Category: Uncategorized
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Music: Back to my squirrel gun
Here’s another song to emerge recently from Beach Avenue garage, a copyright 2025 number by Bendelow/Harris that explores what it might be like to de-urbanize oneself. The images are all from the pollinator activity around here. And for the record, I do not now, nor have I ever owned a squirrel gun.
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Music: Look at all the dandelions #NomowMay2025
Here’s a song that our overgrown lawn inspired. The lyrics speak of seeing beyond the surface of things and being ready for what arises.
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Memoir: Pain management (1973-present)
Whichever hobbyhorse you ride–sports, gardening, music, travel, baking, arts and crafts, your dog or your cat–you ride it away from dukkha.
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Fantasy drinking companion (2024)
I feel emboldened. “Bob, one of your songs declares, ‘Don’t ask me nothin’ about nothin’. I just might tell you the truth.’ So I’m not gonna ask you nothin’ about nothin’. We’ll deal with whatever truth arises.”
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Fantasy dinner: Hello, grandsires (2024)
Dear Great Grandfathers, It’s been 120 years since you were in the full force of your manhood, yet all I have of you are a few stories and characterizations left to me from your grandkids, who were my parents. Please dine with me (presuming your magical embodiment nourishes itself at my favorite French restaurant on…
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Reflection: on having left the Ed-Tech party too soon
This morning I was helping my neighbor, a recently immigrated Spanish-speaking man, prepare for an upcoming licensing exam. To find specific information about his job site, I suggested he call a colleague. He kept the phone on speaker and I heard her advice: “Just Google it,” she told him, explaining that Chat GPT had gotten…
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Standing room for one
Since I’d already eaten, I sit down in a booth with the two other employees over 50. They’re eating the free sandwiches the General Manager laid out near the door. These sandwiches are being added to our menu in April, which is what tonight’s meeting is for. For weeks we’ve seen the notice: “Team Huddle…
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Memoir: Rôle-modeling (1986-94)
Being a rôle model came with my first class of students, a whole new identity outside the classroom that I’d need to embody in order to keep my job in Reagan’s America. The drug tests I had to pass and the expectation of impeccable behavior and bottomless sacrifice were implicit but persistent warnings in my…
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Memoir: “All by myself”–reflections on my creativity (1971 & 1989)
It’s tempting for creative people to believe that they perform their creative acts solo, without external assistance or influence. “Gasp! You did that all by yourself? Wow, you’re so creative–so special. You’re different from the rest (in some sense you are really better)!” Getting a dopamine rush from critical feedback like that as a child…
The Wikiness 