Day of Fallacies, 13th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Castor): Yet another beautiful, picture-perfect day, continuing the long string of lovely weather we've been enjoying here in the South. I voted today, the penultimate day of early voting for the Georgia primary. I wonder how many more years I'll be able to freely vote, or at least vote in meaningful elections  

For some reason, the New York Times ran a long think piece today about Buddhism in Nepal, the first of a three-part "travel series" about the spread of Buddhism across Asia. The series, titled The Prince's Journey, is written by Aatish Taseer of Delhi, India, and future installments will cover Buddhism in Thailand and in Taiwan. Long on history and providing a broad overview of Buddhist teachings, it as informative and well written, although I'd hardly call it "travel" journalism. 

I found it amusing that when the author asked a teacher of Newar Buddhism, the indigenous variant of Buddhism practiced in the Kathmandu Valley, about the tension between the different branches of Buddhism, he was told, “When you look at a tree, you don’t concentrate on its different branches. You try and see the tree as a whole.” And then readers responded in the comments section with complaints that the author had overlooked this movement or that school or some other specific teacher or writer, all focused on the branches and not the tree. To his credit, Taseer personally replied to a great many of the complaints with grace and in a dignified manner.  

Separately, I saw a post on Facebook today by jazz trumpeter Steven Bernstein (Lounge Lizards, Sexmob), who I saw at Big Ears last March playing the music of Sly Stone with his Millennial Territory Orchestra. He was announcing, in a roundabout way, his new project, the ResoNation Trio, and noted, "I love blowing into a piece of metal and creating a sound, and using that sound to interact with other musicians/artists and making something new."

"My trumpet teacher, Jimmie Maxwell, was a Buddhist," he wrote. "We would talk about trumpet satori." 

I hadn't heard of Jimmie Maxwell, but a quick peek at his Wikipedia page tells me Maxwell (1917 – 2002) was an swing trumpeter who played with Benny Goodman's band from 1939 to 1943, later performing on Goodman's tour of the Soviet Union in 1962. He played on hundreds of recordings and commercials from 1950 to 1980 and worked as a sideman for, among others, Duke Ellington, Oliver Nelson, Gerry Mulligan, Maynard Ferguson, and Quincy Jones. He worked as a studio musician for NBC, playing on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show (1963–73), contributed the solo trumpet theme on the soundtrack of The Godfather, and taught from the late 1970s onwards.

And apparently was a Buddhist.