I generally steer clear of images of sunsets, fall foliage, or kittens (cats are evil), but sitting on the roof tonight watching the sun go down behind the statue of liberty was awfully nice.

Jenn and I have been debating the feasability of travelling with the baby during it's first year. My theory: while the baby is breastfeeding, travelling is relatively easy. Strange food is not an issue. The kid is still relatively light and emotionally undemanding. & The baby will open up all sorts of dialog with the locals. Jenn's theory: I'm crazy.

Because of the previous post, I've received a couple of emails today asking me about traveling around Amdo... I keep going back to this area and over the years things have gotten progressively easier, but one thing hasn't changed...it's still basically many many hours in buses...

...but busses are cool because when you arrive someplace you always get invited in for tea:

If you want more detail I refer you to an old series of travelogue emails I originally sent to a Sino-centric travel list run by Peter Neville-Hadley. You can join the travel list by sending an email to this address.

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Nothing much to report from Brooklyn. I have a cold. It's raining. I'm swamped with work and annoyed that I'm sick three weeks before Jenn is due (it could be any day now).

As I've been in scanning mode all week I've finally been looking at hundreds of images I took two years ago when visiting a Demon Chasing Festival in Amdo (they've been sitting in boxes the whole time). It's funny how certain images stand out. These two were right next to each other on a roll of Kodachrome taken as I was waiting for the festival to begin.

We stayed up late last night watching returns and now we're both to depressed to blink. My friend Kevin wrote a letter from Europe that sums it up neatly.

At least our house is coming along and we have a nice place to mope.

This election is making me super nervous. I need it to be tomorrow.
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This is a cool map.

Tonight's fog reminded of another foggy day two and a half years ago on another part of the globe.

I was on the road, near Langmusi saying with some yak herders who had invited me to their homegod ceremony. The ceremony is simple. Everyone walks up to the peak of the highest nearby mountain, throws prayers in the air, shouts for joy, and goes home. I thought I might get some good photos.

The day began clear enough. We walked into the city to the temple to gather some printed prayers, but as we headed up the mountain the fog got thicker and thicker until someone had me hold onto a horse's tail for fear of losing me on the mountain. Horses walk faster than men. I don't think I've ever been more out of breath in my life, but I kept going for fear of being stranded. The ceremony was done in a thick pea soup and photography was virtually impossible but I managed to get a few ghostly long exposure images. Of course virtually the minute the ceremony was over, the fog cleared...

Anyway that's what I was thinking about as I drove with friends across the Manhattan Bridge, belly full of Chinese food, not able to see the city below...

I know it's normal for parents to dress their kids in ridiculous outfits... all part of the scarring process. We intend to dress our daughter in little chick suits for example. But some of my childhood clothes were particularly bad.

Here I am as Little Lord Fauntleroy:

(the socks really make the outfit)

And here I am with a bonnet!

And this is my star trek outfit:

I'm sure it was cute at the time, but it seems almost cruel now.

When I was in Texas I passed the time by going through old family pictures. The photos are well worn and familiar from years of browsing. On this trip I also picked up boxes of Kodachrome slides and have begun scanning them. Looking at the slides on my nice 23 inch monitor (as opposed to holding them up to a light bulb and squinting) has taken me down several interesting personal culdasacs... half remembered family trips, photos of long gone great aunts, and so on...

These were the first 2 slides out of hundreds scanned this morning...

This is my mom pregnant with my little brother. April 1970.

Puerto Vallarta. August 1974. I'm the dork with the hat.

New York not being a swing state, there are virtually no presidential politcal commercials playing (there were none in Texas either)... if you want to see some nice Kerry ads check out Errol Morris' site.

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I can't get enough of gizmodo.

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John Peel was a minor deity to me. I discovered his radio shows on my little grundig shortwave while trekking from Kulu Manali to Leh in Ladakh.

Peel's punk flavored shows were a blast of fresh air in the musical detritus that dominated the airwaves. It was a 40 day trek and nobody spoke English so I relied on that radio quite a bit. I would count the days between shows and even stopped sort of an 18,000 foot pass in the snow to listen in. I've been listening ever since, first on shortwave and later on the web. Dead of a heart attack in Peru. He was the coolest 60-something around. The man will be missed.

In Lufkin they call Mr. Maldonado good people.

This place features fresh squeezed grapefruit poured over ice shaved from a big block--so good it will make you forget your name.

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A girl I liked in the 7th grade used to live here.

Sometimes when I encounter childhood friends I have not seen in almost 20 years there is a subtle instinctual reaction of recoil and sadness before the hellos and hugs. We look at each other's faces trying to push away the years and see the person that was. Perhaps the sadness comes from seeing our own aging reflected or perhaps it comes from all that we have missed from each other's lives and of friendship unraveled. Voices don't change much though. Speaking bridges the gap and helps bring us back. A familiar laugh can do much to ease the divide.

I ran into a friend this morning. She was shopping with her 17 year old daughter who was born when her mom was 19. The daughter looked more like my memory of the mother than the mother did and I had to stop myself from staring. When the daughter waved goodbye she sparked the memory of the last time I had seen the mom... it was a late night high school graduation party out near Zed Creek. She was holding court on a diving board above a pool full of revelers and caught me slipping out the back gate. She alone noticed my exit, smiled, and waved for me to come back... Although I wanted to, I acted like I hadn't seen her, turned my back, and walked into the darkness. I remember the stars above the pines that night. I remember standing out by my truck looking back on the scene and I remember the Earnest Tubb on the radio as I drove away down the gravel road.

That whole complicated humid evening of June 85 came back to me complete in the moment of the daughter's wave... but of course I said nothing, waved back to mother and daughter, and continued on.