*** In my 10-20-2025 blog post, until I corrected it, I had written that there was very little ENEMA in my lower legs. Now it says l have very little EDEMA, bringing the blog post back into the real world.
1. I dedicated today to catching up on reading writing or listening to music and poetry that friends have sent to me and I'm far from finished.
To begin, my Whitworth roommate from the spring of 1975, Rich Brock, and I have been in electronic contact with each other for many years via email and Facebook. He collects automobile license plates. I sent him our Oregon plates when we moved to Maryland and sent him the Idaho plates that belonged to the Subaru until we donated it recently.
Rich wondered, when he thanked me for the Idaho plates, if I'd be interested in writing snail mail back and forth. I loved the idea. Last week I received his first contribution, a several page account of his new life in Middle Tennessee and a great story recounting when he was fired at KZUN radio of Opportunity, WA back in 1979.
It was great material and I enjoyed slowly working my way though both pieces and getting to know Rich in ways that were new to me.
2. Jeff Harrison hosts the radio show Deadish on Thursday nights at KEPW FM in Eugene. Back in late August he sent me a sound file of a show he wanted my response to and for some reason I didn't get to that show until today. The show featured all music from the Grateful Dead playing live on August 28th through the years, starting in 1967 though a show I went to with Jeff at Autzen Stadium in 1988.
He played excerpts from these shows chronologically, giving listeners a chance to hear how the Grateful Dead's sound matured over the years and how it changed with changes in the band's personnel.
I enjoyed Jeff's two and half hours of Deadish and thought the idea of developing his radio show chronologically worked beautifully.
3. I then read almost the entirety of the publication Emergency Horse a stimulating compilation of interviews, poetry, remembrance, satire, current events, and more. The emergence of Emergency Horse in 2025 is especially cool because it's the revival of a magazine that was first published in Eugene in 1991, became defunct, and is mow enjoying a resurrection.
My connection to this magazine is through Scott Taylor. We met in the spring of 1982 when he was a student in a section of WR 121 I taught. He was among the original founders of Emergency Horse, is now a member of the editorial board, a contributing writer, and the designer of the magazine.
Scott mailed me copies of Emergency Horse and today I read his witty and sardonic contribution.
I read an interview that Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter gave the magazine on Feb. 2, 1992 before he gave a spoken work performance at the University of Oregon's Beall Hall, joined by Beat poet and playwright Michael McClure and The Doors' keyboardist, Ray Manzarek. Jeff Harrison and I attended this 1992 performance together. The interview with Robert Hunter didn't appear in Emergency Horse in 1992 because Hunter withdrew his permission for the magazine to publish it, but said they could do whatever they wanted with it after he died. Hunter died in 2019 and Emergency Horse secured permission from Robert Hunter's widow, Maureen Hunter, to feature this interview, conducted by the magazine's poetry editor and member of the editorial board, Darrin Daniel.
There's more. David Weddle wrote about conducting writing seminars at Ken Kesey's farm. There's a ProPublica article on how China feeds the USA's fentanyl market. The late Curt Hopkins, an Emergency Horse founder draws upon his experience growing up the son of a Navy lifer to write about the power of social diversity.
I haven't finished reading the whole magazine yet. I'm close. It's stimulating me, sobering me, making me laugh, and, in many ways, taking me back to the Eugene I experienced when I was much younger and I'm enjoying that a lot.
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