My first university course in the Teaching Fellows program is coming to an end tomorrow. It's been a challenging two weeks reviewing all the math I've forgotten since college. But my brain is starting to catch up and I'm remembering why I enjoyed math so much during my undergrad.One of the assignments for [...]

Yesterday afternoon I arrived in New York. The plane ride was nice and quick. I had a chance to listen to a couple of dharma talks by Gil Fronsdal on "loving kindness" or metta. I've practiced metta mediation a few times before, but as I step into the world of New York [...]

This weekend Doris and I saw an amazing/inspiring/disturbing/awesome show at the Filmore in Denver. M.I.A. tore the house down. This was the second time I saw her in Denver. I mentioned the first show in my Writer as Fry Cook blog post. The opening act was The Egyptian Lover who kicked it old [...]

Yesterday I had some extra time off from work, so I was able to take care of a few things that I've been letting slide. First thing I did was search craigslist.org for summer housing in NYC. I need a room for June and July. Finding housing in NYC is a challenge, [...]

Today I was listening to Tavis Smiley's show My America 2008: Gun Violence. The show was in response to the recent weekend of shootings in Chicago: 36 people shot, 9 die, during weekend in Chicago. In the show, families of victims past and present were interviewed. At work I was talking [...]

Recently I discovered one of my teachers from Naropa, Bhanu Kapil, has started to blog: jackkerouacispunjabi.blogspot.com. Reading her posts is very close to being in her class, except that it's a web page. In one recent post she quoted Rilke: "Ask yourself, must I write?; and if you cannot answer yes, then maybe [...]

I haven't been writing or blogging in a while and today was intending to post something about my writing, or NYC Teaching Fellows, or even the Democratic primaries. But then I received an email from Akilah Oliver, one of my teachers at Naropa. It was a forward, which I usually don't read, but [...]

It is official. My borough assignment for NYC Teaching Fellows is the BRONX! Woohoo! I only went to the Bronx a few times when I was living in NYC, as a volunteer with homeless children. But what I saw of the borough I really liked. The streets were wide and there were [...]

I've been listening to a lecture series recently that has me inspired/excited about writing. The speaker is Joan DePaoli, author of Transparent Thread. Her talk is Buddhist Art as Buddhist Practice, but I think it would more aptly be called Modern Art as Buddhist Practice. The first two lectures give an overview of 2500 [...]

Since I've been working as a house painter I've been able to listen to hours of interesting podcasts daily, everything from lectures on the Brothers Karamazov to interviews with people in the adult film industry to fanboys talking about comic books. Isn't the internet grand! Last week while listening to wzen.org I came across a [...]