It’s a gorgeous day here in Minneapolis and as I have been trotting around with colleagues going to meetings, droves of people in Twins baseball shirts have been headed over for the noon game to watch the Twins play the Detroit Tigers (I think) in their brand new stadium. At one point, I stopped walking and felt the sunshine on my face – it did help with my summertime cold blues. When work was done…
I crawled into bed last night at the hotel in Minneapolis, shaking all over with chills. I was so cold I got up and put on a big plush bathrobe to sleep in. It’s amazing I spend most of my sleeping time trying to be cool because my body is an inferno – I sleep nude, I put the a/c on 75 degrees, and I never seem to be cool enough and here I am…
I was in Boston all day and it was so pleasant, I just wanted to drop down on a park bench and soak up the sun. But wait – everyone there was talking about how hot and humid it was – what? It felt like I was in my house with the a/c on only it was less humid than the LaLa. Very strange. We arrived in Minneapolis to 71 degrees and super dry even…
I was in Boston yesterday in Room 701 and arrived in Minneapolis to Room 701 – something in the air I gather. But 701 adds up to 8 – the number of infinity and the sum of two fours, my favorite number. Now if I were prone to mysticism (which I can be), I’d say this is a lucky trip for me. But since I spent the almost three hours of this flight coughing and…
I was reading about the atrocities in the Congo where rape is the Weapon of Mass Destruction and is the weapon used to destroy the women there, their families and whole communities. We all know by now that countries where women are second class citizens are countries that are rootless – children get trained in war not civic studies or history. Meanwhile the war against women in the Congo continues unabated. I met a man…
I finished reading In Defense of Food and ordered The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Pollan talks a lot about things that are core to my belief but he also points his finger directly at some habits that have been hard to kick. Americans, he says, are driven to consume food on the go and in the recent decades solely on the basis of nutrition nonsense rather than the pleasure of eating. I would say when I see…
I arrived in Boston last night on the heels of a bad storm; we almost didn’t get in at all. But weather in NY was terrific and weather albeit overcast when we landed in Boston the weather was terrific albeit grey skies so somewhere in between a storm was raging. I rushed to the hotel to put down my things and head out to meet friends for dinner and the hotel decided on their own…
I woke this morning at The Bowery hotel in New York, not in a panic, but more dazed and confused 5.5 hours sleep and miles to go and the initial flush of where am I and why? Senator Byrd, who was in critical condition when I went to bed late, is dead. It seems that every time I check into this hotel, someone is dead the next day. This is where I was staying when…
I really dislike the John Goodman character on Treme – he is so Hollywood and so un New Orleans, if there is such a qualifier. He is obnoxious in the ways that Tulane professors just aren’t. But I especially hated the episode where he rants on YouTube and says Fuck You to Houston and Atlanta. I’m sorry but if you really did go through Katrina that is fucked up. When we came back people drove…
Landed at JFK this evening and stood in a godforsaken line about two miles long waiting for a taxi. You might imagine the far ranging sorts that stood there with me but directly behind me were four women, returning from New Orleans, and discussing their escapades as if no one could hear them. The blonde slept with a 24 year old (she looked to be late 30s) and said that she didn’t catch his age…