Brooklyn, New York

"That's Scaughtland for ya!"

The United Kingdom Up at the top of that map, basically the top half, is a tiny nation with a big footprint. With roughly the same population as Minnesota, Scotland has a land mass the size of South Carolina, yet there are more people in the United States that have Scottish and/or Scotch-Irish ancestry than live in Scotland. My family is one of those. In the course of growing up, I was indoctrinated to celebrate my Scottish ancestry (primarily by my grandmother but we'll talk about that later). So a year ago, my wife took a trip with her mother to Japan. I looked at the pictures that she posted, and when I'd talk to her on the phone, I noticed something. She was happy. This is not to say she's always unhappy, but this was different. She was having a good time, engaged in the world, curious, and happy-like no matter what the challenge. And traveling to Japan with her mother posed some interesting challenge...

Keith Jarrett: The Koln Concert and What it says about Creativity

Life is about listening. Sometimes what life is saying comes at you in in strange ways. On Friday, I was reading this story on Salon.com and it mentioned that few jazz musicians have the same clout as they once did. Of the few who still draw considerable audiences, it mentioned Keith Jarrett . I don't know Keith Jarrett, but I've been trying to school myself on jazz for the better part of a year now. Since I'm relatively new to this jazz thing, I want to make sure I'm really listening to what people think of as "great." With that in mind, I bought a book: The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings . Under Keith Jarrett they mention the album, The Koln Concert as his best album (part of any enthusiasts' "Core Collection"). So, when I saw the album while perusing Mecca Records in ABQ, I knew I had to buy it. Life was talking. The Koln Concert (So, go ahead and ...

A Year of Thursdays in the Bosque.

Ran into a friend in the Bosque, and we both remarked about how low the rio was, and I jokingly said, "I almost feel like I should take a picture of the river every week to sort of document it." She said, "Yeah. That'd be interesting." As she continued with her dog walk, I thought, "I should do that." With rare exceptions, I walk my dog in the bosque every Thursday morning. And with rare exceptions, I walk the bosque behind the National Hispanic Cultural Center (sometimes parking at the NHCC and sometimes parking at the small pullout lot south off of 2nd Street). My idea is to the take a picture in the same spot every Thursday for a year to get a photographic record of how much the river changes over time. I understand a lot about this caged and managed river. Indeed, Reining in the Rio Grande is probably the first sort of scientific, historical, political book on the river I've ever read. That's not a genre I usually read. ...

Confessions of a Human Nerve Ending

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