After toasting the New Year in the driveway with firecrackers cracking in the background, Cybele quizzed Ramon and me on what our highlights of 2011 were. Here’s mine:

School vacation trip with Ramon: Ramon and left the ladies behind and flew to SLC, Utah to visit family and ski, then took Amtrak over the Sierras in a snow storm to San Francisco for more family visits and kicking around one the great cities of the world (Mission nightlife, North Beach Italian restaurants, Alcatraz, cable cars) before flying back to N.H. with a stop-over in Las Vegas where we played the slots in the airport.

Learning that my Dad’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis was incorrect – After a year of sadly watching my dad fade from life, unable to converse, barely able to walk, and certainly not take care of himself, I was able to witness a small miracle and see him come back to walking with a cane, talking with his grandchildren and doing more for himself than he had for a long time. What his physicians thought was Alzheimer’s turned out to be Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH), a condition that can be alleviated through surgery.

The wedding of Carolyn and Nigel Lifsey – My niece Carolyn got married in a beautiful ceremony in Ashland, MA. and four generations of Grahams, Oakes, Lifseys, and others partied to the wee hours.

East coast family car trip – In August the four of us piled into the Saab wagon and headed for Philly, Gettysburg, D.C., Mount Vernon, Springfield, N.J. (All car trips in America should include a Springfield.) We connected with old friends and immersed ourselves in America’s history. We felt the earthquake in D.C., outran hurricane Irene on the way home through Vermont, and survived the slings and arrows of 10 days on the road with a 3yr old.

Playing in Redhouse – After years of playing solo and in small acoustic groupings, I finally got the rock band I always wanted. My friends Mark, Rocco, Jim, and I are rocking the small clubs around the Upper Valley of VT. and NH. getting people to dance and have fun.

Chameleon Anti-folk reunion in NYC – After about 20 years in the wilderness, several of the early members of New York City’s Anti-folk scene got together for a hoot at Sidewalk Cafe the modern home the genre.

Working with good people at Dartmouth Mathematics – The Math Department at Dartmouth College provides me with part-time employment as their Computer Systems Manager. The people there are smart and friendly and care about the world.

Being part of the love at 8 Market Street.

The latest non-issue making its way across the front page of the NY Times is especially tiresome for those of us who have a keen sense of race-related problems in our culture. Ron Paul has enough bad ideas of his own without the press trying to link him to the bad ideas of others. This [...]

Kuleoland is a place under the United States where people only die of old age. There are no wars. People who are bad go to jail for ten years and attend classes that teach how to be good people. Everything is held together by the mystical power of peace. –Ramon Graham

In the early days of Anti-Folk (some 25 years ago!) Lach and his band of misfit songwriters were bounced around the East Village from one storefront to another trying to express the impossible. Whatever memories the participants have of those days are most likely dead wrong, but some of the music that was written then [...]

Monday, on the public radio show Talk of the Nation, Neal Conan was asking Occupy Wall Street protesters how they might define “success” of their movement. I was really struck by this idea of success and the related need for observers to have a delineated understanding of the “demands” of the OWS movement. Both questions [...]

Today I visited with my father, who turns 82 in a few weeks. He’s not in the best health but he’s alive and he can get around with help. He can’t take complete care of himself, and that fact is something he and everyone close to him is coming to terms with. It reminds me [...]

You may choose To not study war Until it finds you And the tea you offer Is thrown back into your face But in your awareness You move Ever so slightly to the left And the tea (Cooling as it passes) splashes Onto the hands of the soldier at your back Who thus awakens And [...]

to be reincarnated as a tree that’s the next life for me standing on the side of a hill watching the sun and stars waving at jupiter, venus, mars enacting nature’s will I think it best to be a fruit a life of giving to those it suits an apple would be a reasonable choice [...]

trees flame out spectacular shedding enlightened reminder of death and rebirth