the board of NORML..

I really do love Seattle. I fee fortunate that I get to go there everyday. Today after work I took a bus over to Ballard for a Huntington's support group meeting. There is such an energy around the city that cannot be replicated in the suburbs. My typical Monday evening after work was not so typical due to the excited Seahawks fans roaming about and the long concert line outside a club on Pike and 1st Avenue and the nutty drunk guy who didn't mean to get on the express bus and simply had to get off the bus. Aww it makes everything so much more interesting.

Speaking of interesting, I wanted to take a moment to recognize how fantastic a guy Rick Steves is. I always thought of him as a tiny bit of a goober with his tone of voice and goofy shorts. I have a great found respect for him now (although he does wear goofy shorts). After reading about him in the Seattle Metropolitan, I genuinely appreciate him. Not only is he incredibly intelligent, he is the most broad-minded person around. He invested his 1 million dollar retirement in an apartment building run by theYWCA. For 15 years the building will be used by the organization so that 24 women and their children are able to have a place to live. Who does that?! Then, on NPR this evening I was listening to part of his lecture that he gave in Seattle. I agree completely with his views of drug policy. He explained the out-of-the-box, progressive thinking of Europeans when it comes to drugs. There, people aren't arrested for using drugs. Somewhere in western Europe (I can't remember where) there is a program for Heroin addicts that actually allows them to use, and if I heard accurately, the drug is actually accessible to them through legal sources. These users end up quitting the abuse much sooner than those here and aren't involved in crime considering they don't have to wonder where their next fix is coming from. Now that...is food for thought. Steves later goes on to point out the US's F-ed up views of drug policy; you're either hard on drugs or soft on drugs. In the words of Steves, "I'm on the board of NORML". It's got a nice ring to it, don't you think? I'm sure there are a zillion RS followers who have known these things about him for years. I'm glad I'm learning about him now.

I can only hope to have the opportunity to be as giving as he. As well as be as pioneering and thoughtful with applying my life experiences to something beneficial to at least one and hopefully many.