![\"\"](\"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/pastoral_washington.jpg\" "\\"pastoral_washington\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nNo, Seriously<\/em>. \u00a0 I did my duck and cover drills in elementary school. \u00a0 I listened to the monthly tests of the air raid siren behind the apartment complex mom and I lived in. \u00a0 I did my pre-induction physical six months before Nixon ended the Vietnam war. \u00a0 I remember sitting at the desk in my underwear with a few dozen other guys filling out this form that asked things like were we ever communists, wondering if I should check the box that asked if I was a homosexual. \u00a0 I lived through the counter-culture wars in the 1960s. \u00a0 I marched and took photos at the Nixon Counter Inaugural<\/a>. I came out to myself on December 15 1971 somewhere between 4 and 5PM. I have marched in every gay rights march on Washington since the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979. \u00a0 I wandered among the panels of the Names Project quilt when it was first unveiled on the Washington Mall in 1987, terrified that I would find one with the name of a certain someone I first fell in love with once upon a time there among them.<\/p>\n So I tend to vent a lot about politics here. \u00a0 But this is not a political blog. \u00a0 It is a life blog. \u00a0 I put stuff here on the blog, mostly for the same reason I post my cartoons and photography elsewhere on this site. I am an artist. It sounds pretentious to say it, but there is no way to understand my frame of mind at any given time without understanding that I have this powerful need to Get It Out Of Me regardless of who cares or who even understands. \u00a0 Mostly I do graphic art. \u00a0 Sometimes words come out. \u00a0 The Internet is just another way I have of putting my stuff out there. \u00a0 It is not and does not function as an online publication of some kind. \u00a0 It is a life blog. \u00a0 Think of this place as being slightly retro…like it’s owner. \u00a0 Matter of fact, apart from this blog, the rest of this site is all hand coded by me in simple HTML. \u00a0 Yes, I’m a computer geek too. \u00a0 That’s how I earn my living. \u00a0 That’s where the artist and the Internet meet.<\/p>\n I have comment moderation turned on, not so much to regulate the content here but to keep spammers out of the comments. \u00a0 For every real comment I get here I also get about 50 – 100 spam comments. \u00a0 These are posted just to raise the rankings of a particular web site in the search engines and there’s no easy way to filter them out. \u00a0 This is why we can’t have nice things. \u00a0 My email box is even worse. \u00a0 Send me an email and I might not even see it in the torrent of spam. \u00a0 But this is not an online publication, it’s a life blog. \u00a0 If you post a comment here or send me an email it might not show up for a while…maybe even a long while. \u00a0 That might be because I’m not paying close attention to the blog because I am occupied elsewhere in my life, or it might be because I want to read it over carefully and post a response.<\/p>\n