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| This is my "Cool Hand Luke" pose leaning against the kitchen door on the side of our old favorite duplex on Evergreen Street - I put the time around 1978-79. |
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| This is my "Cool Hand Luke" pose leaning against the kitchen door on the side of our old favorite duplex on Evergreen Street - I put the time around 1978-79. |
portfolio - of sorts
Well i did manage to put together a portfolio - but things changed and so did the purpose of displaying all that art - there's nothing to prove - I've got it all archived - so this will be more of an ongoing scrapbook - grabbing a bunch of odds and ends from the past to entertain myself - watch out- you might show up.
PULL DOWN MENU
photographs
YOU CAN VIEW THE RESULTS OF MY NEW OBSESSION WITH FLICKR.COM AND MY NEW DIGITAL CAMERA RIGHT THERE:
POSTED (8) NEW PHOTOs - 07/27/07
lori's podcasts
LORI READING FROM "OLD MOTHER WEST WIND" - A PRETTY AMAZING AUDIO READ FROM AN OVERLOOKED "KID'S CLASSIC
podcasts i listen to
FRESH AIR - i could never coordinate listening to this but now i don't have to worry about that anymore now i get it automatically everyday - can't imagine what took NPR so long
my cancer - the daily blog of Leroy sievers that he couples with a weekly podcast - it maintains the usual npr high quality - he can write and do a great podcast - and of course he's got a difficult topic.
SOUND OPINIONS ON DEMAND (The best) Hosted by Jim DeRogatis of the Chicago Sun-Times and Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune - it's one of the better music podcasts out there.
dublab - i started listening to this outlaw band of music enthusiast when web radio was just starting out - they stood out from everyone else doing the web thing - now they put individual music spots out as podcasts - alwasy interesting
THE GRAMMAR GIRL (YEP, A PODCAST ON GRAMMAR, HOW ABOUT THAT)
WAIT WAIT......DON'T TELL ME - BY FAR ONE OF THE MOST ENERTAINING HOURS ON NPR AND THE BEST "WHILE YOU'RE COOKING IN THE KITCHEN" BACKGROUNDS
Mac os ken - yea you can laugh at the stupid presumptuous title but this guy is a natural - been in the radio business for 12 years and gets this thirty minute spot out every morning - and no one is funnier just try it once and see how he never skips a beat
MACCAST - A SHOW FOR MAC GEEKS
The mac observers mac geek gab - now it seems unlikely that anyone would realistically listen to this - but these are two guys that invoke the spirit of a grateful dead concert just bullshitting about mac problems and interests - my favorite to listen to on my ferry commute
studio 360 - i originally got this from audible.com and it really didn't excite me that much, but I've revisited it since it became a podcast and it's turned out to be one of my favorite listens
this american life - they just put this into a podcast venue this week and the episode on "fiascos" pretty entertaining. the show has almost a cult following - not sure i'n there yet but we'll see
reading
Joe boyd - white bicycles
Gary snyder - back on the fire
Mark rothko - a biography - James breslin
harry potter and the order of the phoenix - j.k. Rowling
Bangkok Haunts - john burdett
communication arts - the illustration annual
climbing the mango trees - madhur jaffrey
Animal, vegetable, miracle - barbara kingsolver
botany of desire - michael pollan
Boulevard the cookbook - oakes and mazzola
balthazar - cookbook from the poplular new york bistro
Allen Ginsberg - collected poems 1947 - 1980
Vivienne Westwood exhibit catalogue
the sweeter side of r. crumb - r. crumb
tender to the bone - ruth reichl
american bloomsbury - susan cheever
cooking by hand - paul bertolli
the omnivore's dilemma - Michael pollan
ADAM GOPNIK - THROUGH THE CHILDREN'S GATE
ADAM GOPNIK - PARIS TO THE MOON
heat - bill buford
axe handles - gary snyder
THE LEFSETZ LETTER (WARNING: THIS GUY CAN'T STOP GOING ON ABOUT THE MUSIC BUSINESS AND THE GREAT DAYS OF FM RADIO AND THE SIXTIES AND EARLY SEVENTIES - BUT HE STRIKES A CHORD NOW AND THEN - YOU JUST HAVE TO WADE THROUGH)
listening
radiohead - in rainbows
feist - the reminder
teddy thompson - up front and down low
monterty International pop festivals - remastered version
The gourds - Bolsa De Agua
The Gourds - cow fish fowl or pig
The Gourds - ghosts of hallelujah
The gourds - shinebox
The Gourds - stadium blitzer
mavis staples - we'll never turn back
the sea and cake - everybody
patti smith - twelve
spring awakening - soundtrack
dylan hears a who - the incredible take on dylan doing dr. suess - (the cat in the hat is incredible)
Arcade fire - neon bible
john coltrane - lush life (remastered)
aisha duo - quiet songs
charlie louvin - charlie louvin
dave holland - critical mass
alice coltrane - the impulse story
leonard cohen - I'm your man soundtrack
Daniel lanois - rockets
tom waits - bawlers
nrbq - Ludlow Garage 1970
Joanna Newsom - ys
BERT JANSCH - THE BLACK SWAN
NINA NASTASIA - THE BLACKENED AIR
MADELEINE PEYROUX - HALF THE PERFECT WORLD
THE BE GOOD TANYAS - HELLO LOVE
KIERAN KANE AND KEVIN WELCH WITH FATS KAPLIN - YOU CAN'T SAVE EVERYBODY
AUSTIN CITY LIMITS - LIVE FROM AUSTIN - RICHAR THOMPSON
THE HOLD STEADY - BOYS AND GIRLS IN AMERICA
watching
oceans 13
friday night lights
pan's labirynth
eureka
anthony bourdain - no reservations (malaysia/the jungle)
anthony bourdain - no reservations (paris)
anthony bourdain - no reservations (iceland)
anthony bourdain - no reservations (sicily)
music and lyrics
crazy, sexy cancer
House - seasons one, two and three
monsoon wedding
clicking
moleskinerie - the flickr site showing it's incredible variety of use - here in a participatory art gallery of folks that sketch in the amazing little moleskine notebooks - addicting and updated with lots of new material daily.
red wing shoes - I don't know - it's just about one of the best site designs out there and red wing still makes the coolest shoes in the world - logger boots, motocycle boots - stuff that last forever and looks cooler with age. I click on this one just to see things done right in the world.
field recordings - a new obsession of mine based on using field recordings and the many possibilities for layered composition with the new sound software to create beatles beauty from particular times and places.
the quiet american - a complete introduction to ths whole idea along with equipment suggestions and many examples of recordings.
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food blogs - the new york times ran a piece last week about the new power of food blogs on restaurants and cooking in general - so i did a little investigating and will list my favorite ones here:
becks & Posh - nicely designed within the blogger type template that dominates most of these - but abundant photographs and decent layout makes for a much more entertaining visit. interesting use of the right hand column
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other sites of interest
101 cookbooks - one of the most beautiful web sites on food - but also one of the most readable - the writings in the "journal" section are some of the most entertaining pieces out there.
stencil revolution - the web site dedicated to street art stencils - a true urban folk art.
tom killion woodcuts - when i moved to mill valley in 1975 Tom's work was the first to catch my eye. It had all the elements of a new kind of art that appealed to me at the time. Japanese woodcut techniques and a rockwell kent drama that translated nicely into a pure form of landscape art. Well he managed to extend that career through all these decades and youcan still purchase originals from his web site. He currently lives up in Pt. reyes. I' love to have an original on my wall.
GRIST MAGAZINE - I NEVER THOUGHT I'D COME ACROSS A NICELY DESIGNED SITE THAT LAYS OUT ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS ONLINE BEAUTIFULLY - AND EVEN THOUGH THE NEWS GENERALLY SUCKS 9 NOT THEIR FAULT) IT NEVER PUTS A HURT ON YOUR EYE.
DRIVETIME - I dON'T CARE -CALL ME NUTS - BUT THIS IS THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE - BLOGS ARE A THING OF THE PAST ALREADY - PODCASTS AND VIDEOBLOGS ARE CREEPING UP AND HOPEFULLY WILL TAKE DOWN THE ENTERTAINMENT/TV AXIOM. IT'S STILL THE PURE
contact
cP8M20W2@mac.COM
A random choice of letters that i've used as a site title for ten years........why? Good question.
sunday | november | 18 | 2007
through the rough part - maybe
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| My first cat. Her name was Una and she just wandered into the yard by the garbage cans one day and stayed maybe ten years until a car took her out one night. She could look right into your brain - a truely loyal and intelligent animal - made me a cat lover for life. |
Of course it's been almost a week without an update. It's been a week where it's been hard to approach the laptop for anything other than pure distraction and, of course, work. The nine hour Tuesday did finally roll around and we had to report at seven in the morning - a tough thing in itself. So I signed all the pages of paperwork releasing the drug company from any responsibility if anything went wrong. And then I had to be hooked up to a heart monitor for hte whole day which is just sticking a bunch of metal tabs to your skin in various locations which are then hooked up to a monitor that you where around your waist. Then they did an EKG which came out fine. Then they moved me to a comfortable room with a big lazy-boy chair where I stayed for the entire day while they took blood every hour and several more EKG's. I have to take the drug in capsule form - 3 caps - 3 times a day - 4 hours apart. That was pretty easy, and for the rest of the day I pretty much slept. Lori stayed with me the entire day, Lynn brought us an incredible batch of sushi for lunch and everyone was really nice about making the day go smoothly. I don't think we got out of there until five o'clock so it was more like a ten hour day - but we got through it. The next day we stopped in for just about thirty minutes for them to draw blood. On Thursday, we had to go through the whole heart monitor thing and EKG like the long day, but this time for only a half a day. I got the same comfy chair and Lynn brought sushi again and drove me home. The only bad news is that they looked over the last CT scan a little more closely and they think it's possible that I have a collapsed lung which is being aggravated by this endless cough that I can't keep under control. So they prescribed pure morphine to relax me enough so the cough doesn't get too out of control and do anymore damage. It's possible that they might be wrong about the lung because it's hard to see from the particular CT shot they have - but they're hoping that the clinical drug will work and take some of the pressure off and the lung can reinflate itself. Well, morphine really works in the relaxing mode, but it does tend to nauseate you after continued use - and that's kind of where I'm at with it. I'm taking a day off from it today so maybe I can eat a little more. But as far as side effects from the clinical trial drug - so far so good. I took my last round yesterday and now I get two days off before I start another five days on. I'm just hoping it's doing it's molecular tricks - it would be nice to get some good news. [Posted 4:08 PM]
monday | november | 05 | 2007
weekend woes and beyond
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| Lori in front of the infamous pod (a true to life "hobbit hut) in 1984. |
Well it was the preliminary screening for the clinical trial which I've finally scheduled to begin on next Tuesday - November 13 - which is a 9 hour session at the doctor's office hooked up to an EKG monitor because I'm entering a whole new scene of side effects that appear to take on heart rhythms. And since this is a Phase 1 trial there's very little research material to look over. At this point it's cross your fingers time. But I'd like to thank everyone that has emailed about the photographs and what's going on - forgive me if I don't get back to you - I didn't even have the energy to turn on my computer this weekend - but I do check the iPhone - so I don't miss anything. Also, I'm getting a CT scan in a couple of hours and it might confirm that I've actually been dealing with a steady state case of pneumonia. I'll find out on Wednesday probably and then it'll be a batch of anitbiotics added to the list - but if it makes me feel halfway decent that would be just great because the weekend was pretty much a big wash with sleep dominating the bill. Oh well, it's almost time for me to drink my first round of CT scan chalky emulsion - always fun - I think I got banana flavor this time - Cheers! [Posted 3:30 PM]
friday | november | 02 | 2007
could it be november
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| Lounging on Hilton Head Island with my Dad. I'd put it sometime around 1980, 1981. A wild guess. |
Well Friday managed to come along in just a nick of time. It's been a rough week playing in the office with a critical mass type cough that can literally leave me gasping if I don't take it slow. Plus with all the added warnings of a new type flu out there - wandering around in the public domain sports an added amount of risk to it. Here's hoping I hang with the right crowd. In terms of the next round of torture - I'm all signed up for a Monday launch - with a 9AM preliminary screening session of blood tests and EKG monitoring and then in the same day I get to come back at 5:30PM and get a complete CT scan for the millionth time. I can ahrdly wait. But that wll get me one step closer to real torture if I pass the prelims and get to schedule my 9 hour marathon session at the Oncologists testing out the Phase 1 effects of a drug one step away from lab rat results. But it is a pill this time, no toxic bags of chemicals to hunt down every fresh cell in your body. This time it's just a pill hunting down my molecular DNA - who knows, maybe I'll evolve into a lab rat - my cats would probably like that. But, yes, the whold process starts in earnest on Monday morning - So this weekend - I hope- is a decent one and with the creative manipulation of drugs - a happy one - we'll see.
halloween | wednesday | october 31 | 2007
as long as there's not a hill at the end
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| Lori at the old wood stove in the down house in 1985. She really knew how to work this thing. |
sunday | october | 28 | 2007
it's just what you get
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| A short hair portrait for a change - leaning against the pod ( I'll explain that one later) in 1985 - first trip to the ranch |
I hadn't realized it's been since Thursday since I last did something with this page. I hate to say it but I've been taken down a notch or two by this disease and it's hard to get up a full head of steam to manage the day. I've developed a cough that takes me out for short periods because I just can't make it stop. I'm also getting winded by the most rudimentary tasks - I don't thnk I could walk a city block at the moment in my current condition. Kind of a drag. It's not so bad if I'm sitting still and I'm engaged in something mentally stimulating - that seems to throw the old hacking off track for a bit, but it just doesn't seem to be getting any better. It looks like I really don't have much of a choice when it comes to a decision regarding by next clinical trial. I'd really like to be able to take a deep breath again. But so it goes. On the interesting side - I got the new release of Apple's new OS Leopard on Friday and that's been keeping me busy on all the
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| I got back a DVD of scanned 35mm slides and got some real gems from yesteryear. This is Lori at the downhouse around 1985 on my first trip up to the ranch. Pretty stunning. |
computers we have around the house now. We're up to three laptops and one desktop now. I tried it out on our desktop first and it took a long time to back everything up and go through the whole process and set all the preferences. It turned out to be a pretty interesting upgrade and I read that Photoshop was working ok on it. So I went ahead and upgraded my own laptop. I actually find that the cover flow aspect of the Finder to be pretty useful whereas I pretty much ignore it in iTunes. The networking aspects are also pretty amazing - especially the remote desktop management part (Screen Sharing). I'm down to one more laptop to upgrade then will all be current. Fortunately while I was doing a lot of this on Saturday I was able to watch the Breeder's Cup which was taking place at Monmouth Part on the Jersey shore. It was taking place after four days of constant rain and the race track was nothing but slop - but all the races turned out to be very interesting and unbiased - I think the horses were actually having more trouble on the turf than they were on the dirt. And the Classic turned out to be a great race with Curlin winning handily to finish out the year with possible Horse of the Year honors. Which he deserves. Today was pretty much another systems upgrade day with a little Salon work thrown in and that pretty much shoots the weekend. But at least I've got a whole new trove of images to mine for a bit. Boy wait till I do my cat pic entry. That'll be a good one. [Posted 6:21 PM]
thurday | october | 25 | 2007
back to all that stuff
Well it was back to reality today - not that it's ever really taken a vacation - but I had to go back to the Oncologist to see where we're going with the next phase. I'm going to embark on another clinical trial and one that is pretty cutting edge for how treatment is advancing. It's a type of drug called a "Histone deacetylase inhibitor" or HDAC inhibitor. It's a targeted therapy that operates on the molecular level. Another difference is that it's a pill - so I get to avoid the trips to the "chemo room." Of course this is also a Phase 1 trial meaning it's one step away from tests on lab rats. So dosage is still an unknown along with a bunch of other stuff. The known side effects are the usual ones which they always seem to list just to cover their asses, and the woman who was explaining all of this to us said that there haven't been any cases of nausea and they haven't been administering anti-nausea medications. The main area of attention has been with possible heart problems and the first day that I get this I have to stay at the clinic for 9 hours hooked up to an EKG machine to monitor my heart rythms. After that I have to be hooked up to an EKG for intermittant checks. It sounds scary. It sounds like a lot of work. It'll be different than other treatments -but it also has been getting promising results. Plus trials like this aren't available in very many places - the only other trials like this are being held down at USC - so I'm pretty lucky that it's in my neighborhood because very often people have to travel to get these kind of drugs. So it was a drag having to get back into this - I've got about a week until I have to make a final decision on all this and make my appointments. Maybe this will be the one. Is it worth it? I'd say so. [Posted 5:54 PM]
tuesday | october | 23 | 2007
more of that random stuff
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| As we jump up in time to 1998 for a look at my shoes on a weekend where anything goes as a subject. And then my early morning walk to work. I used to get off at the Embarcadero and walk over to Third and Mission where Salon had a great office (just the beginning of many). |
I was fortunate to be able to talk my Dad into the advantages of the new technologies in "digital imagery" or what would be the most popular past time in the next ten years - digital photography - and he popped for Apple's very own digital camera - the Quicktake 200 - something that seems so laughable and primitive at this point - but was really magical back then. With the advent of Photoshop and this endless supply of pictures - I was one happy camper. It had it's problems and I had to send it back to Apple a couple of times to fix various things, but I didn't care - you could see how it was going to be the future and how when it was partnered with the Web and a little html - at that point - if you thought forward a few years - you could see how everything was going to change. I'm sure it helped me get in the door at Salon. There was a pretty small but tight subculture of what we would call bloggers now - but were basically artists with web pages in a whole new technical medium - and everyone was supportive and close knit - and some are even still around - keeping it up for more than 8 years. I only wish I could have anticipated Flickr while I was still thinking forward.
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| Buddha in a North Beach window and Lori and Bob on Thanksgiving morning 1998. |
I wish I still had all the Web pages I did back then. Learning how to jigger html to make things look simple and elegant. And trying to keep your page weight down so pages would load fast on those speedy 56k modems we all had (Boy, I think my first one was a 19k modem). But being able to walk around San Francisco with a camera you could just point and shoot - without regard for film cost or development cost - it really did seem like magic. And even though everyone has a digital camera now - it still seems like magic - pretty amazing. [Posted 5:36 PM]
monday | october | 22 | 2007
lassen in the fall
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| On the top of Mt. Lassen in the fall. I'd say around 1988 or 89. |
I think this was our first trip to Mt. Lassen National Park. We used to take car camping vactions the last week in September to the first week in October and it was pure magic. The campgrounds were empty becasue school was back in session - the weather was California's best and no one was on the roads. You could just travel down any road you chose and plan your trip by just heading in a general direction. It was just about near perfect way to get away. On the day that this photo was taken - I think it was the last day they were allowing you to climb to the top of Mt Lassen. I remember helicoptors airlifting the porta-potties off the trail halfway up so they wouldn't be lost in the future snow. But as you can see we got a crystal clear day and you could almost see San Francisco (just kidding). This was the only time we climbed Lassen but we would return a few times after to the back side of the park with its incredible sand dune cone and if we were lucky to get in - the infamous Drakesbad - the closest thing to heaven on earth in terms of a backcountry authentic ranch setting - no electricity but incredible hot springs pools with three meals a day of authentic ranch grub thrown in. Nothing like it . [Posted 10:34 PM]
thursday | october | 18 | 2007
the randomness of it all
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| Lori and Poppers on Christmas break, 1988. |
I must admit doing this page is fun again but for some misguided reason I thought I was going to take a more linear look at things with pictures - but it turns out that in reality all the hard copy I have in photos doesn't have an organizer like iPhoto - which I really don't mind at all - but I just pick things out as they grab me - shuffling back and forth between decades like they were these short blips in time. So it looks like I'll be all over the long range calendar so it'll be surprises everyday. The hardest part in all this is that I've got a lot of great stuff in 35mm color slides - with that beautiful aged technicolor look. I could just kick myself becasue we used to have a great slide scanner at work, but I gave it up for storage since the medim became pretty obsolete in the ever advancing digital age. There is a trick you can pull on a regualr scanner but the quality is still pretty poor and you lose all that incredible aged color. So it looks like I'll have to weed through the entire slide archive and go have them scanned professionally so that I can really go to town with this.
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| Summer of 1988. I remember it was really hot that afternoon, you can kind of tell that Poppers isn't too into it. |
I've always liked these two photos. Poppers was a great horse. It was fun up at the ranch at this period in time becasue there were sheep and a horse and cats and dogs. It all got quite festive at times and definitely made for more stories and adventures up there. (Like the time the dogs decided to hunt sheep on Christmas morning) I was never very good at riding a horse but I felt comfortable the few times I was on Poppers. I eventually ended up taking riding lessons around 1998 and still found it perplexing - but I sure loved watching them at the race track. The only thing I really learned from Poppers was how social horses are - how they ust like to be in the company of people and how they really don't like being alone. It's nice remembering the times in summer when you'd be reading a book in a lawn chair and Poppers would just be grazing close by - pretty happy to have the company. And it was also funny to see him in the middle of a bunch of grazing sheep. I guess it really didn't matter what kind of company Poppers kept - as long as it was something that grazed and made a little noise now and then- and as dumb as sheep are he was pretty happy to have them around. It must have been an interesting change for Poppers because he was actually trained for equestrian events - which is pretty precise training - and then all of sudden one day he finds himself in the middle of nowhere hanging out with a bunch of sheep. [Posted 3:09 PM]
wednesday | october | 17 | 2007
gardens? in sausalito?
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| The infamous Johnson Street backyard garden in Sausalito ( l to r), RFD, Bianca and Ed. Around 1977-78. |
As we get to see with all the current documentation of the food revolution that was brought about by Alice Waters and cohorts, prior to the eighties - there just wasn't anything going on out there in terms of folks digging deep in regional cuisines and and upping the ante with better components. When I first moved here - my first stop in Marin was Ed Ward's place on Johnson Street - a perfect place halfway up the hill from the police station on Caledonia street. Ed had recently departed from Rolling Stone magazine when I showed up and was writing for a Coppola mag (title escapes me). There were lot's of albums around, and lot's of music to discuss - but our real interest was cooking and eating, especially regional and the spicier the better. But to supplement this interest and Ed's great home cooking - I remember he finally got the ok from his upstairs landlord to put a garden in the backyard. For a year or two it was a constant source of adventure and experimentation with the highly localized Saualito weather - the place where fog changed everything.
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| Me in the foreground, Ed digging away and Bianca supervising. |
So you might say this is where all the interest in food and cooking started for me. It would be a good ten years before the East Bay folks would jump in and they would be called early adopters, but it sure was fun and it sure was cheap to eat out then. The Bay Area was in it's prime right then.[Posted 9:44 AM]
tuesday | october | 16 | 2007
my backer pages
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| I've kept this one a long time. It was a random weekend night in Ann Arbor in the fall of 1970. A reassembled group from the previous year, l to r, "Red Dog," Peter (Sven) Birkerts , David Purdy and me ( with a bad "Small Faces" look). |
It really hadn't been that long, just a quick summer but it was. Peter had been my roomate the previous freshman year and was heading off to get in trouble in Europe - I remembercleaning out our rooms saying goodbye with the English import of "Aftermath" Rolling Stones playing "Flight 505" in the background. Peter's good friend Mark "Red Dog" was heading off to India. David Purdy and I spent the summer doing drudge work to make our next year tolerable. When school started up in fall in Ann Arbor it took about a month or two to land us in one place and it seemed pretty obvious that some time abroad had soured academia for Mark and Peter and I think David wasn't far behind for different reasons. In fact I think this was the last time I ever saw "Red Dog" - rumor has it that he went off to Philadelphia to become some revolutionary conceptual street artist - maybe so. Of couse Peter or Sven Birkerts as he's known in the literary world went on to become a fairly well known wiriter of criticism and essays - becoming popuar for his anti-tech take - The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age -and he even found the time to write a memoir of his college years which rated a paragraph on our freshman year togther:
"Bob was a part of a whole group of friends who had all gone to North Farmington High School and had requested the same dorm. I met them all immediately and then watched over the next few months as they - like everyone around them, like me - succumbed to the irresistible combination of easy-access drugs and nightly peer pressure. The Mosher-Jordan dorm was, throughout the 1969-1970 school year, all the evidence anyone would need to prove the thesis that the West was in a state of precipitous decline. We were all in it together, going down as a merry band, and it was no one's fault. Which is another way of saying that we were all to blame. ------- Sven Berkirts, "My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time"
David and I stayed pretty close - with our common ground being how many times we could see Pharoh Sanders play and dabbling in trying to master various musical instrument - I, the flute, David, soprano and tenor saxaphone. I remember that he came out to visit me a few times after I's moved to Mill Valley. And then I never heard from him again. I heard a rumor that he'd died of stomach cancer, but I don't know from where.
As crazy as all this sounds I remember these first few years as completely mesmerizing - free reign in a town that was up for it and had so many resources to satisfy so many inqueries. I stayed in Ann Arbor for five years and enjoyed everyone of them - in fact the reason I bolted so soon after graduating was that I felt that it's soma like effect was going to snag me for good and I end up being one of those colleg town types that never leave. [Posted 9:53 AM]
monday | october | 15 | 2007
my back pages
It just gets old after a while. Contructing the minutea of disease in all it's glorious detail and finally realizing that very few can get what it's actually like or about and it just generally sucks having to think about it in sentences and paragraphs. So I decided to just delete all that for now. The rest of the of the site is going down. It went up for a different reason than the function it serves now and all those pages of past "work" art work seem like it's coming from another planet. I can't look at it anymore.
So I pulled out an old box I had full of disorganized photos and loads of 35mm slides. I don't have that many but they were more interesting to me at this point than old artwork and I have the added benefit of a new scanner (even though it doesn't do color slides) - so this seems a lot more entertaining for the moment and it'll give me a break from the fascinating details of medical updates.
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| Hanging out in the front of Evergreen Street - I'd just come back from my favorite record store on 24th Street in Noe Valley with the lastest single by the "Dead Kennedys" so that would put the date around 1981. |
Of all the things that I miss the most as a result or side effect of this disease has been the loss of hair. This seems to be the one that everyone gets to pat you on the back and say it's not that big a deal - but then when you meet someone that it actually is about to happen to - the tune changes quite a bit. Women have the availability of some incredible wigs that look outstanding - but men get to bascially look like radiated Star Trek refugees with no eyebrows. You can spot them a mile a way on the streets. And short to shaved hair can be fun - when it's actually a choice - but when it's something that comes and goes over and over again - not so fun. Right now it's been maybe 5 weeks since my last round of chemo and I was showing some hair growth at the beginning of that period - but now for some reason - when all the chemo should be pretty much out of my system - my hair is falling out again and getting all spotty looking - perhaps the ugliest look you can sport. And wearing hats just gets boring. Fortuantely we're entering the season of the year where you can wear the knit ones without dying from the heat.
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This was after work at the Pelican Inn in Muir Beach (note: the infamous Muir Beach Fire Department logo. I'd say this is around 1983. |
So I decided to pick out my "hair " photos. Perhaps the closest I'm going to come to some sort of theme in this new mode of presentation. I'm just going to start rolling out photos as I come across them and when I get to the scanner. But it seems like a lot more fun all around. The batch I've got up now come from a span from the late seventies to the early eighties. I think 1984 saw the end of this period's long locks (but the did come back in the nineties). But it was the last and only time I've ever had a full beard. I've never felt the need to revisit that area of hair growth again. It also marks a temporary fascination with wearing a cowboy hat. I can't really remember where that came from or when it started - I was spending a lot of time exploring northern California at the time and I suspect that it sprang from some sort of local influence up there. It was also at a time when I was learning to play the fiddle and I was going to a lot of "fiddle festivals" at the time which yeilded many a cowboy hat. So somwhere in that range of time this look emerged. In retrospect - perhaps it's a bit dated - but I miss it. You can have the beard but the hair, the hat and the fiddle were a great point in time. [Posted 10:43 AM]