Anthony Bourdain was a refreshing breakaway from the huge crop of foodie chefs that rained down on restaurant and eating culture from the 1990s on. For nearly twenty years after retiring from the grinding restaurant business, he lived his loves of food, travel, writing, and pushing boundaries, as an edgy poet eager to say anything, and everything he felt about the small, and large world around him. Bourdain contributed volumes of eloquence and insight from the many roads of life he traveled. His steady TV presence kept me company over many meals inspired by his passion, as did his cultural narratives that lulled me to sleep dreaming of following his footsteps. I will miss every bit of this… a lot. Maybe what I will miss most is the gift of his desire simply to share it all with us. 😔
Scott Hutchinson, singer songwriter, founder of the band, Frightened Rabbit, died earlier this month.
I didn’t know him, nor the band’s music well, so I decided to listen some. I came away feeling a familiar sadness, as I often have, after an artistic soul of uncommon depth leaves this earth all too early, from tragic events, and worst of all, from apparent suicide.
The world is dense with throngs of humanity that deliberately choose paths of danger, conflict, warfare, and high risk behavior. Their deaths hurt people left behind, but those outcomes are part of a calculation they made willingly, knowingly playing the odds.
Then, there are people like Scott Hutchinson, and those like him, who have a calling to create music, art, dance, and deeper voices, to share with the rest of us, while they wrestle inside of themselves to find meaning. They die too soon, and too tragically, of struggle they can never quite calculate.
Listen to each other. Each other. Who woulda thought??!!
Solid advice on how loving partners survive conflict, and grow together.
If you find you can’t do this, nor consider it a priority above all else, or just feel put upon to do it, you really don’t belong in the relationship you’re in.
“Give up what you have to give up today, so tomorrow can be better.”
Understanding Iran and global relations is not a laughing matter, and should never be reduced to a series of smarmy jokes and cheap laughs, but, if your attention span is not geared to digging into the history and politics of this region and U.S. behavior towards it, at least invest twenty minutes in John Oliver’s take.
Still, the best thing on comedy commentary TV. John Oliver stands alone in providing vigorously instructive, educational and funny content on national and world affairs.
