The Parish Family Blog

Rohn Bayes Poet and Friend

Many moons ago a friend of mine, Sonora Lee, introduced me to a man that I've come to love and admire for his pure creative spirit - Rohn Bayes. Tonight before bed I was catching up on his writing on his blog. He lives in San Antonio, not far from me, and drops by from time to time when he's in Austin doing some business. He resells books to universities, or something like that.

Rohn is a poet and his topic: life that sits right in front of him.  I particularly like the way he talks about his mom. Rohn seems to have a child's mind and and the heart of a king.

The term 'ItIsAsItIs' comes to my mind when I read his poems. I'm chasing after him for a podcast interview for December. His voice is rich, his laugh contagious, and his wit will put a smile on your face. I'm curious what he'll say about Sharon - I always loved the way he spoke of her and would like to share that with our readers here.

In the meantime, put on a cup of tea or that first cup of coffee for the morning and visit
http://rohnbayesjourney.typepad.com/ and enjoy reading. Say the poems slowly, out loud. Look at the pictures. He's in my RSS reader - and I read him regularly.

Go slowly and breathe as you take in each poem. HIs poems are not fast food to be consumed and tossed away without thinking. They are delicate meals to be taken in with a lightness of being that opens you up to 'what is' - line by line.

Love
Tom

Streaming the Talking Portraits Podcasts

I am getting quite a bit of mail from people about Warren's interview. Thank you for such wonderful feedback along with some great suggestions for other people to interview around the world.

From the downloads I'm seeing, it's turning into one of the most popular to date.

However, some people on slower lines are asking about how to stream the podcast versus download to their PC.

Use this link to podcasts.yahoo.com - it will take you directly to my podcasts and you can select any podcast you wish and listen to it there versus downloading it.

enjoy
Tom

Notes to Sharon for Holiday Season ...

Just a note to Sharon if you're out there, my love. What have you been doing lately?  Your chimes have been very very active lately so I've been out there talking with you and them.

The weather is starting to turn cold in Austin finally. I think tomorrow it might drop into the 20s. We're going to get the fireplace going and pull out the Christmas decorations. Lily and I have a plan for a small tree and we're hoping to get that up in a few days. I'm going to light the Christmas candles and incense to make the house all smell so wonderful.

Lily is doing well. Took her to Dr. Berman and we've adjusted some nutritional things in our food and her meals.  Found a wonderful tutor to help accelerate Lily's learning of some of the more difficult parts of math. I'm very pleased and in particular Lily is quite excited about math now. Oh yeah, I'm finally back to going to the gym on a regular basis and guess what? I have a coach. Yea ... it's kinda strange but I'm getting used to it and learning a lot.

We miss you - all of us do. I've been think of you more lately as the holiday season has arrived and I remember how much we enjoyed it together, each year.

Love you
Tom

Podcast with Warren Kahn

Hello there ... everyone still checking in?

Hope your holidays were full of fun, and relaxing. Ours was. Justin and Juliet took Lily and me out to see Casino Royal the new OO7 - that's a must-see. While in Plano with Sharon's dad and Pam for Thanksgiving, I saw Deja Vu with Denzel Washington, and I really enjoyed that movie.

Ok, I have a treat for you. I completed a TalkingPortraits.com interview with Warren Kahn - musican and More to Life trainer. We talk some about the song he wrote for Sharon and why I was so reluctant to listen to it until recently.

Hope you enjoy both the interview and his new album!  There are a number of cuts from the album mixed into our interview.

Tom

Lily in YouTube - Learning Robotics

The 100 Oldest dot COM Domains

Justin forwarded this link to me.

http://www.jottings.com/100-oldest-dot-com-domains.htm

He found the link on DIGG.com, and I hadn't really fully remembered all this until now. I was delighted because he remembers me talking about Symbolics. Sharon and I created two very amazing posters for them that are still hanging here in the garage.  Here are some snapshots I just took, but they don't quite do them justice.

My point here is that one of the most beautiful things I shared with Sharon was our co-creativity on projects. We didn't do this as much in our later years, but we were discussing many plans.

If you're curious who the two children are in the first one, holding hands ... it's Justin and Lauren. I did this in my photography studio in the early 1980s. I was in the Marketing and Sales department at Symbolics.com at the time.

It's so interesting to look back and see how much my present life has in common with my past - professionally speaking.

Connecting the Present ... Delivering the Future

Keys to Creativity 
(the Symbolics keyboard had 88 keys, like the Steinway)

Here's why I was so excited to see this list of 100 domains.

I have the honor of having worked at Symbolics (a spin-off from MIT's Artificial Intelligence lab) from 1983-1989 and MCC (Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp.) in 1990.  Both were in R&D. It was an amazing time in the computer industry to be involved in the research area.

And yes we did have Internet mail back then, but it was the 'MAIL'  program in the old Unix sense ... at the command line where you exchanged commands directly with the SMTP demon running on the server.

FTP, you bet  ... it's arcane, but every now and then I use FTP access at the command level. Not really needed anymore, but it's good to know.

Tom