InMotion

These birds captured my attention, so I stopped on a bike ride as I was traveling North toward Lake Ponchartrain on the west ("upriver") side of City Park. White Ibis gathering, January 2020 Carol and I are for the most part keeping warm but sometimes doing so requires special equipment: I could use better blood flow to my fingers, but this helps.  31 days to Mardi Gras Thanks as usual for your interest.

Discussed: Mardi Gras season, Puerto Rico, Amanda Palmer Here in New Orleans "Carnival Season" starts on January 6, 12th Night.  This day is also celebrated traditionally as the Feast of Epiphany, the day that the three wise men visited the Christ child.  Unlike the revelers depicted in the link above, Carol and I and a large but chill crowd celebrated alternatively,  at a Bywater neighborhood tradition, the Bywater Bakery "King Day" King Cake Kick-Off.  The weather was perfect, the music was sweet, and the cake was excellent (I can testify to the deliciousness of the savory crawfish cake).  Sweet versions of king cake traditionally have a tricolor topping of sugar granules, colored yellow green and purple.  My savory cake had colored parmesan cheese!  It begins!  Magnetic Ear performing in the Bywater on January 6, 2020.  From left to right, Russell Ramirez, Steve Glenn (Tuba), Jon Ramm-Gramenz, Martin Krusche, Dan Oestreicher, Paul T...

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 "wo...

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 Sa...

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 l...

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 Harl...

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!...