Musings on Dance, Food, Geek Stuff
Today is the birthday of David Platt, my oldest, dearest friend in the world, and someone who had a huge impact on me at an important time in my life. When we met, I was a painfully shy, boringly average middle schooler. David was the opposite: smart, confident and vocal about his opinions on everything….
Today was the first time in years that I have given a message at Quaker Meeting for Worship. It was during Brooklyn Monthly Meeting’s virtual meeting, which I have been to a few times since the pandemic. Here’s what I shared: Friends, I have been thinking about this new structure for our Meeting. I think…
This morning at Quaker Meeting for Worship (on Zoom!), I was thinking about how easily triggered most of us are in this time, and how that places increased responsibility on all of us to be judicious about what we share. The COVID-19 pandemic is causing lots of people to be in a general state of…
During an interview for a blog yesterday, I was musing about what made lindy hop so special to me. And that’s when it hit me: Lindy hop didn’t come from a place where everything was rosy and people were always jumping for joy. It came from the African American community during the Depression, amidst systemic…
On Sunday night, I was driving back to my apartment in San Francisco at around midnight, using my friend Hanah’s car. I was dead tired after a long dance weekend in Oakland. My goal was to get to bed as early as possible… but the parking gods had other plans. Pulling up to my neighborhood,…
How do you wind down to get to sleep instead of social media surfing? Last night I came home from a lindy hop dance and started winding down to go to bed. It was a pretty good dance – I enjoyed a lot of the music, danced a bit, chatted with some friends. A fairly…
Hey, Dad! Hey, Dad! Pay attention to me!
You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day. Unless you’re too busy, then you should sit for an hour. Ancient Zen Saying
True Confession: I’m terrible at making time to meditate. As a college student, I was probably my most diligent at meditation, or prayer as I called it then as a born again Christian. I had a regular morning practice I followed, a list of people and concerns I prayed for, sacred texts that I read,…
Last December, it hit me out of the blue what I wanted to do for my 50th birthday. I was having dinner with my mother in a Filipino restaurant. In an adjoining dining room, we could hear some kind of party taking place. There was music, cake, food, dancing — the works. I thought to…