THEN and NOW

This is what mothers do when they miss their sons. My found this picture of my father in London near Westminister Abbey in 1977. And of course, there's me in May of 2006 near the Tower Bridge.

Fishing Stories

A lonely boy finds peace in fishing.
His mother says john this is not the way life's supposed to be.
Dont you see the life that you are missing?
And he says...
"When I grow up I want to be,
One of the harvesters of the sea.
I think before my days are done,
I want to be a fisherman."


Anthony with some Cabezon monsters from the rocks in NorCal.

THE MAN IN BLACK

When I was just a baby, my mama told me, "Son,
Always be a good boy; don't ever play with guns."
But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
When I hear that whistle blowin' I hang my head and cry.
The Man in Black

Summer 2006 in Larryville

What is summer but watercolours dipping into the Ocean,
A Sudden Ray of Hope and a cure for pain for a panic-stricken mess,
A soccer ball dipping into the net, ringing the sweat out of your shorts so wet
as if you'd gone swimming?

Bunny ice cream, Watermelon salad, Cherry Limeades from the drive-in,
Struggling to consciousness as dawn breaks
while underneath a slide in a park with bark in your hair,
Rolling around in the neighbor's front yard after watching the sun rise.

Laughin' and singin' till the early hours of the morn,
It's heaven - a place where nothing happens,
It's a kiss from a new flame, a trip to the moon.

It's music, it's poetry, it's life.

La fiesta de cumpleaños de Rocío

Rocío is the lovely gallega that I co-teach with. Being from Galicia, we ate some mariscos -lemon-garlic shrimp skewers and mussels in a white wine sauce- and other Mediterranean foods- melanzanne parmaggiano, bruschetta, tortilla española, etc.

English Invasion part 2

They came, they saw but they certainly didn't conquer. Here we are checking out the campus.

Here Stuart (aka Donnie) and brother Rob are inside the campanile. I'm not allowed to walk through the campanile until I graduate. Guess I won't know what that experience is like for a while.
Stuart and I with Memorial Stadium in the background.
There's something about being in 100 degree weather that makes English lads want to stick their thumbs up.

The Lakies

100 degrees, 110 with the heat index. It's time for the lake. Time for beering and floating.
















The hardest chore of the day was figuring out how to make your beer float along side of you.
Ghost man Rob.
Soccer team shot with the English and the locals.

European Tour 2006: Un viaje a las tierras ancestrales

On the dawning of this new year, I found myself getting off of a plane in Mexico City. My compañero fiel, James (el filósofo chilango) and his cuate, Memo, took Anthony (my bro for life) and myself to the center of Mexico City, which at 5:30 in the morning on January 1st found itself in a sulfurous state of postapocalyptic doom as if a nuclear bomb had gone off and the survivors were all hiding in foxholes and those remaining above ground were staring at us through the dazed glances of mutated extraterrestrials exploring a new dawn. It was then that I made the most important new year’s resolution: to travel more. Not that I don’t travel enough as it is, but one can never see enough. To live is to see and to live is to listen and feel and explore... Ever pushing forward.

My trip to London and Poland – mis tierras ancestrales – is one of the fruits of this resolution.

Visiting a stellar mate was also definitely in order. Stuart (aka Donnie) and I chugged on the streets and back roads of Ireland trying to sign people up to sponsor children in Uganda (think Sally Struthers’ ads with the kids with flies in their noses) and to support Ireland’s homeless. Thanks to Stuart, I survived my short stint in this wild profession.

It was time to visit him on his home territory: England. Land of the BBC, great British comedy, perfect rock n’ roll,Winston Churchill, football, Imperialism, the Royal Navy and that eternal sense of optimism that has passed on to the American spirit.

I had to visit Poland to see my grandparents’ roots. Poland, prone to tragedy, the land of sorrow and of emigrés who have had to escape from so many atrocities, the culminating blow being the Holocaust.

Now I can reconcile two very disparate pasts to construct myself.

The travel gods

I had a 6 hour layover in Boston and bless the maker for Dave Fischer was able to take some time off of work to show me around. It was great to see him as he picked me up at the airport.

Then later, I discovered that I was upgraded to Business Class… Happy Days!

The travel gods were with me...