I am a 60 year old retiree in Hawaii. Living in Hawaii is a blessing every day and despite my share of physical and emotional pain I am happy to say I get up in the morning smiling at the world around me. But I know this state is precious and fragile. I have been very sad to see how impersonal and difficult our health care system has become. I have had many years of "close encounters of the mental health kind" from the perspectives of patient, provider, administrator, evaluation researcher, legal consultant, and teacher. I started my career at age 8 as a patient and that is where my sympathies still lie. Despite having been a professional, I agree with Pareto that all professions are a conspiracy against the laity. Over the years I have personally profited so much by having a network of technically knowledgeable and humanly caring people to turn to informally for advice in times of crisis, when the professions couldn't do it all in their formal, bureaucratic, cost-sensitive beneficence. I have never been part of an internet community before, but this looks like a way to make such a network richer and more widely available and that is exciting. I am at a point in my life where just being helpful is very important to me. And for the moment I came here just to long around and see if I could do that.