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M

ore water. More reflections. Even as we dry out, some things don’t change. I think most people have power. Not everyone has internet, which doesn’t seem important but in the modern world it is.

We use Cox. They don’t know what they are doing. They sent us a long email apologizing for the lack of service and yada, yada, yada,

That’s great, but our service returned about an hour after our power was restored.

I guess we are lucky.

The house suffered some damage but it is in the process of being repaired. Compared to our neighbors we did pretty well.

Now it’s time to help where we can.

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So many of you have expressed concern about us. We are fine. Our house is damaged, but not badly. Our trees are in our neighbors houses. We have no power, no water, no phone. But, the internet is up. We are running out of food. Some grocery stores are open. But, we can’t get to them because streets are covered with broken trees, power poles, power lines and parts of houses.

Thanks for thinking of us. All of us

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The summer wind blew through the grasses of the season.

A

nother weird week. It seems like death is following us around no matter what we do.

I suppose that’s the way it is going to be until we manage the virus and people are able to think again.

I have no idea what killed Charlie Watts. But, it may illustrate something that I’ve long said. Touring is not good for man or animal.

I don’t care how you do it, your body pays for it. I don’t care whether you drive from show to show in a van and sleep on somebody’s couch or fly private and stay in a private home.

Funny, how a musician proceeds up the ladder. You start by sleeping on someone’s floor or couch. You proceed to cheap motels, eventually moving up to five star hotels and finally back into a house.

This time, it’s a 12 bedroom house in an exclusive neighborhood that a sponsor donated to you for a couple of nights.

Still, jumping through time zones, working an upside down day, eating food — good or bad — at the wrong times, coming down from the adrenalin rush and never knowing where you are, is not good for the body, mind and soul.

Did Charlie’s job play a part in his death? Or, was it simply a matter of aging? Or, was it a combination of both.

Does it matter? After all, dead is dead.

It matters to me. In 13 years I’ll be 80. That sounds like a long time, but where the hell did the last 67 years go?

It happened like a blink of the eye.

It always does.

T

his is my third time around on this post. Once again, the paragraphs locked and no edits or additions could be made.

I did learn something. Up at the top of the page there is a blue “Save Draft” line. Press it and it save the page exactly as it is minus the block edits.

No matter what WordPress claims, the block system is not flexible.

See that white space next to this column?

It came about because I wanted to make the picture larger. It’s a picture that I’d hang on my wall so I wanted you to see a larger version.

That went fine until I tried to build a block there. You can’t. You can’t add another column, or a calendar, or a list of previous posts.

All I know is that programmers are programmers. They have no sense of design or art. It’s all math to them.

That’s why there are so many freelance WordPress coders. The code is so complicated that it takes specialty programmers to create anything different.

Hire one of those folks and guess what? The block system is flexible.

Sheesh.

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Out of the blue and into the black.

W

e do it for the stories we could tell, so says Jimmy Buffett, even when we know do that something could end badly. It’s especially true if you are a young teenager. I was 13 or 14 when I did that story telling thing.

I went to a day camp during summer. One day we were taken to a pretty big and wild park. We could borrow or rent bicycles. So, I borrowed one.

All good so far.

We road to a sort of big peak. The ride was gradual, but if we wanted to continue in the same direction we had to ride down a pretty steep path. The chose would have been walk down or turn back. We should have chosen either of those two options.

Oh no.

We just had to ride. Being the biggest idiot among us, I rode first. About 30 feet into the ride I realized there was no braking and certainly no stopping. I made it about 75% of the way down. I hit a surface tree root. I went airborne, then I went side wise, and finally upside down.

I landed on my face.

I was battered and bruised. After a little clean up by one of the camp counselors I looked better, but not much. I was lucky. I could have broken all sorts of parts. I didn’t.

When I got home my mom was horrified. My dad just laughed. He asked if I would do it again.

Yes.

Of course, for the rest of the summer I was called skid face.

Kids can be so cruel.

I was their hero. I did something they were afraid to do.

So there.

A

pologies. If something doesn’t make sense on the other side.

That WordPress programming trick of capturing everything in a block and not allowing editing happened not once, but twice.

If you try to edit, the software deletes whole sentences. The only way to recapture any of it is to revert to a saved version.

But, that only brings your work so far.

So you rewrite whatever you lost.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember sentences exactly. I reconstruct them as best I can.

Do that three times and you have no idea what you originally wrote.

Add to that the newest annoyance, placing the cursor at the start of a sentence even though I intentionally placed it in the middle, and I almost gave up today.

WordPress has to stop this. Even though I said I’d stay here because of the community, I’ll leave if this nonsense doesn’t stop.

I’ll ghost. That’s where I’ll go to a blogging platform called Ghost.

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Sunset in New Mexico.

T

his testing isn’t easy. There are tricks and traps everywhere. I found a way to change type color.

“Ah ha!,” I thought.

Wrong again. Even though WordPress says it’s block, Tag Clouds are not. You can’t anything to them except remove them once they are applied. I suppose there is a way to change color, but pretty soon I’ll do what I always do and give up.

There are general settings, but I’m pretty sure that if a change one color of type I’ll change them all. That’s not a solution.

There is good news with tag clouds. Just as I suspected, if you press a tag you are taken to similar pages.

Of course, the one I tried took me to a page that is at least nine years old. That would be good for some of you who have just joined Storyteller.

It’s a start, I suppose.

A few other posts that you might enjoy.

Until The End


M ore water. More reflections. Even as we dry out, some things don’t change. I think most people have power. Not everyone has internet, which doesn’t seem important but in the modern world it is. We use Cox. They don’t know what they are doing. They sent us a long email apologizing for the lack […]

by Ray Laskowitz

The Edges


I appear to be stuck on reflections. That’s a pretty good thing, I think. It’s especially after a hurricane, another hurricane and seasonal sideways rainfall. And, good news of all possible good news. The weather is turning cool. It’s been a long hot summer punctuated by Covid fears and untimely passings of people we cared […]

by Ray Laskowitz

What Will Be


S ometimes I really don’t have much to say about world events. I’ve read enough to know that some days I’m better off staying in bed. And, on other days I just go for a walk. This picture found me on a walk. Aside from the square crop, I did nothing to it. It is […]

by Ray Laskowitz

L

ost in New Mexico. Not really, those mountains are the Sandias and I’m in Albuquerque.

I made two good pictures while I was on I-25. For some reason — likely my normal lazy state — I never did anything with this one.

So, y’all are seeing it first.

The other one.

Above is the other good picture I made while I was driving in my car.

Photographer’s luck, that I even made these two pictures, but also that I didn’t die in a fiery crash.

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Returning.

I

talk a lot about nature just wanting stasis. This is a great example of that. The house was damaged during Katrina. The doors and windows are boarded up.

That didn’t stop nature from retaking that little piece of land.

Maybe one day the owner will return or there will be a new owner. They’ll start removing the new growth only to find out that by doing that the house was weakened, often beyond repair.

Yep. That’s nature.

And speaking of nature, her virulent cousin Covid-19 came into play yesterday. Jazzfest was cancelled for the third time in two years.

That leaves musicians, support crew and staffs as well as artists and cooks without work. Some of those people make most of their years bank during the two weeks of Jazzfest.

This hurts hotels, restaurants and clubs. This hurts the city’s tax base. As these things pile up it means that we are further and further away from recovery.

If that didn’t make Sunday bad enough, a friend to us all passed. Action Jackson worked for WWOZ, probably the best jazz radio station in the world. He anchored the culture. I remember meeting him years ago. He was making video. I said, but you work for a radio station. He said, “Aw man, you never know.

He battled cancer for almost four years, almost never missing a beat on the street. He was 59.

He was right. You never know.

H

ere are two mantras to live by. They came to me when I was trying to talk to the universe. I heard them a long time ago but I forgot them.

“Important things are simple. Simple things are hard.”

And.

“Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.”

That’s about all you need to know about anything.

Don’t even bother thinking about it. Just put them in play.

How demanding of me.

Oh well.

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Magical night.

P

laying. Having fun. Tinkering. Messing around. That’s some of what we should be doing. But, often we get sucked into making a living. Or, we really get sucked into the gear of the thing.

Experimenting and playing is what Storyteller is about, has always been about. Oh sure, a client or two has found me here. Or, I’ve sold a couple of photographs to private collectors.

That’s it.

I’m trying to make a big decision. You heard about this in the past. I’ve been quietly building a new website.

It’s a portfolio-commercial site that contains a blog within the website itself. Oh for sure, I’ll take all of you with me who want to come along.

Some of you would like me to stay here. That’s humbling. If I send you an email link that takes you to the new site you shouldn’t see a difference, except you probably won’t be able to “like” a post without commenting.

That’s not the real question.

Actually, there’s two. Will a semi-folksy blog like Storyteller confuse the commercial users? Will LaskowitzPictures confuse the folksy readers?

And, the bigger question.

What is this new website? Do I continue to publish a lot of New Orleans pictures? Or, travel pictures? Or, a giant portfolio from 45 years past?

Or, should I go with my instincts? And, make the site about artistic pictures?

Or? Or? Or?

Please, you tell me what you think. Please.

L

et’s assume that Storyteller becomes an art website and an artistic blog.

See where I am really going with this? Heh!

There are many forms of art.

Some are like these layered things that I’ve been doing a lot over many years. See the picture.

Others are minimalist, almost Zen-like in nature.

Others are a collection of dark, moody and mysterious pictures that I’ve been making.

Do I show a small portfolio of each of them? Could I turn those portfolios into more pictures with a click on the original image? Like a tree with branches?

Do I know how to do that coding and linking?

Does anyone?

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Trumpet player.

I’m sorry that there is no text beyond these few words. I had a pretty well written piece that was complete. It was written, edited, the details were done. When I went to hit the schedule button, the button was light blue, not its normal color. It didn’t and wouldn’t work. Additionally, when I went to the draft file there was nothing saved.

I give up.

I’ll let you know when the new website is ready.