience here on PBase is the new world I had dreamed of, but had come to fear I would never see in my lifetime. But here you are, persons of different generations, from different countries, speaking different languages, following different religions, of different backgrounds and cultures, holding different political views, living in every time zone on the planet, yet supporting, encouraging, educating and sharing with one another, often on a daily basis.
How could I not have hope for our world? You, dear PBasers, have given me that hope and I thank you. From the depths of my heart, I thank you.
