InMotion

In the West End neighborhood of New Orleans, Tacoma is shaded by live oaks, between Seattle and Portland After reading this piece by Gwen Thompkins about Quint Davis and this one  by Robert Gottlieb, a review of Emmanuel Carrere's collection of essays  97,196 Words  I felt a rush of hope.  Lately in my meditation, I have been including the practice of Lovingkindness  where you repeat mantra-like phrases that capture what one hopes for as we seek to end suffering for ourselves and others.  I learned mine from Jude Rhozen , which goes like this: May I (or you or Pete or Sally) be happy and peaceful May I be healthy and strong May I be safe and free And may I be able to care for myself with ease and joy. To these lines I often add: May I be curious and confident .  The essay and the book review above were wonderful, clearly produced by skilled writers and observers, both of whom I suspect would agree with the Noel Coward observation that "work is more fun than fun&q

Thanks for taking a look at my blog.  We sent out an end of year letter this year to 50 folks which included this blog address, and I worried about the first post being the one about my acid trip 50 years ago! So here are some pictures from more recent times (the last year or so).  I also included one with some of my colleagues from our last Group Health Cooperative annual party before becoming Kaiser Permanente Washington, do I look pleased about my upcoming retirement? If you haven't seen this already, it's pretty cool.  POP MUSIC!   I love it. HAPPY HOLIDAYS        HAPPY CHRISTMAS         HAPPY NEW YEAR -Rob New bridge over the bayou, NOLA We got married here 35 years ago.The chapel in East Sangerville, Maine Home (weather permitting) This is us At Work Status update Dad kept on rolling, with a little help Samantha and Jon, definitely ready to go 1 2 3 A Samantha Mullen vision, marvelous. Can do pretty muc

Several weeks ago I was relaxing, talking with two younger friends both between the ages of 25 and 35.  They told me about their camping trip the previous weekend, when they took magic mushrooms.  Their experiences were quite different. One had a very pleasant, joyful good time while the other had a pretty intense trip that was both pleasant and unpleasant.  They appeared to be struggling to make sense of it. I wanted to share with them what happened to me while tripping as a very young man. But instead of the story I write about here, I just said something about a “bad trip” and didn’t share the way I was hoping to at the time. Since then, I have reflected on my experience and write about it here. Hopefully my story can be useful to others even as the process of recalling it is useful to me.   When I was a teenager, I dropped acid, took mescaline, and used psilocybin.  We all have memory nodes that are central to our early experience; events that feel like milestones and that

Well, this computer is busting my balls right now, in Word, it keeps going back to “File” when I want it to stay at Home (hello!).  Drat, I hate that, computer doing stuff against my will.  My failure to wrest control just stokes my feelings of inadequacy, which I wasn’t going to mention.  I’ll press on: a couple days ago, I stumbled upon a new (released September, 2019) Van Morrison record, Three Chords and the Truth .  It wasn’t long into the first song that I perked up, enjoying the rest of the song and in anticipation of the next (this is really good stuff!) And as it turns out, the entire record is stunning.  The Belfast Cowboy, Van the Man, is very much still at work.  From Jason P. Woodbury’s Pitchfork review : “Though he sticks closely to the conservative R&B, blues, and jazz modes that have defined his ’00s discography, the LP’s 14 songs showcase his determination to wring profundity out of even the most common language. Songwriter Harlan Howard coined the phrase “

Discussed in this post: Dancing with at least one person, Polish American gumbo, roots music. As I get older I am into getting more sleep.   I know there are articles and books that would no doubt convince me of the value of more sleep, but I haven’t read them.   I usually go to bed too early to get that much reading done.   Some nights, however, I feel as if I still have some energy, and it’s time to set the book aside and have a Solo Dance Party!    I administer a small to moderate dose of cannabis, usually via a small hand-held pipe using dry herb.   A bit of disquiet arises: will this harm my lungs and my health?   Does drug use like this contribute to or break down my sense of well- being and emotional health?   And of course, our cultural scold: “am I too old for this?”   Once the music starts, all that disappears.    My senses are more attuned to entering the musical space, and dancing feels like the only thing one can do!    I devote my full attention to this art, feeling jo

I’m at the Nora Navra library here in New Orleans on the corner of St. Bernard and Prieur.   I’m not sure this will work, but my idea is to be in a place with low levels of adverse distraction such that writing can occur.   A couple hours ago, I returned from a visit to the New Orleans Jazz Museum at the Old US Mint.   I’ve been to the third floor of the museum many times, to attend lectures, interviews, and concerts. I’ve never previously bought a ticket and toured the museum.   Today I did.     Now here’s the thing: my style of blog posting has been to sit down and write, and think, and google and search.   All the while dealing with a fairly heavy cloud of fear and anxiety coming from that place within, that feeling generator, the one that says “you’re no good, you don’t really produce quality in any sphere, including writing.” Now I regret writing that, because I feel in so doing I am rendering a piece of writing un-publishable, since to admit such self-loathing I regard as b

Hi, and thanks for taking a look at this very short post, but with a 15 minute link.  Over the last 5 days, I attended the annual American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans.  The sessions that I attended included Implicit Bias We Hide, Abide, and Push Aside, The Power of One Caring Adult, A Conversation with Sonia Sotomayor (SCOTUS!!), A Burning House: Children's Health in the Warming World, among others.  Overall much more revolutionary than one would likely expect from doctors.  Nice leads for me to follow in several directions.  More to report, but for now I would recommend checking this out .  It's a TED talk from Nadya Okamoto, a member of Generation Z. 

Allman Betts Band performing in Lafayette Square, New Orleans, October 19 2019 Here in New Orleans there’s a festival every few days in honor or tribute to anything you could imagine.   Last weekend it was the Blues and Barbecue Festival.   My wife Carol and I are back here in NOLA after several months of travel, and decided to meet some friends at Lafayette Square for some music and barbecue while festivalizing.   We focused on food and socializing initially, and heard a bit of good music from Erica   Falls .   The party broke up, but I hopped back on the bike and headed back to catch the Allman Betts Band who closed out the program on Saturday.   The band leaders are Duane Betts and Devon Allman (sons of original Allman Brothers Band members Dickey Betts and Gregg Allman).   Nice show, with some trappings of the olden days including a “psychedelic light show” during the songs, projected onto the backstop of the stage.   This tour is said to honor the 50 th anniversary of

Discussed in this post : Jam bands, Jason Isbell and the 400-Unit, high winds, red mud, the evolution of live music presentation, cultural exchange, survival. Word count : 2300 At around 2:15 pm on Thursday, August 22, 2019 we drove onto the grounds of Infinity Downs and Oak Ridge Farm in Arrington, Virginia.   Coming off a previous 5 weeks of joyful reunions with family and friends in central and southern Maine, the Boston area, areas surrounding Washington DC, and North Carolina, Carol and I were in fine shape and ready for MUSIC!   As great as our trip had been up to that point, our excitement about experiencing a new and different music festival was high.   This one would be a total immersion experience, since once we got our Airstream leveled and unhitched, there would be no driving allowed for the 4 day run of the festival.    Our turn-off from the highway was a bit dubious, but happily we began seeing signs for “EVENT” and arrows pointing the way.   Curious, we tho