Fremont shots

I finally uploaded pics from last weekend's Fremont Summer Solstice Parade. All y'all Seattle expats may enjoy gawking thereupon.

And hey, dig, sorry for the silence up here. I've had a sore throat, see.

More confusions, stem cell transfusions . . .

I ain't one for prayin', but will pray anyway any way I know or can improvise for Mr. Arthur Lee, who's gone in just under forty years from music pioneer to last-ditch stem cell Hail Mary pioneer.

Doctors estimate Lee has a 10 to 20 percent chance of long-term survival. "If we don't do the transplant his chances of surviving are zero percent," said Dr. Furhan Yunus, cancer institute transplant program director.

Some odds. Lee's been through various hells inbetween: addiction, prison, commercial disaster. But any god worth his baraka would welcome him for Forever Changes, for being covered by Mazzy Star ("Five String Serenade"), and now for these words:

"All kinds of things I've had to deal with in my life," Lee said. "It is much better the way I've known life. Those hardships make things easier.

"But for this disease I never would have known I was loved this much."

I have so much to learn of courage. May I have till at least sixty-one to study.

I should add that the headline's a paraphrase of Love's "A House Is Not a Motel," the one sure-thing lullaby that sung ineptly by me even would calm my dear Xia and drop her into the thick of dreams out of the most colicky conniption. It's crazy that such a song, laden with late-sixties heroin fear bad news death vibes would do this (another sample: "and the water's turned to blood, and if you don't think so, go turn on your tub"), but my Xee, with the clarity of infancy, understood instantly its calm center of comfort and beauty. If you don't know Love yet, you owe Xee, me, and Lee the discovery. Click on the YouTube panel linked above at least; go to a benefit show if your holdings exceed mine (and how, dear lord, could they not?).