{"id":10950,"date":"2025-03-25T11:01:24","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T18:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/?p=10950"},"modified":"2025-03-25T11:01:24","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T18:01:24","slug":"on-being-lucky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2025\/03\/25\/on-being-lucky\/","title":{"rendered":"On Being Lucky"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes I think about how lucky I am.<\/p>\n<p>In 2007, I was there at Burning Man as The Man was burned early by a prankster, Paul Addis.<\/p>\n<p>In 2010, I got to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2010\/09\/05\/balsa-man-a-tiny-slice-of-heaven\/\">meet the man who did it<\/a>. You may be able to tell in those photos that I appreciated this particular man&#8217;s free spirit, showing up to an event, years later, wearing face paint idolizing him!<\/p>\n<p>In 2012, he jumped in front of a subway train. Not so merry, after-all.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/news\/article\/Burning-Man-arsonist-dies-on-BART-tracks-3994692.php\">The San Francisco Chronicle wrote about Paul Addis after his passing:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Addis served nearly two years in prison in Nevada after the August 2007 stunt in Black Rock Desert in which he set the 40-foot-tall man-statue ablaze ahead of schedule. He told The Chronicle after his arrest on arson and other charges that Burning Man had become too suburban and needed spontaneity.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This was not an act of vengeance, it was one of love,&#8221; Addis said. &#8220;A love of the ethos that is fading at Burning Man. There&#8217;s no sense of spontaneity. No sense of &#8216;F- it. Let&#8217;s burn this down.&#8217; &#8220;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes I think about how lucky I am. In 2007, I was there at Burning Man as The Man was burned early by a prankster, Paul Addis. In 2010, I got to meet the man who did it. You may be able to tell in those photos that I appreciated this particular man&#8217;s free spirit, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10951,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10950\/revisions\/10951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}