Crescent City Christmas

The other day (ten days ago to be precise!) my friend Mary called me from "Celebration in the Oaks." The event is a New Orleans City Park tradition that Mary and I strolled through two years ago during it's less than fully realized return after the Katrina floods had turned City Park into a lake. The other day she called to share the amusement at "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas," as her niece and nephew danced along, but her call reminded me of my introduction that year to "A Cajun Night Before Christmas."

There is just something about Christmas in New Orleans that goes beyond my favorite line from one of my favorite films, "Anglo Saxons go better in the tropics!" It is indeed interesting to go through this particular season of the year in the lovely temperate climate of New Orleans, but more importantly there is just something about the spirit of the whole place that I am missing right now. It could be the playing of "Peace Stories" in St. Louis Cathedral, or walking along the river on a still balmy evening, or the lights along the street, or the bonfires on the river... or just the sense that, like everything else, Christmas is just different in New Orleans and I miss it.

My life right now is an interesting juxtaposition of crazy and peaceful (there is a sense in which that is the nature of the holidays in general, but that's probably for another post). I was recently informed that I need to find a new place to live by the end of the year. The person from whom I've been subleasing my latest residence has decided to make changes in his travel plans and the way he works with this house and his life in London, so in the middle of holiday madness I am also finding myself house hunting. This leads me to a rather keen awareness of how Joseph might have felt while he frantically scanned the buildings of Beautiful Downtown Bethlehem, holding onto the slim hope of a Vacancy sign. It makes for an interesting experience, this scrambling for housing while scrambling for presents. Not that it has dampened my spirits. The fact is, I find this year's holiday to be the most joyful Christmas I have experienced in quite a long time and I am excited about the possibilities and challenges of the coming year.

But I still miss my Crescent City Christmas... So, Merry Christmas New Orleans! Y'all are in my heart!

Not Just Another Day...

Okay... I've been worse than usual about posting (or rather NOT POSTING) to the blog for the last two weeks.

It's been a busy two weeks... and I've been sick.

But one thing has been running around in my brain ever since a couple of days after Thanksgiving.

That weekend was pretty busy, what with a Turkey to BBQ and a parade to watch, yams, beans, brussel sprouts, green beans, and dressing all to make in a juggling balance while imbibing in all of the lovely libations of the season... It's a tough job, but as they say...

So after the big debauchery it was recuperation day (did I mention that I've been sick?), music to hear at the local pub on Friday and Saturday night and Santa to wait for at the local dock, as he came on up the Petaluma River to meet and greet (making like he was running for election) all his adoring fans.

Somewhere along the way, I think it was outside Finbars on Friday, I overheard someone say that Thanksgiving has "turned out to be just another day." Well... I know it's all very popular to be oh so reserved and cynical about the holidays (someone else I know was recently complaining about all the "false cheer") but to me it's just the opposite, and it's extremely important to remember... especially when things are not all sweetness and light... that the reason we celebrate holidays (whether they be Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, or Mardi Gras) is in order to break ourselves out of the ordinary.. to move us to a new place, to show us - by giving us a reason to relax, revel, and recuperate - that we are not simply here on this planet to take up space and spread our greed.

We are here to see each other for what we are, celebrate the joy of who we are, and know each other for the miracles we hope we can be.

For me Thanksgiving (my FAVORITE of holidays) cannot and will not EVER just be "another day."

Thanksgiving (and the whole end of year holiday season of celebration that it ushers in) is a day for remembering that we live as spirit inside these meat sacks and our lives are better for the times we stop and smell the food, kiss our loved ones, and have a drink of wine.

Buy Jen's Stuff!!!

On Sunday, my daughter launched her budding entrepreneurial career with the opening of her online craft shop, JenniferShmennifer. It's a great store filled with an array of hand crafted items that I'm sure that you and yours would love for the holidays... and THAT is a completely unbiased and unsolicited opinion!

Sitting over chili for lunch the other day and talking about her work and her store I was struck by the fact that I was also 25 (assuming that you don't count my selling Grit newspapers at 13 or doing neighborhood gardening work at 15) when I started my first business, a custom photography company. That was followed three years later with the co-founding of BrierPatch Music, the record company I ran for nearly ten years; an adventure that took me through many changes and all around the world. Basically, I haven't had a "real job" since.

The thing is, watching Jennifer do this now I am struck by the way kids take elements from both parents (and other influences) to create the gumbo that becomes their own life. The engagement with the idea, the combination of playfulness and serious are recognizable to me as a kind of business attitude I possesed in spades back then and which I am to this day trying to hold on to as I begin some new ventures of my own. The orderliness and structure she is already building into her business is much more like her mother; it's a trait I would have done well to have a better handle on and I think it will stand her in good stead.

That said... the store, the goods, and the attitude about the whole thing are 100% Jennifer and it makes me happy and proud to watch from the sidelines as she begins this new project.

Check it out! Buy some stuff! Happy Holidays!

Go JenniferShmennifer!

I'm Walkin' Here!

There are undeniably a whole wide range of issues that need to be dealt with right now in the world. They include everything from the obvious problem (and thank goodness relatively short lived residency) of the current occupant of the White House, his adventuresome debacle in Iraq, the complete lack of affordable health care in the U.S., hunger, homelessness, the ongoing and seemingly never-ending struggle of New Orleans to return from disaster, worldwide abuse of human rights... and more and more and more.

It's a damned depressing scenario and it colors almost every aspect of contemporary living whether your a big time mover and shaker or a small town nobody.

Three weeks ago (and I've been meaning to write about it ever since) I had the delightful opportunity to participate with a whole collection of people, some of whom I knew and most of whom were new to my acquaintance, in a three mile walk around the east side of Petaluma, led by our mayor, Pam Torliatt. There was no overtly political agenda in this, though it was possible (and people were encouraged)to chat with the mayor about their personal civic concerns as we padded along the walking and bike paths of this little town.

Over many years of my life, I've been in a lot of places with a lot of the basic problems of contemporary urban society, and the reality is that not only do I feel a responsibility to personally deal (as best I can) with those issues, but I actually thrive on the process involved in dealing with issues that demand our attention. I have regularly lived in a sort of confrontational mode with regard to such things, and that goes all the way back to my attendance at Viet Nam protests in Tucson from the time I was 16, to my joining the first Witness For Peace trip to Nicaragua in 1983, less than two years after my daughter was born (when every kid in Nicaragua seemed to be her age), spending many years in tax resistance against US war policy, going to jail in Livermore California to protest American nuclear policy, and serving as one of the founding board members of Dolores Street Community Services, an extension of our little liberal Baptist Church (no... that's NOT an oxymoron!) at the edge of San Francisco's Mission District... and, of course, well known to anyone who reads this blog regularly, working in New Orleans with Churches Supporting Churches and others to hopefully see the city come back to life sometime within the foreseeable future.

The thing is... this little three mile walk three weeks ago was a moving experience that I will not soon get over. There was no big agenda, there were no major speeches, no angry protests, and no substantial agenda. In fact, the only real agenda at all was the mayor's desire to get people out and moving through space with the idea that such activity would make them feel better, think better, most likely act better, and undeniably live longer; a pretty damn good agenda, it seems to me.

I still believe in the big important causes, and I still want to work, really work, for a change in the way we humans exist on this planet, but on that Saturday three weeks ago all those issues seemed to come down to the simple reality of walking. And walking can do a lot (last weekend, ECKS's daughter, Lia, raised $2200 and walked 60 miles for breast cancer concerns in the Breast Cancer Three Day) and maybe, in the sense of Gandhi's remark that "you must become the change you want to see in the world," the simple act of walking can, indeed, actually change the world.

It's a good start wherever it takes us and I'm quite grateful to Petalulma's mayor, and all the folks that walked, for introducing me to the idea. Someday soon... maybe tomorrow... maybe even today... I'll be active, political, intense, and challenging once again, but...

In the meantime... I'm walkin' here!

If you read one book...

In the front window of the Hotel Monteleone on Royal Street in New Orleans there is a quote from Truman Capote that expresses the sentiment that the real beauty of writing is not in the stories themselves but in the sound and feel of the words. There are times when I have that feeling, but they tend to be very few and far between. This morning, however, I finished reading one of those kind of books; a book so rich in language, so bathed in linguistic beauty, that the near horror of the storyline is completely eclipsed by the exquisite luxury of words pouring over you like a summer waterfall in a mountain stream.

The plot line of Cormac McCarthy's The Road follows a man and a boy on a never ending cross-country trek through a post-apocalyptic world of hunger, danger, and pain. There are no chapters to break the flow of the inexorable journey as the reader is taken along as a third companion through this world that seems at once too familiar and terribly strange.

Along the way, there are moral questions that are raised and sometimes answered. We are never told the source of the devastation, it just is. It is a story that you want to turn away from, but find that you can't. The reader must wrestle with the difficulties of this world, and these lives, like Jacob with the angel. On some level, by the end of The Road there is no turning back. The reader is forced, by taking the journey, to in some sense take a stand. This may be to seek a way to secure the future from such devastation, or it may be to hold the ones you love especially close.

Above all... the gift of The Road is the gift of language. The story is hard, but the language, and the spell it weaves, is lovely.

Read this book.

Happy Birthday Sam

It is the birthday of the man whom I consider to be the greatest contemporary American playwright (and possibly the greatest living playwright in the world), Sam Shepard.

This fact is extremely appropriate as a follow up to the last post about Godot being performed in New Orleans this past weekend. There is probably no contemporary writer more directly influenced by the traditions and styles that were launched by Samuel Beckett than Sam Shepard. In 1978 he received The Pulitzer Prize for his first major play, "Buried Child," which I had the delightful opportunity to see performed at San Francisco's Magic Theater (where it was debuted) a few years later. Seeing that play was the beginning of my fascination and admiration for Shepard, a man who has built an amazing career as a writer, director and actor in both film and theater. About 15 years later, I returned to The Magic for the debut of Shepard's play "The Late Henry Moss" and had the chance to sit two seats away from him and witness his director's technique as he made notes on performances and enthusiastically cheered his actors on.

Sam's plays grapple, over and over again, with the strange intensity of family dynamics and his writing (both in plays and in short form fiction) never ceases to knock me over and force me to reflect on what it means to take up space on the planet.

Both his acting and his writing have an ability to communicate the true essence of being an American male in the 20th and 21st century, demonstrating a groundedness, solidity and empathy, while struggling with heart and soul and angst.

On top of all that... he's been married for more than 20 years to the woman I consider to be the most beautiful woman alive, Jessica Lange.

Without Sam Shepard my life would be poorer and emptier and I would be more lost.

Nothing to be done...

This weekend on an empty street in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans and again the weekend after, in front of a deserted house in Gentilly, a group of actors will present my favorite play in my favorite city - Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.

Two quotations about Beckett which I found on a Samuel Beckett website describe not only why I dearly love this curmudgeonly Irish playwright, but frankly come very close to worshiping him.

"The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the shit the more I am grateful to him.
He’s not fucking me about, he’s not leading me up any garden path, he’s not slipping me a wink, he’s not flogging me a remedy or a path or a revelation or a basinful of breadcrumbs, he’s not selling me anything I don’t want to buy — he doesn’t give a bollock whether I buy or not — he hasn’t got his hand over his heart. Well, I’ll buy his goods, hook, line and sinker, because he leaves no stone unturned and no maggot lonely. He brings forth a body of beauty.
His work is beautiful. " -- Harold Pinter

" Samuel Beckett is sui generis...He has given a voice to the decrepit and maimed and inarticulate, men and women at the end of their tether, past pose or pretense, past claim of meaningful existence. He seems to say that only there and then, as metabolism lowers, amid God’s paucity, not his plenty, can the core of the human condition be approached... Yet his musical cadences, his wrought and precise sentences, cannot help but stave off the void... Like salamanders we survive in his fire." -- Richard Ellman

This is the real deal, and though I have seen Godot performed many times and in many settings, this is the production I would give my eye teeth to see. Put on by CreativeTime, an experimental dramatic arts group from New York City, in conjunction with a number of arts and education groups in New Orleans, these performances (which are free by the way) are being presented in what has to be the best possible contemporary context for this play; a play about confusion, torpor, and despair, but possessing within that context an amazing and incongruous hope in, and at, the base of life.

The mounting of this presentation, in and of itself, contradicts the first spoken line of the play, "Nothing to be done." This performance, and the energy, creativity, and life that has gone into its creation is SOMETHING to be done.

See it if you can... or, if you can't, at least grab a copy and read (or re-read) Godot this weekend. It might just be the most important piece of literature for our time.

Every Day's A Holiday with Mary...

Saturday night was the big Halloween Fundraiser at Petaluma's Phoenix Theater when I had the honor of becoming Bert (doesn't he have a last name somewhere?) the chimney sweep (among a host of other occupations... a bit of typecasting actually) accompanying Mary Poppins to the wonderful event.

Mary Poppins, I must say, besides being wonderful company for the evening, was indeed the hit of the party. It was amazing actually... Sort of like being a Disney character (which, I guess, in a way, we were). EVERYONE, and I really do mean everyone (well, with the exception of Ace Ventura, but that's another story), wanted to say hello or have their picture taken with Mary Poppins. While the dancing was going on, Mary would often simply take off and float through the crowd as I followed along, chimney brushes over my shoulder, trying to catch up with the girl on the winds.

At one point, as we were standing outside in front of the theater a group of teenagers came by and Mary approached to discuss, "when I used to take care of you." The funniest part of this interchange was that several of the kids were the first people all night who didn't know who she was. But one of them did, and he kept trying to enlighten the others. When I walked up, his eyes got big and he said (as so many others did) "Dick Van Dyke! Bust it out man! Chim Chiminey... Come on... Bust it out!" So I did, standing on the corner of Washington, I started singing Chim chiminey, kicking up my heels like I learned 30 years ago in theater class and join by a kid who is probably ten years younger than my daughter.

And speaking of my daughter... while I was busy kicking up my heels with Mary, she and her sweety were partying in The City... Can YOU guess who they are?

On top of everything... Mary and I even won the Grand Prize in the costume competition (and there was some stiff competition) with one of our competitors telling the audience, "Vote for Mary Poppins!"

It was a SUPERCALAFRGILISTICEXPEALIDOCIOUS evening!

The Prophet... Rocks!

The Boss was in Oakland last night, and he's there again tonight (but then you knew that if you visited here yesterday).

The show - a two hour and twenty minute extravanganza - was simply astonishing. Astonishing in a somewhat unexpected way. The show - as it seems, from viewing the set lists of the tour, is the case everywhere - is an interesting juxtaposition of some of Bruce's oldest and best tunes and a heavy selection of songs from the new album, Magic. What happens in this context is a broad spectrum experience of what Bruce, at heart has always been about, and how that perspective plays at this time in our personal and collective history.

Starting the show with the clarion call, "Is there anybody ALIVE out there!?" Bruce ripped down through the set starting with Radio Nowhere, the new single, followed by a bone rattling, mind-altering three song line up of "The Ties That Bind," "Lonesome Day," and "Gypsy Biker" - a rock and roll look at what holds people together, and what, in this time of war and malfeasance, tears them apart. As the conslusion of this initial foray into what would be a two hour long musical look at what is wrong - and what is right - about our country right now, Gypsy Biker is an amazing song. The story of a group of people preparing for the return of their friend and brother, it's not until the end of the song that you realize that Gypsy Biker's coming home dead.

Late in the song, there's this lyric:

"The favored march up over the hill
In some fools parade
Shoutin' victory for the righteous
But there ain't much here but graves"

It pretty much describes the perspective that Bruce is taking on the whole scene. Even the title song from the new album, Magic, is explained as a song "not about magic, but about tricks... and their consequences."

Along the way, there's plenty of the real deal... heart stopping, ear clearing, joy inspiring, screaming rock and roll that serves to emphasize the fact that the ugliness and despair is NOT THE WHOLE STORY.

This is Bruce in the sixth year of the Dubya Occupation. He's brought the truth, again, but he's done it with strength and thought, and senstivity, and rock and roll.

The raging funamentalists who are running the Republican agenda right now might try paying attention to some of the hard stories in that Bible they are so proud of declaring to be infallible.

When the Prophet speaks... or in this case ROCKS... one would do well to listen.

Magic Pushing 60

Tonight's the night! Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band play the Oakland Coliseum tonight and I am going to see Bruce and the best rock and roll band anywhere for the first time since I saw them at the end of The Rising tour at San Francisco's Pac Bell Park in 2004.

Last spring, I had the great good fortune of seeing Bruce introduce the Seeger Sessions band and absolutely tear up the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, bringing 30,000+ battle scarred people to their feet to raise their hands in the air and cry out to the city around them "Rise Up!"

It was at that show that Bruce introduced a song that he had written specifically for New Orleans, an adaptation of a song written first during the Great Depression, but adapted for the times by Springsteen, How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?

Tonight in Oakland he's back with Clarence, Little Steven, Patti and the gang... all in support of the amazing new album Magic, an album that does for these war times what The Rising did for our collective psychological struggle with the aftermath of September 11. In this album he looks backwards and forward, reflects on the good things in life (and in our country) and considers from several different angles the ways we have lost our better selves (and a good number of our good people) to the obscene Imperial March of George II.

And that's what Bruce is best at... Somehow he can make you look at what really sucks about life, the world, and the times, without losing yourself, and without losing the goodness of the world and the beauty of people at the same time. He even celebrates those good things while refusing to turn away from the difficult. And he does it all with a kick ass rock and roll band that ranks with the best players anywhere.

At the same time... with his creativity, energy, and drive he does a damn good job of revealing an excellent model for moving into one's seventh decade on the planet.

So... well... I'm excited!

I am just damn ready to share that Magic!

Maniacs Unite!

In one of those early morning synchronistic experiences that the internet is particularly good at generating, this morning I moved from reading headlines at the NYTimes, to clicking on an ad for a book by Greg Mortenson about building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to a link to the Epilepsy Foundation (where Greg will be speaking in San Francisco next week) to an article about Ironman Triathlete Mark Ashby.

It was this last link that brought me up short, turned me around and slammed me right into the wall of my life.

I have epilepsy.

Most people who know me and read this blog regularly are aware of that, though few people realize the way it affects my life. In the 32 years since I had my first seizure I have been on dilantin to control them with only a few seizures over that time "breaking through," and most of the time that due to the fact that I have (for various legitimate and non-legitimate reasons) gone off my medication. For the most part, epilepsy is not a regular, visible, easily identifiable part of who I am. At the same time, as I learn more and more about the condition I have lived with for over thirty years, I am discovering that it has defined in some way nearly every area of my life.

My specific condition is known as Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and features three specific types of seizures, all of which I have experienced at some time or another. Something that I have only discovered since my last seizure (now nearly a year ago) is the fact tht the "milder seizures" that I experience from time to time are really the experience of my particular brand of the disease. The big full blown shake, rattle and roll type of seizures (SGTCS) that I have had approximately 6 times in 30 years occur when the electrical firings of the Temporal Lobe seizures spread to the rest of the brain... at least that's how I understand it. These have only occured when I have been off medication. The others actually happen on a pretty regular basis and I am only just now discovering that everything from my deep attachment to religious experience, to a long standing bi-polar condition (now mostly over... I hope), to some very strange semi-mystical visions, my argumentative nature, big blow up rages and a significant lack of stable self-control, and even my deep and constant need to write, all have at least some connection to this condition. There's even a theoretical term for the whole package, Geschwind syndrome.

Sometimes I feel like one of the characters on Heros, in possesion of some special world-saving power; sometimes I feel like a member of the cast of Freaks, darkly struggling through a nightmare world of oddity and malaise.

Sometimes it's just plain hard.

Often, I don't want to be who I am, do what I do, or think like I think. A LOT of the time I don't want to take my meds because of the way it feels like dilantin dulls my senses and disrupts my thinking. And thirty years of the drug has wreaked havoc on my teeth and gums.

Through all of this... the most effective thing I have experienced for bringing myself around and maintaining some semblance of stability and order, both mentally and physically, is when I was training for and running marathons.

That's where the story of Mark Ashby comes in.

Marks' discipline (both physically and with his attention to his condition) is an example to me of a way I not only need to live, but a way I would like to live. I have spent much of the last 30 years trying to pretend like I don't have this problem. The fact is I do, but a person like Mark shows what's possible regardless of my condition.

In the article about Mark, there's a quote from Steve Prefontaine... "Most people run a race to see who is fastest, I run a race to see who has the most guts." Mark himself puts it this way, "I think human beings are capable of doing far more than what we would or could ever imagine, and a good portion of us don't challenge ourselves as much as we should – physically and mentally. I'm of the opinion that you should never say 'no' to anything unless you try, and if you have the spirit to try, you should have the power to succeed."

This is the motivation for living I find as I start this day this morning.

I see it in Mark Ashby's training and competition in the Ironman.

I see it in my "step-son" Caleb, who I watched grow into a tall, strong, deep competitor who will be competing in the Xterra championship this month in Maui.

I see it in the dedicated and joyous training and vibrant life-affirming race that Jennifer ran two weeks ago at Lake Berryessa.

I see it as hope, as discipline, as challenge and as life.

And it's time for me to get back on the road.

She's My Maniac!

On Saturday I made the 90 minute drive from Petaluma up through Napa's fall spotted vineyards to beautiful Lake Berryessa (a place in the Bay Area I had never been in my entire 30 years of residency in the area) to watch Jen kick butt in her first ever Triathlon, the Tri Girl Tri. Last year Jen's best friend, Mel (on the left in the picture below) raced the race and Jen went to cheer her on. While she was there, she caught the bug.

Over the last year Jennifer joined the YMCA, took their boot camp fitness classes, started swimming, running and biking, bought a bike to take out on the roads and even adjusted her diet (including giving up alcohol for a month) as she walked the walk (or more accurately swam the swim, road the ride, and ran the run) of training for a demanding event like a triathlon. Then come Friday, she and her cohorts headed for the hills, camping out on the lake the night before, going to bed early in the evening and rising with the sun on race day.

All I had to do was get my butt out of bed and drive up to the lake, and frankly THAT was a daunting task (I got lost twice). Jen and her friends Mel and Kaylynn (seen below) were up and in the water at 9:00 am. What's more... they were SMILING about it! Jen was smiling all the way... or at least she was smiling whenever she came into public view. I'm thinking that she probably wasn't smiling at about mile 10 on the bike when, as she described it herself, she had "Maniac" playing in her head as she kept her legs peddling as fast as they would go 1-2-1-2-1-2...

Jen not only met her goal times, but exceeded them in each leg of the event. She completed the entire race in two hours, twenty one minutes and fortyfive point six seconds, and she did it in fine form.

For me, the whole event, and everything that goes into it, is another one of those moments when I look at the world in amazement and say with Jack Nicholson, "Look what people can do." Just being in the environment and watching my daughter, her friends, and all the other women taking on the challenge was enough to inspire me, and move me to take action for myself. Everything about the atmosphere is a feeling that I crave. The energy, the supporters, the announcers... the endorphins. The gestalt of a fitness event is something that charges me up and makes me want to be better in my own life.

This year's Tri Girl Tri was followed on Sunday by the first all men's Tri at the same event. At the end of her event, while she was STILL smiling, I told Jen that I wanted to do the race next year and that she has to come and do it too. This is the strategy she used on Mel this year... I guess we'll see if it works on her.

Either way... I'm proud of you Jen.. you and your maniac friends.

Annie Lennox Sings!

I've been a fan of the angel voice of Annie Lennox since I first heard her rip through the wash of Dave Stewart's guitar in the Eurhythmics and their take no prisoners attack on musical mediocrity sucked me in and wouldn't let go. I gained a whole new way of looking at my "call to ministry" when Annie belted out her instructions regarding a certainMissionary Man.

In the time since that time she seems to just keep moving forward, leaping higher, digging deeper; getting broader, stronger, more interesting and more amazing with each album.

Her new album - Songs of Mass Destruction - which came out today, is probably the only entertainment material in the universe that could, in my mind, upstage the release today of The Boss's new album, Magic.

And with one song - "Womankind" - she reasserts the great big thing I most love about everything she does. In what she sings, says and becomes - with the entire personna that she creates - Annie shows me just why, and just how much, I really love the reality that is WOMAN.

In addition... the album features an incredible "Choir of 23" joining an astonishing choir of women from South Africa on the song SING! a truly mesmerizing musical call to arms for the struggle to stop the continuing spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. To accompany the song, there is a website where you can get information on what's going on with this deeply important mission.

This is where art and life meet in the middle of the pavement... the place where the passion that rises when voices are raised is put to use to change the way of the world.

Sing My Sister Sing! Let Your Voice Be Heard!

Things that make ya go.... Hmmmmmmmm

Tropical Storm... KAREN is forming way over in the Eastern Atlantic and all I have to say about that is... better watch out!

ARRRRRRRGGGGGHHH!

It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day So... Shiver me timbers! and Prepare to be Boarded!

Go take a look at The Pirate Nord's page.... He should be ashamed of himself frankly, but since the Bucanners beat the Saints on Sunday I won't push it too much.

You might want to hoist yaself some Rum or some such excuse for scalawag behavior...

Me... well, I've got my own Scalawag behavior in mind!

Arrrrrggggghhhhh!

I'm Younger Than That Now...

Busting my buns to get some work done before taking three days of vacation (the first vacation I've had since I can remember) the best rock and roll song ever comes on to describe the reality I am feeling right now in my life.

I've spent many many years being sincere, angry, urgent, right, wrong, smart, stupid, efficient, inefficient, capable, less than capable, and always very very CLEAR...

Well... That's not how I'm feeling right now.
Right now I'm feeling like I need to find my soul.

-------

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin' high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
"We'll meet on edges, soon," said I
Proud 'neath heated brow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate," I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Girls' faces formed the forward path
From phony jealousy
To memorizing politics
Of ancient history
Flung down by corpse evangelists
Unthought of, though, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

A self-ordained professor's tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
"Equality," I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My pathway led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

-My Back Pages - Bob Dylan

Copyright © 1964; renewed 1992 Special Rider Music


Thanks Karen... see ya'll on the other side of the Sierra

The Kid's Alright

So... over the last two weekends (since I wrote about the necessity of waiting) I have had wonderful, engaging, heart-filled weekends and frankly it's more than I was really prepared for.

On Labor Day Weekend I spent time Friday with a relatively new friend, sitting by the water, listening to music, resting and being easy, and I spent Sunday in Oakland listening to jazz, blues, and Lucinda Williams (that's Lucinda on the left there, from a picture on a new single) and having an exceptionally good time on my own.

The week following was a nightmare (of which I wrote last Friday) and that reality had a way of bringing my feet back to ground, only to - come Friday night - have myself whisking away onto the dance floor with aforementioned "new friend" to a Tom Petty tune in the midst of what felt like a weird channeling of a Sahuarita High School dance (there's a story in THERE somewhere, but it will have to wait for another blog) and into a whirlwind weekend that has left me shaking my head and going "What was that!?"

So here I am on Tuesday morning, struggling with multiple deadlines, facing into a mountain of work, looking for the way to turn that work into a life and basically basking in a state of stupid bliss.

While I was gearing up to hear Lucinda on Labor Day Weekend, I bought Are You Alright off of iTunes and it has been playing in my head ever since.

In answer to the questions of the chorus... No... Yes... Yes... Yes Yes Yes... YES!!!!!!!!!

Help Mr. Wizard I don't want to be a Geek anymore!!!

Say it with me now... "Trissle, Trassle, Trossle, Trom... Time for this one to come home."


[Side note: A lot of references to Tooter Turtle on the web use the letter D instead of T for the above incantation, but I think they're wrong. The alliteration is much better with T, hooking into the second phrase accents on Time... This... and To... not to mention Tooter Turtle]


Okay... by invoking Tooter Turtle's manic cry for rescue (let alone my little literary analysis) I have clearly cemented the geek nature of my being, but then that is in fact the point.

I have had a week (really two weeks) from hell... buried in a cybernetic miasma of other people's design realities and desires for bad art that pretends like they have quality product. I feel like my soul has been sucked out of me through my fingers and the proclamation I made a dozen years ago that "I do not want to be doing websites in 5 years" has finally brought me to the absolute burnout point.

In "Confessions of a Guilty Bystander" (41 years ago) Thomas Merton wrote, "It is precisely the illusion that mechanical progress means human improvement that alienates us from our own being and our own reality. It is precisely because we are convinced that our life, as such, is better if we have a better car, a better TV set, better toothpaste, etc., that we condemn and destroy our own reality and the reality of our natural resources. Technology was made for (hu)man(s) not (hu)man(s) for technology. In losing touch with being and thus with God, we have fallen into a senseless idolatry of production and consumption for their own sakes, We have renounced the act of being and plunged ourselves into process for its own sake We no longer know how to live, and because we cannot accept life in its reality, life ceases to be a joy and becomes an affliction. And we even go so far as to blame God for it! The evil in the world is all of our own making, and it proceeds entirely from our ruthless, senseless, wasteful, destructive, and SUICIDAL neglect of our own being."


That's it... I'm done.

I once did an interview with Sam Keen in which he invoked a quote from one of his teachers (and one of my heros) Howard Thurman. Keen said that Thurman told him, "There are two questions one must ask in life, 'Where am I going?' and 'Who will go with me?' and if you get them in the wrong order you will be in for a world of trouble."


I have asked these questions - almost always in the wrong order - my whole life.


Time to ask again... Time to turn the page.

Waiting as a Way of Life

After sitting meditation this morning I picked up the small labyrinth model that my daughter gave me a couple of years ago and was moving mentally through it as I have done almost every day for the last two years. Halfway through the exercise it struck me, as I entered the center and stayed for just a moment before heading back out, that a large part of the discipline of the Labyrinth is STAYING at the center long enough to hear the Word.

I am good with the part of the symboliic journey that puts me on the road - that keeps me on the road - and I can let stuff go along the way in and ponder what I want to bring out, but I continue to remain rather uncomfortable with the part where I am supposed to WAIT at the center.

The last two years have been for me a constant dropping away of the extraneous b.s. of the first half of my life. At each step along the way, each turning around at a corner, each doubling back of the trail, I again think, "now... this is it. I've done all the work. It's time to move on." What I find, however, is that no, unfortunately there is more work to be done.

Perhaps that's part of the difficulty of facing into the problem of New Orleans. I, for one, want everything fixed NOW. Actually, I want it all fixed a year ago. But there are still things for us to learn, and there are still things for us to do. There are still messages that The God/Goddess wants us to hear. It feels to me that I have been missing this huge lesson of the Labyrinth experience because I have forgotten (or avoided) the waiting part.

It's not for nothing that Moses was not called by God until he was over 80 (McSweeney's, by the way, just published a FIRST novel by an author of age 90, so don't go figuring that the Moses phenomenon has passed).

It's not for nothing that the Israelites had to wait in the desert for 40 years or that the Babylonian Exile lasted for something like 70.

Perhaps it's not for nothing (besides governmental ineptitude and graft that is) that the New Orleans Diaspora seemingly continues forever. Is it possible that there is something waiting here for us to learn?

There is a message for us at the center of the Labyrinth but to hear it we have to enter that center through a slow and winding path, letting go of our overwrought personnas and our excess baggage along the way. Once there, right when we're damned ready to go dashing back with the message (like Phidippides on the plains of Marathon) we find that no... we must wait instead. We must take a breath, sit, loosen our muscles, our hearts, and our minds and listen for the Word made Flesh.

I don't know how long it will take. All I know is that for me... well, I'm not yet done with waiting.

The Call Inside The Silence

I've been struggling for the last five days with how and what to write about my birthday (both the party that I threw and the event itself) while at the same time facing into a sort of low grade depression, leading into and out of the second anniversary of Katrina, that I hadn't even really noticed until this morning. For five days I've come to the computer to write my thoughts and feelings and for five days the page has remained blank.

Some of this comes from the inexorable driving force of SILENCE that confronts me at this time and in the face of these realities. My good friend E sent me a wonderful book of Thomas Merton selections on writing and while it has been a great inspiration and comfort over the last few days, it has had the intriguing effect of deepening the silence I was already experiencing, leading me into a labyrinth of memories, dreams, and reflections from which I can't seem to extricate myself, and from which I am not fully sure I want to be extricated. There is a sort of dull pain that I experience in this silence, but there is also a sense of coming hope, a faltering stumbling undifferentiated something that I can't see quite yet, but that I know is out there and that I think is friendly and does not mean me harm... I hope.

In the just over two weeks since I thundered out of New Orleans on a wing and a prayer in a desperate search for computer resources I have felt more than a little bit lost, a great deal disconnected, thoroughly frustrated, and clearly (though mostly subconsciously) depressed. That flight, for me, was a retreat, a collapse, and a semi-final resignation from all that I have been struggling to maintain since the Sunday afternoon two years ago when I rode with Roxanne across the bridge to Slidell and on to Mississippi.Unknown to me at the time, that flight was a final capitualtion to the forces set in motion by the storm, a reluctant acceptance of the inexorable power of the events, now two years old, that put the ending stamp on the life and love I had imagined; a life and love I had lived for 17 years and the hope of new life and love in The Land of Dreams.

Yesterday's anniversary was the final nail in that coffin. For the rest of my life the last week of August will be forever tied to four events: my birthday, my mother's birthday, The Thing (as Chris Rose calls it) and its annihilation of my dream of New Orleans, and the final swan song of my relationship to Wendy MacCall. I doubt if I will ever be rid of those memories, but I think that yesterday was the beginning of a healthy grief. A grief I needed to feel . A grief that will finally be the gateway to a new life.

Yesterday, as part of the Katrina anniversary memorial events, The Monette Trumpet Corporation presented "The Elysian Trumpet" to New Orleans' cultural representative, trumpeter Irvin Mayfield, as a symbol of remembrance of the people lost in the storm (including Irvin's father) and of the hope of renewal to come.

As a trumpet player myself, just having a look at this 24K gold plated instrument is enough to bring tears of hope and joy to my eyes. I can imagine the clear, crisp tone, and the muted low growl. I can hear it playing When The Saints Go Marhing In, and St. James' Infirmary. I hear it ring out to say that all is not lost... not by a long shot.

We are called to hope, to joy, to life coming around again and again and again. I believe in that. I believe it for New Orleans. I believe it for our country. I believe it for you. I believe it for me.

Sooner or later... one of these days... It really is gonna be okay.

Taco Butts

They're shoving the taco trucks out of Jefferson Parish and I have something to say about it on Butting Heads...

Order...Design...Tension... Composition... Balance...Light...

HARMONY

After leaving this uncharacteristically abbreviated post, I imagine there are only a few folks who really got the reference (of course E got it)and I should probably make some sort of explanation.

In one of those serendipitous iTunes moments, I wound up being interrupted in my work yesterday by Sunday in the Park with George (yes the Mandy/Bernadette version) and shortly thereafter found myself in midafternoon Sondheim swoon. It's a lot like the Terence Blanchard album below. A piece of music that drills down so deep into the soul and mines so many and such magnificent images that it simply forces you (or at least forces me) to put the brakes on in my otherwise speeding life and take a moment to put things in perspective... at least a little bit, for a little while.

From the moment I first saw "Sunday" in New York City nearly 25 years ago, all the way through to yesterday afternoon, it has grabbed me and held me relentlessly. There's simply something in this tale of artistic obsession [to be good is not enough when you dream of being great] and a love (and creative life) that must "move on" that rings deeply true. It is particularly poignant to me as my 53rd birthday approaches and the second anniversary of Katrina rolls around immediately thereafter. These two things will forever be linked in my psyche as the fulcrum of my life.

These events, like the music itself, demand that I take more time now to look, and listen, and watch and see. They emphasize the need to focus on things that matter, to at least consider the qualities of a reality that moves beyond the daily and the mundane and thereby imbues those daily and mundane realities with worth and meaning. This is the call to attention; this is the resonance of the heart that magnifies the whispers of the soul.

So many possibilities...

A Tale of God's Will

I don't know much about God's Will, and I know absolutely nothing of what that will has to do with the chaos and suffering that came out of Katrina. What I do know is that despite all of that chaos and suffering, and in some cases because of it, there have been some amazing things to happen in addition to the really horrible things, and the moderately horrible things, and the not really horrible but still pretty damned inconvenient things.

Terence Blanchard's new album, A Tale of God's Will, is one of the truly wonderful things. The second song on the album, Levees, a slow, orchestral riff that plays off the New Orleans classic St. James Infirmary, leads into a winding collection of soft, thoughtful, emotive material that does exactly what it's intended to do. It puts the reality of Katrina two years later right in front of you, asks you to open your eyes and pay attention, and then holds you and lets you sit and have a good cry.

I had the accidental opportunity to hear part of this at Jazz Fest this year and it literally stopped me in my tracks and knocked me off my feet.

It is a beautiful, lovely album from a man who is to my mind and heart the greatest Jazz trumpeter of our present age. From his work on soundtracks for Spike Lee(from which some of this music comes), his previous work with Art Blakey (alongside fellow New Orleanian Donald Harrison Jr.) , his excited, heart felt campaign speech at the 2006 NOLA Jazz Fest for (unfortunately) losing mayoral candidate Mitch Landrieu , his work with young up and coming players, or sophisticated, heart shaped modern classics like this; the man has got the heart, the brain, the soul and the chops.

THIS is why there is music. BUY THIS ALBUM.

I'm an Island in a Blur of Noise and Color...

It's been an interesting week... It's been an interesting day. It started with some very weird dreams in the wee hours of the morning, led into some deep and intense reflection on life and what I'm doing with mine, and then a whole sort of stream of consciousness path that oddly seems to make sense (at least in my oddly constructed brain).

While digging around online this afternoon, I caught an interesting little bit of info on Bruce Cockburn, who is playing near me on Sunday at the Sol Fest. I was trolling the web for info when I found the True North site. In a really great article that covers most of his career, there's a comment about the fact that his song Night Train was written after " a long night of Absinthe drinking." I'm a great fan of absinthe. I'm even a fan of the faux American version called Absente, not to mention the made in New Orelans knock off known as Herbsaint.

The thing that captured my imagination about this particular bit of information is the factual tidbit that the song in question is a particularly psychedelic stream of consciousness poem about images and people and the state of the world. It happens to be one of my favorite songs by Cockburn because like so many of his songs it plays lightly along the line of dark and light, life and death, despair and faith. It's the first song on an album called "The Charity of Night" which displays (as you can see in the first picture here) a collection of disparate images including an angel, a machine gun, the yin and yang, the Muslim Crescent (an image that Cockburn has made use of before), pikes and stars and mysterious wisps of nothingness. The whole feel of the album is a bit hallucinogenic, but it's a reflection of the world, both in the late 90s when the album came out, and prehaps even more now, when the songs Cockburn is doing are as strange and profound as they have ever been.

The thing about the absinthe reference is that all of that strangeness feels completely appropriate. Whether it was Halloween ten years ago when I stood, in full costume, clamoring at the gates of Bartholomew Park Winery while my friends sat in the car, laughing hysterically, waiting to go to a Cockburn concert in Petaluma (the Charity of Night tour incidentally), or the interview I did with Dan Noreen of the Sonoma Wine Exchange, an avid collector of Absinthe Art, or the strange way I keep coming and going from the current heart of strangeness (and home of Absinthe) in America... The Crescent City.

It's a strange world... and the more I try to gauge a through line on the whole thing the more I seem to get lost and the hallucinogenic curly cue of distorted reality actually begins to make sense. How else to explain so much of what has gone on in my life over the last few years... few months... few days?

I used to think that things were supposed to make sense and that it was really my problem that I didn't get the concept. These days, I'm pretty sure that The Strangeness IS the basic reality... and if you've got some Absinthe handy... I think I'll have another drink.

Last Flight Out

Monday night at 6:15 pm I joined about two dozen other people on an Air Trans flight to Atlanta and then on to SFO. By 2:00 am Tuesday, I was at home in Petaluma. The fact that I was one of only two dozen people leaving from Louis Armstrong Airport (as John Fohl says, the only airport named for a reeferhead) at COB on Monday says a lot about the state of business in New Orleans these days, but that's for another blog.

The impetus for this spur of the moment transcontinental flight was the software meltdown of my Mac mini on Sunday afternoon, and my subsequent inability to find a way to fix this relatively simple problem in the reality of post-Katrina New Orleans. Previously, even during the dark days immediately post-Katrina, I used to have two places where I could get my Mac issues addressed, if not fully dealt with, but both of those businesses are gone now. The closest Apple store, as I was told by one person who tried to assist me, is in Houston... and, well you get my drift.

I let myself off the hook after things melted down on me on Sunday. I just shut off the power and went on to other things. Then, on Monday I set to trying to solve my problem. Facing into the hundred degree heat and long walks across town (since I don't drive these days and the public transport scheme in New Orleans is a bit less than dependable) with my computer and various peripherals on my shoulder, I went in search of assistance. Assistance that never materialized.

With limited options, ridiculous heat, and an air conditioner in my apartment acting seriously like it was about to crap out on me (and my hard drive already overheating as it was) I decided to gamble and check the flights west. It was clear to me that this was a problem that would take a week to fix in New Orleans and half a day to fix in San Francisco. So I bit the bullett, packed up my stuff and called a cab for the airport, all in less than two hours. This really might qualify as the clearest, most definitive choice I have ever made in my life, but the choice of the moment, at least for me, was clear.

Back in May I asked myself if I could make it in New Orleans right now and I never was able to gain a good strong answer. This time, in ten short days, the answer was clear... Absolutely not!

So here I am, prematurely back on the west coast with work to do in California, New Orleans, and Florida. What is clear for me this time around is that I remain called to and connected with The Crescent City, but like a hiker venturing into hostile territory, if I can't pack it in, I can't depend on having what I need to get by.

When I return (at some point in the next few weeks to few months, depending on what I can put together) I will return with full support resources for problematic computer issues. I will return with income and sources for income that are not dependent on getting gainful employment in New Orleans in order to survive, and I will have worked out my health issues with my neurologist and the DMV so as to be able to drive my own damn self. I will also bring a car.

This is the reality of New Orleans two years after The Thing. Yes, you can live in New Orleans, but not if you, in any way, depend on the support, assistance, and/or planning of government programs and a viable small business infrastructure for anything. It really is the Wild West right now, a Darwinian reality of haves and have nots. Another way in which New Orleans feels like a microcosm of the way of the world at the beginning of the 21st century.

I'm not even going to start on current weather conditions in The Tropics.

Sometimes I scare myself... seriously

Immediately upon finishing and posting the piece below, and it's related piece on Butting Heads, I opened my browser to discover the above story in my daily Storypeople offering.

Yeah you right!

Coming Around Again...

We are less than three weeks away from the second anniversary of Katrina and the related disaster of the levees and Harry Shearer has an, as usual, excellent piece on the current situation and the soon to be photo op of presidential candidates in The Huffington Post this morning.

I've written some things of my own about that in Butting Heads.

Have a look...

Waiting for a Miracle... Still

It has been one hell of a crazy week! The most extreme aspect being last Thursday and Friday as I shoved my poor aging body and mind through 40 hours without sleep in order to finish up some of the immediately necessary work, get on the plane, get to New Orleans and go hear Donald Harrison (among others) at about hour 38.

Now that I've gotten a bit of sleep, and I'm starting to settle in with the urgent work on this side of the continent I am gradually beginning to feel like my head is coming back to my body.

The weekend was, as any festival - even in 100 degree heat - in New Orleans always is, one unbelievable moment after another. It was another opportunity to remind myself why I was first attracted to this precarious city and why I keep returning. By mid-morning Monday I was already facing full into the basic reality of New Orleans in 2007. Three weeks away from the SECOND anniversary of Katrina and the failure of the Federal Levee System around New Orleans, the city is still clopping along like an old tour horse with bad feet. Sure the Quarter is jumpin' and during the weekend you could be forgiven if, as a visitor, you thought that everything is back to normal.

Well... it's not.... by a long shot.

• Two-thirds of the city remains broken down and largely empty (I spent part of my weekend with the folks from Churches Supporting Churches who are working hard to bring back many of the churches (mostly African-American) in town so that the community can find a center and truly begin to rebuild.

• Eleven people were shot over the weekend.

• I still have to wait 25 minutes on average for a bus to anywhere (on a system that claims to be running buses every 12 minutes) in the city... let's not even talk about "evacuation plans."

• It took me two hours and three trips (including one this morning) to finally get a check cashed at the bank it was drawn on.

• They just pointed out in the Times-Picayune that four local bridges crossing our now famous bodies of water - bridges that must be crossed in order to escape another storm - are below the safety level of the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota last week. My friend Mary emphatically proclaims that there will not be another storm, and I promised not to dispute her, but...

• Oh yeah... Who Dat Say Dey Gonna Beat Dem Saints!? Pittsburgh evidently.

So... I was particularly captured by the Storypeople story (above) that came in my mailbox this morning.

The fact remains... in the midst of everything, that it really is important to keep looking for the miracles. After that story about flight, I will, at least for tomorrow morning, feel differently about the military hellicopters that still fly overhead every morning just as I am getting out of bed.

Even when it just seems like all you're doing is waiting for them, the miracles that sustain you for just that little bit longer seem to pop up just in time.

Falling Up!

I get these little motivational emails in my box every morning; an admittedly lame way of giving myself a little shot of emotional adrenaline to get the day started. Sometimes it provides a nice little reflection... other times it serves the task I have really set for it, namely creating a synchronistic event that might work to shake up my psyche and break loose some sort of creative energy.

This morning was one of the moments when it did the later.

The message this morning went like this: "It's not the dazzling voice that makes a singer, Thom. Nor clever stories that make a writer. And it's not piles of money that make a tycoon.

It's having a dream and wanting to live it so greatly, that one would rather move with it, and "fail," than succeed in another realm."

The thing is... it coincides with a quote from JFK that I heard on the ABC show "Brothers & Sisters" last night. Calista Flockhart's character, Kitty Walker, corrects her boss (played by Rob Lowe) when he misquotes Kennedy.

The quote is: "Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly."

After two years of working on these blogs and the attendant life experience (the good, the bad, and the ugly) they represent, I am standing right now in a place where I feel the most important in my life is to clarify that thing that I am willing to fail at in order to succeed and to take on the task.

There is a poster from the New York School of Art that sits in the entry way of Perry's Restaurant on Union Street in San Francisco that has captured my imagination since the first time I saw it. As I remember it, it's an image of a black and white zebra casting a rainbow colored shadow (sort of the opposite of what I have here, but it was the only one I could track down).

This image (and its accompanying phrase) have haunted me since the first day I saw it, nearly 30 years ago.

To Be Good Is Not Enough When You Dream Of Being Great.

It's taken me that 30 years (and especially the last two). But I think I'm ready now...

Ready to risk failing miserably in order to achieve greatly.

Talk... Talk... Talk...

So, tonight CNN (and lovely Anderson Cooper) will be giving the Democratic candidates the opportnity to debate questions submitted by geek obsessed watchers through YouTube.

So, as a sort of experiment of my own, I've decided to join the insanity by blogging my own reactions to the debate on Washington's Cousin. So... if you're interested make a click over there and let's see how this goes.

That's what friends are for...

In the post I wrote last week (yeah... I apologize... very lax of me... no proper discipline here... sorry) I included a tune by Bruce Cockburn that means a lot to me these days because the single thing that has gotten me through the hard times, down times, strange times of the last two years is a small group of friends who lie scattered all over the country. There are three (in New England, Colorado and Los Angeles) whom I have known for 25 - 30 years and who know me as well as anyone on the planet, and in some cases, better than I know myself.

One of those friends is visiting me this week from New England. We are trying to catch up on thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams and we are discussing the possibility of doing some work together when we get to the end of this week of reconnection. It's a strange dynamic and I don't know at this point where it will go. What I do know, from just the few hours we've been together, is that, as always, Zach is as much a part of me as I am a part of myself.

There are a few other, more recent friends - in New Orleans, in Petaluma, in England - who have moved with me through my life and who put up with my bullshit like real troupers and who share their lives with me in a way that makes moving through life on the planet easier, more comfortable, and more endearing. These are people with whom I don't have the kind of history I have with my oldest friends, but they are people who I think, and hope, will be with me for the rest of this journey of my life.

The presence of Zach in my house and heart this week has me thinking, gratefully, about all of these people. I really don't think I would survive without y'all. I'm sure that I wouldn't want to.

You gotta have friends!