‘White Rabbit’ was mostly done in about two days, the music in about half an hour. The music is a ‘Bolero’ rip-off and the lyrics a rearrangement of ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ You take two spectacular hits and throw them together, and it’s hard to miss. ~ Grace Slick
Three Questions, April 19, 2025
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I saw today?
Honestly it was a white chocolate rabbit, it’s a silly but lifelong Easter tradition I have and I had four possible stores to find one and it was store number four where I found it.
What did I learn today?
Read an interesting piece that the whole universe may actually be spinning. Apparently, I didn’t understand all the math, this solves a lot of the mathematical and physics anomalies that exist in galactic studies.
What made me happy today?
A pizza omelet, my own creation, sauteed mushrooms with pepperoni and mozzarella cheese, topped off with spicy salsa.
Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream. ~ Khalil Gibran
Three Questions, April 18, 2025
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
A cloudy windy day on the coast, but there’s something really beautiful about a windy coast and big waves.
What did I learn today?
The latest robotic invention is pretty cool, it’s a headless robotic horse that you can ride.
What made me happy today?
As long as my surgery doesn’t get pushed again, today I did my last blood tests before surgery, so I celebrated with something I’ve been craving for a time, a nice big vanilla milkshake.
Just living is not enough… one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. ~ Hans Christian Andersen
Three Questions, April 17, 2025
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
There was a pretty purple orchid with drops of dew, it was gorgeous.
What did I learn today?
I learned someone I thought was was in their late 40’s turns out is 64 years old, brother is doing all kinds of things right obviously.
What made me happy today?
In the last day I have had two people tell me how they really feel about me, and yes, it was positive and actually really touching. It’s nice to remember there are good people out there too.
But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ said Alice. ‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the cat. ‘We’re all mad here. ~ Lewis Carroll
Rev Kane’s Wild Ride: The Mental Side
I’m a long distance hiker, or at least I am when I can be. If you’re new to this blog you can go back and read about a lot of my hikes in Scotland, the Himalayas and the Appalachian Trail, even wrote a book about the last one, Appalachian Trail Happiness. When I was first prepping for my Appalachian Trail hike one of the things I read about was how the one thing people underestimate about a long thru-hike are the mental aspects of the hike. You’re about to walk over 2,000 miles, everyone gets that it will be physically grueling but people don’t consider how hard it will be mentally. One of the reasons I developed the Three Questions concept that I post on each night was to personally help me address the mental challenge of the hike.
So I’m no stranger to big challenges, and my upcoming heart surgery is certainly that. I think everyone understands the physical challenge. A five hour surgery where they stop your heart, splitting your breast bone in half and putting it back together, spreading your ribs wide apart for hours, lots of soft tissue damage and cutting. I fully expect for at least the first couple weeks to feel like I got into a fight with a rhino and lost. And every time I have that thought, I think about when I did a fight club at burning man, and fought a man the size of a rhino who eventually spiked me to the ground and broke several of my ribs and this is gonna feel way worse than that did. As I’ve written about, I’ll have help and honestly there’s not a lot you can do beyond rest, eat well, exercise as appropriate and give your body time to heal. Oh and when necessary get real fucking high on pain meds.
So the physical side is understood, expected and prepared for as best as I can. Of course theoretical preparation and the actual event are seldom completely in line, but I’m as ready as I can be. But like preparing for and doing a long distance hike, the mental side plays heavier games with you and is harder to be ready for. The simple fact is, albeit happily small, there is a chance I’ll die during this procedure or if there are complications afterward. But even a small chance of death fucks with your head. So I’ve been working on preparing the best I can. I’ve done the first step, I’ve read every damn thing I could get my hands on about the procedure, my hospital, my team. I’ve talked to doctors, nurses and folks who have been through the procedure. I’ve talked about my fears, hopes and expectations with people I trust and respect. But man it ain’t easy. And where mental issues hit me are squarely in my sleep patterns. It’s far too easy for my mind to get wound up at night and not allow me to sleep, that happened last night.
There’s a secondary issue that faces me in this scenario, I’m that guy. You know, I’m the guy people go to for advice, to solve problems, to think things through. I’m the guy you want around when there is an emergency, I’m the one who stays calm and works the procedures we were trained for just in case. I don’t get flustered easily, I rarely ask for or need help. Hell, I’ve had knives pulled on me, a pistol stuck in my face and was even shot at by the cops once, I’m that guy. But when you’re that guy people have a tendency to forget your human. They take it for granted that you’re fine, you can’t be shook up, you’re not afraid of anything. And when you’re dealing with something significant like I am, that has a risk of death attached to it, people have their own fears that they are not willing to face and don’t won’t brought up.
So last night, in a text exchange with a friend, a truly kind and wonderful person, upon hearing my surgery was delayed, referred to the delay as a stay of execution. I responded, a really bad choice of words and their response was, with your sense of humor I thought you could take it, and I can, but… And the but is, that the comment was all it took, while I’m in a more delicate than normal state, to derail my train last night, get the wheels spinning and keep me awake. One of those nights when you lay down to go to sleep and your brain says, “dude, really, c’mon, you don’t think I’m going to let that happen do you?” So I got back up and watched some television, then I read until 3AM when the rest of my body finally said to my brain, “we don’t care what you want we’re sleeping.” And no sleep throws off everything for the next couple of days. It didn’t help that the conversation happened on the original scheduled date of my surgery.
Perfect happiness is a beautiful sunset, the giggle of a grandchild, the first snowfall. It’s the little things that make happy moments, not the grand events. Joy comes in sips, not gulps. ~ Sharon Draper
Three Questions, April 16, 2025
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
I saw an amazing landscape photo today, a shot from the forest floor up through the canopy of changing leaves that gave the effect in the sun of a giant circular rainbow, it was amazing.
What did I learn today?
Today I learned that Inuit in Greenland were doing metallurgy way earlier than expected, particularly since there was no mining in their culture, the iron they were using was a from an iron rich meteor that had crashed into Greenland.
What made me happy today?
Honestly it was a shit day at work, and what made me happy was giving in and making myself a small pizza for dinner. I’ll also call that a celebration of my niece’s birthday, she’s 13 today.
Rev Kane swimming with a whale shark in the Georgia Aquarium
Three Questions, April 15, 2025
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
It was a video I watched that the Mars Rover shot of the night sky on Mars, what an amazing time to be alive.
What did I learn today?
That researchers found the largest whale shark ever recorded. Adult whale sharks are typically around twenty feet long, but this whale shark was 60 FEET LONG! Absolutely amazing.
What made me happy today?
A colleague gifted me a couple of Gameboys and games to give to my nieces and nephews.
Gardening is one of my best early memories. I remember digging in the garden in the backyard of the house I spent most of my time growing up in. We had a garden plot in the back corner of the yard and every year we grew tomatoes and peppers and other things that slip my memory. But my job as a little kid was to plant the radishes. I love radishes, now I rarely ever buy them, almost every year, even if it’s in containers I find some way to grow them. Often in containers they don’t get very big, but I still love pulling washing and crunching down on a radish. I often encourage elementary and pre-school teachers to grow radishes with their students from seed. Super easy to get the seeds started in paper towels and plant the little seedlings, they grow fast, are easy to grow and fun to eat.
I also have amazing memories of my grandfather teaching me how to grow tomatoes and roses. He tricked me into it by telling me the first thing we had to do was go fishing. We put a little fish in each hole under the plant to fertilize it. He always grew amazing roses and tomatoes and I work like hell to carry on that tradition.
Gardening brings me incredible joy, I like being in the dirt, love planting, watering, hell I even like weeding. There are always surprises in the garden, whether it’s a volunteer plant you didn’t expect, a ripe vegetable you didn’t expect or a critter. One of the most amazing things I’ve ever encountered was a huge two foot long lizard in my garden, scared me half to death, but was absolutely amazing.
But the absolute best thing thing about gardening is the eating and sharing. I always grow more than I alone can eat and this allows for two things. First, a lot of great vegetables to eat, and secondly the ability to share with folks who don’t have a garden. And third, it allows for the making and storing of things, sauce, salsa, dehydrated vegetables for soup and of course canning things like pickles.
As our society gets further and further away from being outside, knowing where our food comes from and having a relationship with it, gardening is a wonderful way to connect back. It’s also an incredible piece of quiet time, a small act of simplicity in an ever complex world. And a great way to have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane
Beauty is whatever gives you joy. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
Three Questions, April 14, 2025
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
Definitely the flowers on my walk today, some really lovely blue flowers and lots of flowers in blossom on a sunny day in the spring.
What did I learn today?
I read about an amazing Inuit woman, Ada Blackjack. She was on an arctic expedition and they left her behind to tend to a dying man. She was found for two years, taught herself to shoot, made her own clothes, fought off polar bears, a total badass.
What made me happy today?
After getting my deck cleaned up yesterday, today I took some time to just sit on the deck in the afternoon. I’ve realized I should be able to easily get in and out of my camp chair on the deck, so happy that I should be able to sit out on the deck during my recovery.
In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. ~ Margaret Atwood
Three Questions, April 13, 2025
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
My littlest niece told me last weekend she had created a secret spy society. So as a good uncle I of course immediately sent her out a spy kit. Today I got a picture of her in full gear, glasses, hat, trench coat, she looked amazing.
What did I learn today?
There’s a new theory that our entire galaxy may be inside a massive black hole, would explain a lot.
What made me happy today?
A beautiful day, and time to work on putting the tiny patio garden back together for this year.
Happiness held is the seed; Happiness shared is the flower. ~ John Harrigan
Three Questions, April 12, 2025
You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!
What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?
A red puffball of a flower, spiky and beautiful in an unlikely spot, a little bush in a parking lot.
What did I learn today?
There’s a technique for being able to concentrate in a noisy room, if you tap your fingers in a planned rhythm it actually helps you focus better.
The Ministry of Happiness 