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Ghost Story (Australia vol. 1)

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  Discussed :   seasonal rearrangements, cultural contrasts, a strange big island, mass musical culture, family ghosts, werewolves. Carol and I get in the car with our friend Kristin’s boyfriend’s son’s girlfriend Nadia on Tuesday Feb. 21, 2023.   We are shuttled  50 miles to Portland, and pay Nadia $100.   We h ave the folding bike loaded into the cargo bay. We sit in the plane, get off and soon get on another, try to sleep. We walk off the plane 15 hours later, gathering our stuff and greeting my niece Anna on a bright sunny humid Thursday afternoon in Melbourne. It’s 6 months into the past or the future, and 80 degrees not 40.   Not taking it for granted, I accept this as a journey on a magic carpet, woven from ancient fossils we have taken to calling fuel. Adventure ensues.   We encounter all manner of animals and birds and plants that confirm the alchemy of the carpet.   We notice that the land is enchanted but the people are strangely just like us.   What are they doing here?
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Maybe This Will be Fun to Read

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Discussed : sloth and torpor, things we do, survival, Koalas  I always strive to make what I write tasty, at least aromatic, in that there is something about it that draws one in.  Curiosity is what I am counting on, in the sense that I actually hope this gets read and that it offers something.  How can I describe what happens to allow this blog space to be empty for over 4 months?  There are excuses that have something to do with everyday activities and responsibilities, but they turn out to be pretty lame excuses when you dig a bit deeper.  I've put "writing" on my identity resume as a thing I do, so to actually not do it creates anxiety.  Amazing to think that at a radical (real) level, this is simply a manifestation of my innate laziness.  Amazing, I AM Lazy!! Instead of writing, I worry about not having written. Instead of writing, I wonder about what to write.  That's uncomfortably accurate.  And yet...this awareness is an opportunity to realize that despite my
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Fresh Ideas

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  Been way too long.   Often, I feel anxious and worried about whatever (no shortage of topics and fears), but lately I’ve been more at ease and curiosity seems to have taken the place of anxiety.   That’s a very good thing.   So, in this post I’ll ramble, and hopefully you’ll be curious and read on.   I’ll keep it short.   Previous posts from me have generally had a “theme”, this time it is what it becomes.   In honor of his passing, a friend posted on Facebook today a YouTube of Ahmad Jamal playing in 1959.   Inspired, I read that shortly after his 92 nd birthday, Mr. Jamal told a New York Times interviewer that “whenever I sit down at the piano, I always come up with fresh ideas”.   Twenty-one  years hence may I say the same!   Trying to stay fresh, here we go. My wife Carol and I have “downsized” to a 983 sq. ft. house, but it’s got a large garage (400 sq. ft.).   Recently we  had hanging shelves installed in the garage, and now the space is waiting to find out how it will be
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A very nice little story

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  The six of us were a bit chilled but sun soaked as we rode up to Karma Coffee Bar and Bakery in Dallas for warm-up and refueling. This was a late November Salem Bicycle Club ride, 37 miles out and back.   Someone spotted a truck parked out front, with a rear window decal featuring a combat-style weapon and the wordplay “OreGUNian”.   I facetiously suggested that we inquire as to the capacity of the magazine on that semi-automatic*. My imagined stereotype of the truck’s owner was that he voted hard right, and that he stereotyped us (bicyclists) as hippie hard-leftists.   We laughed.   Good down to 30 degrees After some good coffee and carb loading, we spent two hours replacing all our winter riding gear (seems like it sometimes), and pulled our machines out, ready to roll. One of us habitually locks the bike every time, especially since it’s a high-end custom (really a good policy for us all).  There are downsides to locking, and one we rarely consider is lock mechanism failure.  No
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The Kate Wolf Music Festival, 2022

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  Like perhaps thousands of other couples, in 1984 Carol and I included Kate Wolf’s song GiveYourself to Love in our wedding ceremony.   I listened regularly to several of her albums in the early ‘80’s, after first hearing her on Mike Flynn's syndicated radio show, The Folk Sampler, and we got to see her perform and briefly speak with her, in Lansing Michigan in 1985. She died of leukemia at age 44 in December of the next year. This was a monumental loss for many, and in 1996 a memorial concert was held in Sebastopol, CA.   It became an annual festival, moving north to Laytonville, CA in 2001.   Once we heard of it, after emerging from the haze of early child-rearing, we vowed to go.   Finally, we arranged to meet two of our best music buddies there for the 25 th annual (rescheduled from 2020), said to be the last one. We drove eight hours on the first day so that we would only have an hour’s drive the next day to the festival site. Having been advised by the festival info to n
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Open Vistas

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  In December of 2020 I came up with the strange idea of reading everything in an issue of a magazine and then writing about it for a blog post.   Now, with 2020 hindsight and a terrible, disabling case of “writers block”, I set out to do something like that again.   After reading the entirety of the May 30 issue of The New Yorker, I sat down to write. I started, but then froze up again.  The  read-it-all tactic to help thaw out wasn't working. Finally, here’s what I came up with.    The cover of the magazine features an illustration called “Open Vistas” and the artist is Cannaday Chapman . My initial impression of it was of a woman in a hat gazing off down the way.   On closer scrutiny: Two women sit at an outdoor table with their café-au-laits and powdered beignets, one is wearing a large hat and sunglasses and is looking away as she stirs her coffee.   Her companion has her sunglasses hung on her shirt while she studies her cellphone. A sign saying Jazz Club hangs from the
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Some thoughts after not talking for 6 days.

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  Last week, I drove 100 miles north from Salem OR. and parked my borrowed car at Cloud Mountain Retreat Center . Inspired by friends and readings, I wanted to be on retreat with others seeking to deepen our meditation practice. This would be a retreat held in noble silence, no speaking, reading, phones or other digital devices.   As I walked the grounds at Cloud Mountain, I would reach in my pocket to discover that there was nothing there.   No oblong device there, my pocket had achieved what we retreatants were leaning into: emptiness.   If you attend a 6 day retreat and maintain silence for the duration, stuff happens. Questions come up: who am I?, why am I?, what's my next step? Having a daily meditation practice as I have for a number of years is helpful, but for what?   Sometimes I think my meditation is done in order to check a box to get credit in the category of “spirituality”.  As in, "i f I don’t go to religious services, pray, chant, perform sacred rituals, or me
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