New Moon.  Eclipse.  Blog launch today.

Sometimes, even though I love my ability to produce meaningful words fairly reliably, there are people I admire who can write more emotionally than I can, or who can write music, or deliver words or make cultural references in a way that I only wish I could.

So I’m going to quote someone I adore, and there aren’t many of those
“Oh, I have been waiting so long to play this for you.”

My own introduction to the launch of my site are analogous to her words:
“Oh, I have been waiting so long to share this with you.”

So here we are.  My colors might be awkward and my server might crash from time to time, but no one will *ever* delete your comments, claim to own them for using someone’s service, or take this website from you.
I have a lot of data, a lot of my writing from the past that will take a lot of time to completely fill in, but this is The Beginning.
This is a site I own, and those of you who want to interact, those of you who have encouraged me to write can now be a part of it. I am so honored that you choose to be a part of it and that the technology exists to make this happen.

I write a lot of stream of consciousness, and sometimes I don’t know where I’m going with a story.

Yet I have had so many people encourage me to write.  Chris Stein told me to try to write science fiction after I sent him a synopsis of a dream I had of him.

I also want everyone to know why, on October 19, I chose November 3 as the launch date.

It’s because November 3 has become a defining moment for me.

I like to choose dates (when I can) that have some significance.  There are four reasons.

Numbers and dates and natural phenomena experiences (the full and new moons complete with apogee and perigee in my calendar etc.)

The first reason is that November is a magical month for me.  It took a long time to realize but it came to me late one night when I finally figured out after 30 years what “Angels On The Balcony” is about.
Care to guess what day that happened?

My interpretation (revelation) when I discovered what “Angels on the Balcony” is about, suddenly, was on November 3, 2010, after 30 years of trying to figure it out, I did that at 5:09am EST.

The 3rd (!) reason is that November 3, this year, is New Moon.  Chris Stein told me it’s just as powerful as the Full Moon.  It’s so perfect.

The last reason is even more interesting.
It was November 3, 1989 that a series of events were set in motion that led to my meeting Chris and Debbie not quite 9 months later.
They had a Def, Dumb & Blonde gig that night at the Chestnut Cabaret in Philadelphia.  I arrived early enough to stand in the front row.   I was in the midst of the singularity of almost knowing them (but I didn’t know it was coming yet).
I’d been doing Fan Mail for two years and because we had email since the mid-80s, I had already developed a real friendship with Gunter from Perth.
I was so blown away by this show that afterward, I drove an hour to Bethlehem to use a computer at Lehigh (since at that time, that was the only form of email or internet).  I wrote Gunter a message and told him to “do anything” to come here.  He did.
That trip and the ones that followed developed some of the connections that led us to meet Debbie and Chris and to later become friends.

All this makes November 3 like a new beginning, a transformative moment.  The 21, 22, 23, they are also very special, but the 3rd is really symbolic of a new beginning.