Dean Ericksen's realtime travelogue continues to unfold

...Click Mary to enlarge...

My brother and sister in law, Dean and Mary, and their youth Declan, Althea, and Augie, continue their two month journey through Nicaragua and Costa Rica, as reported in the blog Almost There In No Time. The trip has ranged from the harrowing to the sublime, at least from an outsider's viewpoint. There is no question they have been battling with bugs, that is, cooties and microbes, leavened with moments of tropical bliss.

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Video: Elena James & Band play the song 24 hours a day

A video of Elena James playing "24 hours a day." (I just saw her in Austin last Friday night: The Save Town Lake benefit: Elana James, Bob Schneider, Dale Watson, Stephen Bruton, Jimmy LaFave, and Kinky Friedman).


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Photograph: Jack & Bobby Kennedy deep in conversation

click Jack and Bobby to enlarge
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Lady Bird Johnson, Austin hero missed and praised

I know quite a bit about Lady Bird Johnson. I've read her diaries, and many books about her husband. I didn't realize how great her stature was in Texas, or at least in Austin, until I arrived in town, just one week after her funeral. Everywhere in Austin are posters, banners, and signs commemorating her life. Here is a snapshot of one I saw at La Pena on Congress Street:



At the Concert to Save Town Lake, many of the speakers praised her efforts to beautify Texas. In particular, Lady Bird loved Town Lake and was instrumental in having all the hike and bike trails, and gardens built there. In fact, it sounds like they are considering naming Town Lake after her. In any case, speaker after speaker praised her for her charm, wit, warmth and envionmental activism. She is indeed missed.

Town Lake is actually the Colorado River, or rather the Colorado River between two dams. It is a huge park, with 10 miles of trails, and lots of wildflowers, and really the centerpiece of Austin.
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Newt calls the G.O.P. Presidential slate a "bunch of pygmies"

Newt Gingrich yesterday called the GOP presidential field a "pathetic bunch of "pygmies," and said he may very well step in to take on Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

"If, in mid-October, it's quite clear that one or more of the current candidates is strong enough to be a serious alternative to a Clinton-Obama ticket, you don't need me to run," the former House Speaker said at a breakfast sponsored by the American Spectator. "If it becomes patently obvious, as the morning paper points out, that the Democrats have raised a hundred million more than the Republicans, and at some point people decide we are going to get Hillary unless there's a radical change, then there's space for a candidate," he added. "So you'll know by mid-October one of those two futures is real."

Gingrich mocked Republican presidential candidates for subjecting themselves to a May debate hosted by Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball. Newt didn't much cotton to "The idea of 10 or 11 people standing passively at microphones," where you "shrink to the level of 40-second answers, standing like a trained seal, waiting for someone to throw me a fish."

A passel of quotes of the day

Sex is like a game of bridge - if you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.
- Mae West

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
- Congressman, Senator, and President John F. Kennedy

Always run from a knife and rush a gun.
- Jimmy Hoffa

This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.
-William Blake

Kinky is using a feather. Perverted is using the whole chicken.
- Author Unknown

It was a pleasant café, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old waterproof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a café au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write.
-Ernest Hemingway

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
- Leonard Cohen

Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition.
- Eli Khamarov

It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things. ~Stephen Mallarme

Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography. ~Robert Byrne

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
-Abraham Lincoln

There is nothing wrong with going to bed with someone of your own sex. People should be very free with sex, they should draw the line at goats.
- Elton John
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Poem: Landing, or, Aviophobia, Part 26

The plane eases down from 36,000 feet
And as the ground rises up,
My aviophobia dissipates.

The closer we get, the better I feel
Even though earth, and not the air
Is most likely to do me in.

I could maybe handle falling 36,000 feet
In a screaming jet moulting its parts.
It's that last foot that does you in.

The landing plane could flip head over teakettle,
And burst into technicolor flames
As it cartwheels to a stop down the runway,

When I'd use my lifeless seatmate's
Head as a stepstool to vault
From the twisted wreckage,

And I would still sigh
With relief when my ankles broke
As my feet touched mother earth.
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The Save Town Lake benefit: Elana James, Bob Schneider, Dale Watson, Stephen Bruton, Jimmy LaFave, and Kinky Friedman

Save Town Lake Benefit Friday night at Stubb's in Austin

Jack, writing, back in Seattle:

You may remember from an earlier posting that I was going to attend the Concert to Save Town Lake at Stubb's in Austin. Wow. It was very cool. A nice night. The Lone Star beer was cold, and the music was great. Kinky Friedman, a musician in his own right ("The Texas Jew-boy"), and recent candidate for governor, emceed the proceedings. I saw Elana James, Bob Schneider, Dale Watson, Stephen Bruton, Jimmy LaFave, a folkie whose name I missed, and a couple of people who did tributes to Lady Bird Johnson (whose funeral was in Austin last week). I fell out at about midnight, so I don't know if any of the surprise guests appeared (people were speculating Willie, and a few other luminaries).

In addition to a salute to Lady Bird, Kiniky also gave a moving eulogy to his friend, the great Texas (and New York Times) pundit Molly Ivins, who who would have been at the benefit had she still been with us. Elane James, Jimmy LaFave, Stephen Bruton, Dale Watson, and Bob Schneider all put on great shows. This night was a showcase of Austin singer-songwriters, and in the case of Bruton, a great guitar player.

Elena James, EJ and Band

Elena James can fiddle--both traditional and in more of a rock mode. And she can sing. She sang a lot of originals with a bass player and guitar player--both of who could really smoke. She has a good voice, but her fiddling is absolutely astounding. And she took up the fiddle late in life, after earlier careers as an editor and graduate school. Amazing. If that wasn't enough, she wasn't hard on the eyes either.

What endeared me most was a cover of Cotton-eyed Joe, an old folk song that's been around forever, but a song that Bob Wills and Tommy Duncan own as far as I am concerned...although it has been covered by many others, up to and including the Kinkster himself--Kinky Friedman, Nina Simone, and the Rednex. Go see her when she comes to your town. If you happen to be going to the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan at the end of July, she'll be there for three days. As a side note, she played fiddle for Bob Dylan extensively a couple years ago. Not a bad recommendation in itself... It would be great to see her at The Tractor in Seattle.

Dale Watson

Dale Watson! Great patter, and tunes. He has a good website too. You get a good feeling just listening to him talk. He doesn't like to be called country, preferring a word he coined "Ameripolitan." But this is roots country at its best. A fascinating sidenote on Watson: He is featured in the Zalman King documentary Crazy Again, that documents his mental breakdown after his girlfriend Terri Herbert died in a fatal car accident in September 2000. There are rumors that he will star in King's next film, Austin Angel, due out this year. Dale often plays at a place in Austin called Ginny's Little Longhorn. . .often on "chicken shit Sunday." On chicken shit Sunday, they play chicken bingo. You buy in, and you get a $100 if the chicken poops on your number on a board on the floor. Side note: Dale Watson looks a little bit like Paulie Walnuts.

Bob Schneider

Bob Schneider, an Austin legend--when people in Austin find out I see a lot of music, they always ask if I've seen him--is basically a rock and roller, albeit rock with major tinges of funk, country, folk, even a little R & B and rap. He has released a ton of albums on Universal/Vanguard, and prior to going solo was in several other bands. Outside Austin, he seems to be best known for having been Sandra Bullock's boyfriend for a couple of years. People speculate that it was that link that brought him national attention. Having seen him, I can state that he definitely has the goods. At times, he reminded me of the late 70's Bruce Springsteen...not the music so much as the energetic stage show (and the passionate vocals). He tours all the time, and plays regularly at Antone's and the Saxon Pub in Austin. I like this guy a lot. And he was clearly a hunk in the eyes of many of the women at the show, just in case you thought my mentioning Elana James looks was, uh, piggish...

Jimmy LaFave playing with Lucinda Williams and Kevin Welch at Austin's Hole In The Wall (one of my favorite Austin dives, and where Roger Wallace plays regularly)

Jimmy LaFave performed a solid, rootsy-bluesy, wistful set. Like others on the benefit bill, Jimmy is not so much country as residing somewhere in that amorphous roots rock genre that encompasses a lot of territory. One review of LaFave's recently released Cimmaron Manifesto says: "Delivering his most realized recording to date, LaFave solidifies his place as on the truly great American songwriters." And he did indeed have songs! I have this CD, and in addition to his own original tunes, he also covers: Bob Dylan (Not Dark Yet), Donovan (Catch The Wind) and Joe South (Walk A Mile In My Shoes). . .what a strange trio of songs to cover (not shocking 'though, since he has earlier recovered San Francisco...you know, "if you're going to San Francisco/be sure to wear some flowers in your hair"). The reading of Catch The Wind is especially interesting, because I never much liked the song, at least when it came out 39 years ago, or whatever it was. His reading of the song was moving; maybe it was just not having that quavering Donovan voice that makes what was actually a good tune. Thumbs up on LaFave too! If Lucinda sits in with him in a dive with forty patrons, that in itself tells you this guy has something serious going on.

Stephen Bruton, Singer-songwriter and guitarist par excellence

Stephen Bruton is a singer-songwriter, actor, buddy of Kris Kristofferson and T Bone Burnett, and most of all, a smoking guitar player. His tunes were great too--he's written songs for Willie Nelson, Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Bonnie Raitt and others. But it was was mostly great to watch him play the guitar. We saw a lot of good players Friday, but he stood out on the guitar.

How often do you see a convergence of talent like this at one show? Not often, and it could only happen in one town. I now have five new people to see anytime I am in Austin, or they venture up north to Seattle.
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Jeri Kehn Photos, Part 3: Three more photos of Mrs. Fred Thompson

Another photo of the happy couple, this one tracked down by the Beldar Blog, a trial lawyer's web log

For whatever reasons, the two sets of photographs here—Meet the Thompson Twins: Fred Thompson's wife, Jeri Kehn (with photos) (June 26, 2007) and More Jeri Kehn photos--> A follow-up to "Meet the Thompson Twins: Fred Thompson's wife, Jeri Kehn (with photos) " (July 16, 2007)— featuring Jeri Kehn photos account for almost half the traffic to this blog. I mentioned previously that Jeri Kehn Thompson (or her handlers) have kept a pretty good cap on information about Ms. Kehn Thompson. . .so we're left with a handful of photographs, and not a lot of biographical information.

Here are a couple more recently found images:


This photo of Jeri Kehn seems to be real, although compared to other photos, she seems less photogenic. On the other hand, the Senator has that same beaming smile we see when he is with her in other photographs


This photo is allegedly also Jeri Kehn, wearing—apparently—hand-tooled shitkickers. I really doubt this is her. But it appears on several web sites identified as her. In none of the other photos is her hair this short. In none of the other photos, is she dressed so informally. And her hair seems far more blonde than in other photos. Ed Note: a reader, confirms that this is indeed not Jeri Kehn: "Regulator"wrote: 3rd photo is of Lorrie Morgan, country singer.Get your act together before you post!" Hey, Reg...K.M.A.! Love, Jack

—Mark Levin, in the National Review makes a very good point about the uproar over Jeri Kehn. And he is basically correct (not something I usually think about the National Review):

"The Left likes to lecture us about sexism and gender discrimination. But when it comes to Republican women, they’re all for a glass ceiling. The truth is that if Jeri Thompson was the wife of a leading liberal Democrat candidate, or spent her life working for liberal causes, they would fall all over her with adulation. They’d fawn over her good looks, grace, and charm. They’d praise her for balancing family and public life. The age difference between Fred Thompson (64) and Jeri Thompson (40) would go unmentioned — as it has with Chris Dodd and his young wife. And in the case of JFK, his marriage to the younger Jackie was said to be a huge asset. It unquestionably was."

Links on All This Is That to Fred Thompson:

Senator Fred Thompson Responds To Michael Moore's Call For A Debate On Cuba
Senator Fred Thompson swamps The Mayor of 9/11 Rudy Giuliani
More Jeri Kehn photos--> A follow-up to "Meet the Thompson Twins: Fred Thompson's wife, Jeri Kehn (with photos) "
Meet the Thompson Twins: Fred Thompson's wife, Jeri Kehn (with photos)
Jeri Kehn

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All This Is That Squad Car

click the car to enlarge

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Poem: The eyes have it

Do amoeba have eyes?
Or electrons, or neutrinos, or quarks?
I'm sure oysters don't.
I don't know about bottom fish.
Does God only issue
Eyes on a need-to-have basis?
And which of us have souls?
When an electron fades away—
If electrons and atoms ever fade away—
Are they also issued a harp and wings?
I could find all of this out
In five minutes, except the soul part,
For which I must wait until I die,
If then.
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The concert to save Town Lake

click the poster to enlarge

I have tickets to a benefit at Stubb's Barbecue tonight--the concert to Save Town Lake (town lake, a/k/a The Colorado River as it runs through Austin). A lot of great music all at once: Bob Schneider, Jimmy Lafave, Dale Watson, Stephen Bruton, Bob Livingston, and some surprise guests. This should be great! /jack from Austin (btw, on a Sleep Number tm bed, I dialit all the way up to 100...rock hard)...
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