“Ten years ago today, right about now, we sat down together on the couch, with some cheese and crackers and nuts and chips, and turned on the TV. It was time for the Year In Review shows. We loved to watch people and cultures around the globe ring in the new year time zone by time zone. We loved to see the “stories of the year”, with all their dramas, tragedies, and triumphs. We loved to reflect back on the world, our country and our own lives over the past year, and imagine the next, debate a little, vision together, create some direction and goals for the coming year. How I miss those lively conversations.

We never thought back then that would be the last time we would do this together.

Tomorrow, me and mom will go to the Riverside for Meditate Milwaukee, close our eyes for 90 minutes, remember you, and hold an intention and vision for Peace this coming year. Peace on the planet. Peace in people’s HEARTs, including our own. Peace in humanity’s collective HEAD, so full of confusion and self-focused. Peace in our HANDs, which do our “works.” I will reflect on the works that Dan’s hands did ten years ago, and what might have been in his heart and his head that could allow such works. We need to understand this if we hope to fulfill your mission.

Then we’ll go to lunch. You would have made us find an organic place that gets its meat from humane sources. After lunch we’ll go to the movies and see the new Avatar. The three of us watched the first one together, and you cried when they came to destroy the “Hometree”, an ancient tree so immense that all the Na’vi people lived in it. The Tree connected their souls to every living thing on their planet. We learned then about the “Wood Wide Web”, the vast underground fungal network here on earth that binds our great forests together. I’d smile when I looked out the window to see you in our backyard literally hugging and talking to the hundred year old oak trees.

You wished that all of us would understand how deeply connected we are. I believe you still wish this, and actively work on it.

I believe you are in a place now where your peace is too profound to be hurt by what happens here. I believe you continue to focus your spirit, your will, your energy on Peace. And Love. I believe you and our Maker are offering me and everyone a profound peace beyond our comprehension, but we must accept the gift, take it, and practice it. Especially when life gets hard and trouble strikes, like when others do violence to us just to satisfy their own selfish desires.

Maybe I’m just crazy honey, a dad who has to make sense of a loss too big to absorb. Or maybe it’s real, that little whisper in my quiet times, when I hear you clearly, and yet another butterfly finds its way to me in some form or another. Regardless, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we get humanity focused on Peace and Love again and end the kind of violence that stole you away from us, that happens only because we completely fail to understand how connected we are.” — Buck Blodgett, Executive Director

This year marks a decade since the birth of this Project. In decade one, we’ve blasted off the rocketship in terms of reach and impact. But numbers haven’t changed. In fact, they’re worse because of the pandemic.

In Decade Two, we have a lot of things coming: we’ll film our fifth TV documentary about Jessie’s story and her legacy project on a major cable TV show we can’t name until it’s released. It will air in the US, then around the world, and it will be seen by millions. Later in 2023 or 2024, we’ll shoot our sixth TV documentary following a similar script, on a Canadian network show out of Winnipeg, which we just filmed at the Cobblestone in Hartford this month. The show will air first in Canada, then the US.

Coming in February, the MrBallen Foundation is flying Buck to Portland for three days of collaborations, including in depth filmed interviews that they will use to create short videos, which they will release throughout the year on their vast social media (>7 million subscribers on Youtube, >400K followers on Instagram, nearly 3 million followers on Facebook). Buck will present part of our faith-based series, and they will film it, which will also be used throughout the year. Stay tuned for how Decade Two will be bigger, better, and stronger.

Fly free butterfly. We’ll see you somewhere in the New Year. Keep blessing everyone you touch. We believe in you. We believe in Peace. And Love.