So goes a conversation toward the end of Cameron Crowe’s film, Almost Famous.  It makes me think of a conversation with myself that I have often:

I love the people who dwell within a spectrum of intensity that ranges from limp to fanatic, and the way the fanatics put all they have into every cause, each charging his life and mine with an energy of conviction that knows no compromise.

And the bricks.  I love the zee-bricks that make this place something special and different.  I love even the ones that have broken and that RIOC has allowed to break more.

The grass, wherever it may be found, whether it is in the small cherry grove that lies riverside to Westview or the larger one south of Rivercross.  Even the weeds that get hold of the soil when RIOC cannot get organized to do the mowing.

And the Tram.  Especially the Tram.  The Tram, even when RIOC is trying to cut its hours.  Indeed, I love even the attempts to take it away because they are so desperately dumb that they are lovable in their total ineptness.

I love the memory of Al Weinstein, fighting for the Tram.  Plunking a chair down at the front of Good Shepherd Chapel and pointing out the absence of Dr. Jerry Blue, coming out for a moment from his genteel suit of diplomacy and showing us the fire that made Roosevelt Island and the Tram his Island and his Tram.

And there is the image of Sister Regina Palamara, telling us that, on the way to yet another Town Meeting about the Tram, she prayed to a Saint named Al Weinstein, and then laying it on the line like no nun I have ever heard or seen.

I love Archie Seale and Patrick Stewart and so many who, because of the roles they play in this game of life, do not and cannot love me; I love them because there is texture and richness in the complexity of the practical and philosophical matters on which we disagree.

I find that I can love even Jim Whalen or Debra Mount Cornet as one or the other blasts away at me in yet another screed that I think passes only for an angry and ill-reasoned first draft, because the richness and texture that passion adds to this Island are felt at their hearts and dig at their souls, as silly and misplaced as the passion may be.

I even love the way philosophical allies can take their cause and its prosecution so seriously that they can disagree passionately and angrily about the finer points of what must be done for The Cause, and then lose that anger and keep the passion over coffee at Trellis.

There is so much to love about Roosevelt Island.

At another point in Almost Famous, the mother of child-journalist William Miller, played by Frances McDormand, quotes Goethe:  Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.  If there is any single editorial message this newspaper seeks to bring to its audience, it is that message.  While timidity and fear will beget only more reason for timidity, bravery and guts and determination are their own rewards and they are the only path to what this Island community deserves.

To me, being bold means going all-out for a locally elected RIOC Board of Directors.  It means making the leap of faith that in this community we have the intellectual wherewithal and commitment to make this community greater by far than it could ever be while under remote rule from Albany.  Being bold means shedding the fear that is bred when we have lived for so long under the sheltering safety of a State government that has shown repeatedly that it produces little safety and robs us of the responsibility we owe ourselves.

Being bold means making the leap with confidence that at the end of our trajectory there will be mighty forces coming to our aid.

DL