snowflakes

Concerned as we were about our flight north yesterday — those 90% snowflakes in the weather icon for Denmark, Maine, were worrisome to us — we arrived without a hitch about 2:30pm in Portland and found the weather not so bad after all. The sudden shock of cold air was even a bit invigorating. But it was lovely warm down there in Ranchos Davies, about twenty miles from Fort Lauderdale, in upscale horse country. We even stayed on Thoroughbred Lane. Laurie and Roberto “Faibi” Tuchman have a large home, guest house where we stayed, and a large barn plus paddocks for the six horses (two belong to them) they currently board. I snapped a lot of horse pictures plus a number of others, 78 in all (see MY FLICKR in my right sidebar). We visited a couple museums, the Viscaya in Miami and the Flamingo Park nearby. I loved those bright orange flamingos standing, perhaps asleep, on one leg.

I managed to get some reading in: over half of Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Then I completely re-read The Private Life of the Brain: Emotions, Consciousness, and the Secret of the Self by Susan Greenfield because Faibi Tuchman is a noted neurologist and I figured I might have a chance to ask him some questions about the brain. Sure enough, I did, and he gave me two books to read: On Deep History and the Brain by D. L. Smail, and In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind by Eric Kandel. I’ve started reading the latter, a fascinating part memoir, part history of brain science, and I’m up to chapter 9 out of the 30 chapters in the book. As a would-be philosopher of mind the least I can do is try to understand what scientists know about the brain before I philosophize about it?