Welcome to Hurricane Season

For most people in the U.S. Memorial Day Weekend represents the official beginning of summer, the time when the last vestiges of spring bloom leads to the music, picnics, parties and playfulness of vacation time. It's a party weekend when most people give a cursory nod to honor those who have died for our collective sins but then turn again to another hot dog, another beer and another hose shoe clanging against a metal post. This used to be the way I thought of Memorial Day Weekend (well, that and the fact that it was always the weekend when gas prices went up), the time just before the end of school when you had the first taste of vacation time to come.

Not so much anymore... Last Monday I woke up thinking of the impending start of the Atlantic Hurricane Season (which officially started yesterday, on June 1). I don't mean that I didn't party with some other folks, because I did. It's just that the one thing that kept rising up in the back of my mind was that we were starting the third hurricane season since Katrina. From now until Thanksgiving I will check The Weather Channel, National Weather Service, and National Hurricane Center on an almost daily basis. When there are storms brewing I'll be checking every hour and become nearly obsessed with watching the progress of storms and anticipating where and when they will hit land and/or move safely out to sea. I will keep the hurricane report on my RSS feeds.

This has been my routine from June through November for the last two years. Whether in New Orleans, or safely ensconced in Northern California I have watched, worried, prayed and fretted for six months each year concerned not only for friends in The Crescent City, but friends and family in Florida, and people I don't know in places like Jamaica, Cuba, or the Yucatan.

This year both the temporal and the geographic windows of this worrisome voyeurism have been expanded. With the recent disaster in Myanmar I have had to face full on the realization that we indeed are all connected on this little planet. A number of people have made statements of dismissal regarding these horrible incidents and the less than stellar response of the respective goevernment agencies, but I think it's pretty important to remember that the current administration in this country is also guilty of slow response, of refusing help from foreign countries, and of being thoroughly unprepared for something they knew would happen sooner or lateer under even the best of circumstances.

The fact of the matter is that most of us live on our own small portion of a very tenuous little rock that is hurtling through space at mind-boggling speeds. At any given moment, on pretty much any spot on the planet, something catastrophic is waiting to happen. We cover our eyes, cross our fingers, say our prayers and hope for the best. In the meantime, we laugh and sing and dance; we eat, and drink, and play. Someone might be inclined to suggest that human existence is, and always has been, lived in the midst of varying levels of denial... and we probably do. But if we can also acknowledge that we are all vulnerable to disaster, and that we are all capable of helping someone else, perhaps we really can make it through another half lap around the sun more or less intact.

That's what I'm counting on... Welcome to Hurricane Season.

Heaven Can Wait

Last Saturday I went wine tasting with my friend Joe. It was a great time; we had some excellent wines, a beautiful drive up through the Napa Valley (a place I haven't been in probably 10 years since my major wine haunts tend to be in Sonoma county) under bright sunny skikes with golden rays shining off long tows of green. Acres and acres of vines were breaking forth in an abundance of tiny spring buds that, six months from now, will yield bushel upon bushel of plump ripe fruit that will eventually lead to hundreds of thousands of bottles of wine.

It was a grand afternoon... though the trip was in fact a distraction - a misdirection - of my attention from the actual magic trick that was taking place back in Petaluma. While Joe and I meandered our way through "the other valley," Karen was back home busily preparing the scene of the crime - my new apartment - for a surprise house warming party, gathering foods and libations, and friends from all over town; all coming to MY HOUSE to celebrate my new digs on Fair Street - the first place in my entire life that is really a place that I can call my very own.

I was completely unsuspecting... I had NO IDEA (and I'm usually pretty sharp about these things). When Joe and I finally made it back to my house, he asked to come up, and with me in the lead and Joe lugging a case of wine on his shoulder, we proceeded up the stairs to my little apartment. As I opened the door, a dozen shouts of "Surprise!" greeted me along with raised glasses, banners, streamers, and smiling faces. I'm sure I looked like I had no clue what was going on. It's not my birthday... Am I in the wrong place? 

Karen stepped forward to straighten me out... "Happy Housewarming!"

A few minutes later, seated in the middle of my sparsely furnished apartment ("Where are your chairs?" asked one friend), I gazed around at the wide grins, twinkling eyes and self-satisfied simpers and thought to myself, "These are my friends!"

I've never really had that experience before. I have certainly had friends over the years, and some of them have been - and are - long-term, die-hard friends that have stuck with me and by me no matter how stupid my decisions, chaotic my life, or imbecilic my behavior. But until now, I've never had a collective of friends, drawn from all different places, with different backgrounds, and different points of view; friends for whom the only real common ground is each other. This realization was the true gift of the party, a basic, clear, and somewhat startling realization that this group of a dozen folks (and another dozen or so who came along later) are people whom I love; people who love me.

A little over a month ago, my daughter got married and one of the biggest joys of that occassion was the opportunity to see the collection of crazy friends that she and Andy have gathered around themselves. Last Saturday afternoon I looked around my apartment and around Karen's back yard (where part two of the party continued lots of food, and drink, and conversation) with the joy filled realization that I too have somehow gathered around me a similar community. These people who share our existence together, people that can be counted on to laugh, cry, argue with and support each other despite both our annoying differences and similarities.

At the apartment, my friend Peter offered a toast and a blessing of my new place, saying, "A room of one’s own is where you define yourself, before you exit the door into a world that would rend you asunder. Your house is where your story springs from.
Congratulations on acquiring a room of your own, and let the chapters begin."

And those chapters did begin... right then, with the realization of this new place I have come to out of the long strange trip I've been on.

We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking terrific wines, and enjoying wonderfully prepared foods (including a fabulously marinated BBQ tri-tip , a spinach tortellini salad, a sort of baked veggie/potato casserole that was amazing and more... more... more... and more). One of the things about living in Northern California is that people really do know how to cook (and drink) wonderful, satisfying things. When you combine this with good company, playful laughter (as well as a few hot shot ping pong players) and informed and thoughtful conversation that lasts well into the night, sitting around a a burning fire (and even eating Somores)... well, to me that's about as close to heaven as all this stuff gets.

In fact... I'm pretty sure that I'm not interested in heaven unless it turns out to be like last Saturday night.

He Gave Up... Golf!?

In my opinion, Keith Olberman, is not only the best spoken commentator on television, he is also the most entertainingly intelligent. Last night he laid into Dubya for 12 long minutes. 12 minutes that cover the lies, stupidity and wrongheadedness of the last 7 years. He addresses many issues that a I feel are not only significant in our current election, but that are in fact central to our democracy. I plan on doing some more writing on this subject later today and posting it on George Washington's Cousin, but in the meantime, take 12 minutes and watch this video.

THIS is the true legacy of George Bush, the most clueless, hapless, careless, and thoughtless leader of our country (and military) in my lifetime.

Not Exactly Rockin' The Casbah...

So... it's been two weeks since I ventured a blog and it's been a whirlwind of activity (not that it hasn't been a whirlwind of activity for pretty much as long as I can remember here). The weekend immediately after the last blog, in a sort of attempt to make up for not being at jazz fest, by being my own jazzfest, I took part in the first ever Petaluma Moose Marching Band... pulling my trumpet out of mothballs (actually borrowing one from the band "director") and putting it to my lips for the first time in over a dozen years. I took that horn home to my new little apartment and drove my new neighbors (and landlord) crazy while I attempted to bring my lip back out of musical atrophy and played Rebirth Brass Band over and over and over again, trying (more or less sucessfully) to figure out my 5 measures of notes for Saturday's Butter and Egg Days Parade.

Bright and early Saturday morning I joined my partners in crime at the Moose Lodge and picked up my music from band leader Michael Whitley who must have thought he was insane taking on this raggedy bunch of wastrel musicians into a public venue. Michael was a great director; patient, attentive, creative, and most of all lacking in any big expectations. At the bottom of my music sheet ran the words, "PLAY ANY NOTES YOU WANT." It was good of him to give me that sort of permission since what I was actually playing was more or less beyond my control. What was really amazing was that while we all waited for the parade to start Michael started vamping on "Low Rider" and when the band picked it up, I was right there along with 'em.

The fact is the parade was an absolute joy to be a part of, not only because I was getting the chance to play trumpet for the first time in decades, but also because the celebration of Petaluma's 150th anniversary (an all year event you're bound to hear more about in the coming months) was a nice thing to be a part of; a chance to settle into this place that, over the last couple of years has become quite unexpectedly (and more or less against my will) a real home to me. As much as I have fought it throughout most of my life, finding my place in this little Northern California town has brought me a centeredness and a joy that I was not really sure that I would ever find.

Happy Birthday P-Town!

I STILL Know What It Means...

If I was in my adopted hometown, right about now I'd be making my way to the Cafe Du Monde booth for my iced Cafe Au Lait (with coffee made with chicory)and my first Beignets of the weekend. The liklihood is that I would have already begun my morning with a mind-blowing Bloody Mary at Liuzza's before even entering the gates of the New Orleans Fairgrounds and Racetrack... because this morning starts the Holy Grail of music and culture for anyone with a penchant for jazz, blues, roots, or other "American" music... It's JazzFest Time in New Orleans!

For the next 10 days music and food will reign even more supremely than usual in The Crescent City. People will wander around in dust and/or mud, they'll gorge themselves on foodstuffs both wonderful and peculiar (or wonderfully peculiar). People at the fairgrounds, in their homes, and on the street will eat more crawfish than people elsewhere can even imagine exists. All of this will go on accompanied by the incessant drumbeat and lilting melody of music wafting out of every nook and cranny. New Orleans exists both for and because of this incredibly rich mixture of food and culture (not to mention food culture) and despite all of the strange, horrible, and frustrating realities that accompany The Big Easy (both now and from long ago), this is the reason people will ALWAYS return!

You can read some of my previous posts on JazzFest here and here at SpeakLo, and you can catch the fever for yourself by tuning into the Best Radio Station In The World and at the Jazz Fest site itself.

Of course the best thing to do is GO! There really is no other way to truly capture the amazing mixture of people, food, and culture - the incredibly rich tapestry that is New Orleans - than to spend the last weekend of April and the first weekend of May festing with the best of em.

See ya'll next year! Have some mudbugs 4 me!