Breaking from work on income tax prep and other administrative matters, we shop for groceries, walk around, do dog duty, and look at random sights. Spring might gradually be coming closer, as snow is melting except in the shade, but the wind still blows its chill.
This one is really for Ivi.
My earlier mention of Buckminster Fuller started the memory mill chugging again, as I began to recall how the Bucky photo session came about. It was because I got a call one day from my friend, P.T., who was deeply involved in the so-called human potential movement (or however that wave was being characterized) and who was working as an assistant to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, author of “On Death and Dying” and a leading internationally-known researcher into that subject who famously described the five stages of grief. My friend — this was sometime in the mid- or late 1970s –told me that Kubler-Ross would be speaking at an upcoming event — the World Cooperation Council, if I have the name right– that I should attend, that Findhorn people as well as my “hero” Fuller would also be speaking, and that she could probably arrange to get me a press pass.
So it happens that my friend P.T. was an utterly obsessed dancer (she started taking ballet lessons, in a class of youngsters, at age 30, for example, because her parents would not allow her ballet lessons when she had been a young child and she suddenly realized at that late date that she could still give it a whirl; she also was already a formidable interpretative jazz dancer at that point, even as she was pursuing her doctorate in cancer research). And she had told me that Kubler-Ross had once expressed the regret that she had not spent enough time in her life … dancing! This led me today to try to find the exact quote (from sources like this and this), and I finally found something close on Wikipedia:
In Switzerland I was educated in line with the basic premise: work work work. You are only a valuable human being if you work. This is utterly wrong. Half working, half dancing – that is the right mixture. I myself have danced and played too little.
In our latest Seattle communique from Ivi (Sunday evening?), she mentioned that she was planning on several upcoming dance nights for the next week, including doing one of her new favorites, Bachata. Here is a vid to help us (me, namely) to understand what this is about.
Taking a look at the new courthouse, then walking up and down neighborhood streets.
Spent this Saturday morning at Eric’s, where we worked on “The Project” and discussed a range of topics from fear-driven politics to creativity and innovation to culture and education. We compared notes on the 2014 Dean Kamen documentary, “SlingShot” (available on Netflix and YouTube) and talked about figures like Leonard Da Vinci and Michelangelo. I told him about meeting and photographing Buckminster Fuller (when I had a press pass to the World Cooperation Conference in Santa Monica in the late 70s), so we naturally delved into topics like geodesic architecture, trash as a resource, and, of course, the ill-fated Dymaxion three-wheeled car. And he showed me how to carefully, painstakingly, gradually pull the dent/gash out of my rocker panel.
The problem …
And action …
Devil-Dog attends the celebration for the birthday pair, but wants to be the center of attention …
The snow is melting. And Charlie meets a new friend.
Lloyd, a farmer from the Cove area, makes a weekly delivery of eggs to our doorstep. He customarily leaves Charlie with a homemade beef jerky treat, perhaps to quell the latter’s barking and protective actions. Today he left an oversize egg in a bag as it wouldn’t fit in the usual egg cartons he delivers. Later on, we walked through strong winds and slushy streets with Charlie Boy. And we got in another hour or so of reading aloud, now about 450 pages into the 750 page total of the Joseph Mitchell, “Up In The Old Hotel” book. Stay tuned for more thrills.
Much conversation about cooking, knitting, dancing, Velouria, Little Lisle and more. We see earrings and dancing shoes. All this makes us very happy. Via Google Hangouts:
