Car Accident

I got in a car accident where I got rear ended, wasn't injured and the insurers agreed that I was not at fault. This is a blender episode, with lots of little segments that all go in there.

Blender Episode

This episode contains lots of different segments, all going into the blender like fruit goes into the smoothie.. Stay tuned for lurid stories of rampaging young adults and their dangerous car accidents, but let's start our blender episode back in the 1990s at Jamba Juice.

Juicy Tale

Do you go to Jamba Juice? My first thought was that I went there in the nineties, and that I don't go there anymore.

Kind of like Noah's Bagels, I feel like Jamba Juice belongs to the 90s the way Orange Julius belongs to the 80s

But I go there all the time because like El Pollo Loco, you can trust it, if you don't trust anything, Jamba juice will feed me I get the peanut butter smoothie

Jamba Juice was originally called juice club

Began in San luis obispo in 1990

It was renamed in 1995.

In 1995, founder Kirk Perron swapped out Juice Club for Jamba Juice, which is a play on the African word, jama, which means "to celebrate."

Music & Culture Festival

Like Carijama, the dormant Caribbean music and culture festival in Oakland's Mosswood Park

Ended in violence every year 2001-4 after existing since 86

Making The Scends

 I have been using lent as an excuse to go to the fried fish place in San Leandro on 14th street Scends

Crate Digging Expedition

 Visited Stacks Records, a used record store in Hayward

Session In Paris

Masahiko Togashi was a jazz drummer who sustained a spinal injury in 1970.

After his injury, Togashi had a custom drum set adapted so he could play drums using only his hands

At Stacks, I found a copy of 1979s Togashi / Cherry / Haden "Session in Paris - Song of Soil" with a picture of Togashi in his wheelchair on the back, something I haven't seen very often on a record, so I bought it right away.

If you're looking for a copy, they're on Bandcamp

Pole Cane Stick

Got a new walking stick made of carbon fiber, the old one was aluminum.

The weight difference is like picking up a twig vs. blade of grass

Creative Destruction

I was on vacation in Palm Springs, Calif., on Nov. 7, 2021, when I awoke with the cacophony of a dozen dial-up modems blaring inside my head. Confused and alarmed, I called out to a friend staying in the room next door and could hardly hear my own voice. When he responded, I heard almost nothing at all.

The reason for my sudden hearing loss and the persistent ringing in my ears wasn’t immediately obvious, to me or to the emergency room doctor who examined me that morning. I hadn’t stood too close to the speaker at a concert or hit my head in some traumatic accident. I simply had gone to sleep with my hearing intact and, come morning, it was gone.

My life since that day has been difficult to describe, though the words I return to most often are “disorienting” and “humbling.” I spent months shuffling from one medical specialist to the next for a battery of tests and treatments. I eventually started wearing hearing aids and learning American Sign Language. And, perhaps most challenging of all, I confronted a new identity — disabled — that often leaves me feeling vulnerable.

At first, I also felt very alone. No one hands you a guidebook when one of the fundamental senses on which you innately rely is revoked without warning. Even the most attentive physicians are primed to focus on your physical symptoms, not the upheaval that a sudden impairment brings to your personal and professional life, nor the erosion it causes to your sense of self.
Steven Overley, "I had decades to make peace with my sexuality. My disability is a different story." NY Times Subscriber-only newsletter (EXCERPT)

Acquiring a disability feels like forced creative destruction

Steven Ozerkey was guest writer for Frank Bruni's newsl...