I don't think it was any one thing that switched me, it certainly wasn't any snapping of the fingers. During Desert Storm I was downtown on the Pro-War side of the street (I know, I know, but I was young and CNN was showing footage of trucks blowing up) and I got along great with a soldier in the group. When that night broke up I was offered a lift home or a place to crash; I was having too much fun and didn't want to go home so I took his offer to crash. Turned out he was gay, and turned out that wasn't any big deal, none of the stereotypes concerning mannerisms or recruitment took place.

And then I discovered Rocky Horror. And then I was close friends with someone who eventually became a gay-rights activist until she finally came out of the closet. And then I was in the Drama Club my Senior year.

And then Bill Clayton, younger brother of a friend of mine, and someone I got along great with, was beaten unconscious on school grounds by a gang of thugs...a month later he took his life.

Actually getting to know people was a good step...finding out people I knew were gay and realizing they were the same people I always thought they were. Getting over the "ick factor" which was actually easy.

Before the age of 25 I was a single being not connected to anyone or anything. My thoughts, views, and reflections did not go beyond my own best interests. I was a poor friend, lover, neighbor, and human.

When I was 25 I was injured at work and it put me out of commission for an entire year. During that time, after the initial period of laziness and sloth, I got really bored and my thoughts turned inward. I began writing, almost constantly, vast amounts of vomitous poetry and prose. If I wasn't physically writing it I was thinking about it and would write it down later. That started me into asking myself a series of defining questions about who I was and who I wanted to be. The answers began coming as fast as the questions, most of them were a lot different than who I was up until that time.

I had made all of these realizations about myself but had no idea how to apply them. At some point I would have to go back to work and how would I stick to my newfound principles if I got sucked back into everyday life? A month shy of four years ago, my friend Chuck handed me a rolled up newspaper and said, "You write, you should try to get printed in here."

I unrolled the paper after we parted ways and it was a rag called 'The Voice of Olympia', now out of print, while it was in circulation it was by far the best street paper in the nation in terms of design and content, mostly thanks to it's founder, some woman named Meeta or Mita or something like that (I think she's related to that wrestler guy, The Hulkster). Anyhow, I flipped through it and found a notice that said they needed help with ad sales, and I had done that kind of work before, so I called the number, talked to Meta (that's it!) Hogan and went down the next day.

I think I knew from the very first moment that I walked into Bread and Roses, despite the fears of something new and my own vast amounts of insecurity, that my life was going to be different from there on out. Meta and Phil welcomed me into their lives with open arms and hearts, they introduced me to ways of thinking and being in this world that I desperately needed. From there my world kept expanding and I met more people like my dear friends Andy and Brent and then it expanded more as I took on more work at B&R and in the community.

Four years later, I think about how much I've changed and it's like night and day. I was afraid. I was afraid of the world and so I became insular, I built a shell around myself. If I didn't let anybody in, then I couldn't be hurt. Now I know, that if you never let anybody or anything in, you'll never love, be loved, learn, succeed, fail, laugh, cry, never experience any of the things that make us a unique species, and most importantly, never be truly happy.

I have changed my mind about everything, and (hopefully) the world is better for it.

I change my mind all the time...I'm a fickle little thing. 

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. ~Ludwig van Beethoven

but in the last 15 years of so I've made fundamental shifts regarding...

1. Anthropogenic climate change (it happening)
2. The Isreal-Palistine conflict (allowed myself to have sympathy for Palistinians)
3. Free market economics (Nice in theory, but it only exists there)
4. Faith (my heart is not a slave to reason, my worldly mind is) and
5. there is nothing wrong with a downstream presentation of a dry fly.

But I still believe Oswald acted aone and while a zebra may be "ridden," it is not domesticated and remains a far cry from a good horse.

Hypothesis: One cannot accurately fire a Mannlicher-Carcano fast enough.

Null-hypothesis: One can accurately fire a Mannlicher-Cacano fast enough.

It appears we've failed to refute the null-hypothesis. And perhaps mind-changingly so.