InMotion

  Check out this temp graph (you have to scroll down to the figure), remembering that Mardi Gras was Feb. 16! This year, the Year of the COVID, featured many challenges and disasters.   Deaths and indignities and a New Orleans Mardi Gras that was the coldest on record since 1899, when it was ONE DEGREE colder.   What the fuck does this mean?   Well, in a time of intense challenges: the “uncovering” and widespread acknowledgment of systemic racism and persistent white supremacist attitudes, persistent beliefs and behaviors promoting climate change, widening polarity and animosity between political partisans, and a shocking display of willingness to subvert democracy on the part of millions and millions of Americans, it means that we need to chill and get clear about what “the next right thing” is.   Click on that link to find an episode of the podcast Invisibilia   that I found especially inspiring last year, which dropped in late March just as SARS-CoV...

  New Orleans!   It’s been home for my wife and I since late 2017, but we’re moving to Oregon, and that means decision time on possessions. We’ve got two big billowy down-alternative comforters at The Palace (our ironically ostentatious name for our condo) and Carol put one of them in the discard pile.   She wants to give away or toss most of what we have and reduce our belongings to only the essential and the dear, then outfit once again on arrival in Salem. She assumed Goodwill wouldn’t take it, and it was headed to the landfill.   I guess that would not be too heinous since it’ll break down easy, certainly compress down when wet. But I felt sorry for the thing, and wanted to find it a home, comforting nice people who shop at Goodwill.   A couple weeks ago when I took it there to attempt a drop-off, they said they’d take it but would much prefer it being washed first since someone (ahem) likes to keep his shoes on when watching TV from bed.   Thereby hang...

  Over the last several months, life has been complex, challenging and weird.   Friends and family and others signing on to trains of thought and channels of political action that seem wild and incomprehensible.   I’ve been glued to my podcast app (Pocket Casts) seeking to find and download the latest episode of what I always hope will be the explainer that illuminates.   “Help me make sense of this steaming pile of something-other-than-nourishment”.   Alas, as I found myself on the road in July and nowhere near the place where live music was for me a daily treasure chest (New Orleans), it’s been rare for music to enrich my life.   In my home (either our Condo in New Orleans or our small travel trailer on the road), we don’t have ambient music on.   If you want it, it’s got to go into your ears with buds or headphones.   And as I said, Ezra Klein or Sam Harris or Marc Maron or Kara Swisher or whomever are much more likely to be on my playlist than...