A grateful story! Thanks for that!

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"Are you kind?"

The song Yellow Moon (on his album Tiger Rose) has a verse in it that goes
"Love, Love, Love, it picks you up and spins you round,
sets you right back down where you belong"
It's kind of funny - the twists and turns our lives both took in getting to the point where we met. We think we were actually both at the world's fair in 65 and at Expo 67 - but never met until years later. Also, My mother came from California & my Father from upstate New York - and they met in Grad school at Maryland & settled here - so the odd occurences in both our familie's lives that brought us to the same space & time is a pretty cool coincidence.

My wife is a quiet Capricorn - very practical, hard working, reliable - and while not overly outgoing - also very strong willed. When they came back to America, from South Africa, they lived in Virginia - but moved to San Francisco when she was still pretty young- and that's where the transformation took place. She was exposed to lots of stuff in San Francisco - and had lots of pals, who I'm sure turned her on to the Dead.
There's a funny story about when she was at St. Bridget's (a Catholic school) - a nun was going to punish her for talking in class by hitting her hand with a ruler - and she kept refusing to put her hand out - and finally, the poor old nun was about to blow a gasket, so she put her hand out to be whacked with a ruler - only to pull it away at the last second - and she said "I told you you weren't going to hit me with that thing" - so the poor old nun doesn't know what to make of this insulent young thing - and has her hauled off to the principle's office - where they call her mom - who is kind of sympathetic - but is trying to smooth things over. Her dad was in Viet Nam at the time, and i think they figured the lack of a father figure must have been the cause of it all & i think she did a detention or something.
They moved back to Maryland when she was in mid-high school, and she met lots of deadhead friends in college too. A funny story is that after we were together for a while, we figured out that we were both at the same Harrisburg Island show in the 80's - and when i told the story of being to messed up to find our car - she had the same story - see there were two parking garages - and we were both with different groups of people, looking for our cars in the wrong garages - we probably saw each other & may have even talked. I remember hanging out on top of one of the garages with some people - too bad my memory isnt' better. It almost seems like there is this thread of us getting close - but not meeting - first at the world's fair in 65, then Expo 67, then at this dead show.

You are one suffering bastard! My advice would be to get thyself to AA asap and, believe me, I never give THAT advice to anybody...

Way to personal/inappropriate. What I was reacting to was the tone. Africa is a poor place and the way we walk through there should be in sympathy with the general ambience of the area. I don't know of many people who travel to Africa with a Playstation 3 with a camera eye.

I had a friend who was traveling in Africa. Some place like Rwanda I think. There was a lot of violence in the general area so his group of backpackers thought to sleep in the most safe place, a clearing near the local police station. They were awoken in the middle of the night by a mob of people who ran directly through their campsite and stormed the police station. They killed all the police and burned the place down but left the backpackers completely alone.

I would love to know if there is some place in the remote jungle of Cameroon where the natives are listening to old bootleg GD tapes while tripping the light fantastik on the local brew... Probably not. The reality of their lives is so different from ours. But the band did some shows in Eqypt so it's possible. Much stranger things have happened.

My only point is that I wouldn't go someplace so radically different and techno-trip over the local people, which is what we seem to do with our culture. I wouldn't. I don't think it's respectful. And that has nothing to do with the stupid comment I made, sorry.