75 and More Alive
The Title is perhaps less egoistic than it may seem.
‘All is alive, in its own degree.’
July 14, 2025
The Title is perhaps less egoistic than it may seem.
Today I “make” 75 years in age, as “make” is said here in New Orleans.
The ‘More Alive’ part of the Title refers firstly to the much greater CAPACITIES that humanity in general enjoys across our world of 2025 than, say, our worlds of 1975 and even 2000.
I mean, of course, our CAPACITIES through digital technology and especially digital communication through the Internet. We can reach across Continents in any minute with fully realized Audio and Video Creations … Creations that might have astonished Diaghilev and Charlie Chaplin and even Kurosawa … Creations that arise from tools available in everyday Computers and in Freeware.
Possibilities for us to be MORE than any prior generations of humanity are now “all around us.” Max Roach said to Delfeayo Marsalis in a New York City bar during the 1990s: “There’s greatness all around us.” So true, so apparent, when we just look.
Possibilities present now from Timbuctu to Titusville also remind me of the unbounded visions and optimism that percolated through Sunday-night meetings of visionaries for personal computers in Palo Alto circa 1971-1972, as sessions among those pioneers were related to me by Michael Rogers when we both were students in Stanford’s graduate Creative Writing Program.
These sessions’ enthusiasm carried into the Home Brew Club of Menlo Park and San Mateo in 1975 and ’76, when Michael had moved on to Rolling Stone. Lee Felsenstein, Gordon French, “Captain Crunch”, and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak—then—all shared drives to make practical their visions of personal computers as the engines and fountains for ANY user to be creator—and for society to thus be leveled into limitless opportunities.
So that’s what I’m talkin’ about in the ‘More Alive’ part … Even as the “Net” and the “Web” have been constricted by Old World Monopolies (Yes, I mean the inbred and accelerating Mediocrities produced by marriages between ‘Nobility’ and Rothschild Crime Families) … Closed-Loop Marketing and Universal Surveillance that serve the exact opposite of personal and collective freedoms: Corporatist Fascism … While ‘Silicon Valley’ reduces its possibilities through a Top-Down White Supremacy that passionately opposed by big proportions of its Brain-Power and Work-Force … And Neo-Colonial attacks and venture are repelled on every Continent and especially in Africa and Latin America.
Company leads to being ‘More Alive’ as well. Always I’ve been blessed by great friends. A boy and teen-ager playing Ball or swimming over eight-hour spans in Bellingham. A writer with in Palo Alto with pals of Ed’s Place and beyond. A runner and writer in the San Francisco Bay Area traveling over 25 years round the world. Never, however, so much as now have I enjoyed so much good company. The Rivers Answer Moons band of ROGER LEWIS, KIRK JOSEPH, DON VAPPIE, HERMAN LEBEAUX, and ALEXEY MARTI is marvelous in its legacies, accomplishments, and its will to be ground-breaking. So warm, solid, and creative, these players! Like the communities of musicians who surround us in New Orleans and across Louisiana!
Likewise, Sticking Up For Children and its Partners in Haiti and New Orleans are “tree-mendous” agencies for being ‘More Alive’. Mighty THANKS again to CYRIL and GAYNELLE NEVILLE for passing along to MARYSE and me the chances that Sticking Up For Children have afforded. There’s nothing like seeing Students grow!
In particular Students who have to overcome, along with their Schools’ Staffs, daily difficulties that would try the fortitude of revolutionaries. And they keep smiling! Thanks specifically to the beacons MARIE MARTHE BALIN FRANCK PAUL and MARIE-JO POUX.
Then there are SUFC’s leading supporters over more than one decade. JENNIFER MAXWELL and her Foundation and then the JAMBAR product and Foundation that Jennifer heads are the single greatest basis for SUFC’s and our Partners’ material progress. Without Jennifer and/or JAMBAR: No bus for FEPE, no building-extension for the Youpi Youpi school, no generators for EFE, no Auditorium for College Canapé Vert, no 3-D printers, no Desktop Computers, no free snacks-as-meals (“JAMBAR, JAMBAR / It makes you strong!”) for students.
Likewise KATRINA and JON FREY and Frey Organic Wines have funded Sticking Up For Children and our Partners since 2013 and NEVER FAILED in their engagement … even after wildfire razed most of their 1000-acres of vineyards in Redwood Valley, October 2017.
Redwood Valley, California.
There are the 500+ of Substack and the 5000 of Facebook. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your support and information! Substack is the vehicle for our digging and the station where trains meet.
There is MARYSE. Cornerstone. Main foundation. Main fountain.
Sky over Mississippi with digital artifact that may be an RSD (Roving Surveillance Drone) or that may be a reminder of Uncle Toby peering from his Hobby-Horse. Anyway, it’s a photo from Maryse, so who knows what she put into it!
Connection to ‘sunrise by your pillow’ and ‘Lilies’ and ‘bass-lines’ from ‘a Creator many know as God.’
“Lilies’ with KIDD JORDAN and MORIKEBA KOUYATE for the album Women Center Earth, Sea, and Sky.
Cheers!
Please do check out the latest Update on and from SUFC Partners and see whether you may want to drop a Dime into their Cup through Donation there or Suscription to ‘Stands The Human Being’ here.