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

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