@detroitmechworks Feeling passionate about whatever you do is important. And I will continue to say I'm enjoying your post-American Empire essays a whole helluva lot.

People drift away from hobbies as interest waxes and wanes.

I recently started posting on a site I haven't been to in 15 years. They still remember me and my work. (No, not TOP)

I find that as I write more and more about what I WANT to write about, rather than what I feel I have to write about, my quality improves exponentially.

Yes, I may fall away again, but that's just a part of my life. I have to stop thinking of these times as a failure and instead as a low ebb in my life.

Sorry to jump in with my own rant, but I appreciate the hell out of this post.

Thank you.

@Raggedy Ann I will support this site monetarily as long as possible, and hopefully still make other contributions when I can. I really respect the hell out of the people here.

Reading it, I heard myself. I comment less due to time constraints, political burn-out, etc. I've missed your writing, while I, too, miss Hectate, Phoebe, and DD. I think of them often and wonder...

I enjoy this site enough to monetarily support it as best I can, as well as contributing to the discussion as long as I feel what I have to say is relevant to the conversation.

There will always be a certain amount of turnover among the more frequent posters at any community blog such as c99, whether from death (as we have experienced here of late), or other reasons, many of which are personal to the individual and have little to do with the community as a whole. But I'm grateful that as c99 has matured, I have seen a number of voices rise up to replace those no longer here, or here less often. At least that's my glass half full analysis of c99 at present. This is still a vibrant and valuable community and online resource for many, many people. Enjoy it however long it lasts.

Thanks Steven.

@Anja Geitz Romance, mystery, fantasy, psychological thriller, literary (bildungsroman).

And it involves Jorge Luis Borges. Beyond that saying any more would reveal too much.

How wonderful for you that you've been moving ahead with your dream. What is your story about? If you don't mind my asking?

@DonMidwest Thanks.

The water is rising on the sinking ship but the establishment continues to plow ahead.

For most of our lives we looked forward for the future. Progress was underway

A couple of decades ago I realized the fraud in the hope of progress, well sorta realized, but could not have imagined the world wide effect when the hope for the future was a sham, the establishment hope for the future.

Now that progress of globalization is impossible we are faced with a return to the earth but don't know what that means.

Something different I have done in the last month is to read fiction. I am focusing on Richard Powers who writes heady stuff including his latest novel with trees as major characters in The Overstory.

Here is a review by a young philosopher on an art exhibit at the LA Architecture school Sci-Arc

Somewhere, in a passage I can no longer locate, the British novelist J.G. Ballard (1930-2009) makes a statement about the arts that has haunted me since I read it a quarter-century ago. The role of the artist has reversed, Ballard tells us. Formerly, the artist’s mission was to produce fictions. But now our collective life is saturated with fictions: films, comic books, advertisements, theme parks, videogames, alternate online identities. As a result, the task of the artist has become the production of a reality able to provide some backbone to what is otherwise an unending stream of fictions. In the era of supposed “fake news,” in which even the President of the United States can hardly open his mouth without emitting a barrage of half-truths and outright lies, the problem of constructing reality in an environment of fabrications feels even more urgent than in the decades J.G. Ballard lived to see.

The theme of how fiction intersects with reality is one that could not be avoided when visiting the Ruy Klein show in the SCI-Arc Gallery under the title “Apophenia,” which ran from November 17-December 17, 2017. The designers David Ruy and Karel Klein are both familiar faces at SCI-Arc, where David serves as Postgraduate Programs Chair (and, moreover, bears the sole responsibility for having dragged the author of this review slowly into the architectural world). Having been a regular visitor to the Ruy Klein website in recent years, I thought I knew what to expect when their show opened at SCI-Arc in mid-November, and thus I accepted David’s invitation of a walk-through without thinking his guidance would really be necessary. But in fact, the exhibition was quite startling, departing as it did from trends I thought I had recognized in Ruy Klein’s previous work.

Apophenia: The Ruy Klein Cartographies

I find the "fictions" in Richard Power's work provide insights on times which could be a prelude to the end of humanity.

I also post much less these days.

But I do occasionally go to TOP just to see how the democratic party continues to try to hold onto power.

We have seen this for decades that labor unions have sold out their principles to keep a seat at the table, now the dem party is obviously going down the same path.

I would be interested in an update of the people mentioned in Steven's list

@irishking Means a lot to me.

I always read your stuff with interest,this post no exception.
Hope things improve for you and your family.

I remember your kind words when I had some problems here back in December.
It meant a lot to me at the time, and still does today.

thanks again.

@The Voice In the Wilderness @karl pearson Good to see you over here. Sorry that BT is no longer as welcoming to non-establishment points of view. I have not been back there in a very long time.

I'm now a fellow self-exile from Booman Tribune as there is no community there any more, just a handful of old-timers and three or four hilbots turning it into DKOS. Booman himself is fixated on Russia! Russia! and impeaching Trump to the exclusion of everything else.

Regarding your points 3) and 4): I well understand being burned out on politics. Only the IL Gov race holds any interest to me. Pritzker sounds good, but I've been burned before. Still, Rauner is almost a cartoon caricature of a Wall street republican that I feel I must oppose him.

And PLEASE post here when the book is published. I promise to buy it.

EDIT: Not sure if those hilbots are not his own sock puppets. He does nothing to rein them in.

I have enjoyed reading your essays for years. First, at Booman Tribune and then here at Caucus99%. Am glad you are engaging in some other activities, but still dropping by periodically to update us on your thoughts. Any "thinking" person would reassess their life and world after the 2016 primary/election and the current state of politics. Please continue to stop by when you get a chance. Regards to your family.

@joe shikspack Yeah it does seem to be going from worse to far worse very rapidly. I appreciate those with more energy and optimism than I fighting the good fight, whether in or outside the Democratic party, excuse me - nonprofit (i.e., for profit) corporation lol.

i'm glad to hear that you are pursuing some projects and continuing to keep the juggling balls in the air.

there's a lot of burnout and despair going around, but at c99 we have each other. we don't all agree on how things can be fixed, but we do generally agree on what a better world might look like and that's a good start. i'm grateful to have met you and a number of folks who post here, we're a good group of folks and it's great to have good company as we stumble through things.

wishing you and the family the best and i hope that you'll check in frequently, even if it's just to say hi.

@Mark from Queens How is your wonderful spouse and child? I hope doing well. I will always have fond memories of meeting all of you folks in Philly at the DNC. I will check out the tumblr. Sounds like a good concept. It's so difficult these days when any form of mass social media (FB, reddit, twitter) is censoring voices on the left.

I am sorry to hear that about duckduckgo as that has become my default search engine. Sounds like they could be knuckling under to pressure from someone. That would be a damn shame, if true.

One of these days we should have another get together in NYC or someplace.

Take care.

So much of what you wrote resonates. It really speaks for many today I feel.

Personal stories such as yours are a powerful document in helping to bridge divides, recognize commonality and then start coalescing the vast majority into a coalition against the ruling class protecting their status quo of pillage and corruption which is responsible for our worldwide predicament.

Ever see the WeAreThe99Percent tumblr page? Another brilliant creation by Occupy-inspired folks. Just scores of regular folks, writing on a single page held up for the camera next to their face, explaining their personal tribulations caused by the Economic Terrorism of Wall St and corrupt, beholden government. (Another pretty good site with related links here).

As an aside, and I hesitate to bring this up because it is further evidence of RW dominance in controlling (or in this case, erasing) the narrative, when I went to search DuckDuckGo for I couldn't find a direct link to the page. Instead all these other sites came up, like this and this weird one, that however intended, even as a smarmy ode to the original, they dilute the raw power of that powerful forum, in my opinion. I think they're purposefully meant to distort the original content, and actually pushed my search to having to find a link through a story written about the tumblr page from either Mother Jones (who still had some integrity back in 2011), WaPo (maybe the same) and the Atlantic. I still think the subject of controlling the narrative and recognizing the attendant propaganda used to do so is perhaps the biggest thing we should concentrate on here. With that, I echo the praise for you upthread for your efforts in doing just that by investigating a matter during the #DNCFraud of the 2016 primary.

I sympathize with all of your personal tribulations. I find in myself a tendency to occasionally feel isolated about mine. But then I realize that especially here, we know the truth. It's an epidemic, afflicting this whole epoch, in which we've been beaten down by the Economic Terrorism of Wall St. It's a sobering realization that we're on our own and more than ever need each other, as flagrant corruption and pillaging runs roughshod over us. But I take solace in this community and my own local activist friends that we have these channels and networks for one another. It's only a matter of time until many of those zombified political partisans holding us back believe the same.

Best to you, dear friend, and your family. I really hope to see you again soon.

@dfarrah @dfarrah I think our family's troubles are no worse, and probably better than many others. It's hard times for everyone unless you are independently wealthy and have no soul. I truly believe what we saw in 2016 was the exposure of the soft coup that the oligarchs have accomplished over the last three decades. I honestly think our corporate overlords' main objection to Trump is simply his unpredictability. They'd prefer a known quantity, Dem or GOP as President who would do their bidding with less bombast.

that things are difficult. Blessings to you and your family.

It seems like there is an unrecoverable downward spiral in the US and the world.

We truly have no representation, because the wealthy, who stole their wealth from the non-wealthy (one way or another - by not paying labor its value, manipulating markets, etc) have bought all of the politicians. And they are controlling research and information, and they have the power to kill or imprison anyone who protests.

@Ellen North I appreciate the thoughts, and also the compliment.

sending thanks, healing thought-wishes and hugs.

@Linda Wood Means a lot.

plus, thank you for the countless ways you have opened my eyes and contributed to my hopefulness. I truly believe family matters are the most important things we can be focussed on, and so I thank you for doing what you are doing and hopeful you'll contribute here as often as you can. Peace, Steven D.

@mhagle I appreciate your comments and posts here as well.

I don't have any wise or clever words, but please know that in my heart I cherish your wisdom and words in print and video. Thank you.

Best wishes to you and your family. Peace and love.