Since I created this blog last winter, I have struggled with the issue of how much of my own life to put in here. I'm generally confident that most visitors here are not all that interested in the ups and downs of a day with the Rabe family. I also don't care to have a ton of my personal information floating around on the 'net. Therefore, I've mainly focused on observations about the outside world.

Now, the dilemma. I happen to have, by the grace of God, a job in which I get to occasionally spend time with well-known people who are directly pertinent to the issues I talk about here. As a television researcher/producer, I get chances to interview and be around people in whom you might be interested. I've (mostly) avoided mentioning these encounters for fear of appearing to be name-dropping. The last thing I want to be is the kind of person who says, with studied casuality, "Oliver North (or whoever) said something amusing to me about that the other day..." But another part of me thinks that some of that stuff would be at least as interesting to you as my dopey opinions on Whoopi Goldberg.

The conclusion I've come to is this: people who come here regularly must be at least mildly interested in my opinions, whether to agree with them or to see what ignorant, uninformed thing I'll say next. Therefore, my occasional professional encounters with fascinating people would probably be the one thing of value I actually have to offer. Or at least that's a little more unique than my own dime-a-dozen opinions about national affairs.

So I think I'm going to mention some of that stuff from time to time in the future, starting in my next post. I hope that it will not be seen as immodesty, because as one wit once said, "I have plenty to be modest about." I'm not powerful or influential. I'm not meeting with these people because they have a strong desire to spend personal time with me. My only entrée with most of them is fact that I have a television cameraman to bring with me. I'm quite certain that most of them forget me before the door has even closed on my way out.

God, in His providence, simply plopped me into a job two years ago where I have the opportunity to have some interesting conversations with people. I wasn't all that qualified for it, and they certainly didn't chase me down to come have me do it. I hope you won't mind if I let you in on a bit of what comes into my path from time to time.