Hello Open Salon community. Today is the day I post my first post. Yay!

 I've had this profile, oh, a few months now, but for the same amount of time I have been suffering from acute writer's block. Funny, seeing as how I now hold a semi-advanced degree in English. Maybe I learned too much hyper-critical-ness in my graduate seminars and from my ultra-disciplined and demanding thesis adviser.  Whatever the reason, the old saying goes, "Writers write," and I vow at this moment to tip the saying slightly to one side, as if it were a plate,  and let slide to the floor in a heap all of the misgivings and insecurities with which I've laden it as time has gone by.  The shortest verse in the writer bible, it does not bear the scrutiny I've turned on it full force as of late. "Writers write." Cut the fat later.

But what do I write, other than the above soul-baring about which the most forgiving of blog-browsers couldn't care less? Nobody here knows me, and so far I've not given much reason for anyone to change this. My bio says I'm interested in the American health care sector, which is too true. I have all my online health care resources categorized into tidy folders which I confess I've spent not a little more time organizing than reading.  (I'm working on this. They can't get much more organized - the harvesting and silo-ing is past, now for the sifting and milling.)

 What else do I care about? Item number two is easy: Gay marriage must be legalized. I have personal and ideological reasons for feeling this way, as do most supporters of the movement. My sister deserves to marry her soul mate (whomever she turns out to be).  And there is no logical nor Constitutional reason for the remaing 40-odd states to continue barring gay couples from any legal union whatsoever. Item 2(A):  Church must be kept separate from State when it comes to marriage. Church recognition or non-recognition of gay marriage should have no bearing on its legality. Item 2(B): Gay marriage will become as ordinary as interracial. It's an eventuality in such a country as ours. So, no, I'm not completely without faith.

 Which brings me to item 3, my "exploration," as my Christian friends put it, of Christianity. Though it's becoming less and less an exploration and more and more a set of convictions, however crisis-of-faith-ish it still seems to these friends (with whom I disagree on key points, hence their belief I'm still in crisis).  If anyone is curious, I *do* agree, for the most part, with Marcus Borg. It's been kind of a relief to read his stuff.

 So those will be the Big Ticket items on this page. But if I know anything about blogging (and I hope to know a little, considering my master's thesis was about virtual community and the oral-literate hybridity of the Daily Kos), my musings will soon branch and expand. Provided I keep writer's block at bay.

 Any tips, Seasoned Open Salon-ers? I'm all ears-eyes.