Raisin Box Trumpet

Some very good people, a very good place, and a good time

2011-02-20T16:28:00.001-05:00

I've been away for awhile. But, I assure you, it has been for the best of reasons. My business has exploded and I've been working like a fool from dawn to dusk. I didn't mean to leave you hanging. Lots to say, just not much time to say it.

The picture above was from last night's reading at the Kerouac House in College Park. Finer company you couldn't hope to keep. Poets, writers, and benefactors, brought together to celebrate the life and legacy of Jack, to make sure it doesn't get lost in the muck of his sad final chapter, as a brilliant mind succumbed to the terrible disease of alcoholism.

The embedded audio below is a podcast of Out and About with Jeremy Seghers on WPRK-FM, a radio show from Valentine's Day weekend, where Darlyn and I read our poetry along with some favorites by Neruda and Michael Ondaatje. We come on at 35 minutes in if you want to queue it up directly. But if you do, you'll be missing Mean Mary, a wonderful singer/songwriter from Nashville, who performed with us live in the studio.

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Paging Tavi ... Rikki Tikki Tavi, party of 10

2011-01-23T20:25:00.000-05:00

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but here are some words from today's newspaper, that paint quite a picture. I'm not going to explain this . . . I'm just going to put it out there and let y'all guess what the story may have been about . . . no fair Googling it. Here it is:

"I guess I need a snake lover; either that or someone with multiple mongooses."

This line is good enough to stand without a separate list of The Good Stuff. Carry On.

Hairy Potter

2011-01-14T17:20:00.000-05:00

I'm kind of worried about my new "themed" barber.

Deere Darlyn

2011-01-11T20:07:00.001-05:00

A couple of winters ago, I took Darlyn home to visit my people. Nebraska - land of big shoulders, and bigger tractors. My brother-in-law is a farmer in Western Nebraska - Willa Cather country. At some point, as we were all walking slow, burning off a big meal, he took us to the massive barn where he keeps his tractor collection. We're not talking Tonka trucks here folks. We're talking about the real deal -- John Deere green from door to door. Being a guy, it didn't take much for me to fall under the spell of the smell of motor oil and deisel fuel. I felt the rush of potential as Tom spun the big weighted flywheel and the old pre-ignition tractor sputtered to life with its syncopated hiccopy cadence.

The big surprise, for me, was Darlyn. I looked over to make sure she wasn't bored and saw a gleam in her eye. Her eyes danced across the ponderous farm machinery and she clapped her cashmere-gloved hands with the delight of a child on Christmas morning. She had her eye on one of the more recent additions, a big modern enclosed cab job And I knew that, given the chance, she'd be up in that cab, bouncing on that suspended seat, making vroom-vroom noises and singing the theme from Green Acres in a heartbeat.

I wasn't wrong. Vroom-vroom!

The good stuff:
Living in Florida in January.
Rowing reunions
Building a business
Building a s'more
Fresh produce
Vegetarian pizza
Turning "to do" to "ta da!"
The circus coming to town
Cash Cab

Happiness

2011-01-02T17:07:00.002-05:00

Spent the last few days under the weather. Darlin' Darlyn nursed me back to health with hot ramen and tender loving care. One of the highlights of the past few fever-addled days, was sitting side-by-side on the loveseat in my library, playing guitar and singing folk songs - Darlyn's sweet melodic voice floating smooth and soothing over my own, tortured Tom Waits. I like the way this picture highlights the grooves in the well-travelled fretboard of my 1970s-vintage Yamaha G-65 classical guitar. Even the frets themselves look dished and worn from 40 years of therapeutic noodlings. We've traveled a long way together -- from This Land is Your Land and Kum Bi Yah to Blackbird and Classical Gas, through break ups and make ups and countless campfires. I have newer guitars - sleek electrics with equalizers and built-in tuners. But for good old-fashioned chicken soup comfort, it's hard to beat the sweet, mellow sound of my old friend.

The good stuff:

Darlyn -- just because

chicken ramen

Lemon zinger tea - with Grand Marnier.

humidifiers

hometown heroes

antibiotics

seagulls - miles from shore

the day after the fever breaks

new sidewalks

acorns crunching underfoot.

London, 2008: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets

2010-12-31T05:39:00.000-05:00

When you pay good money to be scared, this is the kind of place you hope to find. Here we are, in a deserted alley, on our way home from drinking Absinthe at The Ten Bells -- last stop on our Jack the Ripper's London tour. It was a fascinating night of true crime hosted by Donald Rumbelow, a guy who had literally written the book on the case. Rumbelow -- one of the all-time great author names :) -- claims to have been the studio-hired resource who briefed Johnny Depp on the case prior to the filming of From Hell. We met in the furtive shadows across from The Tower of London, and trod the cobblestone streets of Old London -- one square mile bounded by Roman stone and conflicting suburban police jurisdictions. Rumbelow wove a captivating tale, then opened his attache to conduct a little book sales business. I got the last copy! There are lots of folks offering Jack the Ripper tours and they steal each other's business like Gypsy Cab drivers. We were fortunate to get Rumbelow, and we were his last tour before taking a several week break for back surgery.

The good stuff:

Comfort food

Apple cinnamon oatmeal

eucalyptus

Niquel

Antibiotics

glad tidings

great joy

angels - of all stripes

DIY web design

Solstice

2010-12-22T08:39:00.002-05:00

It came upon a midnight clear . . . actually it arrived around 1:30 a.m. -- a full lunar eclipse on the winter solstice. Now I'm not up on my druid lore, but that's got to be some kind of triple-witching hour. Local pagans celebrated with drum circles. And I thought of a couple of summers ago, when Darlyn, Meschelle and I were at Stonehenge on the eve of the summer solstice.

Regardless of your creed, there is something powerful about a solstice, especially the winter solstice, the longest night of the year -- standing astride the midnight meridian, staring up into the honest eye of the moon, you feel closer to God, and somehow empowered to ask him anything. This time, I didn't. I just tilted my head back and watched as the lid of the earth's shadow, dropped like an eyelid, until all that was left was a white tip and the moon eye became a buckeye. And then even that was gone, and the moon slept. A silent night, indeed.

I watched through the improbable December blossoms of my flowering peach tree, and whispered two words -- to God, and to Darlyn, whom I knew at that moment was at her home across town, bundled and sapping the heat from her cocoa, staring up at the same night sky, 25 miles away: "Thank you."

Peace to you all.

Pinocchio - the later years

2010-12-19T08:16:00.000-05:00

Like many child stars, Pinocchio had a hard time adjusting to reality. As it turned out, being "real" was not a marketable job skill - not like, say, being a stringless puppet. Desperate, he took matters into his own hands, undergoing experimental surgery in Mexico to return to his natural state. The surgery worked, but by then the world's attention had turned to automatons. His life in splinters, he took to freebasing varnish. An autopsy, performed by a noted tree surgeon, placed his age at 37, although his rings showed signs of termites and the advanced dry rot of a much older tree. He was made into a pine box and buried in a private ceremony attended by a cricket, and several smoking donkeys in topcoats and short-pants.

The good stuff:

Pot luck at the Kerouac House

A good yarn

A nice sweater made from good yarn

Apples and peanut butter

Barnstorming hawks

Woodpeckers at the window

Pajama weekends

Community

Linear parks

Writer talk

Pinocchio -- artist's model

2010-12-17T05:28:00.001-05:00

Another great sculpture by Cheryl Bogdanowitsch

The good stuff:

A warm day in winter

Rowers at dawn

Ferris wheels

Dancing shoes

Wind-up monkeys

Puppet boxing

Packages on the porch

Crisp, shiny apples

chimney smoke

Faces off

2010-12-16T02:29:00.000-05:00

This shot of fragments in Cheryl Bodganowitsch's woodpile would make a nice cover image for a poetry collection.

The good stuff:

Blue moons

Spaghetti and brocolli slaw

New office supplies (feels like new school supplies)

Poetry in motion

Infinity - and beyond

Questions without answers

The Three Musketeers

Traffic circles

Crop circles

Turning in circles

Fellahin

2010-12-14T06:41:00.000-05:00

More beautiful detail from the work of Cheryl Bogdanowitsch. This one reminded me of that famous National Geographic Cover, the one of the Afghani girl with the searing green eyes. This particular photo shoot was so rich with these powerful images. I think I'll keep posting them for awhile.

The good stuff:

The exhaustion of a day well-spent

Cold weather - nature's bug zapper

Woohoo! 30 degrees - no more lawn mowing this year

Getting pulled over for a burned out headlight - on my way to an auto parts store (no ticket)

Silk Soy Nog. Not the product itself, I just like saying it.

Sidewalk chalk

Vermillion

Chartreuse

Cinnamon candles

Spelunking for sweaters

Blue Angel

2010-12-12T23:42:00.001-05:00

I hope Cheryl Bogdanowitsch won't get mad. Her work is so inspiring, I played with it a little. Here's my collaborative interpretation of one of her pieces.

The good stuff:

Offsetting setbacks.
New Hope For Kids Christma Light Ride organizers and marshals (y'all rock! Thanks!)
Ray LaHood
Rails To Trails Conservancy
Living on the verge
40 degrees and sunny - mmm, brisk
Buffalo chicken quesadillas
Christmas parties
White elephant gift exchanges
fondue fu

Collaboration

2010-12-10T03:30:00.000-05:00

No one but the poet knows, from this beginning, where she goes. To take, and make, from this, a poem. From artist's head, to poet's koan. One to another, heart to heart, a transformation, art to art. And in between, the muses meet. Two strangers passing on a street. Each burned upon the other's eye. Cross-pollination, by-and-by.

The good stuff:

Friends at the Enzian

Snickerdoodles

saying "snickerdoodle"

cheap sunglasses

margarita salt sombreros

moving bookcases

giant libraries

library giants

baby bats

local bands

Wood-witsch

2010-12-09T11:23:00.001-05:00

Darlyn had a surprise for me. "I want you to meet my artist," she said. "Bring your camera."

As one of the leading ladies in the Florida poetry scene, it is becoming increasingly common for Darlyn to be paired with an artist, or two, for collaborations guaranteed to amaze. We were on our way to the Orlando studio of Cheryl Bogdanowitsch, a sculptor known for her fantastic wood sprites and spirits carved from gnarled and knotted limbs she strips of bark and stacks like so much, well, cordwood, around her studio on Lake Formosa - a stone's throw away from the community center where Gram Parsons played with his band "Legends," and where bands like The Allman Brothers, Tom Petty, and the Outlaws, hit the small stage before making it to the big one -- a youth club so hot that older teens would get fake IDs so they could appear "young" enough to get in. But that's a story for another day -- one already written by local pop historian and WESH TV reporter Bob Kealing, for Orlando Magazine back in 2007.

The poets and artists in these collaborations have a quaint possessive way of referring to each other as "my poet" and "my artist." Darlyn had been to the studio at the beginning of the process, and was going to pick up a sculpture inspired by her poetry. Under the rules of engagement, she would have to study the piece, as Bogdanowitsch had studied her work, and write an original poem, inspired by the reflection. That poem, in turn, will be given to a painter, who will create something original inspired by Darlyn's ekphrastic phrases.

But Darlyn had an ulterior motive for inviting me along last night. "This place reminds me of the inside of your head - at least the way you've described it to me." She was not wrong. Over the next few days I'll be presenting some of the photographs I took inside Bogdanowitsch's wonderful studio.

The good stuff:

The REAL Orlando

Lobster bisque and bourbon pecan chocolate pie at Logan's Bistro

Almond brie quesadillas with mango chutney, served sushi-style, at Sip.

Circus train - just passing through.

Creamy Jif, from a spoon!

Getting by with a little help from my friends

Howl - tonight at the Enzian

Living in a state where our politicians actually spend time, and taxpayer money, debating whether a long-dead rockstar, who is buried in Paris, did, or didn't expose his hoo-ha at a concert 40 years ago, and whether he should be pardoned - really. How's that budget coming?

Green and groovin'

2010-12-08T06:09:00.000-05:00

Boy have I been a bad little blogger. Went and filled up my dance card with paying gigs and now I've gone and missed a couple of days. To summarize: Sky, flower, frog, freak, cemetery. Ooh, aah, watercolor. In my defense, I have been busy. Look for a couple of stories in the January issue of Orlando Magazine. Just finished a cover for the International Accounts Payable Professionals and a white paper on Regional Water Strategy. Hit send on the water strategy white paper today. You know there's a trick to writing a water paper, right? Well, the trick is, it can't be dry. Badumpum! Ching! Thank you. I'll be here all week. Now see - it's that attitude right there that makes me think about skipping a day. But I'm bigger than that. I'll just sit here across from the Buddha Frog, and look for inner peace.

Japanese beer in American aluminum, brewed in Los Angeles

Spaghetti - with whole mushrooms and fresh basil. No spaghetti.

Clearance, Clarence

Roger, Roger

Leslie Nielsen - RIP

Mr. Natural

Kilroy

Banksy

Obey-Giant

Public graffiti walls

Scribbler's Corner

2010-12-05T12:01:00.000-05:00

Darlyn at work is a beautiful thing. ... Darlyn ~~at work~~ is a beautiful ~~thing~~. I had the opportunity to see Darlyn in full-on frenetic work mode this weekend. She has agreed to do some part-time bookkeeping for me and was helping me get my office in order. Sixteen hours later, I had to unplug the computer to get her to stop. That's just the way she is. Whether she is writing, or working (for free) on behalf of the Central Florida writing community, she gives all she's got. I took this picture in October, at the AM 810 studio, where she was broadcasting her Scribbler's Corner radio show. (Second Saturday of every month at Noon(ish) during the second half of Yo Soy Latino - yes it's in English). Typical Darlyn -- edge of her chair, coiled and ready. She looks as if she's ready to spring into action. And, speaking of Scribbler's Corner . . . Next Saturday (Dec. 11) Darlyn will be interviewing me, and my colleague Diane Sears, owner of DiVerse Media, on how getting laid-off can be a blessing, and how you can earn six figures freelancing.

The Good Stuff:

Bluejay at my window
Warm, fuzzy socks
Hot ginger tea
Pom Pom's Teahouse and Sandwicheria
Chocolate Guiness cupcakes
Snowy nights and Christmas lights. Tinsel afternoons.
First Friday arts strolls
Orlando Shakespeare Theater
The Innocence Project
Scribbles

Bric-a-brat

2010-12-03T07:06:00.000-05:00

Well, I swan. It's a Southern expression -- because it's not polite to "swear." I'm sure there's a great legend depicted by this figure, but it's not coming to mind.

The good stuff:

"Snow" falling softly on Market Street at Celebration

Florida winter - both days

Fireplaces - just because

Rock Band Freebird - family style!

Airing out the sweaters

The first seasonal whiff of a heater

Outdoor cafes with propane heaters

Cold, clear nights - so many stars!

Christmas lights

Holiday decorations

I am the wall-rus

2010-12-02T02:33:00.002-05:00

This particular gargoyle from the Parc de la Ciutadella in Barcelona, is probably not what John Lennon had in mind when he sang "I am the walrus." -- Although, judging from the lyrics, I'm not sure he was thinking much of anything at the time. Still, it never hurts to Imagine. As the media machine cranks up to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Lennon's assasination next week, I wanted to post this as an off-the-wall tribute of my own.

The good stuff:

The Beatles catalog is now available on iTunes!!! Finally!

Strawberry fields

For the Benefit of Mr. Kite

Norwegian Wood

Blackbird

Yesterday

Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey

Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds

Maxwell's Silver Hammer

A Day in the Life

Dog House

2010-12-01T06:00:00.004-05:00

A busy, but good, day yesterday. Had to escape to my watercolor happy place. This Key West cottage is, well, soooo Key West.

Pastel paint: Check.

Gingerbread: Check.

Dogs on roof: Check.

Mermaid figurehead on the attic vent: Check.

Homeowners association says: "two snaps up."

The good stuff:

Big lazy dogs

Blue lazy days

Cocktails served in a hollowed out pineapple

The tractor beams of Christmas

Snow (on tv)

Sun (on my face)

Formal flip flops

Moving vans in the neighborhood - moving in

Wayward pelicans

The smell of fresh bread.

Here comes the sun

2010-11-30T06:00:00.002-05:00

Big, bright and happy - what's not to like. And I say . . . It's all right . . . which reminds me of a scene I witnessed at a redlight, taking my daughter to school the other day.

Sirocco

She enters as motion
At the corner of my eye
Left to right
In a solar arc
All elbows, knees, and jiggling excess
Bold as brass
Dark as bronze
Big as a Sousaphone

She takes to the streeet
As if it were a stage
In her own private parade
Dancing to beat the band
With a hyperbole of gesture
No doubt scripted for aerobic effect

She takes her time
Taking in the moment
When she reaches the refuge of the far corner
A car honks
And it looks, for a moment
As if she might return for an encore
But she continues on her way
After a simple jig
Blowing west
In a cloud of construction dust

The good stuff:

Takin' care of business
The light at the end of the tunnel
Double rainbow
Big hairy audacious dreams
Good old-fashioned elbow grease
Comic books
Sultry looks
Yogurt-covered pretzels
gingerbread
volunteers

Alleluiah!

2010-11-29T07:36:00.000-05:00

There's a big old cross around the corner from my house that towers high over the landscape, poking up into the rarefied air reserved for skyscrapers, cell towers, water towers, and Mormon temples. Early odds had it that this monument was, in fact, a cell tower. A couple of other churches in town had already monetized their monuments, and given the prime location next to the cross-town expressway, it seemed a logical step. Except this cross was no golden idol. Central Florida Baptist Church built it as a beacon of faith -- and a nifty navigational landmark. "Look to the cross," and turn right.

At first I wasn't sure what to think about having my neighborhood high ground, near Gotha, turned into a gol-darned Golgotha, until I saw the cross backlit one stormy evening at sunset. I keep meaning to get back and stake out a spot the next time the light is right. But in the meantime, this will have to suffice. I shot this back in August, but have been holding onto it for the right moment. After Darlyn and I went to hear the wonderful free performance of Handel's Messiah last night at The Bob Carr, the time seemed right.

The Good Stuff:

Sacred Music
Renaissance Art
Cinnamon pecans
Freshly washed cars
A week full of possibilities
Holiday spirit
Morning rain
Sunny and 70 degrees
Hot apple cider
Crawfish etouffee

Azaleas

2010-11-28T07:38:00.001-05:00

Florida fall is in full effect - sycamore leaves twirling in the wash of passing cars. Acorns crunching underfoot. And color! Sweetgum, sycamore, red maple, sugarberry, persimmon, black cherry, sassafras, and the flowering dogwood. The West Orange Trail this weekend was a riot of color. But my favorite season, by far, is just around the corner, when the camelias will bloom, followed by the azaleas and magnolia. Paradise!

The good stuff:

A well-organized office

Handel's Messiah - FREE!

Facebook - in moderation

A good book (or three)

A well-stocked library

Scrooged

The morning paper

A job well-done

Dandelion fluff

Maple seed helicopters

Juvenalia

2010-11-27T08:04:00.001-05:00

Spent yesterday going through my home office, digging down through the layers - the art from the refigerator period, the various tools and paraphernalia of the scrapbooking period -- all the way down through the college textbooks I saved because I thought I'd need them, but never did, and into the stuff I did when I was a kid, that my parents shipped me in a big old box to get it out of their house period. This picture was not from any of those periods, but it captures the essence of all of them -- demolition derby, monster trucks, mayhem . . . beer -- rendered as a cartoon, suitable for even the finest refrigerator.

The Good Stuff:

Clean closets - No. REALLY clean.

Old photographs

Sharpies and Post-its

Toy telescopes

Late-night guitar sing-alongs

Vodka and cranberry juice

Venetian masks

The way everything, always seems to get done, eventually

Blue skies, smilin' at me ...

Puppies in passing cars

Winternacht

2010-11-26T07:21:00.000-05:00

Cold air is just made for walking at night, bundled up in a long black felt overcoat, snuggled down into a baby-soft cashmere scarf, hands in pockets, shuffling down empty streets beneath a stark, fat moon like a character from a Leonard Cohen song. On cold nights, we are all gifted with rabbit ears, as sound, unfettered by the baffle of humidity, travels fast and far to bring news of things unseen. The chicken-chatter of children, the suspicious report that sounds like gunfire, but is probably only a taxi backfiring. The cell phone conversation on the fire escape, and the fight in B-12. These are the nights for which neighborhood bars with fireplaces and Irish coffee were invented. Comfort food is mandatory.

The Good Stuff:

Long weekends

More leaves on the ground than on on the trees

Fall colors

The sorting hat

Confessional poetry

Passing the phone at Thanksgiving

Getting organized

Tipping points

Poinsettias

Big pots of spaghetti

Moto

2010-11-25T19:26:00.000-05:00

The good stuff:

A long walk on a cool night

A fire in the fireplace

12-cold drinks and a powerful thirst

Leftovers

Improvisation

Three kinds of dessert

Purple and pink sunsets

Traditions

The smell of cookies baking

Breeze

Bicycle Boulevard Barcelona

2010-11-24T06:08:00.000-05:00

Just one of many beautiful vistas in Barcelona. This one, from the Parque de la Ciutadella, looking through the Triumphal Arch toward Tibidabo.

The good stuff:

Coffee on a cold day

The celophane sheen of lake ripples at sunset

Anhinga roosting

Fountains

the village at Versailles

baking cookies

vanilla

the irrational exuberance of dog owners

the potential of libraries

the opposite of conspiracy theories

Two - redux

2010-11-23T06:00:00.003-05:00

As with the butterfly a few months ago, these two wouldn't let me get away with just my original altered picture. They wanted me to show them as I found them.

The Good Stuff:

campus visits

The Swamp Restaurant.

The Swamp

university libraries

Hari Krishna lunch

racoon bandits

pipe organ

carrilon

marching band practicing

balcony seating

El Gallo

2010-11-22T08:48:00.000-05:00

More Key West, more watercolor. There's just something about that place.

The Good Stuff

Urban assault chickens

A night out

rainy days

Mondays

Cuban coffee

etouffe

balloon arches

swans at night

the vulnerability of a sleeping vagabond

dueling guitars in the park at dusk

World Wide Web

2010-11-21T11:20:00.001-05:00

The big blue marble in this pic - actually a blown-glass fishing float - reminded me of the big blue marble we live on. I spend a lot of time, professionally, thinking about this marble - writing about sustainable water strategy and advocating for healthy lifestyles, diversity, and sustainable development. It's easy, in my line of work, to get caught up in all that is wrong on our marble, but like the net in this picture, we are all connected. Yesterday that point was hammered home for me.

I started my day with whole wheat toast, and honey - harvested, as you know, from the killer bees in my yard. Darlyn and I met up with a group from Bike/Walk Central Florida and Commute Orlando to ride our bicycles to the Winter Park Harvest Festival - a celebration of locally grown food. On the road, along the way, to and from, we passed people we knew, some also on bikes. They smiled and waved. Sometimes we stopped and talked, and it struck me as wonderful, the way a couple of winding residential thoroughfares, connected by a paved park path, is rapidly becoming a bicycle highway - well-travelled by a growing number of faces - faces I recognize, because we're not all flying along at 55 miles an hour behind tinted glass.

The recently installed bike racks in Winter Park's Central Park, were filled to capacity. And all around, I saw families on foot - parents pushing strollers, kids lolling in the grass conversing with bugs. Everywhere we turned, we found people we knew. And when we got home, there were emails from friends we'd missed, who had heard we were there and wanted to say they were sorry we'd missed each other.

Next to the Harvest Festival, which was new this year, was the Winter Park Farmer's Market, which is held every Saturday -- fresh produce, homemade breads, beaugainvillea and bromiliads. Hard to find fault there.

Later, in my car, I passed the venerable Citrus Bowl, where the Florida Classic, the annual match-up between Florida's two predominantly black universities, square off every year in one of the nation's truly great Football traditions.

I was on my way to Clermont, where bike club officers from around the state gathered in a conference room at the base of The Citrus Tower - a tourist attraction dating back to the days before Interstates, where, when roadside attractions thrived. When I moved to Central Florida, in 1985, you could still go to the top of the Citrus Tower and see mostly citrus groves below. These days, you see mostly houses, and varicolored ribbons of cycling clubs, churning and burning their way up, down and around the region's verdant rolling hills.

The meeting was organized by one of my clients, The Florida Bicycle Association, which was reaching out to ask club leaders how they might better serve the cycling community. It was a great dialogue, followed by a reception at the Cycling Hub bike shop, headquarters for the Horrible Hundred, a ride named for both its 100-mile distance, and the challenging hills on the course. The ride itself took place today.

Just 24 hours - one turn of the marble between the thumb and forefinger of God. So much hope. So much life. So much to celebrate.

The Good Stuff:

The Horrible Hundred

Community

The Cycling Hub in Clermont

Cycling Savvy

Five Guys hamburgers

The Winter Park Harvest Festival

Blue Jays at breakfast

meeting friends at the park

momentum

college visits

Apothecary

2010-11-19T05:09:00.001-05:00

I've always liked this photo. Not sure why. I'm going to the dentist this morning, so I'm not feeling particularly creative. I'll post The Good Stuff when I return.

The Good Stuff:

Van Morrison played during a root canal

Quiet waiting rooms

Flexi-straws

Walking around with Elvis lip --Thank you. Thankyouverymuch.

A break in a hectic schedule

A fire in the fireplace

The anticipation of mail

Big gnarled oak roots

Snow birds headed south

Butterbeer recipes on the Internet.

Heron Gone

2010-11-18T06:00:00.000-05:00

Great Blue Heron -- they don't pose for pictures, but man are they pretty.

The good stuff:

Kids on bikes

College campuses

Green transportation

Stomp the yard - for real

Fraternity row

Revision

Crocuses

Swallow swarms

Goalies

Goonies

Wild Blue

2010-11-17T06:00:00.001-05:00

One of the art world's dirty little secrets revealed here for the first time: Because Picasso's blue period preceded his green period, the famous artist, in the fashion of the day, simply plucked the blue periods he needed from several large exclamation marks and left the discarded tops upended in this public park. Later, he would realize the error of his ways and become an avid recycler, crushing all of his refuse into convenient, disposable cubes. Thus, Picasso would go on to become known as the father of cubism.

The good stuff:

A forgiving audience

Dilbert

Designer sheep's clothing, for wear-wolves

Free speech - with purchase

FIVE GOLDEN RINGS!

Patents pending

Self-cleaning ovens

Self-cleaning babies

Count Count

A Muppet Christmas Carol

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde

2010-11-16T06:00:00.005-05:00

Whenever he'd go out, he'd hear the people shout: "There goes Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde! Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da." . . . Which was unfortunate, and more than a little disturbing. Plus it wouldn't fit on the book jacket. So he shortened it -- his name, that is, not the book jacket -- that would have been silly, like having yourself buried in an Art Deco Egyptian modern tomb within kissing distance of your famously flamboyant fan base.

Little known fact:: He was born with three middle names. One he had surgically removed. The others he sold for food and firewood during one particularly harsh Paris winter.

A favorite quote: "People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately."

The good stuff:

Big Hairy Audacious Grave markers

Jambalaya, crawfish pie, and file gumbo (that's fee lay)

Bluesville

The Writer's Almanac

Cedar Waxwings -- I just like the name - very Icarian.(would that be vicarious?)

The Fringe Lottery

Peach yogurt

Crunchy ice cream

Free deli samples

Anything cinnamon

Orchid angel

2010-11-15T06:00:00.002-05:00

Orchids do well in Florida. It's not for nothing that Ponce de Leon named this place Florida - which means "flowery" in Spanish. You can argue till you're blue in the face about how pretty the leaves are (for two weeks) in New England, but I'm here to tell you, we've got color year-round. From the tawdry red of the hibiscus, to the delicate pink of the Moth Orchid, Florida is a feast for the eyes. The camelia outside my dining room window is bursting with buds, ready to blast open into a fuschia orgy of the most beautiful lush flowers you could ever imagine. They look good enough to eat. This moth orchid lives at Le Petit Cadeau, a paradise on Big Pine Key, where Darlyn and I go, when we're lucky, to write and count the deer and iguana. Once, we were fortunate enough to go out on a boat with the cottage owners, Dan and Katherine Vaccaro. I reached into the muck and pulled up a perfect - empty - queen conch shell, that sits today, like an orchid, on a pedestal on Darlyn's porch.

The good stuff:

Time to waste

flip flops in November

geese gaggling

Excedrin

Eden Brent singing Goodnight Moon

Boogaloo Ames

muses

Chinese fortune cookies, with fortunes - in Spanish

Hulu

hullabaloo

Hogwarts

2010-11-14T11:19:00.000-05:00

Amazing use of perspective almost makes you feel as if you're in the book. Hope y'all aren't sick of my Harry Potter pics yet. Lots of good fun

Last night, I attended Jazz on Edge, a wonderful event produced by Joseph Hayes and Jennifer Greenhill Taylor, featuring creole cooking from the Roux Memories cookbook by Belinda Hulin, who was on-hand to share stories with us, and phenomenal Django Reinhardt-style Gypsy guitar music from Jason Cook and The Cook Trio. Poet Sharon Hoffmann rounded out the bill, filling in ably for Summer Rodman, who was unable to attend.

Great night! Great food! Great people! Great fun! Thanks Joe and Jennifer.

The good stuff:

A full weekend of local entertainment
Frogen Yozurt
Squirrel Honey
Colombian Burger with Pineapple
Coffee, coffee, coffee, starts with C
Elaborate inside jokes - that you keep to yourself.
eggs and grits
guacamole
The Cook Trio
Django Reinehardt

Got butterbeer?

2010-11-13T16:48:00.000-05:00

Cheers! And speaking of cheers, Darlyn and I ventured to New Smyrna yesterday for the 7th Annual Wham Bam Poetry Slam -- a crazy-good event put on by the great folks at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Fifteen poets, three judges, no preparation, and five minutes to compose an original piece, based on a prompt drawn from a brandy snifter. Three rounds, and cash prizes. Darlyn had been asked to judge this year. I was a tag-along, who decided, at the last minute, to sign up and compete. What fun! The event was conducted in three rounds, with us writing and performing each piece before continuing to the next round. Each performance was scored, and three winners were selected based on total combined score. This year's prompts were: "Turning the tide," "That's money," and, "Washing my hands."

Here's my favorite, of the three I wrote:

Bard

Washing my hands

I turn and churn the bar of soap

Slip, sloppy suds

And I wonder

As the bar erodes

How much of that is soap

And how much is me

Swirling and gurgling down the drain

10 times a day

for 48 years

365 days each

plus 12 leaps

There must be a whole me down there

collected in the bend

And I wonder what my doppleganger would be like

If I were to crack open the works

And gather me up

All those soapy bits

And squeeze them together

Into a new clean and shiny person

99 and 44/100ths percent pure

Bar Brad

I'll call him Bard.

The good stuff:

k.d. lang singing about the big-boned gal

poetry under pressure

cardinals dogfighting in the crape myrtle

Atlantic Center for the Arts

Bonfires at biker karaoke bars on U.S. 1.

crazy, quirky poets getting their muse on

tiny, cozy cabins amid the palmetto and cabbage palm

deer on the swale

dressing up - for a radio show . . .

biscuits and gravy at It's All Good, New Smyrna.

Queue-riosity

2010-11-12T06:00:00.000-05:00

Here's something you don't see everyday -- an empty queue line at Islands of Adventure. Oh, sure, everyone was lined up waiting to buy a wand at Olivander's, but still, you have to appreciate the beauty of it. This was taken at 11 a.m.

The good stuff:

Cold beer

Hot deadlines

Old friends

Bold type

Rold Gold Pretzels

Shiner Bock

Finer rock

No socks

Talk

Spock

Sidewalk chalk

Hang on

2010-11-11T05:31:00.000-05:00

More random beauty from my trip to Islands of Adventure. Yeah, I know, there are other things to take pictures of, but few as worthy as this lone hibiscus flower, the only sign of life on a leafless skeleton of a tree. I felt as if I were photographing the last star in a dying galaxy. I wondered if this one flower was all that stood between this plant and the compost heap. As an entrepreneur, gritting it out through sometimes sparse cash flow, I could relate. I thought, "Hang in there, Buddy." I suspected this heroic effort would be for nought. In tourist world, even the foliage is expected to perform. Still, like the tiny wrens in yesterday's post, this close encounter of the wonderful kind made my heart race in a way that Spider Man and Harry Potter never could.

The good stuff:

Faith in success

Random peacocks

Ends meeting

Meetings ending :)

Arlo Guthrie's City of New Orleans

Creative noise

Local heroes

Dinner delivered

Time in a bottle

A Wrinkle in Time

Two in the bush

2010-11-10T06:00:00.003-05:00

As much as I liked the new Hogsmeade area at Islands of Adventure, it's this picture I keep coming back to -- two wrens, keeping house next to the exit to the High In The Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride. They're right there at eye level, and easily within reach. I guess there's so much going on all around that two small brown birds don't peg anyone's whoopee meter.

The good stuff:

Doing it all, and then some

Shopping for comic book illustrators

Date night

1,000 pictures . . . that's what, like a million words?

Lions, and tigers, and beers

The first Christmas song of the season

The LAST Christmas song of the season

low-hanging fruit

double coupons

village squares

Instant bestseller - just add writer

2010-11-09T06:00:00.002-05:00

Dear literary agent,

As you can see, my next best seller has all the makings of a classic -- a manual typewriter, strong coffee, and lots of leather-bound notebooks. I've even thrown in a clipboard and an uncomfortable chair, to show the quality of my research, and my ascetic work ethic. I have yet to write the first word. But having assembled the essentials, the rest is merely a matter of putting letters on the page and moving them around until they form sentences. There are only 26 letters. How hard could it be? I'll be sure to send you a copy, as soon as I know what it's about.

p.s.: I would prefer direct deposit for all my royalty checks.

The good stuff:

The hundreds of drivers who DIDN'T almost hit me on my bicycle yesterday

Going to bed early

Leftovers

The serenity of a quiet house, when even the dust motes hold their breath

The Dalai Lhama speaking at the University of Miami

The question: Does a designated deity have "human" rights?

The first fire in the fireplace

Austerity

Private sector cheese

Self-portrait

2010-11-08T06:00:00.002-05:00

Mama always told me it was important to make a good impression. Here's an impressionistic interpretation of your blogger.

The good stuff:

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey

Butterbeer at Hogsmeade Universal Orlando

Pumpkin Juice

The Three Broomsticks

Hogwarts castle

69 degrees and sunny

Chocolate Frogs

The Incredible Hulk roller coaster

Spiderman, the ride

Short lines at theme parks

Hey, Hey We're the Monkeys

2010-11-07T06:00:00.003-05:00

Took the last train to Clarksville and look who met me at the station. Guess that'll teach me to be a daydream believer. I should have known. Good day Saturday, signing books at the Altamonte Mall to raise money for Adult Literacy. Thanks to all who stopped by! Great fun. Great cause!

The good stuff:

Steak and bourbon mushrooms

Florida resident discounts

Pumpkin Pie Blizzards

New projects

Islands of Adventure

Stalagmites and stalactites

Putting faces to names

Colombia -- St. Augustine

Blown glass jellyfish

Trying out catch phrases

Drum line

2010-11-06T10:27:00.000-04:00

I love, love, love roadside tourist traps. They're just chockful of these ticky-tacky tchotchke gems. Somebody actually set up a production line where they said: Okay, what we need it to glue these cowrie shells together, give them straw hats and stogies ... and, oh yeah, a drum. I found this drum line at the Florida Citrus Center in St. Augustine: "Home of the 13' Alligator!" I loves me some Stuckey's Pecan Log, and growing up, I remember a place, in Nebraska, or thereabouts, called Horne's Corners, that had a beehive behind a glass wall. Without these places, I wouldn't know about Sea Monkeys, Magic Rocks, Mexican Jumping Beans and Saltwater Taffy.

The good stuff:

Pecan Logs

Jawbreakers

Mexican Jumping Beans

Sea Monkeys

Magic Rocks

Saltwater Taffy

Horne's Corners

Truck stop pancakes

Novelty trucker caps

Bobbleheads

Russians Love American Music

2010-11-05T08:21:00.002-04:00

Blue
From Three Houses Copyright 2008, Brad Kuhn & Darlyn Finch

There's a shade of blue
I call "Wild Blue"
that makes me think of France
or Kansas
depending on how pretentious I'm feeling
or how much I've been thinking about wine
"Cornflower" they'd call it
in men's shirt catalogs
"Cerulean" to poets and
fashion-forward writers of couture copy
I guess because it's hard to get people
to break off an extra $20 for "Yonder."
It's free in November
Sky

There's a shade of blue
I call "Sweet-Jesus"
that makes me think of dancing in biker bars
hands cupped on the denim-clad curves
of a big-boned gal
hanging on for dear life
eye to eye, knee to thigh
grinding her gears
She sucks breath through clenched teeth
as my fingers find and linger on
the thin spot
that makes her think of past mistakes
and ones she'd like to make again
Indigo

There's a shade of blue
I call "Lucille"
that makes me think of Kansas City,
New Orleans, Memphis, St. Louis, or Chicago
Digging glassy-eyed Buddhas with their mad, mad mudras
using horns and crying guitars
to rip the hearts out of suckers like me
who pay for the privilege
of having the surgery performed by professionals
instead of the dull knives of the back-alley butchers
back home
Cobalt.

Blues, jazz and tag art (the russian sax man was painted on a construction fence in Key West)--a few of my favorite things. Here are a few more . . .

The good stuff:

Folk songs sung at the top of our lungs, with a Bob Dylan accent.
Playing guitar till it twangs out of tune.
Swapping family stories and laughing until our faces hurt.
Loud, clumsy, wonderful sibling reunion.
Being reached via Facebook, because my phone is on silent.
Watching my daughter leave for school, driving herself for the first time.
Getting a phone call from my daughter (unsolicited) and hearing she arrived safely.
One day off
With four bottles, you get a wine bag, free!
St. Augustine

Kokomo

2010-11-04T08:42:00.000-04:00

In the Florida Keys, there's a place called Kokomo. At least that's what the Beach Boys say. They made that up. But if there were such a place, I figure it would look like this row of Key West cottages. My Key West photos look great by themselves, but, as with yesterday's bagpipe busker, I'm finding that water color seems to capture the vibe of the place --- reality in a blender, served with a slice of lime. I was half-tempted to photoshop a red bike into the picture, just because.

The good stuff:

Rain on a tin roof

Coconuts - unless you've parked beneath a palm tree

Banana daquiris

Mango groves

Key lime pie for breakfast, lunch and dinner

Family reunions

Rites of passage

A well-stocked library

Ceiling fans

Big fluffy bathrobes

Mallory Square

2010-11-03T06:09:00.000-04:00

"Jumping the Shark" is an entertainment term inspired by a later episode of the 70s sitcom Happy Days, when writers, desperate to hang onto a falling audience share, had Henry Winkler's character Arthur Fonzarelli, jump over a shark tank on a motorcycle -- for reasons that have been lost to time. Today the term is broadly applied to any form of entertainment that tries too hard. Of course, if jumping the shark were an actual form of entertainment, you'd probably find it at sunset at Mallory Square in Key West, and the guy or girl jumping the shark, would also be juggling fire. I don't know whether fire juggling is required to get a busking permit in The Conch Republic, but everyone does it. A guy on a unicycle limbos under a stick, juggling fire. A few feet away, a guy on stilts juggles fire. And across the square, a magician does card tricks and, . . . you guessed it. A troupe of trained six-toed cats . . . no, THAT really would be jumping the shark -- besides, cats don't have thumbs. The guy I feel sorry for is this fella, who trained his whole life to be a Key West fire juggler, only to discover, upon arrival, that he had to learn to play the bagpipes if he wanted to stand out. Personally, I'd have been more impressed if he'd juggled flaming bagpipes. That would have been entertaining -- and noble.

The good stuff:

Circus supply stores

Afternoon naps

Dessert first

The way sportscasters' heads explode during the week that professional baseball, football and basketball seasons overlap.

Calliope tuners (who juggle fire)

Dueling dulcimers

Rain, out of season

Charity that begins at home, but spills over into the community

Flannel pajamas

Flan

Eventually zebra came to regret the condo

2010-11-02T06:22:00.000-04:00

The good stuff:

wrens

juxtaposition

song parodies

candy corn pumpkins

sitting side by side because across the table is just too far

planning a family visit

dreaming of Tuscany

exercising the right, and privilege, to vote

dancing through life

the first honk of geese

the last honk of geese

Feliz Dias de los Muertos!

2010-11-01T06:18:00.000-04:00

A detail from one of the Day of the Dead dioramas Darlyn bought me on Olvero Street in Los Angeles.

Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico can be traced back to the indigenous cultures. Rituals celebrating the deaths of ancestors have been observed by these civilizations perhaps for as long as 2,500–3,000 years.[1] In the pre-Hispanic era, it was common to keep skulls as trophies and display them during the rituals to symbolize death and rebirth. more

The good stuff:

Trick or treating by pedicab.
Only 24 more hours of political ads
Renewing acquaintances
Family reunions
A buck by the lake at dawn
Sandhill crane couples
Morning fog
Wrestling a goal to reality
Fondue forks
fondant icing

Hey now, you're a rock star . . .

2010-10-31T07:18:00.000-04:00

Putting the (fun) in funery -- another cool cryptkeeper from Pere Lachaise. The French really know how to bury their dead.

The good stuff:

Selling a story written on spec

Victory laps

A murder of crows

Turtle heads periscoping up out of a glassy lake

Anhinga, airing their wings

Baked potato pizza

Time to play B-sides

Holding hands, down by the lake

The spit and cackle of coffee brewing

The sweet agony of the muse

Olympic Dreams

2010-10-30T06:00:00.001-04:00

More beach art from Barcelona.

The good stuff:

Happy editors

Happy creditors

Getting to yes

Rational exuberance

Traffic signal synchronicity

Recycling day

Drive-thru tellers

emerald oceans

Roseate spoonbills

coleslaw on hotdogs

Hey!

2010-10-29T08:57:00.000-04:00

Architecture stodgy? Think again. I found these happy frat boys roof-surfing the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The detail is so far up as to go almost unnoticed from the street.

The good stuff:

The real Von Trap singers on the morning news

mmm, honey

so much to do and so little time to do it

flip flops - all year

mandevilla

superhero costumes

chopsticks

twinpops

turning off the television

singing along to the radio

Break on through

2010-10-28T08:59:00.000-04:00

Continuing my October graveyard tour, our next stop is Jim Morrison's grave. Being an American who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, I couldn't go all the way to Paris and NOT visit the poet's corner of rock 'n' roll heaven. It's a pretty modest affair, perhaps befitting the Navy brat, born in Melbourne, Fla., to George and Clara Morrison. His dad would go on to become an Admiral and command forces at the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. Jim, of course, would command an army of another sort. The inscription on his tombstone: KATA TON DAIMONA EAYTOY, means True to His Own Spirit.

The good stuff:

Free refills

Wild honey, dripping through cheesecloth

Waffles and sausage

Herb gardens

Old couples, holding hands

Coffee talk

Watering cans

Gardening gloves

Standing ovations

Honest feedback

Statler and Waldorf - the later years

2010-10-27T12:47:00.000-04:00

Darlyn and I passed a perfect evening in the Summer of 2007 crowding the stage of a womb-warm jazz cavern carved into the substrate of Paris's right bank. I read that the club, The 7 Lezards, sadly, has closed. The singer, Bremner Duthie, has become a friend. The cavern, and its adjoining 177-mile labyrinth of abandoned limestone quarries, has claimed a piece of my soul. Known collectively as the Paris Underground, these dark and dangerous haunts are home to all manner of commerce -- from the famously public (such as the 7 Lezards and the ossuary known as The Catacombs, to occult ceremonial chambers and the clandestine tag art of kata-artists. The artfully displayed skulls in the photo are remains from two of more than six million souls moved from a mass grave filled to bursting on the grounds of St. Opportune parish. Centuries of mass open burial had already contaminated the groundwater, but things came to a head in 1786, when the cemetery wall collapsed, spilling corpses, and their attendant diseases, into the surrounding neighborhood -- oopsies! Moving the remains took years. Chanting priests, swinging incense, led processions of black-draped tip carts from the failed cemetery to the ossuary. The original plan was to just dump them there, like an eternal U-Stor-It. But ultimately, they decided to arrange the bones artfully, and to open the ossuary to the public, as a tribute to the dead. The sight is both awesome and disturbing as you walk among miles of stacked femurs, admiring altars and art fashioned with skulls. The sign at the entrance to the ossuary reads "Arrête, c'est ici l'empire de la Mort" ('Stop, this is the empire of Death'). For some reason, these two particular skulls reminded me of those old hecklers from the Muppet Show.

The good stuff:

Bee free!

National Honor Society Induction

CBGB T-Shirts

kata-artists

Mid-term elections

Clowns in cars - really

Civil discourse

Justice

Tires for life

The yin and yang in the moon

Bee-otch

2010-10-26T09:58:00.010-04:00

It lies in my driveway like so much tripe - a Frank Gehry confection of wax and honey as long as my arm. Honeycomb! I stare at it with the consternation of a Taino Indian watching sails manifest from clouds on the horizon. Here it is, October, and all the long summer I'd been out and about, searching my tree canopy for blog-worthy photos: hawk, squirrel, cardinal, jay. I'd seen nary a bee, nor heard anything approaching a buzz. But there is no getting around the fact of this candied asteroid crash-landed in my driveway. Honey, at least a quart, flows from the cracked corpus, treacling down my driveway like blood in a crime scene photo -- a lewd invitation to ants. Mortally wounded bees twitch and fret their last, commending their spirits to the great queen of the heavens, whose light greets them at the end of a hundred tiny tunnels - eternity through a compound eye. Their tiny bees carcasses twitch and curl, giving up the ghost, as others right themselves and perform their preflight damage assessments amid the elm duff, no doubt working out the intricate choreography of culpability and wondering how they'll ever manage to dance their way out of this disaster. They buzz around the wreckage, collecting data, and rise . . . to where?

Reality dawns slowly and my guts turn to water as a fat drip of honey plops, wet and sticky, at my feet. I can't even make myself look up for fear of the Damoclesian horror. The honeycomb in my driveway, I realize, is only a fragment of what must still be hanging in the elm and oak canopy directly above my head -- how far above me? -- and if this piece (at least two pounds) is just a crumb. . .

I shudder and back slowly into my garage, closing the door behind me. I get in my car and open the garage door with the remote, backing out to the end of the driveway, where I can clearly see a brown beard, tho

usands of bees buzzing around a hive the size of my chest and torso, a giant heart beating beneath an oak limb 20 feet in the air. Only one sort of bee builds its hive in the open like that, and as Winnie the Pooh so eloquently opined, it's: "the wrong sort of bee." Apis mellifera scutellata -- the africanized wild honey bee, better known by the frightening moniker: "Killer Bees." Beer me. Time to call in the cavalry. Anybody know a good bee wrangler?

The good stuff:

I didn't get stung

I may get some fresh honey out of the deal

Got a really cool story to tell
Best Halloween prop on the block

My parents were here to see it

Great DIY fantasy involving my neighbor, a six pack, a hazmat suit, a chainsaw, a large trashcan, good aim, and a roach fogger
Good blog photo
Was wondering if I'd ever get a chance to photograph wild honeycomb up close
There are people who relocate bees for a living
It didn't fall on my car

The kiss worked, but the prince was never the same.

2010-10-25T06:00:00.001-04:00

Typical day in Barcelona. Here's a guy with time on his hands.

The good stuff:

Sharing local culture

Finger painting as fine art

Japanese salsa bands

a capella

The secret lives of yard gnomes

Low country boil

Cajun Night Before Christmas

Microwavable pancake syrup

haberdashery

harbors

The Legendary JC

2010-10-24T06:00:00.002-04:00

I was tie-dying a shirt and this is what I got. Some people say they can see the likeness of Jesus, but you know how people are -- always trying to make religious artifacts out of scorch marks and window smears. Anybody know how to disperse a large crowd? I can't get to my washing machine. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

The good stuff:

Holding hands beneath a fat harvest moon

Dinner for eight

Freedom of speech

Cupcakes

Spider rings

Blow-pops

Leftovers

Blues blisters

Picking up the tab

Absentee ballots

ICBM - Intercontinental Ballistic Monkey

2010-10-23T06:00:00.002-04:00

PARIS -- France today announced the first successful test of its new guided missile defense system using technology repurposed from the recently liberated Democratic Republic of Oz. Representatives of L-POP the the union representing the guild workers of Emerald City and its environs, declared the test to be positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably a success, then danced an amusing jig for the cameras before adjourning to a local pub.

The good stuff:

zithers

mandalas

an extra book to share

Sweet 16

A comfortable sofa bed

acorns raining on the roof

white noise

pogo sticks

whittling a whistle

waffles and sausage

Cubists

2010-10-22T05:30:00.001-04:00

I'd heard that Europeans were more laid back about cubity than we are here in The States, but I'll admit it - my first sight of cubists came as a bit of a shock. There they were, right out in public, letting their angles dangle. Well, you know me; I just had to get a picture. I'm posting this as a warning to those of you who might be planning a trip to Europe so you'll have more class than I had, and you won't stare and act like an ugly American should you encounter a Cube Beach.

The good stuff

Riding a bicycle to work on a breezy fall day

Someone else cooking breakfast

When a plan comes together

Yellow squash

Nothing but blue skies

Guitars in tune

Lost in let's remember

To dos, ta done - ta da!

Dizzy Gillespie

Thelonious Monk

Kiss of Death

2010-10-21T01:40:00.001-04:00

This is one of the most powerful memorials I've ever seen. The famous sculpture, El peto de la mort, by Jaume Barba was created in 1930 to mark the passing of cotton manufacturer Josep Llaudet Soler. It has become a Barcelona landmark.

The inscription translated reads:
"So his youthful heart is fading
In his veins his blood is freezing
and all strength has slipped away. Faith is levelled
as he falls into the arms of death. Alas!"

The good stuff:

The audacity of dreams
obstreperousness
tea shops
blogs
maracas
Dizzy Gillespie
garden rolls
The Onion
adventure

The only ones for me are the mad ones . . .

2010-10-20T06:00:00.015-04:00

This is how Darlyn and I roll. We meet at the house, in Orlando, where Jack Kerouac lived when On The Road was published, and where he wrote The Dharma Bums. Darlyn goes on to live in the house as a writer in residence as part of a program called "The Kerouac Project." The next year, we go to Paris, and after a tour of the "Beats in Paris," and a wonderful birthday party for a friend at the U.S. Ambassador's residence, we see this in a window display that very clearly says "The Kerouac Project." Apparently there's a line of swanky work boots, messenger bags and leather jackets fashioned after the rugged individualism of Kerouac. Anyway, a happy coincidence. Last night, at the Cornell Museum of Fine Arts at Rollins College, I had the pleasure of watching Darlyn and several other talented poets/writers affiliated with the Kerouac Project, reading work produced in, or inspired by the house, in conjunction with a traveling exhibit of work by Robert Motherwell and Jasper Johns. I became involved as a founding director of The Kerouac Project back in the mid-1990s, and it continues to bless my life. Over the next few weeks, I'll have the opportunity to work with pop culture historian Bob Kealing to produce a special edition of his wonderful book Kerouac In Florida: Where the Road Ends.

The good stuff:

The Kerouac Project poetry reading at Rollins College

Mom and Dad visiting from Omaha

A visit with the Sheriff, for good reasons (making Central Florida better for biking/walking)

Lunch with a potential benefactor

A good parking place

Crock-pot cookin'

Eagles and Osprey

Yellow-footed water birds

Nesting

Lemon-scented Soft-scrub

Didn't bat an eye

2010-10-19T05:49:00.000-04:00

I started the month thinking I'd publish a bunch of my cemetery pictures. I've actually run very few. I keep getting distracted by shiny objects -- which, I guess, is the nature of this blog. Today's offering is an extreme close-up of the Halloween wind chimes on my my porch. When I flopped the image into negative, the bat stayed black, but it's blue eyes turned a scary orange. There's another bat peeking out from behind it, but for some reason only one eye turned orange. It met my Halloween requirement of being Gothic, and snarky at the same time.

The good stuff:

Keeping the wolves at bay

Baying at the moon

Boca Ciega Bay

Buca de Beppo

Plaster of Paris

Paris

Family

Frippery

Flipper

Slippers

You talkin' to me?

2010-10-18T06:00:00.001-04:00

This time of year the squirrels in my yard, well, they go nuts. They hang by their feet in my elm tree and chew the tender leaves from the tips of the branches until my sidewalk and driveway are strewn like the road to Jerusalem. Being no Euell Gibbons, I've never tasted Elm myself, but the squirrels sure seem to like it -- so much so that I was able to walk right up to this guy (I don't own a zoom) and get pretty close before he saw me and freaked out. I managed to capture the split second before he bolted.

The good stuff:

The smell of an acre of Florida roses on an October afternoon.

Halloween decorations

Time in a Bottle

RC Helicopters

Swallows swarming at dusk

Butterflies on milkweed

Ample parking

unidentifided mylar balloons

The Lorax

Sharing a pillow

After everafter

2010-10-17T13:01:00.000-04:00

Halloween season. The one time of year when it's cool to be Goth. I wonder . . . what do Goths do when Bif and Muffy steal their thunder? Do they take jobs at the Atelier Abattoir and embrace their role as arbiters of funeral fashion (does this silver dragon claw armour ring clash with my black nail polish? do pink and black leggings make me look fat?), or do they go all Abercrombie and Fitch for a month?

The good stuff:

Mousetrap - you roll your dice, you move your mice.

Henry James

Spencer Gifts

a selection of broadswords

Consecutive conversations at a writer party: "His great aunt took a cow to India," "He didn't know he was Jewish until he was an adult," and "I can't believe nobody at Lowe's knew what hardware cloth was."

ham in a baggie as a party favor

Preparing for houseguests

high dudgeon

low humor

shenanigans

Matryoshka

2010-10-16T06:00:00.002-04:00

Didn't intend to go back to the frogs so soon, but I was cutting the hedges today and found this set of Russian nesting dolls on the arch above my dining room window.

The good stuff:

yard work

Halloween decorations

homecoming

a fully-checked to-do list

engineer boots

time in a bottle

wordplay

college club quidditch

flower shops

fried pickles

The Writing On The Wall

2010-10-15T05:15:00.000-04:00

More wit and wisdom from Philly -

This neon sign, created in 1967, hung for years in the front window of the artist's storefront studio. It's now part of the permanent collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

"The most difficult thing about the whole piece for me was the statement. It was a kind of test - like when you say something out loud to see if you believe it. Once written down, I could see that the statement [...] was on the one hand a totally silly idea and yet, on the other hand, I believed it. It's true and not true at the same time. It depends on how you interpret it and how seriously you take yourself. For me it's still a very strong thought." - Bruce Nauman, artist

Biography

Born in 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Bruce Nauman has been recognized since the early 1970s as one of the most innovative and provocative of America’s contemporary artists. Nauman finds inspiration in the activities, speech, and materials of everyday life. Confronted with “What to do?” in his studio soon after graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1964 with a BFA, and then the University of California, Davis in 1966 with an MFA, Nauman had the simple but profound realization that “If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product.” Working in the diverse mediums of sculpture, video, film, printmaking, performance, and installation, Nauman concentrates less on the development of a characteristic style and more on the way in which a process or activity can transform or become a work of art. A survey of his diverse output demonstrates the alternately political, prosaic, spiritual, and crass methods by which Nauman examines life in all its gory details, mapping the human arc between life and death. The text from an early neon work proclaims: “The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths.” Whether or not we—or even Nauman—agree with this statement, the underlying subtext of the piece emphasizes the way in which the audience, artist, and culture at large are involved in the resonance a work of art will ultimately have. Nauman lives in New Mexico.

The good stuff:

art and beauty
snark and wit
words and music
as told to
the ozone spark of streetcars
Lombard Street
Las Ramblas
Pike Place
Kamloops
Fruit Loops

Love shack

2010-10-14T06:00:00.003-04:00

This "house" of LOVE, is actually one of the famous "LOVE" sculptures by Robert Indiana. This one, created for the American Bicentennial, is in Philadelphia's LOVE Park, aka John F. Kennedy Plaza. Originally red, it has been flipped to negative, cropped close, and bent with a fisheye effect. The reversed shadows and pieces of surrounding buildings give the whole thing the feel of a Dutch Modern flat, viewed from above.

The good stuff:

Reindeer games

s'mores

Sunday Gospel Drag Brunch

Cotton candy

Free valet parking

Celebrity duck poo at the Peabody

Wheelchair double backflip

model rockets

rockabilly

black box theater

Tommie Smith and John Carlos

2010-10-13T02:56:00.002-04:00

Last night, I shook hands with the hands that shook the world.
On October 16, 1968, flash bulbs popped, and San Jose State track teammates Tommie Smith and John Carlos made history. I've carried the image of these two African-American athletes raising gloved fists on the Olympic medal podium in Mexico City with me my whole life. I was six at the time, so I couldn't say whether I remember the event itself. But I remember people saying they had done a bad thing. The crowd booed, and the men were suspended from the team and sent home. In time, the world came to see this moment for the celebration it was -- two young, successful black men, standing tall, and signifying their transcendence in a time of turmoil and racial strife. You can read the story of that moment, and the aftermath, here.

Smith and Carlos were in Orlando last night to be inducted into the National Consortium for Academics and Sports Hall of Fame, along with Nelson Mandela, who did not attend. My hands shook as I heard about the death threats they and their families faced upon their return home, how they were shunned by the sport they loved, and subjected to the very poverty and hatred they had hoped to help overcome. The third man on the podium that day, Peter Norman, of Australia, though white, was also shunned, for supporting them. He never got over it and died of alcohol-related complications. Smith and Carlos served as pallbearers at his funeral.

I had the pleasure of meeting these fine gentlemen and great Americans. I shook their hands and felt history come alive. In their honor, I'm breaking tradition by running a photo that I didn't take, in hope that it will serve as an inspiration to us all. Please follow the link above and read their story.

Auschwitz

2010-10-12T05:22:00.002-04:00

One of several powerful Holocaust memorials in Paris. Every one of them leaves me speechless. I don't know what to say except: Remember. Remember, remember, remember. Rembember that Hitler is only a mask to hide the sins of a nation. Remember all religions, at their core, embrace tolerance and compassion. And remember that history is not the dusty pages of a book, but a letter to future generations from those who have gone before. It gives me the willies to hear politicians wax eloquent about "manifest destiny," the American code word for the extermination and subjegation of Native Americans. It hurts my soul to know that every African slave who suffered under our "peculiar institution" had also been betrayed by a brother back home and traded for material gain. And it makes me sick to my stomach to know that human trafficking continues today around the world, including the United States. We make evil distant and give it a foreign accent, because the truth -- that we all share responsibility -- is not something we want to believe about ourselves. It's the Germans who were bad, not the well-groomed women at the Orlando Country Club who didn't want to let the women from the Jewish Community Center use their locker rooms in the 1980s; or the men of the University Club, who didn't accept blacks until the 1990s, and then begrudgingly. It's the free-loading 40 percent of the country, living below the poverty line, who won't pay taxes; not the top twenty percent who hold 97 percent of the wealth. Poverty. Immigration. Sexual Orientation. Religion. Pick your poison. Now look in the mirror. That's the lesson of Auschwitz.

The good stuff:

Love
Joy
Peace
Patience
Kindness
Goodness
Faithfulness
Gentleness
Self-control

The Critic

2010-10-11T04:35:00.001-04:00

I like frogs and toads. Probably because, growing up in California, we would build elaborate subterranean cities, with tunnels and gunnite-lined toad pits. Like the SIMS but with toads. We'd populate our cities with toads we'd collect from beneath an oleander hedge. And we'd control immigration (but mostly emigration) with a mesh screen lid.

As a writer, it is important to have a window. A good window - that is, a window with a view that inspires -- is a tool of the trade. I'm sure it's tax deductible (especially if it is energy efficient). From my window, as you know, I see cardinals, woodpeckers, jays, squirrels and the occasional hawk. I also see frogs. There are times during the rainy season, where I've seen a "frog fall" -- hundreds of peepers climbing the bricks on the front of my house, diving into my ligustrum, then climbing the wall again, over and over, as the rain falls, peeping and generally kicking up a ruckus. As summer gives way to fall, I have big rubbery tree frogs - beige and gray, but sometimes tiger striped like this guy. They land on my window with a big wet plop at four in the morning, scaring the bejabbers out of me.

I spotted this guy craning his frog neck to watch me from my porch roof, peering from a spot more often populated by squirrels and woodpeckers, but when I went out to take his picture, he hunkered down. I came back inside and began to work, when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him throw himself into the air, arms and legs flailing like a stuntman, landing six feet away, and another six feet down, right outside my window. I grabbed my camera again, and shot this.

The good stuff:

Homecoming week

last night's fire on yesterday's clothes in the hamper

shoe-shopping success

first pizza pie out of the oven

potato chips off the line

factories

road construction equipment lit like lunar landers

photographs and memories

plans coming together

coffee in plastic cups

The things we choose to keep

2010-10-10T09:30:00.003-04:00

Revision

In death we are perfect

Bleached bone white

And clean as casket linen

Miraculous metousiosis

Fists hard as anvils

Suffer thorns

To bloom with roses of remembrance

How we exalt the fallen

Build monuments

Cross continents

to say goodbye

to people we discount in life

In death we are brothers

Cain and Abel

Saintly and fond forever

These are the things we choose to keep

The good stuff:

Community

Perseverance

teachers

family

firepits

fables

foibles

wild irises

gladiolas

apple pie moonshine

Bats of Barcelona

2010-10-09T08:04:00.000-04:00

You've got to like a city that chooses, of all things, a bat as its heraldic symbol. Local legends are a bit tangled on the subject - some say a bat woke King Jaume (James) at a critical time, others say the bat landed on is spear and he took it as a sign of good luck -- although historians say the bat was actually a swallow in the original text --- not the first time King James has been misinterpreted.

The good stuff:

Singing along to Bob Dylan - filling in all the words you know, even though you can't understand a word he's singing.

college towns

thistle down

puppy muzzles

new boots

maps

legends

turnpike plazas

truckstop coffee

security monkeys

Hub and spoke

2010-10-08T05:40:00.000-04:00

I know I said I'd be posting funery in October, but Raisin Box Trumpet is as much about found art as it is about anything else. I "found" this as I was putting together a presentation about the dangers of bollards - those wood, or metal posts used to keep cars off bike trails. (Bicyclists and pedestrians keep hitting them and injuring themselves terribly.) I just liked the color and composition of this photo - which was intended to show how scrapes like the one in the picture, line up with the wider parts of bike trailers - plus, it's shiny :).

The good stuff:

Bob Dylan, tonight, in Gainesville

bright, shiny objects

free peppermints at the cash register

living vicariously through published and soon-to-be published friends

the decadence of owning a butter knife

ordering dessert

pleases and thank yous

timely response

wit and wisdom

passed hors d'oeuvres

Grief

2010-10-07T11:33:00.000-04:00

Seeing as how it is October and all, I figured it might be time to trot out some of my more elaborate and interesting funery images. This one, from the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, is one of the most striking portrayals of love and loss I've ever seen. The woman is seen reaching up from beneath the stone to ease her lover's grief, but death, with his bony fingers, holds her down. Powerful stuff.

The good stuff:

The 6 a.m. thump of the morning newspaper

the fiscal promise of the "send" button

having enough to share

the sweet smell of success - and orange blossoms

deadlines met

expectations exceeded

oleander

owl telegraph

sudden deer

lizards pooching their dewlaps

d'Orsay Can You See?

2010-10-06T03:12:00.001-04:00

Yesterday's post, unadulterated - is the 110-year-old clock in the Gare d'Orsay, a fabulous Beaux Arts style train station better known, since 1986, as The Musee d'Orsay, home to the world's largest collection of impressionist paintings by such painters as Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin and Van Gogh. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986. This is where you would find Whistler's Mother, along with many other paintings I'd only previously seen in books. Before the Gare was converted to a museum, it was the setting for Orson Welles' The Trial. The Ferris Wheel visible in the background is at the Tuileries, a beautiful garden that extends from The Louvre to the Champs Elysees.

The good stuff:

The 7 Lezards

Bremner Duthie singing Leonard Cohen's Chelsea Hotel

guitar jams

Leprechaun pie

steamed shrimp

cool Fall mornings

Red Box

road trips

chick flicks

Sparkpeople

Time Bandits

2010-10-04T22:03:00.000-04:00

Guess what this was before I got after it?

The good stuff:

Urban Sketchers

frangipani

gopher tortoises

wild hairs

past mistakes - and ones I'd like to make again

dancing in biker bars

platanos

BOGO

International Walk to School Day (October 6)

International House of Pancakes

Hoptimus Prime

2010-10-04T04:55:00.000-04:00

Sadly, this little fella had hopped his last before I got to him. Of all the things I found to photograph at the new Amway Center, this was the most poignant. He's missing a few parts, which suggests he came to his final rest via some sort of bird. But there he was, like a fallen Transformer, perched on a ledge, surveying the street below.

The good stuff:

National Geographic pull-out sections

fresh guitar strings

Bob Dylan

apple slicers

old furniture

new car smell

children's books

plush puppets

gift certificates

Hulu

Enter Legend

2010-10-03T03:22:00.001-04:00

Orlando's new 20,000-seat "Amway Center" invited the community in Saturday to see the new home of The Orlando Magic, Orlando Predators, and major touring concerts. The new venue replaces the 20-year-old "Amway Arena," which had 17,519 seats, and yet, from way up here in the back row, it actually feels smaller. The Eagles will be the first band to play here - October 7.

The good stuff:

Free popcorn

You Tube

Downtown Winter Garden

Extra potato salad

craft beer

curries

new buildings

empty streets

dry ice bubble machines

good health

Bougainvillea

2010-10-02T04:46:00.003-04:00

The good stuff:

Cooler temperatures

The Greek Corner Restaurant

complimentary ouzo

front porch neighbors

catching up

origami

lake breeze

hope

talking crosswalks

neighborhood festivals

Beautiful plumage

2010-10-01T05:47:00.000-04:00

Birds? Check. Paradise? Check. What's not to like? There are things in this world that deserve applause. The South African crane flower is one of them. Yeah, yeah. I know. It's called a bird of paradise. It's also called a Strelitzia if you want to get all uppity. This is another example of "found" beauty. I spotted an egret in some reeds along the southern shore of Lake Ivanhoe and stopped to take a picture. I found this next to the parking lot. The egret pick turned out okay, but this was the shot of the day. I mean, roses are nice and all, but every time I see a bird of paradise, I want to stage my own parade. Of course, I'd stage a parade for a dandelion -- tonight I'm riding my bike through downtown Orlando with Bike/Walk Central Florida to promote safe cycling -- but that's beside the point.

The good stuff:

whiskers on roses

and raindrops on kittens

doormen with strudels

and squirrels in my kitchen

brown trucks with packages

bringing me bling

(whole heap of zing let me do my own thing)

Little Early Pearlys in their curley whirlies

And caliopes crashed to the ground.

free association

oh, and Beaker, from the Muppets. (who looks just like a caliope pipe, if you think about it)

Aloe, hah!

2010-09-30T05:03:00.002-04:00

The jays in my water oak screamed bloody murder. Squirrels too. I went to my porch, half-expecting to find Tippy Hedron, but the source of their agitation wasn't readily apparent. I stood in my yard and stared up into the canopy. There must have been 30 blue jays! I'd never seen so many in one place. A slight movement to my left drew my attention, and I found myself eyeball to eyeball with a massive hawk, perched in the tree crotch. I'd never been so close to one before. I backed away to fetch my camera, but when I returned, the hawk was gone. The jays carried on for a few more minutes as if to say: "And STAY out!" And then all returned to normal. I felt bad to have missed the shot, but grateful for the experience. And, when I zoomed in on this aloe flower, I found a nice surprise hiding in the shadows.

The good stuff:

adrenaline rush

Diet Coke for breakfast

oatmeal with raisins

lagniappe

raptors

cooler weather

tropical storms

sturm and drang

mentors

getting to yes

Things that make you say, "Hmmmm."

2010-09-28T23:56:00.002-04:00

Not sure where the architect was going with this. You've got your cross, some kind of angry prairie dog (with prairie), and, well, yeah. I've opened this picture every day for two weeks and haven't used it. I like it. I just don't know what to say about it.

The good stuff:

Mailbox money

Google Earth

Earth

candy corn

lifelong learning

Cool Runnings

One-minute Aeneid

poppycock

balderdash

tree frogs

Twilight - with cheeseburgers

and this ...

Faerie Garden

2010-09-28T05:51:00.000-04:00

Just another one of the slap-you-upside-the-head beautiful reasons they call my state Florida. This is my friend Robert Seidler's backyard in Sopchoppy -- home of the world-famous Worm Grunting Festival (Sopchoppy, that is, not Robert's backyard). Robert stopped in Sopchoppy, suffering from hypothermia on a long-distance bike ride a few years back. He never left. Considering this is the view from his back porch, I can see why.

The good stuff:

azaleas

wisteria

apple cider

hot chocolate

cinnamon buns

tupelo-cypress swamps

quaking ground

wind-up monkeys

paper chain garland

craft boxes

El Langostino

2010-09-27T02:59:00.019-04:00

Stayed up late celebrating with Jeremy Seghers and some of the finest people you'd ever want to meet at Tower of Song: A tribute to Leonard Cohen, at Benoit Glazer's Timucua White House. Rather than try to write anything that would take me out of that wonderful vibe, I thought I'd just chuck a Godzilla-sized lobster at you, and run.

The good stuff:

Winter With The Writers

The Winter Park Institute

The Spanish Sugar Mill at Deleon Springs

The Morse Museum

Orlando Fringe

Orlando Shakespeare Theater

Air Andrew

2010-09-26T10:29:00.000-04:00

I'd heard that air was thinner in the mountains. But I'd always figured that was just one of those things people say -- like "Juggling more than three chainsaws is crazy," and, "Do-it-yourself brain surgery is a bad idea." So imagine my surprise when my friend Andrew Najberg floated away on Montserrat. Now, despite the pose, I can't say for sure whether he was wearing Hanes, or any other merchandise endorsed by Michael Jordan that might have given him magical flying powers. Being scientific by nature, I'm inclined to believe that there's a perfectly rational explanation -- such as the fact that Andrew is a smoker, so maybe it was all that smoke and hot air trapped in his tar-coated lungs that gave him the extra lift he needed. Whatever the case, I haven't seen him since. -- True story.

The good stuff:

sneak previews

Geico commercials

seeing inspiration in action

wood storks so close you could touch them

great blue herons

pot luck

re-discovering a great book

poetry in public

grocery store food samples

first responders

Schuykill Navy

2010-09-25T06:16:00.001-04:00

From the moment I saw my cousin's calloused hands, his arms and leg muscles taut and sinewed as hawsers, I knew there was something powerful and transformative about rowing. Norm rowed for UCLA. I would go on to row for the University of Nebraska, and later the Orlando Rowing Club, touring the eastern United States, plying the waters of the Chatahoochee and negotiating the bridges of the serpentine Charles -- starboard five in the varsity eight, and alone in the single sculls. The Huskers didn't fund rowing as an official sport, so we raised money as best we could -- cleaning up after football and basketball games, selling "square inch" sponsorships on our boats, and holding 24-hour "row-a-thons" on snowy street corners in the dead of winter. As a rower, I'd always heard of the Schuykill Navy, the collective appellation given to the ten teams housed on Philadelphia's famed Boathouse Row, but I'd never laid eyes on this hallowed ground until last year, when I snapped this pic at sunset.

The good stuff:

Bike valet

Rowing at dawn

The harvest moon

vermillion sky

Leonard Cohen tributes

heather

engineer boots

choppers

geeks

madmen

Ascension

2010-09-24T01:17:00.002-04:00

Growing up, I remember Mom subscribed to The Bethel Series, a Bible-study that featured iconic paintings on glossy card stock. As the series progressed, Mom would add chapters, and I can remember looking forward to seeing those pictures. I don't remember the content of the lessons. I don't think I was even old enough to read. I think it was probably about the same time Mom was clipping phonics cartoons out of the Los Angeles Times -- black and white Monday through Saturday and color on Sunday -- and pasting them in a black binder she used to teach me to read.

I came upon this monument in a Barcelona cemetery and it reminded me of those pictures. Forgive my crude craftsmanship, but, with the help of a cloning brush, I separated statue from pedestal and added lens flare to create my own tribute to that childhood memory.

The good stuff:

RAGBRAI

gray geese on black water

frozen fields

the aquatic percussion of irrigation pivots

terraced gardens

yard sales

ladybugs

antimacassars

stacking bookcases

grand openings

Wood shoe like more tea?

2010-09-23T05:46:00.002-04:00

A found still life. Again - no cropping or modification required, and the elements were positioned that way when I found them. I just converted it to black and white.

The good stuff:

life lived full-on

lessons learned

friendly service

finding a dollar in the laundry

chocolate brownie gelati at Twisted Bliss

dreamers and doers

the wisdom of irreverent cartoons

daily affirmations

5K runs

Barging in

2010-09-22T01:19:00.000-04:00

Just when you think you've seen it all, something like this comes along and proves you wrong. Pleasure barges are all the rage in Europe. This is one of hundreds moored along the Kennet-Avon Canal near Bath, where pleasure-bargers negotiate no less than 23 small, manually operated locks to make their way merrily up or down the stream. Turns out Handel's Water Music was written for bargers. Who knew?

The good stuff:

spirited debate

the triumph of reason

the rabbit in the moon

The Persistence of Memory

satire

rediscovering old books

happy clients

a hole in the fence

Dodger Stadium

Fall

Out of Eden

2010-09-21T10:34:00.007-04:00

Ever get the feeling that God is just showing off? I feel that way whenever I come upon a scene like this -- startling beauty in a perfect frame. Some people look to the heavens for the divine. For me, it's here, in the water lily, or a single, perfect rose -- feel free to add the dew drop if you're so inclined.

Throughout history, fine arts and leisure have been the hallmarks of advanced civilizations. Beauty for beauty's sake is way up there at the top of Maslow's Heirarchy. I'm sure there's a perfectly good scientific reason for why flowers are so doggone pretty -- natural selection, attraction, or some such -- but I'd prefer if you'd keep that to yourself.

In my own storyteller's version of the creation story, God is up there in heaven painting his Garden of Eden like some cosmic Bob Ross: "Let's put a happy little flower over here." It's Take-Your-Only-Begotten-Child-To-Work Day, so Jesus is there next to him -- on his right, of course -- sitting at a Little Tykes table, playing with his I Can Create plasticine modeling clay

Jesus watches God paint the scene above. He tries to make a flower out of clay, but fails -- accidentally creating the avocado, the pineapple and the artichoke before giving up and settling for something simpler.

When God lays down his brush and goes into the house for some lemonade, Jesus pinches off a big hunk of clay and rubs it back and forth quickly between his palms until he has produced a long, rubbery strand that looks like a garden hose. "Snake," he declares, and the snake springs to life. Jesus laughs and claps and immediately makes another.

God returns from the kitchen to find his son surrounded by snakes of all sizes.Jesus, smiling ear to ear, picks up his favorite serpent and holds it out to God, proud and expectant.

God frowns. Thunder rolls. "Son, I am not well pleased."

Jesus wept.

Then, he took the snake he'd picked out for his Dad and threw it as far as he could. The snake flew threw the air and landed in a pomegranate tree. But Jesus's biographer couldn't spell pomegranate, so he changed it to apple later in his ghost-written memoir.

And that, is why we have timeshare pitches and Shake Weight infomercials. And why, forevermore, fathers will gladly accept all manner of ties, Old Spice and Aqua Velva for Fathers Day.

The good stuff:

Allegory
suspended disbelief
open minds and open hearts
local cheese
on-demand pedestrian crossings
lofts
rope swings
water skiing
clutter
kitsch

Simple pleasures

2010-09-20T04:53:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago I published an elaborate mash-up of this picture under the heading of "Kaleidoscape."

I liked the effect, but I've had this nagging sense that the real beauty is in the original. Here's what I saw and captured, without any crops or retouching.

The good stuff:

strong coffee

hot apple cider

deadlines and commitments

what to leave in, what to leave out

Bob Seger

English gardens

live theater

free concert tickets

a hand to hold

something to say

Naiad

2010-09-19T13:40:00.001-04:00

When she was little, it was ballet -- the short hops and earnest spasms of an earthbound angel whose jetes were still years from grand. But even then, there was the hand - swanlike and graceful, the hand of a porcelain figurine, cool and delicate in my own bear's paw. Perfect - not like the knees that would betray her time and again.

These days, we get mail from colleges -- hopeful, helpful, happy brochures that emphasize the benefits of an Ivy League education but downplay the cost. She can hardly wait for the bounty the daily mail will bring. And she brings them to me, holding them out like she used to hold worms and lizards: "Look, Daddy. Look what I got!" There are spots on those fingers, rubbed raw from work and worry, the grist of life that erodes even as it polishes. We talk about the perils of perfection and the divinity of forgiveness -- of self, of others.

Yesterday, I stood behind the starting blocks, parsing the moment with the surgical click, click, click of my digital shutter, I saw it there in mid air. The swan, rising from the waters. My heart leapt, and it was grand.

The good stuff:

barbecue at midnight
delusions of grandeur
grandeur
dreams dared and done
riding a bike to dinner
harvest balls
a walk on a cool morning
family reunions
taking lemons and making - a Tom Collins
centipedes

Flight line

2010-09-18T08:54:00.000-04:00

To sleep, perchance to dream -- of birds, and flight, soaring high and weightless, on the invisible zephyrs of Brazilian butterflies and African swallows, heaving hurricanes into existence. The Promethian gift. Bird's eye. But not an eagle eye. No. Definitely not an eagle.

Another shot from my walk around Lake Eola in downtown Orlando.

The good stuff:

cupcakes

flight dreams

long walks

anniversaries

parenthood

blues

yard gnomes

Sopchoppy earthworms

bats barreling out of a chimney

libraries

Creepshow

2010-09-17T00:58:00.002-04:00

There's one in every neighborhood -- the aspiring George Romero with the Halloween yard display right out of Night of the Living Dead. ("They're coming to get you Barbara.") In my neighborhood, that would be Dano Needhammer, erstwhile Disney kitchen manager currently holding body and soul together as a self-employed pinata maker. For the past ten years, I've watched from a distance as Dano expanded his Mausoleum Museum, adding new handmade features to the point that it now encompasses both his front and back yards. I never had a reason to bother him before I started writing this blog. So, last night, as I passed his house on my way to the grocery store, I saw him working in his garage and stopped to say hello.

Turns out Dano is a horror movie buff, who aspires to be a professional movie makeup artist. He's been studying the craft, and already has a handful of movie credits. Fans of "Zombies, Zombies, Zombies," have seen his work, which was also showcased in "Automaton Transfusion," and "Dead by Friday."

He and his partner Maria Gallagher have auditioned for "Face Off," a special effects makeup reality show on the Syfy channel. They hope to find out in the next few days whether they'll move on to the televised competition, and a chance to win $100,000, in Los Angeles. He will also be giving a horror makeup demonstration at Screamfest, October 8-10.

Watching Dano arrange the four-inch strips of newspaper and coat them with paste, is almost therapeutic. He says that's why he started making pinatas in March. Whatever his inpiration, he has turned it into a business. One of his large character pinatas, sold prestuffed with candy, costs $140.

He sees real potential there. But his heart is still in makeup and he hopes to leverage any notoriety gained from Face Off into a full-time career.

Looking back, he says that while he never would have quit the high-paying restaurant position, he's been making the most of it.

"I think losing my job may be the best worst thing that has ever happened to me."

The good stuff:

papier mache

pinatas

Centipede and Frogger

Dark Shadows

sunflowers

sharing good news

writing a novel

granola with raisins

gondola rides

celebrating 5 years of love and dreams come true

Dancers

2010-09-16T01:37:00.000-04:00

The brick and the dancers in this image have never met. In fact, the brick is a reflection of the wall across the street. The dancers are on panels, leaning up against a wall in a window overlooking the ruins of a Roman city, preserved beneath the streets of Barcelona. Before I tweaked the image, you could barely see the dancers. Digital editing flattened the image until it appeared that the dancers had actually been painted on the brick. The reality is more apparent in these two undoctored shots, taken from different angles, at the same time of day.

The good stuff:

red rubber rain boots

serendipity

old pickup trucks

Ernest Hemingway

good history teachers

hand-painting holiday ornaments

camelias

purple Chuck Taylor high top sneakers

vidalia onions

Busker

2010-09-15T06:21:00.003-04:00

"What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?" -- such was the question posed by writer Gene Weingarten in his Pulitzer Prize winning story "Pearls Before Breakfast," documenting a stunt in which violin virtuoso Joshua Bell -- who regularly sells out concert halls at more than $100 a ticket -- dressed as a street musician and performed some of the world's most beautiful and complex violin concertos for 45 minutes, on a 300-year-old Stradivarius, and was virtually ignored, as a busker in a Washington, D.C., Metro station. You can listen to it here.

L.A. Times reporter Steve Lopez found the Julliard-trained cellist Nathaniel Ayers playing a battered violin, for real, on Skid Row, and documented the brilliant musician's descent into schizophrenia in another award-winning series that became the basis for the movie "The Soloist."

Dick Van Dyke did a comic turn as a one-man band in Mary Poppins.

And then, there's this guy . . . click here.

Buskers play anything from buckets to, well, see for yourself . . .

The guy in the picture above was tucked back in a courtyard at the Cathedral of Barcelona.

If life has a soundtrack, buskers are a big part of it -- along with crickets, coquis, June bugs, and bull gators. I've been blessed to have seen some of the world's great cities, and heard some of the world's great street musicians firsthand. And, a good street musician is always worth a good tip - you've tipped for much less. So the next time you hear a busker knocking themselves out - particularly if they're really good at it. Break off a buck, or two, or ten. And consider yourself that much richer.

Oh ... and I've been listening to the Joshua Bell link as I wrote this ... OMG! Grab a cup of coffee and give yourself a treat.

The good stuff:

Crystal perfect moments
Sudden love
arboretums
The hanging gardens in the Land Pavilion at Epcot
Park Guell
Airboat Rides
eagle nests
Nutella crepes
curling up with a good book
playing a musical instrument

Champagne wishes and caviar dreams

2010-09-14T05:56:00.001-04:00

I don't have anything to say. This is one of those photos that is so full of possibility that I'd rather just offer it up and let you react.

The good stuff

coming to terms with who you are
mot juste
color comics
fog
moors
panniers
honeycomb
popsicle stick throwing stars
pinewood derby
ice-fishing houses

Instant Karma

2010-09-13T05:40:00.002-04:00

If this looks like Elsie the Borden Cow tripping at a Grateful Dead concert, then the 60s were good to you. (and yes, I know Instant Karma is a Beatles song, and not by the Dead) It's actually a mash-up of the detail on a donkey cart outside the Italian pavilion at Epcot. Hee Haw! In this blog, I try to celebrate the exceptional in the commonplace -- the magic in the mundane, particularly the simple pleasures of "The Good Stuff." My search for simple beauty often sends my thoughts racing backward down the neural backroads to the funky tin-roofed shack where I keep my childhood. Not that I ever lived in a tin-roofed shack -- I grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles -- I just keep my memories there, because when I visit, I like the sound of the rain on the roof. This journey is fraught with magical thinking. To the point that a simple picture of a Sicilian donkey cart, sparks a memory of a simple children's story, that turned out to be not so simple and I am reminded afresh how so much of what we believe is not based on fact, but on faith, fear, greed, assumption, position, privilege and ignorance. These thoughts have been front and center for me, as we, as a nation, struggle to understand the causes and cures of this prolonged recession, and cast stones at the faith of other people's fathers, because the splinter in our brother's eye is so much easier to see than the plank in our own. If we were to turn the mirror on ourselves for a moment, strip away the magical thinking that allows us to alchemize our own fear and greed into righteous indignation, I think we'd see that religious atrocities cross all faiths, racism knows no color, and greed no political affiliation. Go ahead, you think about that. I'm going to sit here in my shack, listening to the rain on the roof, strumming my dusty guitar and singing songs from my childhood: "Take a look at yourself and you can look at others differently . . ."

And for those of you who came here because of the Grateful Dead reference, I don't want you to go away empty-handed: http://artsites.ucsc.edu/GDead/agdl/

The good stuff:

Paying for a soldier's breakfast

talking to family

glimpses of the person your teenager will become

The Bill of Rights

a walk in the park

the silence of snow

noodlehead stories

Wikipedia

seeing the original

potable water

Bloom Where You're Planted

2010-09-12T09:49:00.001-04:00

I saw this as I was driving by on Interstate 4 and circled back around Lake Ivanhoe to get the shot. Hard to do it justice without a telephoto or fisheye, but I loved the 3D effect of the yellow flowers lifted up and off the water, as opposed to the white ones that normally nestle down low. The giant leaves gave it a Johnny Quest, Land of the Lost feeling to it. Plus, I thought they looked like Chihuly seaforms

The good stuff:

Squeezing history out of old pennies

A day of indulgence

Afternoon naps on a warm sunny bed

movie popcorn

state fairs

harvest moons

room to dance

the smell of fresh-turned earth

charcoal starter

dragon flies

Portal

2010-09-11T08:00:00.002-04:00

Train stations have always struck me as portals into the past. Since 1926, Orlando's Seaboard Coast Line railroad station has welcomed generations to Central Florida. The first time I saw it, in 1985, I had just arrived in the South after 14 years in Los Angeles and eight years in Nebraska. I remember noticing that everything seemed to be duplicated -- two drinking fountains, two women's rooms, two men's rooms, side by side. That's when it hit me -- the reason for the duality -- it was as simple as black and white. That was when I realized I wasn't in Kansas any more. The signs had been removed, but I later saw them at the Wells' built Museum. Later I learned about about the Wells' built hotel, where Ray Charles swept the floors after running away from the St. Augustine school for the blind. The Wells' built was where the African American luminaries, like Duke Ellington and Jackie Robinson had to stay because the rules of the day prohibited them from staying at the Angebilt, the posh "whites only" hotel with the tunnel under Orange Avenue to the backstage dressing rooms of the Beacham Theater. The tunnel, though boarded up, is there to this day.

The good stuff:

butch wax

Bazooka Joe Comics

apres ski

slaw burgers

deep tissue massage

photo darkrooms

model railroads

signed first editions

morning newspapers

Skeeball

Squeally Fun!

2010-09-10T06:23:00.003-04:00

I don't know how old I was when I stopped chasing pigeons, but judging from the look on this girl's face, I'm really missing out. It reminds me of the kid in the animated movie Despicable Me with Steve Carell, squeezing a stuffed animal and growling with unsuppressable joy: "It's soooooooo FLUFFY!" Kids experience a whole higher plane of fun. I call it "squeally fun" -- a kind of joyous abandon adults rarely attain. Even the chest-bumping, fist-pumping excitement of athletic competition carries the weight of contracts, endorsements, dominance and despair. With kids, there's no ulterior motive. It's pure stimulus and unbridled response -- to motion, color and sound -- "ooh shiny!" Left to their own devices, kids meet, greet and network far better than adults. There are no strangers, only kids they know and kids they haven't met yet. When they meet, they get right down to business, sharing likes and dislikes openly and honestly, looking for something fun they can do together without regard for race, creed, weight, gender preference, or affliction. Kids look for ways to get along. It's adults that teach them things like "girl games" and "boy games," and the dysfunction grows from there like sugar crystals on a string. As I watched the sickening circus of ego masquerading at religion at Dove World Outreach Center up the road here in Gainesville, I tried to picture the Reverend Terry Jones as a child, chasing birds and sharing his raisins. I read about the school at his 50-member church, where kids are reportedly sequestered from the world and pack furniture that he and his wife sell over the Internet, when he's not talking about burning the Koran (Quran), how his daughter had broken with the church, calling it a cult, and how another church he'd started in Germany, now won't have anything to do with him. I wondered what had gone so bad wrong in his life that he would work so hard to foment fear and hate. Yesterday there was talk he wouldn't do it. He himself has said he wouldn't do it, if the President called him -- attention which, I have to suspect, is at the heart of this little donkey diving show. Peace to all, and as we remember those who died at the World Trade Center on 9/11, my wish for the world is that we will take a lesson from the children we fight and die for, and celebrate all the things we have in common. Because the real lesson of 9/11 is not about Islam verus Christianity, Ismael versus Isaac -- both sons of Abraham -- but about the damage that can be caused by small-minded zealots like Terry Jones and Osama Bin Laden, who claim devine sanction for their self-agrandizing bigotry, ego and fear. If God is LOVE, as we so often hear, then maybe we should spend the next day chasing birds and praying for healing and brotherhood instead of revenge.

The good stuff:

squeally fun

tree forts

songs around the campfire

homemade mini-golf

hide and seek

hopscotch

Hungry Hungry Hippos

Silly String

Silly Putty

jumprope

PB&J

naps