There was a flea market that assembled itself outside the gates of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn some Sundays.  The trouble was, it only convened on “some Sundays,” it was unreliable.  It didn’t matter much anyways, I and my art student friends were usually broke; and the stuff they offered wasn’t worth much.  It was all new stuff, and to me that really was worthless.  I figured flea markets should only sell old stuff.

This flea had come a long way from the early days a century before when upholstered furniture for sale had to (by law) be brought outside the city limits of Paris, to stop the infestation and spread of fleas.  The only thing I remember buying at the Pratt Gate was a red pillow with little pineapples all over it.  My girlfriend Isabelle bought a matching one.

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My friend Susan has been a vegan for decades.  She’s invested a lot of time finding the healthiest, tastiest vegan cuisine in New York.  When I was in the City, sometimes I’d come along for the sampling of cuisine, sometimes not.

Knowing about my burgeoning interest in Buddhist Meditation, she brought me along one day in 2004 during one of my mad-dash visits to New York from the Pacific Northwest.  She said there was a place I had to try, that it was run by a Buddhist Nun.

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Some of my clearest memories are of waiting on the front porch of my house at 126 S. 43rd West Avenue in Tulsa. It was 1978 and I was 10 years old going on 11.  I was a reflective (some might say brooding) kid given to flights of fantasy and whimsy.

I sat there, while other kids rode their bikes back and forth, and waited for the mailman.  I’d come to expect our mailman on Saturdays around a certain time, I waited for him avidly every fourth Saturday.  If that delivery time was close I couldn’t be tempted by either the Toss Across or the Slip –N- Slide.  Not even by an offer to pitch our throwing knives into the tree in the front yard.

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Twenty years ago tonight I had my last drink ever at my favorite watering hole and hangout, Two Boots Restaurant and Bar in Brooklyn.  I was there (as if I ever needed an excuse) to attend the screening, the World Premiere, if you will, of a 90 minute long silent movie comedy called “The Schenectady Massacre.”  It was based on a real historic event, a 17th Century massacre at a fort in upstate New York.  It had been filmed on location back in February.

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“Hey dude, yeah you.  I see you or someone like you every morning on my way to work.  You’re the guy who impatiently blows by me on the road, you know, because I’m only going 10 miles over the posted limit.  Do you ever notice that I’m also the guy you see 5 traffic lights later, idling at a red, just on your right side?  I don’t know you, but you seem to display a clear misunderstanding of the principles of traffic flow.”

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