To Do

•Learn how to play backgammon
•Buy a good telescope
•Discover a fitness regimen I don't despise
•Give Shakespeare another chance
•Log some hours in a darkroom
•Ride a motorcycle cross-country
•Master the accordion
•Try head cheese, tripe, chicken feet, and all the frightening bits
•Keep my own honeybees
•Take lessons in fire eating
•Create an animated short
•Donate to AIDS research
•Milk a cow, drink it warm
•Appear in a film
•See the aurora borealis
•Tend another bonsai
•Play in a National SCRABBLE Association-sponsored tournament
•Record an album (not accordion music)
•Spend a day people-watching in Tokyo's Shibuya District
•See my father's grave
•Switch to a car that runs on vegetable oil or biodiesel
•Participate in a meeting of a polar bear club
•Spend a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, at a Buddhist monastery
•Write and publish a memoir [Note: as I wrote here, on 14 May 2011, the memoir is done — kind of] •SCUBA dive
•Invest in a truly high quality timepiece
•Shop for Soviet kitsch in Moscow, have my photo taken in Red Square dressed like Boris Badinov
•Knit something
•Tend an Ant Farm and a tank of Sea Monkeys
•Learn how to really sail
•Adopt a special-needs pet
•See a Coney Island side show
•Learn the alchemical secrets of working with chocolate
•Try out for Jeopardy!
•Take Mum somewhere really, really special
•Commit to eat at least 75% locally produced food
•Appear on the radio (terrestrial or satellite; Internet radio doesn't count) [Note: this got scratched after my interview on KKFI, Kansas City's 90.1 FM. See my 1 May commentary for more.]
•Get that tattoo
•Have a pastrami on rye and a celery soda at Katz's, then walk it off in Central Park
•Build a Zen rock garden
•Spend the night in an igloo or ice hotel
•Have a pair of shoes made, buy a bespoke suit
•Rehab, build, or buy a zero-carbon-emissions home
•Revisit Oz
•Sponsor a disadvantaged child
•Become proficient with American Sign Language
•Make my own cheese
•Build a heartbreakingly enviable PC
•Bake a perfect soufflé
•Exceed 150mph in a car
•Plant and maintain a vegetable and herb garden
•Get caught in a blizzard in Iceland
•Volunteer for a scientific research study, either psychological or behavioral
•Eat the worm
•When that beloved artist or band won't cross the pond to perform, cross the pond to see that beloved artist or band perform
•Stand on a glacier
•Hangglide
•Master at least two programming languages
•Celebrate Dia de los Muertos in Mexico
•Locate, buy, and play the hell out of a copy of Empire Builder
•Dine at a three-star, world class restaurant
•Drive a supercar exotic, even if it's got to be in circles around a tiny track, at an exorbtant hourly rate (and it probably will be)
•Swim in mountain streams of at least two more countries
•Learn how to butcher and dress small game (i.e., rabbit, fowl, poultry, et cetera)
•Make my own doughnuts
•Get lost in Berlin, and, maybe, give up on ever trying to leave....

To FOUND Magazine: Some Brief Words of Gratitude

A sizable thanks goes out to Davy Rothbart and the crew at FOUND Magazine for their continued active support of my cause. Featuring one of my finds in issue #6 was surprise enough without the generous ad for Free Byron Case in the back. It means a lot.

To everyone else: FOUND is available on the shelves, countertops, and racks of exceptional independent bookstores everywhere, as well as through the FOUND website. The latest issue offers up ninety-six pages of the terrific "lost, tossed, and forgotten treasures" dedicated readers have come to expect.