Saturday morning here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwestern Virginia. Woke up with frost on the ground for the second straight day in April and a high wind warnings of chilly air cooling things down even more. This is Spring?

News brings news of more deaths in Ukraine from what many are now calling the unending war crimes of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. We have friends over there who have died -- a video journalist and a network news cameraman. Others remain in peril.

America now has its first Black woman Supreme Court justice -- a result of a mostly-partisan vote where only three Senate Republicans voted "yea" on her confirmation. Were the other negative votes driven by partisanship or racism? Sadly, probably both in too many cases. Watching the party of the drunken elephant self-destruct increases my sad realization that I worked for that party as an operative from 1981-87 in what becomes, daily, an increasingly stupid period in my life.

At age 74, one ponders what parts of our seven decades on this third rock from the sun were good or bad. In the overall accounting, which will dominate? Hell, I don't know?
In less than two months, I will recognize 28 years of sobriety, a state reached the same year I walked away for any and all in work in politics and returned to my evaporating profession as a newspaperman. Four months after walking into my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, I started a one-page newsletter covering the happenings in Washington. It grew into Capitol Hill Blue and this discussion forum.

When I look at popular topics in the listing in the left-hand column, we find millions of views, with more than three million taking about the presidential election in 2020 and more than four million from the 2016. A lot of talk. More than three million views on "Trump's Trumpet." Another two million on "Big brother is watching."

The current membership of 6,300 has had a lot to talk about for more than a quarter of a century, but when I look at the top five posters, two are current members and three are no longer with us. As the owner of RR, I have been an absent landlord for too long. I need to be more active, not as one who seeks control, but as one who wants to be part of the family we have here. There's a lot gong on around us. We need to be part of what is happening. It's your forum. I'm just along for the ride.

--Doug

It is the role of a newspaperman to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
-- Finley Peter Dunne