These things have almost never been the kinds of items others drool over. I no longer crave. My point here is that none of these things maintained my sense of accomplishment. I was, and continue to be, a writer with a modicum of success to my name. This, while bringing a smile to my face on a random weekday, is only important in the scheme of things when I am, alas, writing.
Past glories mean little and writing itself comes hard, if it is truly valuable.
I mention all of the above for one reason only. Last week I said good-bye to a rather large group of students. They were on their way to the other side of the highway. They were heading for, in most cases, Los Banos High School. I had spent the last year trying to give them some tools to communicate to a world not limited to their immediate environment of adolescent desires, artistic and otherwise.