Family Vacation

Laos and Cambodia

This October, we spent 3.5 weeks in Laos and Cambodia. 

An absolutely amazing trip.

And since I can't seem to find the time in my ample open hours wandering the house in the middle of the night due to jetlag to write anything of substance, I will photodump.

I hope to put more here. I kept journals. But, life.

That's a cricket. 

More to come.

Happy Fall

Did anyone else catch that? About the winery?

Bruni says it straight re: 45s sheer failure, as seen through his alt right meltdown.

He abdicated his responsibilities so thoroughly and recklessly that it amounted to a letter of resignation. Then he whored for his Virginia winery on the way out the door.

That bit about the winery was just too perfect. A man child trapped in a job he has no idea how to do, unable even to keep his head in the game for an hour, to focus on what's important as opposed to just focusing on him. Just, gross.

The Center

This piece today in the NYT by Timothy Snyder is brilliant and fairly disturbing. It paints a clear but dark picture of what is being attempted in this country right now by far right extremist groups and the 45th president, the attempted rise of naziism and white nationalism aided and abetted by the administration and its media arms. 

I've kind of gone off on a tangent with it, though. And this is why.

In the Europe of the interwar years, the growing sense that politics was defined by two “sides” came to consume the broad political center, where people can think for themselves and confront the tests of politics as responsible citizens. If everyone was on a “side,” then no one bore responsibility for society as a whole, and the center could not hold.

A simple statement that has startled me into a new understanding of the importance of the center. I'd just never thought about it that way--that by putting yourself in the center you are taking responsibility for finding ways to get things done in spite of the unyielding ideologically driven edges who are important for consideration of the full spectrum of ideas and possibilities of any idea or political solution, but often intransigent when it comes to compromise or getting anything actually done. 

The center has been forced to the left in response to the insanity of the right. This is not balance, and it has to change. 

It's easy to think of the center as where the grown-ups live. That's where I've been. But that's too easy. I do believe, however, that the center is the place for pragmatists, realists, those with a recognition of the need for change that might not fit their own idea of what should be. 

Change will happen not when the left beats back the right, but when the center reemerges and gets to work. 

Wow. Shocking. Duh.

In the most predictable move ever by the most entitled, out of touch, idiotic douchenozzle ever:

Pander much? Think, ever?

Happy Birthday, America

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt

It's been quite a year.

You're going through a tough time, America. Things seem dark. Bleak. Horrific. But you are bigger and stronger than this.

All things pass, just hang in there.

A great visit

Floating

Human Most Vile

One stupid thing after another. One more cruelty, one more can kicked down the road. One more idiotic, irredeemable act.

To all of you who put him where he is: This is all your fault. It's just too bad the rest of us have to suffer for your ignorance, your fear, your outright stupidity.

Fuck you. I truly mean it, no matter who you are. That is all.

A good weekend's work

Ready for backyard camping

Don't care how, I want it now.

"We’ve got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar."

Yesterday's piece from David Brooks is spot-on. Sickening, depressing, ridiculous, but totally right. 

Still hard to accept that this is acceptable. 

Still can't believe that so many can't see how stupid and dangerous this man is. 

Still dumbfounded by how dumb so many of us are. 

New music from Grizzly Bear and LCD Soundsystem

Shaping up to be a good summer, what with new singles from both these giants along with new music from Hauschka, At the Drive-In, Feist, PJ Harvey, Slowdive, and a whole bunch more new and new-to-me folks that I'm stumbling across daily.

Treefort 2017 pt 1

I'm not going to impose order or make sense out of this. I'm just doing to do a photo-braaaap. This is my friend Jason shooting the amazing band The Coathangers at the Linen Building.

Thunderpussy on the Main Stage.

DJ Henry Pope on the Radioland stage. 

This is Ora Cogan, who played at the Boise Contemporary Theater before Grouper. Ora Cogan was gorgeous and intensely enjoyable, but the big impact came from Liz Harris, aka Grouper, who did not allow photo or video. An amazing set that I'll be writing more about momentarily. 

Had a great day out with Theo. Here's the boy being a DJ.

Theo the Strongman, complete with strongman mustache stamp.

Theo on the air guitar. 

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Theo on lead vocals.