“He rocked, he spewed venom, he seduced, he sang us to sleep and slapped us awake, he befriended the shadow, and he held the lamp up to all our faces. He irreverently and irrevocably turned the suburban back yard of folk music into a mysterious tangled forest of unlimited possibilities.”

— Eliza Gilkyson on Bob Dylan

I remember going with Bruce Heiny to Rochester. It was outdoor field to hear Bob Dylan and there was a previous time when Dylan was performing in St. Paul if I remember right.

Unfortunately, I didn’t keep track of my flights. However, if you didn’t see Dylan in Rochester he can be seen on the wall in Grinders where you can see Dylan riding his cycle down Broadway with his player in front of him. He is looking at the person who shot the picture with Dylan wearing a bike hat following behind his musician. It’s about as close to getting close to him.

Natalie Goldberg also was a big fan of Dylan, and she and a friend made it to his farm site.

And speaking of Natalie Goldberg, author of “Writing Down the Bones,” I have now purchased “Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up In America.” Thomas Moore’s, author of “Care of the Soul” said, “Natalie Goldberg’s writing offers a path, a highway, to that elusive place deep within our own lives where divinity sits.”

I think I’m about 130 pages into it, and I can’t put it down. I picked up a copy of it in a bookstore Jeanne and I visited in Fargo.

She speaks of this, “alienation is the American disease. Mother Teresa has said that America has worse poverty than India’s, and its called loneliness. She tells us Tibetan Buddhists say that a person should never get rid of their negative energy, that negative energy transformed is the energy of enlightenment, and that the only difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.”

This was last Saturday and Sunday as Jeanne, Casey and I attended Skyler’s graduation from Concordia College. It was a nice blessing.