Oh what a beautiful city
Oh what a beautiful city
Oh what a beautiful city
Twelve gates to the city, hallelujah.

Christo’s Gates have come to New York City’s Central Park. It is truly an experience to walk through them, around them, see them flapping in the wind, and see them like a silent line of fire curving through the sketched trees of winter.

We spent the day weaving in and out of awed crowds, looking up, jumping around, smiling, basking in the sunny Sunday afternoon joy of Central Park, and thrilled by the display of color tracing the city’s paths.

There’s three gates in the east
And three gates in the west
There’s three gates in the north
And there’s three gates in the south
And there’s twelve gates to the city, hallelujah.

The old song, “O what a beautiful city” is very fitting today… “Twelve gates to the city, hallelujah…” Well, there are more than 12 gates, but the song speaks to some kind of divine wonder that struck Central Park yesterday in the form of Christo’s gates. What a wonderful thing that we humans can create something so wonderful and beautiful in the middle of God’s creation. The fiery saffron fabric falling from the iron and aluminum gates lit the earth as if this had been an act of nature — an early spring — a burst of light in this dark season.

The Gates by Christo are truly magnificent — this time not simply in concept, but in true, earthy saffron orange fire, weaving through the sketched black branches of the city’s dingy February.

Oh what a beautiful city
Oh what a beautiful city
Oh what a beautiful city
Twelve gates to the city, hallelujah.

Peace.

I suppose if you typed this phrase into google and got my website, you’ll be disappointed to find that I am not upset about men always forgetting about Valentine’s Day.

I really do like Valentine’s Day now because of my lovely lady, Kathi. I am really excited to spend a nice evening with her along with the hordes of other couples out on their yearly ritual confirmation of their love for each other.

Thing is, I understand the folks who have a hard day on Valentine’s Day — so if you found this search because you are upset with your man — try to find it in your heart to forgive him for feeling a little goofy on Valentine’s day — or for having terrible flashbacks (as I sometimes do) to being in college, all alone because your college roommate needed the room all to himself.

I distinctly remember sitting on my good friend Duff’s couch and listening to the entirety of Tom Waits’ ‘Blue Valentine’ and feeling like the world had stopped on its axis.

But, if you are a guy: FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, JUST BUY HER SOMETHING FROM THE 7-11 AROUND THE CORNER! DON’T FORGET VALENTINE’S DAY, MAN!

That is coming from a kid whose dad really wasn’t fond of picked, dead flowers, chocolates or Valentine’s Day dates with my mom. Nevertheless, my mother has always had her love celebration — but on the 12th of February (Lincoln’s Birthday!) My father really admires Abraham Lincoln, and so my parents share a pie or cake, and my father thinks about old Abe, and my mom thinks about the first date with my dad, when she had pyrocantha berries in her hair:)

Have a wonderful Valentine’s Day, folks. Tell someone you love them!

I met a really incredible flash designer in my work at One Soul Studios recently… He designs flash ‘games’ for folks to play for free on his site… and the one called the Ganesh Music Machine is one you have to check out. Go to his site at — he has a lot of amusing links to his flash art/games on a drop-down list.

Click here to go straight to his Indian Shankar Drum Ganesh Machine and I guarantee you will be amused.

Kek will also hopefully be designing a special ‘Music Machine’ for one of my songs, which I’m very excited about — and should be very amusing and beautiful — and hopefully will attract some folks to my music — he gets lots of hits per day — up to 30,000 different people. (And he designs these games mostly for fun!)…

Also check out his blog at http://www.pk-prod.com/blogkek/ — right now he is in New York — so you will find lots of pictures of New York in the snow there — but if you scroll down, you will find that he often includes his flash art, or amusing flash games on his blog that he has designed for folks to mess around with:)

Check it out!

A new article in the New England Journal of Medicine says that, mostly in women, a sudden emotional stress can cause heart failure. This is in healthy folks with no history of heart disease.

‘Scared to death’ and ‘died of a broken heart’ takes on more meaning to all of us now.

Take care (especially you sisters, mothers, grandmothers, and daughters out there).

Story on NPR
Story in Newsday

In Durango, CO Taylor Ostergaard and Lindsey Jo Zellitti, 17 and 18 years old, left homemade cookies at the house of Wanita Renea Young (49).

Ms. Young couldn’t sleep all night, and went to the hospital the next day with an upset stomach.

The girls had to pay her 900 bucks.

What has this world come to? I guess they didn’t have any business scaring the woman half do death, but the woman said she saw ’shadowy figures’ and, I guess cookies excluded, she thought they were terrorists or folks out to malign her somehow…

Point being — it’s sad that the media (and the government) has worked everybody up into a frenzy, ‘keep on the lookout’ — you never know when anthrax might be in those cookies.

The poor woman had a terrible night — I know what that’s like — but really, aren’t we all afraid right now — we lefties are afraid of the righties, and the righties are afraid of the terr’rists, and they think that all the lefties are terr’rists too. And the media has us all mixed up as to who’s who.

Check out Jim Wallis’ new book, God’s Politics — which talks about all of this brilliantly, and honestly. (Not about the cookies or the two poor girls who had to pay the woman’s hospital bills, though, not to mention the cost of the cookies). Here is a link to the first chapter on the NY Times website — if you don’t have access to it — you can suscribe for free…

Alas, I have not said more than a word or two
Of the one who I know to be my true
Compatriate of the female sort
My fearless and noble cohort…

So here is a handful of jargon
For Kathi the snow on my trees,
The PB and J, the whole wheat bread,
The most best friend I’ve had yet
The lady who, with no need of luck,
Makes me run cheerfully amok…

She purports to do the dishes
More often than I,and insists on hugs and kisses.
I sometimes would like to abstain
But not always, you see, from the twain…

So to my surprise, when I don’t wash up
Kisses and hugs I have none as we sup
So I decide mostly to clean, and not to be mean
If I like to hug or kiss up…

Here was my rant about us
Though secrets were coded enough
So that you, should you not be
Her, wouldn’t understand everything, see?

This was the poem that is meant for the one
You rarely see in my rants and raves,
In my political, religious and winter tirades…

Here’s to her, the friend I love best
Who takes my complaining and pokes me in jest
Though I often fail to mention her in my blog
She is much better to me than a frog!