Just re-read yesterday's blog (and approved),

and realized that I'm beginning to really miss the interaction that comes with posting on the boards. There are times when I love having the stage to myself, but that doesn't last very long. I miss the questions, the interruptions in the flow as others move in and out of an online discussion. Yes, I even miss the challenges.

Would love it if you'd take the time to comment or question from time to time. That would help to know where to go next, though a pattern is beginning to emerge, I think, even with the leap-frogging.

Lately I've begun to visualize my kids reading this and wanting to know what my life was life, and those before me on the great continuum of family experience. That's serving me well. Makes me stop now and then and dig deeper. How I wish I had a record of the lives that preceded mine -- especially the voices of my father's people. Even after years of searching, they remain sketchy at best.

One day, maybe, one of my curious grandchildren will read this and have a sense of choice and alternative pathways, and of how much freedom life holds -- and just how much is controlled only by chance. That may be enough reason to continue to write.

How I wish I'd known Celestine or Leontine in their times! The sheer randomness of life is so obvious in retrospect. If there's anything that I've learned, it is that it matters little what happens along the way -- one's responses to events are what really matters. We all share the joys and tragedies, but the survivors appear to be those who develop resilience early in the process. Surely this was true for my great-grandmother, Leontine.

But I'm off now to "resil" (who says I can't make up words?) again in the world of "The State." Tomorrow evening Assemblywoman Loni Hancock and I will travel to Walnut Creek where she will participate on a panel re the Patriot Act for the League of Women Voters. Today we have a briefing session where I'm presumed to have gathered together the relevant facts and we'll go over them in preparation. This one is a no-brainer. But ya nevah know. Need to get into those 177 pages, more seriously, now, so I'll see you at the end of the day.

Do take the time to say something, though. I'm missing voices... .