Thank you notes.

When we sent Managing Editor Amitabh Pal to India to interview the Dalai Lama, I was skeptical. I doubted whether he'd actually land it, since the Dalai Lama has many obligations, and the line is long to meet him. And, as an atheist who has trouble with notions of the divine, and as a rationalist who can't accept reincarnation, I wondered how much I would find of interest in such an interview anyway. But I was pleasantly surprised, and I hope you will be, too.

Vine Deloria Jr. died on November 13. The Native American activist, most famous for his book Custer Died for Four Sins: An Indian Manifesto, made a huge mark. He championed Indian treaty rights, he celebrated Indian culture and spirituality, and he did it all with bite. We interviewed Deloria in April 1990.

"In less than 200 years, white Americans have virtually ruined the whole continent," he said. And he imagined his own reincarnation in a pristine place: "I'd be very content to be a rock or a tree on some brand new continent where nothing is polluted. I'd be happy to grow leaves in the spring and give them up in the fall."

It's the end of the year, a time for thanks.

Thanks to my wife and my kids and my parents and my brothers and sisters. Love all the way around.

Thanks to the great gray owls that came down from Canada last winter to offer birdwatchers like me beauty in the snow.

Thanks to my colleagues at The Progressive for doing the work, and for adding humor and camaraderie along the way.

Thanks to the writers for The Progressive, and while I don't play Favorites, I do want to single out Howard Zinn for being so on target about the Iraq War and so inspirational with his long view. (He's inspirational again this month.)

Thanks to you, the subscribers and supporters of The Progressive. We wouldn't be here without you.

Thanks to the Progressive Media Project, its staff, and the foundations and donors that fund it as it diversifies and democratizes the op-ed pages of our nation's newspapers.

Thanks to the listeners of Progressive Radio and Progressive Point of View, and to the forty stations that carry us, and to the talented engineers at Audio for the Arts, who record me as I spout off.

Thanks to Cindy Sheehan for her crucial act of courage.

Thanks to United for Peace and Justice, Code Pink, Military Families Against the War, and all the other activists who have kept the peace movement going.

Thanks to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee out of Northampton, Massachusetts, for helping to organize 392 cities and towns and seven states against the Patriot Act.

Thanks to the ACLU and Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for calling Bush out on torture.

Thanks to Amy Goodman and Al Franken and Laura Flanders and Stephanie Miller and Ed Schultz and community radio and Daily Kos and TruthOut and Buzz Flash and Alternet and Common Dreams and Portside and Free Press and FAIR and The Nation and In These Times and Z and Mother Jones and The American Prospect and Hightower Lowdown and all the other alternative media players who are improving the climate in this country.

And thanks to every one of you who has gone to any protest in the past year to demand peace and to preserve our rights and liberties here in this sickly democracy.

It's you who carry the cure.