1/8/07 No, I'm not hibernating. Who's hibernating? Even the bears aren't. The one winter we don't go south for two weeks to see family and make art, the south comes to us. If it weren't so scary, I'd think we were lucky.
Weather seems to be the world-wide conversation topic, even when there are other things to talk about. The cover of my London School of Economics Alumni Magazine (I was there in 1957-58) shows Earth on a life-preserver floating in the ocean. Will life be preserved? The world's warming to Al Gore.
When I'm on my bike or carrying my helmet, I'm a magnet for commentary. At the Fitness Center, Jeff, one of the trainers, and I are soon into the status of the globe. I bike downtown, and a Mexican man working on the building exterior next door to Artasia tells me the seasons are reversing, so warm here, and can you believe it, it's snowing near the border with Texas. Snowing! He points to my bike and says, "That's the solution," and of course it could have been. Instead there's another reversal: in China everyone who can is giving up his bike for his dream of a private car.
I go to the dance studio to rehearse with Betty Salamun. She thinks we passed the tipping point a year ago, I think it was probably longer ago than that. What's left? To raise awareness. If everyone tries, perhaps we can slow down the speeding up.
So no, I'm not hibernating, I'm collaborating, with Betty Salamun and DanceCircus, biking downtown in January to rehearse our endangered species concert. The dancers warm up, and so does Milwaukee. It's the countdown, high stress, is everyone ready? Our
performances are January 19th and 20th at the Humphrey Masonic Center.
