TheNextReport

Reflections on John Coltrane’s 80th birthday. John Coltrane was a poet without words, a holy man without need of a holy book. He rewrote the text every time he played and it was all revelation. In Coltrane's sound, one can hear the glory of the human drama, the story of evolving consciousness and humanity's unique capacity to consciously and deliberately participate in the process. Coltrane's sound was an acknowledgement of our divine mission as human beings, a hymn to understanding our identity, and a recognition of the oddity of being animal, human and god-like all at once. Coltrane first discovered multi-phonic sound -- the ability to play more than one note at a time -- sometime in 1957 when he played with Thelonius Monk. Somewhat a stranger to rational thought, Monk advanced the evolution of jazz by persistently refusing to acknowledge the physical limitations of the keyboard and the structural limitations of Western music. Coltrane would set off on a path that would

SO LONG STEVO Stevo is gone. The crocodile hunter with the heart of a lion, who thrilled us by confronting some of nature's most deadly creatures, met his end on the tip of a sting ray's tail. His accidental death shocked many. As a television personality he had appeared eminently masterful in the ways of the natural order. He couldn’t have felt more at ease snorkeling the calm waters of the Australian reef -- it was common knowledge that sting rays weren't dangerous. Everyone loved Stevo for his courage; a courage born of an intimate understanding of the animals with whom we share the planet. Steve Irwin befriended the natural world, gloried in its treacherous beauty, and helped us to understand our place within it. Overcoming the instinct to run from danger, Stevo encountered it personally and deliberately. In cozying up to poisonous snakes, toxic lizards, hungry crocs and other fearsome creatures, he helped us to visualize our own animal nature and ponder the evolvin