GoDaddy!

I'm in the process of moving the website to a new, cheaper, better company.

AdiosUSA is mostly up and running.
Everything else is pending.

Dial-A-Shot will not be returning. I'm going to pull out the pics that I think are worth seeing and put the rest in storage. If there is something you want from the old site just email me. I'll try to find it.

Moving Update

I've neglected this blog for too long. So, here's a quickie just to catch up on the current state of my getaway.

My health seems OK. I still get stabbing pains on the right side of my chest when I over-exert myself. I'm not too worried. I still haven't paid my bills but I'm moving to Mexico anyway. They made $75,000 off of me, another $5000 shouldn't matter. I hope to quit my job Thankgiving week and be on the road by the first of December. I'll put my bags in storage when I get to Mexico city, then head for the beach for a month of decompression. I'll probably end up in Puerto Angel. No phone, no internet, no television, no computer. Just reading, swimming, and staring into the horizon.

When I return from my sabbatical I'll start looking for an apartment. Once I'm settled you're all invited for a visit. My usual email addresses will still be good and I even have a 415 phone number you can call to leave a message. If you want the number, just send me an email.

I still have lots of stuff I want to sell: computers, a scanner, a printer, a Canon 10D, sound equipment, videos, and lots more. I think I'll post everything on Craig's List when I get a chance. I'll add a link here.

In the sidebar to the right there is a link to what will hopefully be my podcast on Odeo. I'm able to upload audio files as well as call a local number and leave a message that gets uploaded to the site. The first "episode" of my podcast was posted with my cell phone. Cool! I won't bother to add new "episodes" unless I have something interesting to say. I hope to do a lot of recording in Mexico. Dreams!

American Soul

Revelations are no more than familiar circumstances looked upon with open eyes. I know nothing more today than I knew yesterday.

Throughout my travels outside the United States I have encountered an overwhelming number of considerate and thoughtful people. I've found them, too, just off the boat or just having crossed the river. I also count them among my compatriots, but the number is anything but overwhelming. It appears to me that immigrants are bestowed with virtues that seem to escape their American born children. It has been my fortune that most of the foreign cultures that I've encountered foster humility and mutual respect. Bad people are bad people everywhere. But kindness and generosity are sucked out of genuinely good people while they search for the American dream.

The nuns taught me that the soul is not buried deep inside the chest, but engulfs the entire body. Our soul is who we are. With time, the American soul penetrates all who make it their home. It infects the old and possesses the newly born. There might have been a time when it was vibrant and life affirming, but I believe the American soul has become cancerous and self destructive. If it can be said that there is a general decline in the humanity of humanity, I believe it can be attributed to the pervasiveness of American culture throughout the world.

I am often asked two questions: Why would I want to leave the United States, and why would I want to live in Mexico.

I live entirely without television. This has afforded me a life of peace and contentment that I rarely find in others. The horrific events in these first years of the third millennium have forced my eyes wide open. Circumstances are not good and I find myself an active member of the guilty party. I feel sick with responsibility and must escape if I am to feel well again. A better man might stay and fight for change, but it's too late for me.

Mexico City is full of corruption, poverty, and pollution. New York City, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Houston are full of corruption, poverty, and pollution. Why would anyone choose to live there? Those who warn me of the dangers have universally never set foot in Mexico, D.F. I leave it to the visitor to understand what attracts me to the second largest city in the world. But it is Mexican culture, the Mexican people that compel me to make my home there.

A young boy snatches a woman's purse and runs quickly down the street. Dozens of men, some emerging from nearby shops, chase the boy down, bruise him up a bit, find a cop, and return the purse.

I sit on a sunny park bench with a newspaper. An older gentleman sits next to me and asks to borrow the sports section. We begin a conversation that lasts for an hour and ends with an invitation to dinner with his wife, children, and grandchildren.

A man enters a bar. Before his first drink he greets everyone he knows with a handshake and a squeeze of the shoulder. He spends a little time asking how things are going. He met me the day before, so I am treated the same. I learn to do this everywhere I go.

Robbery is rampant. Graft is pervasive. Domestic violence is the norm. Women are second class citizens. The police are corrupt and have too much power. Many people work an 80 hour week for just enough to get by. Alcoholism is of epidemic proportions. Poverty shows a different face. If you see someone sleeping in the street he is likely drunk or a traveler visiting the capitol city with no money for a place to stay. There are certainly more, poorer people than in the United States, but they don't often face their poverty alone---

Family and friends are of highest priority. This is a universal truth in Mexico. I need to be surrounded by this ethic. I need to feel in every waking moment that I am an integral part of my surroundings, not the rugged individual that my country expects me to be. In the United States we are connected by cell phones and email. Mexicans connect with a handshake and a squeeze of the shoulder. I'm moving to Mexico to have my shoulder squeezed.

Katrina: The Bitch of New Orleans

I once lived in New Orleans. My heart is there more than anywhere. I've been busy these last few weeks trying to gather my old friends together so that we can deal with the sadness and loss together. With iTunes you can listen and watch a slideshow of the things I will Miss about New Orleans. I also set up another blog for us to remember why we loved the city so much. Here is my first entry:

The Black Vinyl Blues

One thousand years ago I was a DJ on the greatest Jazz/Blues/Black Heritage radio station in the world. A couple of times a week I’d wander two blocks from my slave quarter apartment on Dauphine and Orleans to the big iron gates of Louis Armstrong Park. Standing there under the streetlights I would call to the black guard who’d recognize me and let me pass into the darkness, slamming the heavy gate behind me. New Orleans was a much safer place in those days. However, knowing that the most dangerous housing project in the city as well as Marie Laveau’s grave lay just outside the iron bars, that two minute walk through pitch black at two in the morning, gave me the shivers. I scurried as fast as I could without the guard thinking I was a sissy white boy.

Once my key was in the door of the WWOZ studios I’d become afraid of something else all together. I’d never know what I’d find when I opened that door. Often there was no one to be seen. Music would drift down from the second floor where the late night DJ had thrown on one of his pre-recorded tapes before leaving the place to run itself. When that was the case, the phone system would be lighting up like a christmas tree with unfulfilled requests and dedications. Other times I’d find fellow DJs hanging out on the lower floor talking music and women, neither of which I knew much about.

Although I had spun records at WTUL for several years, I knew very little about music and even less about Jazz. When I’d find myself in the same room with some of the ‘OZ crew, I’d shrivel up into a ball; intimidated and overwhelmed. They didn’t know my name. They knew me as the white boy who took the shift that nobody wanted. I deejayed in the wee hours of the morning to an audience of six demanding jazz fanatics with insomnia, although I counted janitors and late night security guards among my peeps.

There was only one other caucasian working at the station at that time. As seems to be a New Orleans tradition; while the black folks kept everything running, a white boy held the purse strings. I wonder if an outsider can understand this status quo. Like nowhere else in the country, blacks keep The City of New Orleans on its tracks and running, yet the whites own the train, the coal, and the very shoes worn by the engineer. Mardi Gras is a celebration of that status quo. I have yet to make my peace with what seems from the outside a glaring racial divide, but what in practice is more harmonious than any other place I know.

During my four hour shift I would sit alone in that tiny building in the middle of that dark park playing random tunes and getting lectured by listeners much more knowledgeable than I. As I’d rummage through what might be the most extensive and valuable collection of black music on vinyl ever amassed, I’d hear suspicious noises coming from the blackness outside and run to double check the lock on the door. That glorious record collection may soon become another victim of Hurricane Katrina. It now sits unguarded at the mercy of bad weather, looters, and local police. There is no one to call, no one to write.

New Orleans’ blacks may not own the bricks, the pavement, the houses, or the stores, but they do own its heart and soul. They gave birth to the groove in the music, the spice in the food, and the rhythm in the streets. Those stacks of priceless records belong to the black people of New Orleans, as does most of the city’s heritage. Whether help comes from outside or not, the city will be rebuilt with all of its charms and graces intact, because black folks are the keepers of its soul.

brian

nada

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster feedster:00139caccd13f695a6a0d67e8993a88d

Miss New Orleans

Watch a slideshow in iTunes

Ghost

Last night a doctor who worked eight years in an Emergency Room was confounded to see me alive. He joked that I might be a ghost.

How would I know? Pinching doesn't seem to work.