Embarking on this Blog

Okay, after weeks of tinkering, I'm finally ready to launch this blog I've been talking about for months.

Those of you who know I have been in K(ansas)U(niversity) Med Center with my partner, Jim Long, helping with the aftermath of his recent nephrectomy, may be surprised by the photo above.

No, that is not Jim. For updates on that adventure, you can visit thisgownhasnobackside.

 The patient you see here is my best straight buddy (and ringer duplicate bridge partner) Bill Daly, Chairman of the Board of Voter Contact Services. He has been in the hospital a lot longer than Jim recently, and they are racing each other to see who gets home first.

Bill is in Honolulu, where it is much harder to give him and his family the love and support I want to lavish on them. Guilt swirled around me, until I recently had a nice note from Betty Daly, assuring me they appreciated whatever oomf I could send their way.

I love this picture of Bill, taken some weeks ago, when he was first able to sit up, out of bed. I received the photo as a tiny insert in an e-mail, but I didn't fully appreciate it, until a mutual friend said, "Wasn't that a wonderful picture of Bill?"

I opened a larger image, and there I could see Bill's beautiful eyes, and the expression of contentment, which is partly, "I'm sitting in a chair, finally," and mostly, "Thank GOD I can scratch myself whenever I want!"

Bill comes to mind particularly now, as I launch this blog, because my first post is somewhat political and sprinkled with the warped humor I favor, which he seems to like. I am so thankful for his friendship.

Brief thanks here, too, for my friend and fellow author, Sylvia Cornette, who volunteered to help me shape some of my Dang Near Native columns into the book form which will serve as the backbone of this blog. (More on Sylvia and all of this process later.) I'm basically cracking open that book in the middle, and giving you a peek, as the primary season gets underway.

Hopefully everybody is ready for a story which mentions a Democratic National Convention without any of the current candidates, and with more humor than strife.

I welcome your comments, so tell me what you think. And please, subscribe to the blog if you enjoy it. If you know someone who you think might enjoy my writing, use the prompts to e-mail them a link to this blog so they can check it out for themselves.

With my best regards,

Josh