Some of us may offer a surprise Recently have you looked in our eyes Maybe we're your conscience in disguise - Joan Baez

Al Capp, creator of the "L'il Abner" comic strip, launched the most imaginative of the negative attacks, introducing a character into his strip called Joanie Phoanie...I asked for a retraction but did not get one.

I am thinking that Ronald Reagan is the same age as my father. They have some things in common. They are both young in spirit, buoyant, well-preserved, and optimistic. Beyond that, I can find only outstanding differences. The President is either ignorant of, or unconcerned by the ills of the world about which my father and I have been speaking. He is particularly immune to any part America may have in engendering these ills, as he dislikes the inconvenience of thinking beyond his own definitions of good-guys/bad-guys, and also doesn't like to be depressed. His pleasant, bumbling demeanor is preferable to the murderous efficiency of Kissinger and Kirkpatrick, but on the other hand, he is involved in the same dark and bloody deeds, all done under the same vast, all-encompassing and convenient banner of anticommunism. He feels that God is on his side, and that he really can do no wrong. What piques me is how this man and his followers can write off someone like my father. Because of my father's protestations about the raping of the Amazon forests, the pollution of our rivers, the misuse and depletion of natural energy, and the poisoning our children's air, people like my father are explained away with the flick of a wrist as a doomsayer, a depressive, a pessimistic liberal.

I tend more towards Buddhist and Native American thought. For me, the spirits are quite real.