InMotion

Notes on Jazz Fest 2019. Clay Parker and Jodi James. “This is an album that will need to be listened to and not just played in the background. It has to marinate in your musical soul--It is for select tastes and for discriminating ears. It will make an impression…it will.”   - John Apice, No Depression For several hours in the days preceding Jazz Fest I do my research to plan each day.   The smaller, more intimate stages?   An interview an artist?   The cooking demonstrations , for crying out loud?   Or a plunge into the maelstrom of the mega-stages to hear Widespread Panic or Gary Clark, Jr.?   On our first day of festival this year, we started off at the small somewhat shade-blessed venue called the Lagniappe Stage** (lagniappe is, according to Mark Twain, a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get, see footnote). My choice to start our first day at Jazz fest this year was the singer-songwriter duo Clay Parker and Jodie James.   Both pl...

Starting nineteen months ago my wife and/or I did the following things pretty much "all at once": Clean, paint, carpet, and repair our home of 28 years. Find homes for, give away, sell, or store all of our stuff. Sell our home Retire from a 30 year career in pediatrics Purchase a new vehicle Purchase a 22 foot Airstream Trailer Acquire Medicare (me in Feb. 2017 and Carol in Mar. 2019) Pull a trailer from Washington State to Louisiana, then stay here in New Orleans to live, arriving 17 months ago. Since then, I've posted a few times on this blog.  I want to write more, and am currently stalled.  I wrote a long piece (originally titled Retirement: Report Thus Far) explaining why and have "edited it down" to this:  I'm understanding the stall more and am working on it.  I hope you choose to check out the upcoming posts, which I'll do my best to produce at the earliest possible time.  

OK, this is a single-issue post and it's about TV.  I spend time watching TV.  And, in the last several years it has been quality-time.  The writing and acting can be at times jaw-droppingly good.  I found myself watching The Good Place  on the recommendation of my wife, and almost quit after the first few episodes (each is 22 minutes long because it is a "sitcom").  I am now on episode 10 and I'm all in (3 seasons, I think).  On our flight home from Minnesota a couple days ago, I read a piece about Roger Stone by Sam Anderson. I thought it was very interesting, and when I learned that Mr. Anderson had earlier written about The Good Place, I sought it out.  It is a marvelous article, and I recommend it (and the show ), to you: The Ultimate Sitcom by Sam Anderson

This 1500 word post describes our experiences in the first days of February, 2019 around the death of my father.   Like all of us Dad was always doing the best he could.   I don’t know, but it seems like his behavioral range was a fair bit above average.   Every family thinks it’s special and I’m not going to be contrarian on that point; it goes without saying.   But saying it puts me in mind of the structure (psychological, spiritual, physical) of our unique family, the group sparked into being by Dad and Mom. I can tell as I write that these unique features of our family will be metamorphosing spectacularly as we now all move too fast toward our own exit.   Even the memories seem to be shifting.   I hope to be celebrating all these inevitable shifts and discoveries and insights as we survivors continue to be here together, doing the best we can. - 2/17/2019 Me and my sisters with dad: L to R Janine, Cindy, Linda Dad died, on my birthday February...

Several years ago, I read an essay by Zadie Smith in The New Yorker  .  In it, she tries to explain her encounter with Joni Mitchell's music, which for her was apparently nearly a life-changing experience. Her piece inspired me to write, and I titled my piece  Reflections on Reflections on Joni Mitchell: Blue and Green.  An excerpt is included below. I am currently having trouble doing something I want to do: write.  So I dug this out and offer it as a stimulus to me, and you, to be receptive, and expressive in whatever ways feel real.  Music is a vehicle, and it is hard to describe what it is exactly, and how it works.   What is the mechanism of its magic?   It must be a resonance that occurs, a harmonic vibration between the performance and the listener. This is no doubt what Zadie Smith is talking about when she talks about attunement in her New Yorker essay, Some Notes on Attunement, a Voyage Around Joni Mitchell .   When the lis...

My wife Carol and I have returned from an extended (23 day) live-in experience with my 92 year old father in his apartment in the Memory Care unit of his retirement community.  He moved into memory care a couple months ago, and for a while before that, it appeared that he was nearing death. Carol and my sister Cindy decided that we would stay with him for his last weeks, and we took turns living with him.  We appreciate more deeply and better understand the work staff in these places do. Lots of bathroom time.  Understatement.  Now Dad's recovered some physical abilities. He is still able to walk, talk, and laugh, but has very little short term memory.  His thoughts and memories and present experience seem to blend and twist into surprising shapes and utterances that challenge one's ability to make sense of anything.  Being his son and having all those shared years with him at a tender young age the things he says and does often trigger emotions and tho...

What do you do when your father is 92 years old  and his equipment (heart, kidneys, structural supports, brain) starts going on the fritz big time?  Well, I have concluded that there is something I can do to help, and here I am trying to do that. After my mom died in 2004, he lived alone for 12 years  in the independent apartment section of a 3-tiered senior living facility in Spring Park, Minnesota, 20 miles west of the Twin Cities.  3 years ago, while walking in his apartment he fell and broke one of the vertebrae in his neck.  He's never made it back to the independent living he enjoyed, and now my sister Cindy and I are here seeing what's what and hoping to return to our  "regular lives" in the not too distant "future".  My parents raised my 3 sisters and I in Michigan, and 2 of the sisters still live there. I live in Louisiana, and Linda, the oldest of us 4 sibs, took a long life journey that finds her currently pretty much home-bound with disab...