Dinosaur Updated

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 17 Oct 2016 00:32:50 GMT  <== Personal ==> 

I said three posts back:

I'm a dinosaur, too. A dinosaur who loves to dance. And sing. And play the trombone. And ride a bicycle. And my next post will be about those things, especially the bicycle.

Well, this isn't the next post, but close enough for jazz, and government work.

For many years, I used this blog to be angry. I'd find things on the web to be angry about, and I'd spew that anger all over my blog. Well, I've mellowed. A lot. I'm hardly ever angry any more. Not even about Hillary, or Donald. Life has affirmed what I knew all along:

There are no political solutions to any problem. Politics is itself the cause of most of the problems it purports to solve.

So I dance a lot. Wild, free-form dancing, to music with an infectious backbeat. My favorite bands are local:


  1. Sister Sparrow and the Dirty Birds, from Brooklyn. Must dance music. Six men, including trumpet and bari sax behind a tiny woman with infinite energy. They'll be in Albany at the end of October. Not a great dancing venue, but I bought a ticket in the back row, so I can either stand up and dance in my seat, or go behind the seats.

    Sister Sparrow and the Dirty Birds

  2. The Interlopers. More must dance music. The original group broke up when they all graduated from Berklee School of Music in Boston, but Curtis Kelley, the drummer, singer, and writer of most of their music, has put together a new group. I look forward to dancing with them sometime soon.

    The Interlopers

  3. Adam Ezra Group, from Boston, plays upbeat folk music. Adam puts his whole soul into it. And what a beautiful violin player. Yow!

    Adam Ezra Group

There's also dancing the third Friday of every month at the local Yoga studio. Every two or three months I put together the play list, of whatever songs made me dance during that time period.

I'm not currently playing my trombone in a group, though I played in a local concert band over the summer. I sing with a 50-person choir on Monday nights, with an amazing director. We'll have sing gigs around Christmas and in the spring, then the band will start again in the summer.

Music rocks!

Trombone

But what about the bicycle? As you may remember, I hit a deer with my Scooter in August of 2014. Fell down, rolled like a log, and broke seven ribs. Walked away thanks to really good riding armor.

When I moved to southern Vermont, I packed my stuff in a U-Haul truck, including the bike, which ran, but didn't have full motion of the steering. The place I took it, a few miles from my apartment, totalled it, deciding that it would cost more to fix than it was worth. Geico paid me enough to pay off the loan and buy a nice bicycle.

After I graduated MIT, I rode a bicycle all around Boston, from 1978 until I moved to the Berkshires to get married in 1991. In the Berkshires there were big hills and long distances, so I let the bicycle rust. It has been wonderful to be pedalling around town again. I take the car when I need to go far away, but locally, I ride or walk.

New Bicycle

But the best illustration of the simplicity of my life is my key chain. I carry two keys, one for the apartment and one for the car.

Keys

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