ANOTHER OPENING, ANOTHER SHOW!

Gee, I really wish I felt that excited about 2007. Let's just say, I have "compressed optimism." What that means is that I am always hopeful for good in the next hour, day, week, etc., but I've also lived long enough to realize our lives don't reside in OZ where there are beautiful lollipops, quick justice to evil and everyone gets what they need to be complete. This realization, I hope, lets the good flow in, embrace it and go forward. It also lets the bad in, recognize it and let it go if there's nothing I can do to change it. The key is, as they say in AA's 12 step, recognizing the difference what you can do and what you can't do.

I lost a good friend on New Year's Day. Gene Wright and I had one thing in common, we were both Sagittarians. From that point on, there wasn't a lot of common ground. He thought I was a "tax-cutting for the rich" Republican and I thought he was a "tree-hugging liberal" Democrat. The truth, as usual, was somewhere in between and we had a long, warm, caring friendship based on mutual respect and love.

Gene was a counselor for people who had drug and alcohol abuse problems. Over the years it's hard to say how many people Gene's kindness, humor and civility healed long scabbed over wounds. All I know is that, in the 20 + years I knew Gene, there were many people who would come up to him and thank him for the difference he made in their lives. These reactions were always profound and Gene would hug them close and tell them they were in words to this effect: "God's child and that's what they needed to remember to continue the healing."

In addition to his regular therapy for substance abuse, he also dedicated his Saturday's to help other dysfunctional people with art therapy. He was a brilliant artist himself and he told me he had some real breakthroughs with people who used the art he was teaching them to start their process of healing.

I've known a lot of people and I've lost a lot of people, but I never knew one who truly made a hands-on difference in other people's lives like Gene did. He made a difference in my life (in spite of our differences of opinion) because of his loving patience, his quiet humor and most of all, his civility and courtesy. His loss makes these qualities even more rare in our world today. I guess my prayer would be to thank God for Gene being in my life, but also pray that in honor of Gene, we would all try to emulate his personal kindness and training in the humanities. What a DIFFERENCE that might make!