Gala_Teah's Farewell
Yucky gives me some numbers: 1800 Netizen Heroes. Links going out to 1500 stories. Pretty good numbers - but that's just the start!
Add to that the stories on public radio. The articles in newspapers such as the San Jose Mercury News. Online coverage by CNET, WIRED, Slate. Worldwide coverage, with articles in Le Monde and Der Standard and coverage by the BBC. Sites following the developments chronicled by World Without Oil in Russia, Italy, Spain, Japan, Poland, the Czech Republic (and of course the many heroes we have in Canada, Australia and the UK).
All told, over 50,000 people have come to World Without Oil to look at your stories and learn from you about the oil crisis. And that number is growing daily. Over 3000 blogs link to the site. If I put "World Without Oil" into Google today, I get over a quarter of a million hits referring to this site and what the Netizen Heroes have created here.
You guys are the rock making the big splash in the pond, and your words and images are rippling out far and wide. People all over the world are considering your accounts of the Oil Shock of 2007 and comparing them to their own perceptions. They are able to get past the talking heads spewing sound bites, through the door you have opened for them.
The 8 To Save Our Country have done our best - we gave what we could, hardly knowing what to do in uncertain times. But thanks to you the seed has been planted: next time, will it be the 8000 To Save Our World? Or 80,000? Or 800,000? And will they build strongly upon what has been started here? Upon your ideas of community, self-reliance, conservatism, and compassion. And inspired by your ability to look at the future honestly, keen-eyed, without blinders or rose-colored lenses. With your wits about you.
And now, and now. Now I must thank Blueski at rdy2rte. For saving my life, in a manner of speaking. I didn’t talk much about this, and neither did Inky, but here in our household we were going under. We were going to lose our house, and the threat of it had split my family apart. My husband had moved to Sacramento, partly to chase more income but mostly, I think, to escape the pressure cooker our house had become. Inky and I stayed in the house so Inky could stay in her school.
But then Blueski said what s/he said about holding on and letting go. And those words unraveled the knot I had made out of our life. Today we are renting out the house - successfully so far. Inky and I are here with Hubby in Sacramento. Inky is in a new school and loves it. I've found part-time work for a community paper/website. We let go, and now we're holding on.
It's been an honor to walk this road with you all. Thank you for guiding us along the way. - Gala_Teah, with Inky_J