A VERY LONELY BUSK LAST SUNDAY Oftentimes this season, when I am busking at SHOPPERS, I am very soon accompanied by one of a couple panners.  In street argot, panners is short for panhandlers.  Factoid:  At the best of times the buskerhood etiquette in Regina is boorish.  Regina especially, of all the places I have busked, has little value, or notice for busker etiquette.  In ALL places I have busked elsewhere, there is an unwritten (and sometimes even written where the busking is regulated) that buskers perform a reasonable distance of at least one blo ..read more

  MY HARLEY BIKER FRIEND AT THE LEGISLATIVE LANDING Know thyself.  And what of this ancient Greek aphorism?  Who, among us, know themselves?  Not-so-strangely, even though I exist as a singular being, I have been many selves so far in my life.  As a professed existentialist, believing that I was born without purpose into a world that makes no sense, along with everyone else wittingly or unwittingly, I have had to create many selves to survive. Furthermore, as an existentialist, I know that I am personally responsible for creating my own purpose in life.  ..read more

72. SELF PORTRAIT 72.  For me this number is significant.  This month I will be 72 years of age -- I was born May 31st, 1951.  72.  Yikes!  Where did the time go!  Where did my life go!  My past now seems but a fillip, my future, too, soon to be a fillip!  Aging positively, I know, has a commercial spin rife with platitudes – yikes again!  Here are just a few of those platitudes along with some personal thumbnail annotations. “Age is just a number." In my current health condition, both mentally and physically, I should get there and so yipp ..read more

  MYSELF AND AMAR Finally, Sumer is icumen in! This 13th Century Medieval phrase translates to “Summer has come in” and about my busking season, it too, has come in.  This week my buskspot was SHOPPERS ON BROAD, Regina SK Canada, where I spent as much time chatting with staff as I did with my passer-by consumers.  Pictured above is Amar, one of the many staffers who came out to chat.  And pictured below is my ACURA RDX, same location.  For self-psychoanalysis, my excuses for including my vehicle are to either show it off or to present that I am a very middle-c ..read more

  BARON AND SELF AT THE CURE Lately these past couple decades suffering through my existential dread, I have really come to realize that my existence is but a moment in time.  I could write that “Our existence is but a moment in time,” but I certainly do not want, too, to suffer deductive reasoning to the point of bracketing everyone along with me and my thoughts.  For if I did, then you, too, (the collective you) would unnecessarily be suffering that same existential dread as I. Years ago, a colleague of mine stated at the lunch table in a high school staff room that l ..read more

  AT THE CURE My blog title today is my new mid-section mantra:  Seven pounds until summer:  sumer is icumen in with six-pack abs. This “Sumer is icumen in” is from my university English Medieval Literature days: The Cuckoo Song (W. de Wycombe, 1261). Note, dear reader, that I am not stating the obvious pun of Middle Ages and my mid-section because I am no longer middle-aged, and therefore no longer burdened with a middle-aged mid-section. Alas, and certainly not by my design, I have become a senior citizen with a noticeably bulging mid-section.  (I only mentioned ..read more

  BARON AND SELF AT THE CURE I am getting old enough to know that age is not just a number.  Oh sure, I still run and swim and box and downhill ski and ride my bike, but I am not delusional about my aging.  I know that my life is finite, and my personal aging I have classified as a classic YIN and YANG life scenario.  I live until I die.  Or to put it into a more universal perspective: WE LIVE until WE DIE. Existential dread?  Hmmm … maybe.  Methinks if such thoughts were continuously tormenting me, then this would be existential dread.  Howeve ..read more

  ‘Tis the HALLWE’EN season and seems the perfect time to offer an annotated version of a folk song I wrote many, many (blood) moons ago.  Not-so-strangely, my song,BLOOD MOON, was inspired by a local WICCAN one evening during an actual Autumntime blood moon. Firstly, I should explain that most songs that I write are by my definition considered to be folk songs. Folk songs in my mind are those songs written about a group of people and performed for the people. The folk style for such songs typically means having a stanza form (usually three poetic verses), complete with a refrain ..read more

  SELF AND MOHAMMAD BUSKING IN MARRAKESH SELF-ACTUALIZATION, in my circles, is always about Abraham Maslow’s HIERARCHY OF NEEDS, a theory of human motivation.  Maslow, an American psychologist, presented a pyramid of needs for personal growth, the foundation being the physiological need of shelter, food, and water, and the peak being the self-actualized achievement of self-fulfillment.  Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a theoretical psychological assessment tool to measure what motivates human behavior.  But this is a blog about the psychology of busking, and therefo ..read more

MY BOYS AND I SWIMMING IN OKANAGAN LAKE LEFT - RIGHT AGES 47, 38, 71, 41 AGEISM.  That prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of a person’s age. Factoid: 82% of Americans 50 years and older say they have experienced prejudice, discrimination, or stereotyping based on ageism (University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging, July 2020). Factoid: “One thing Americans agree on?  Our politicians are too old” (Chris Cillizza, CNN).  American president, Joe Biden, is 79.  Speaker, Nancy Pelosi is 82.  Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer is 71.  Mitc ..read more