A Brief Personal Note

[THANK YOU! THANK YOU! My deepest gratitude to all of the wonderfully generous people who have made donations and offered assistance in other ways. I'm genuinely overwhelmed. I simply don't know what to say. And my great thanks to John, once again. On a number of occasions, John has kept me blogging, when I myself might well have given up. Here, completely unbidden, he has done so yet again. Bless you, my friend.

The immense kindness so many of you have showered upon me now gives me the luxury of a choice. Wow. I haven't had any money to make an actual choice about anything for quite a while. Several people have offered to donate a computer, and I'll be in touch with them in the next few days. If I should buy a new one, I'd probably get a desktop model, since my health keeps me housebound almost all the time. As I'm largely ignorant about computers and tech stuff, could people recommend a good desktop computer for around $600-$700? I'd appreciate any suggestions (arthur4801@yahoo.com).

I can assure all of you that I live very frugally on next to nothing, with no frills at all (I still have a dialup connection, and I have no cable or satellite TV, for example, not even for basic service). So if I should accept the wonderful gift of a computer, I'd use the donations for medical expenses. I'll finally be able to take care of several problems that have gone unattended for far too long. I hope that's alright with everyone. If not, please let me know, and I'll refund donations as indicated.

My boundless thanks once again. I will have to fall back on the closing lines from Tony Kushner's wonderful play, Angels in America: "You are fabulous, each and every one, and I bless you. More life. The great work begins."

I guess that means I need to get back to blogging regularly. Drat. You've all reduced me to tears. Honest.

Bless you, one more time.]

I'm very sorry that posting has been very sporadic lately. As my latest essay indicates, I've been thinking about many issues, and there is a great deal I want to write about. I'm dealing with two very difficult problems at the moment. The first is my health, which is very bad at the moment. I'm often unable to do much of anything for days at a time. Unfortunately, I doubt this will improve significantly in the near future. I wish I could write all day long, but on most days, I simply can't.

The second problem presents difficulties of another kind: my old and primitive computer is now on its very last legs. I thought it had given out completely yesterday, and only several hours of tinkering saved it (for the moment). Since I just barely have enough money to live on, a new computer is impossibly out of reach. I don't mind not having any bells and whistles on my computer, but it's very difficult to do research and insert links when it often takes three or four minutes for a single page to load, which now occurs routinely.

All this means that posting will continue, but at a much slower pace than I would prefer. I apologize again for this, but there is simply nothing I can do about it. Your patience and understanding are appreciated. At the moment, I plan to post at least one essay per day. If several days or a week go by with no new entries, it most likely means that my computer is finally dead -- and until and unless I get a new one, posting will be unlikely to resume.