I just signed up here a night or two ago, and here I am making bold to share with you some little bit of myself. It's about me, of course, because I chose not to be known here by my screen name from TOP (DaNang65, fwiw) but to use my real name. Not exactly the one my parents carried me to baptism with, Robert, but the more familiar Bob.

I know, Bob, the butt of a thousand typical white guy jokes. So be it.

For some time now I'd regretted ever having had a screen name. When I adopted it internet anonymity was all the rage. So when I signed up, first at Arianna's hustle and then at Markos', I did what was expected and adopted a nom de web. The first several I chose were so obvious they'd already been taken. After a half hour or so of getting my ideas rejected by the machine, as you might have, I reacted in frustration. I spit out a handle that seemed to me somewhat unique in the Left blogosphere of that time. I claimed myself by a time and place. Da Nang. !965. I'd been there and then. In some ways the most transformative, for better and worse, experiences of my life. Been stuck with it ever since.

The great google machine now gives it back to me as an "aka", although I've never intentionally linked it.

So, it's such a great pleasure to be here where I can use my own name. I hope that turn of phrase rang a bell with you, "where I can use my own name." It did with me. It got me thinking about a great song, by a great singer/poet/songwriter by the name of Jacques Brel. A Fifties and Sixties kind of guy, a Belgian who wrote and sang in French mostly. En Anglais, not at all.

So what we have of him is in translation, except of course, where we have the real thing

Power, passion, they come through. The beauty of Brel's words, to those non-Francophones of us, not so much. Fortunately, perhaps the smoothest voice of the time, Brel's almost contemporary, Johnny Mathis nailed it in English

I'm no Johnny Mathis, nor Jaques Brel. I'm an ordinary human being, but when I came here I felt I could use my own name.

Thank you for providing that space, where I can "use my own name."

Glad to be here!

bp