As a boy I was fascinated with books, and most of my favorite books had a dashing hero, or an awkward hero but, there was always a hero in most books I chose to read.  The Tolkien books had Bilbo and Frodo.  The Stephen Donaldson books had Thomas Covenant.  The Twain books had Huck Finn.  But my favorite hero was from the Dumas books “The Three Musketeers” and my hero was D’Artagnan’.  He was my favorite for all the reasons that I later came to understand were the qualities of a person who believed in LOYALTY above all else.  At the time it was all we really had, loyalty that is.  Our family was like an island all to itself.  My brother and my sisters and I would often play together for hours and hours using only our imaginations to entertain ourselves.  Since we had sisters we, as boys, would often have to concede to our sisters and play something that they would like too.  So I remember playing things like Paper Dolls.  Do you remember paper dolls?  The Archies had a set of paper dolls with Veronica, Betty, Jughead, Reggie, and Archie of course.  If you don’t know, ARCHIE was a comic book.  Anyway, long story short, I would always wind up playing the one guy that no one else would be, in this case Reggie, because he was always scheming or cheating his way into getting his choice of the right girl to date.  My point is that I always understood what it meant to play the bad guy or the unwanted guy, but inside I always thought of myself as D’Artagnan.  The young upstart with skills but not the experience, so he chose to surround himself with people who were more experienced and wiser than himself.  And I always gravitated, in my real life, toward people who had something to teach me.  My best friends have always been “oddballs” or real “Characters” with depth and wisdom beyond their years.  I am bringing this up now because as I am sure you noticed the name on this blog is Dartanion, (the Americanized version D’Artagnan)..and this is the name I gave to my first son.  When he was very young I would fix his hair exactly the way you see on the baby in the picture above.  And the expression on that babies face is the expression that was on my face the day he was born.  I am telling you this so that you have some understanding why the title of this blog is what it is.  The “2” behind the name is there for my second son, who’s name is Griffin.  And today Griffin will be going to my mothers house to visit for a week and my mother will direct him to this blog.  So I wanted to explain that I did not name this blog out of favoritism….I did it out of love for my sons and to pay respect to the hero I so cherished as a child.  I haven’t seen my sons for, what seems like forever, but I miss them, and dream of them, all the time.  I just needed them to know……….so thank you guys for your kind accepting of this very personal post.  I just wanted to say to them both…….I LOVE YOU…very, very, much.  …………I am Dartanion2………and that’s the way I see it……..t   xx