Videos hosted by Michael Erlewine

Around here we are slowly sliding into the Thanksgiving weekend, a day at a time. The extended family begins arriving tonight, and of course my daughter Anne and granddaughter Emma are already here. Emma is almost two, in January.

I am going to have to get out my cooks cap, because certain duties fall on me, primarily making my famous buttery stuffing and supervising the mashed potatoes and peas, and other stuff too. My wife Margaret worked hard today and produced three beautiful pies for the days coming up.

And for sure I am the fastest dishwasher in the family. No one else even competes; either that or they like to give me credit, and trick me into doing the dishes. I don't care. Sometimes it is better for me just to stick my hands into warm water and pump the dishes through, rather than just converse or hang out. I am content.

Am also getting ready for the concert the day after Thanksgiving (Friday, the 29th) with my daughter May and my son-in-law Seth Bernard. It is going to be held at our studio, so I have to move some stuff around. These very small concerts don't happen often, a chance to just hear May and Seth as a duo singing to a small group of family and friends. It is like one extended family. So if you are brave enough to venture out this coming Friday night, come on over and spend it with us. Scroll down my blog for details.

Which brings me to my current project, producing a set of audio-blogs of some dharma material. I include here thumbnails of the covers for 36 (actually there are more) new Audio-Blogs, as recorded in the last few days. Not all of them are up yet on YouTube, but it is a slow process. I am posting them as fast as I can. Why am I doing this?

Hard to say. I get these intuitions to do things and I do them, often without asking myself too many questions, like why? I guess I keep looking for ways to connect with folks interested in learning to use their mind to look inward instead of outward as we usually do. I am very into looking into the mind and seek others who share my interest.

I keep thinking that if I can just communicate the beauty of looking at the mind to others, they will be able to get over the difficult hurdles of beginning mind practice – learning meditation. I really try to communicate.

So, this new batch of audio-blogs or podcasts are good for listening to, either directly or while you do something in the background. Sometimes it is easier to soak in an understanding by repeated doses than it is to power drill-down on it. And reading the written word is not quite the same as my accenting the words as I meant them to be heard, more or less.

So here we are, in the middle of a cold snap, at the start of what is finally.

Facebook can be like a warm fire.