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...

  A few months ago, a friend and I were discussing the the speed with which the vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 was invented, tested, manufactured, and licensed for use. She was contemplating holding back and waiting rather than getting a dose as soon as her turn came. That we have a vaccine for a disease we only started being concerned about less than a year ago is unheard of. Remarkable, amazing, spectacular, revolutionary. But is it also scary?   Does the happiness associated with such a miracle give way to doubt, suspicion, and anxiety? I had been following the vaccine for COVID-19 story closely, and although I always have some suspicions when it comes to organized medicine and drug manufacturers, I had very little such skepticism in this case. I noticed that after a couple minutes, I started feeling a bit angry. I wanted to share with my friend my joy about the end of this horrible plague being in sight, while my friend was manifesting anxiety that if shared widely could lead ...

  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...

What I saw looking up after reading the first article (Hari Kunzru) Lake Pontchartrain and the Causeway This post is experimental, and perhaps a bit too self-indulgent. Like an “experimental” performance at Sidebar NOLA . Check it out. I clicked on Vol. 2 (Johnny Vidacovich and Mahmoud Chouki) and am staying with it (very cool), but the livestream video had me clicking out quite early on. What I’m saying is: I am putting this on the blog. It’s raw, experimental. OK, enough of my excuses.  Here’s the post: (reflections on reading a magazine)  When I heard about Kim Stanley Robinson’s new novel, The Ministry For the Future , I felt certain that I had to find a way to read it. The way-finding can be interesting, and that’s the problem. Too interesting (the way-finding, that is). Earlier this week, I had my folding bike with me when I dropped our behemoth car off at the Toyota dealer for servicing. Carol and I had been pulling a trailer all across the country, and so we need...

  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...

  I have been regularly listening to a podcast called Making Sense  by Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and famous published atheist and podcaster.   He may be animated by contrarianism, but to a fault, he wants to take a look at all sides of things it seems to me, to take a look at this thing   as meditation teacher Rodney Smith likes to say.   After the protests in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing by the police officer, and the aftermaths of the protests, and the other things going on in the cities in the name of Black Lives Matter, Sam Harris posted an episode of the podcast wherein he reflected on what he thought was going on and how the overall orientation of what we consider to be the BLM movement   might lead to more suffering, particularly that such an orientation could contribute significantly to the possibility of a second Trump term.   A few months later, Harris had Columbia university professor John McWhorter on his podcast discussing ra...

Carol and I are back at the Lodge, doing minor repairs and I for one am trying to craft my travel buzz.  I notice that with long retirement days, I have an index of accomplishment that I keep referring to.  When the index gets too low, my buzz definitely feels less buzzy. More on that in a minute; I am wordsmithing now and if I get too jumpy, the text might disappear forever.   Have you ever been in the Wind River Range in Wyoming?  PFC. Earlier today we did a kick ass day hike up to Lake Louise whose waters eventually crash thru some tight gaps down into the Wind River and then into the Bighorn river and on to the Yellowstone.  Speaking of, we've decided to stay out of Yellowstone and Teton parks, fearing crowds.  Nevertheless, in a couple days we'll pull our home thru Jackson Wyoming and continue on, thru Pocatello and Boise.   About that index: I mean producing something or accomplishing something that maybe someone else can appreciate or ...