I’ve Been Pfizered

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Yesterday, 361 days after we began our Covid-19 pandemic stay@home routine, I received my first vaccine shot. Woo hoo!

All it took was a quick 20 minute walk to the “Big O”, a short wait in line, an evaluation and then the shot and a 15 minute wait afterwards to be sure I had no strong reaction. The injection sight in my arm is a bit sore but that it is. Easy, peasy!

I received a print out of the brand, in my case Pfizer, the batch number, time injected and the name of the nurse who jabbed me.

My second shot is scheduled for June 28,2021 which means 16 weeks later for the beginning of complete immunization.

The delayed second dose approach is somewhat controversial. Several provinces in Canada including Quebec decided to extend the time between shots based on evolving science that indicates good protection from the first dose and extra protection from the delayed second “booster” shot.

Also, by delaying second doses more people can get their first dose faster.

I am happy and relieved to have the first shot in me. And, I’m really looking forward to having full immunity by mid July — there’s a two week ramp up of immunity after receiving each of the vaccine shots.

Thanks to all the amazing scientists who made this possible. Thanks to Prime Minster Trudeau for getting vaccines ordered. Thanks to Quebec for getting those vaccines to the people.

Where was I? July 5, 1969

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I had been traveling with two friends. The trip was supposed to have been several weeks of hitch hiking around Europe.

We ride-shared from California to New York, took a ship from New York to Southhampton, England. We traveled to Winchester, then to London, to Oxford through Wales to Ireland and back to London. Somewhere along the way I decided I didn’t want to travel any longer with the two friends — one of my first lessons on the importance of choosing good travel partners.

They continued on to Amsterdam. I had a few days in London until I could catch a plane home so I spent the time wandering around the city by myself.

I caught a performance of “Hair” at the Shaftesbury Theatre. As a native San Franciscan coming from living in the Haight-Ashbury, it seemed kind of silly. There was some audience gasping at the nudity. They obviously had never experienced a be-in in Golden Gate Park. I did like some of the tunes.

On July 5, I was doing more wandering when I saw crowds of people streaming into a park. I wanted to see what was going on. Within minutes of my seeing the stage and realising it was a concert, hundreds of white butterflies were released and filled the air.

It was the memorial for Brian Jones in Hyde Park.

This was the clipping from the Sunday Times that I’ve saved all this time. I came across it this morning while straightening out a shelf in my studio.

Of course, now there is a YouTube:

Lá fhéile Pádraig sona dhaoibh!

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🍀💚🍀💚🍀💚 Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! 🍀💚🍀💚🍀💚

Stay safe. Stay at home, if you can!

We will all be singing and dancing together again. Just not for the next few pandemic weeks.

Bare Bones

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Mags is busy writing music and working on band promotion, so I am stepping in to share with you this “bare bones” celebration of me, Death, on my favorite holiday of the year.

¡Feliz Día de los Muertos!

— Death

In parts of Mexico, cleaning your families bones is a loving tradition

Now, imagine cleaning 40,000 sets of bones!

But, wait! There’s more!

BONE HOUSES A Definitive Guide to the World’s Ossuaries. 40 different collections of bones. Wow!

All Together Put ‘Em:

A quick anatomy refresher. 3D views of all the BONES of the human body.

Now, Shake Those Bones!

 

Featured image by artist Aaron Kuehn

15 years for the Mad Maggies

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February 14, 2019 was the band’s 15th anniversary of making beautiful music together.

We celebrated by releasing a new single. “All in a Day” is light-hearted polka, perfect for lifting one’s spirits in heavy times.

Crank up the tune, grab a partner and dance around the house with wild abandon!

You can listen to it here on this player. If you drop a buck in the hat at BandCamp you can download a hi-res audio file.

 

Why crystal?

Well, according to those who know these kinds of things, the traditional anniversary gift at 15 years is crystal to represent sturdiness and clarity.

And, Death thinks crystal skulls are really cool. So there’s that, too.


(This crystal skull is from a collection of the British Museum in London.)

28 Years of Love

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28 years ago tonight, Gary came over to my pad after work to hang out. That night was also a Tuesday — Mardi Gras actually.

After much talking and drinking of pots of Lemon Mist tea, we finally kissed and then connected “in the biblical sense”. We spent the night together –the first of approximately 10,220 nights that we’ve spent together.

We’ve only slept apart maybe 20 nights in 28 years. That’s a 99.8% uptime of downtime. 😉

Love is grand!

Cultures Appropriate. Get over it.

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Language, music and art have always been cultural exchanges. That’s how we humans roll. We share and cross-fertilize. If you don’t recognized how entwined we are, then you best get to reading some history. Lots of it.

We have been sharing artistically for millennia. We mutually appreciate our fellow creatives on this planet. We inspire each other in countless ways — a musical rhythm, a colorful pattern, a delicious recipe, a way of styling hair, folding a scarf, herb knowledge, a good story, a sad melody.

The attempt by some social activists to draw artistic boundaries between us and insist that those borders cannot be crossed is absurd and futile. Censorship and intellectual tyranny stifle mutual respect. Don’t fall for the silliness of “cultural appropriation”.

I was at the soft opening of Slāv on 26/6/18, a presentation by Ex Machina sponsored by Festival International de Jazz de Montréal (FIJM). Friends who worked on the show had comped us tix. Outside the theater a small group of outraged social activists were protesting. They were outraged that the white singer/writer Beatrice Bonnafassi who is Serbian/Italian and the director Robert Lepage who is French Canadian and gay — created a show with themes of slavery. They claimed that the show was a “rip-off” by white people of their black western hemisphere experience.

They were aggressive, rude, almost hysterical. They formed a gauntlet that we had to push through to get to the theatre entrance. They screamed at us that we were privileged, that we were racists. One pushed a poster into my face literally rubbing my nose on it.

I thought how very silly this ado was. I asked one man yelling at me whether he had seen the show. He hadn’t. None of them had seen the show yet. They couldn’t have because this was the first public performance. Why are these people in such a lather over a show they hadn’t even seen?

“Slāv” is a musical play aka an artful expression of a sorrowful human experience. The work is not a farce or mockery. It is not stereotyping or denigrating others. It is not stealing from others for profit.

The protestors could have been using their energy to fight serious issues like chemical pollution or income disparity or detention centres for asylum seekers or, hey, sex slave trafficking. But, no. They picked the low-hanging fruit of a musical created by a popular artist and director at a world class festival, undoubtedly to nab headlines.

The festival after originally supporting the show, eventually caved to the protesters’ political correctness tantrum and cancelled the show.

Shame on you, FIJM for being cowed by these dilettantes. You let nonsense trump freedom of expression.

  • The cast of “Slāv” was all women and diverse — Bonnafassi and 6 others.
  • Slāv is a reference to the origin of the word slave. Slavs — those living in the areas now called Eastern Europe — were regularly enslaved throughout the Middle Ages. Bonnafassi, of Serbian heritage, is sensitive to this.
  • All of us can claim some form of enslavement in our ancestors’ past. Most human cultures have enslaved others regardless of skin color.
  • No single culture or racial group owns suffering. We are all in this together.
  • Beatrice Bonnafassi drove home the issue of modern-day slavery eloquently in the show. Yes, slavery goes on just like it has for centuries. There are more people enslaved now then at any time in history.

The protestors and commentators in the media kept referring to the profits being made in theatre. They imagine the director, creator and performers all making oodles of dough off of this “appropriation”. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha … oh. my. word. Do they know anything about theater? … Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha …

More:
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/robert-lepage-breaks-his-silence-on-jazz-fest-decision-to-muzzle-slav

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-should-white-people-sing-black-slave-songs/

March for Our Lives – MTL

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Gary and I marched in the Montreal “March for Our Lives” this morning in solidarity with the big march in Washington D. C. and all the marches across the U.S., Canada and the world.

A limit on military style assault rifles and better screening and background checks of gun buyers are logical, conservative approaches to protecting citizens. Do I even need to say this?

Cars are dangerous machines. We put laws in place to limit their use. Driving 100 mph in front of a school is not allowed, for example. Seat belts are mandatory for safety.

Military assault rifles are wildly destructive. Limiting their use is reasonable. Screening buyers is reasonable. There is plenty of data confirming that societies that regulate firearms efficiently have much lower incidences of gun deaths. Jeezuz J. Christ.

See: America’s unique gun violence problem, explained in 17 maps and charts

#NeverAgain #MarchForOurLives

The Struggle Continues

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People gathered at Place des Arts in downtown Montreal on this brisk Saturday midday, in solidarity with worldwide demonstrations for the rights of women and equality for all.

I wanted to add my body and pink pussy hat to the event so I hopped on the metro and made the short 25 minute trip. I captured these few shots of the participants.

In Canada, equality between women and men is enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights, unlike the US, which has yet to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Canada is not perfect — the pay gap is still wide and women are under-represented in politics,for example — but the the government is committed to creating gender equality.

It is hard to believe that in the 21st century, those of us with a vagina are still fighting for basic human rights.

The Amazing Snow Removal Machines of Montréal

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While walking home today, I had the chance to enjoy, and video, a complete snow removal operation on a sunny stretch of Boulevard Saint-Michel.

What can I say? These big machines and their coordinated moves are fascinating.

I had fun putting together this short video, underscoring it with one of our tunes: “Drunken Sailor’s Hornipe – Wally’s Dub” from our album “Shake Those Bones”.

The statistics quoted are from the official City of Montreal website:
English: http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/snowremoval/
Français: http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/deneigement/

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