The Tao Of Jazz

Not all forms of transportation have wheels…

Chucho Valdes

It wasn’t planned … last evening we found ourselves rolling into Hermann Park on a random ride. Turns out Chucho Valdés and his Afro-Cuban jazz band were on the stage at Miller Outdoor Theatre. No place on Earth can hide from this music and over the course of 90 minutes Valdés took us to Havana, Senegal, the Serengeti Plain, Morocco, Andalusia, to New York for 15-minutes of “Take Five,” across the North American Indian soundscape, and back again never leaving our seats. The Tao of great jazz is its power to transport you across time and space.

Riding home I couldn’t stop thinking about this unexpected journey and all the amazing sounds of this night. Como la vida.

The Dark Knight on Herman Drive

At Miller Outdoor Theatre in Hermann Park – August 13th 2013

The Summer Of Life

For four decades this scene always made me slack-jawed. It still does. The life-lessons of a first Summer on the road to Paradiso. It begins quiet as the solar wind but always ends with a loud cry, “Vámonos niña!” It never gets old.

Fawn and Doe on the Otto Bahn

Fawn on the Otto Bahn

Doe on the run

“Rita Ridge” in Washington County – August 7th 2013

The Backside of Equus

Noblesse Oblige

Horses graze slowly yet constantly. They’re picky eaters always on the move — a habit from the past when they traveled far and wide to find the rare nutrients required by their tricky digestive systems. With domestication their spirits adapted to slow-motion constant grazing within fenced boundaries … but their bodies have not. They live in constant danger on the farm and can easily die when fed the wrong thing or too much or even too quickly. Drought-years are like “way-back machines” transporting them to the time when they were wild and roamed for miles every day in search of the right graze — which is our obligation now.

A Ranchero on FM 2193, near FM 1155 — Washington County, July 7th 2013