It's the holiday season, time for some laughter and good times.  I'll work on my delivery over the next year.

Happy New Year to you sir.  Hope all is well.

This group of folks had all of the cards stacked against them. No one wanted them to succeed and they looked that in the face and forged ahead. It started for them as a scary week at the beginning of February where a police raid seemed constantly imminent, everyone (politicians, The Olympian, a large number of citizens) publicly scorned them, called them criminals, addicts and child molesters, and told them they didn't belong in this community. Now today they have been officially recognized by two cities (Olympia and Tumwater) that were skeptical and reacted harshly in the beginning, they are having no trouble finding host congregations, and the people in the neighborhoods surrounding the new hosts are welcoming, as opposed to angry about their presence.

These people at Camp Quixote, no matter what, are my people of the year. They taught our community a lesson. A lesson about what it means to be a community, what it means to pull together and help one another, to truly care about one another. The most important thing they taught us was that human beings are only limited by the constraints of physics. That even a group of people who have nothing can achieve seemingly impossible things at great odds with nothing but sheer will keeping them going. I know I learned a valuable lesson through it all, and I have my friends at the camp to thank for it. I learned that when people come together and organize in order to assert their place in the process, they cannot be defeated. Camp Quixote is one of the things that gives me hope for the future, and I will never forget them.

I am really never gonna live that down, am I Jim? I'll get to work on that top 10 real soon.

I nominate Mark Foutch. That man has put a lot of his time and energy into this city and is stepping down after all this time.

I don't envy the decision maker.

A little sarcasm never hurt.