AncienTrails

Neither Winning, Nor Losing

Summer                            Waxing Summer Moon

Last night I did not win, nor did I lose.  My score for the evening was zero, neither on plus or minus side.  A come down from the last two months, yes, but with the cards I had, a respectable showing.  Most of all we had a good time.

I learned more about the Jesuits.  They do not take final vows until they have completed their tertian year, a final year of intensive experience that comes sometimes as late as 15 years into their joining the order.  Individual Jesuits must make a perpetual pledge soon after admission, but the order does not commit to them until after the tertian year.  That would have made sense in my case because at the end of the 15th year in the ministry I was on my way out.

Today found me at PetSmart early in the day, picking out large breed puppy food and adult food.  We are feeding Rigel and Vega a mix of adult and puppy food to keep their growth slowed down.  We hope this will give them a longer life span.

They also got a new long dog squeaky toy.  It looks like a bride for no good reason I could figure out.  We also have three new Kong toys.   They have openings for  peanut butter or treats or cheese.  This makes them much more interesting to these large puppies and distracts from chewing on, say, a kitchen chair.

The rest of the day I spent upstairs waiting for the Lupus Foundation to come around and pick-up our donations.  Neither the Lupus Foundation or the Disabled Vets have proven reliable, so our garage still has a substantial amount of stuff from our not so successful garage sale in early May.  Waiting for someone else to come combines boredom and frustration.

Kate worked from 10-3 and she will work the same schedule tomorrow.  That’s why I couldn’t shift off to do other chores.  They said they’d knock.  Of course, to knock they would have had to show up.

Fences, Cards and Hunt

Summer                    Waxing Summer Moon

Vega will find herself star-crossed in a couple of weeks.  We hired a fence-installer to put up a three rail split fence with a green mesh over the back to keep the pups out of the orchard.  When the pups are more mature, we can take down the green mesh and have a split rail fence.  We already have a couple of runs of split rail.  A good solution.

Tonight is sheepshead.  You may remember I did well the last time.  Tonight is a new night, new cards.  I’m glad I did as well as I did last time, especially considering the years of experience around the table.  Wonder how the cards will run tonight.

Still working the  Lady of Shallot.  This is one of three or four of Hunt’s paintings that I consider masterpieces:  Finding of the Savior, Bianca, Triumph of the Innocents.  At the moment I’m inclined to lift my tour theme from a monograph about the Lady of Shallot, “The Burden of Meaning.”  His work goes right to the bone, the skeleton the natural world as it is, the flesh, the symbolic overlay.  The Lady of Shallot satisfies me the most because it includes a wild emotional gesture with a cerebral message about art and authenticity.

The True Generational Transition

Summer                   Waxing Summer Moon

Jon and Jen moved around the house this morning, packing and stowing, wiping Ruth’s tears–the wrong cap on her bubble bottle–and feeding a smiling Gabe.  It was the deliberate preparation of seasoned parents, checking this and that, getting ready.  As I watched, I realized this was the true generational transition.  The birth of grandchildren seems to represent the moment when the grandparent’s generation gets legs in time.  It’s not.  It comes when those children integrate into their family.  It comes when their parents take responsibility for them in a functioning, dynamic family.  It comes when tears are soothed, food comes to the table, when boundaries are set, when imagination is nurtured.  It comes when love creates a new family.   I saw all this over the last two days.

Jon put together Ruth’s playhouse.  We bought it a year and a half ago on sale at Costco.  It’s actually a utility shed, but a very cute one with windows and peaked roof.  We’re going to put white lights over the whole area and dress up the inside so other grandchildren can use it too.   Permaculture focuses not only on the plant life in an area, but on the human use of the land as well.  The playhouse adds generational nurturance to the built environment here.

Meanwhile the attacks on our new drip irrigation continue.  Vega seems to have taken a particular interest in where the netaphim should be.   She is not content with things as they are; rather, she sees things as she would like them to be and acts.  She apparently sees the netaphim with multiple holes, disconnected from its sources of water and distributed not where the plants are, but where she sees a better design.

Life has vibrancy here.  A good thing.

A Promising Alliance

Summer                     Waxing Summer Moon

A strange sensation today as I walked up the long flight of stairs at 2828 University Ave. SE.  Not deja vu exactly, I knew was this not a relived moment of my past, but a definite sense of having been here before, walking in to a strange room, meeting people, shaking hands, thinking further down the road.

It was the celebration of the Blue/Green Alliance’s opening its new offices.  The mayor’s of Minneapolis and St. Paul, RJ Rybak and Chris Coleman gave speeches, Ellen Anderson and Melissa Hortman were there along with others including Mark Andrews, former Hennepin County Commissioner.  There were labor leaders, leadership of the Sierra Club and a number of other folks whose personal and political lives pull them somehow into the orbit of labor and/or environmental politics.

I met Michael Porter, a guy from Macalester who runs their intern program.  I shook hands with Mark and saw Margaret Levin, executive director of the Sierra Club and Joshua Low who has done great work as the Green part of the Blue/Green Alliance.

Crowded rooms make hearing a difficult task for me, so I look to get away when I can, but it felt familiar to be there, getting ready for something months away, the second session of the 2009-2010 legislature.

This particular group and what they represent give me real hope in a couple of different directions.  Labor unions have had a tough go of it over the last twenty years or so and this represents a new and promising direction.  David Foster, the executive director of the Blue/Green Alliance, put it this way in a speech in Germany recently:  I want every job to be a green job and I want every green job to be a union job.  Sounds right to me.  Second, the environmental movement has often looked away from the difficult politics of economic justice, yet no lasting change in environmental policy will take place if those in the lower income sectors of our economy have to bear the brunt of it.

A Pain in the Neck (and the Lower Back)

Summer                         Waxing Summer Moon

Up to Elk River with Kate to see Dr. Bewin, a pm&r doc (physical medicine and rehabilitation).  He’s a tall, fit man with gray hair and a reserved manner.  His demeanor in the office was professional, taking careful notes and putting Kate through a series of movements to discern the current state of her pain and its sources.

In the end his news was sobering, that is, he said no surgeon will touch her back, “Just too complicated.”  That means more physical therapy and possible injections, but no long term fix.  Her neck, a somewhat less complicated area (but still her neck), might still respond to surgical procedure.  We’ll check that out in a month or so with a couple of neuro-surgeons.

She’s dealt with this ongoing problem since our honeymoon, when she carried two liters of water in her backpack and felt some pain the following day.  This degenerative disc disease did not start then, but its appearance in our lives did.  Now here we are, 20 years later, still deciding, still treating.

Kate’s ability to endure and to endure and get significant work accomplished staggers me.  It has its limits.  The combination of neck and lower back challenges even Kate’s Norwegian toughness.  I believe her conditions will ameliorate somewhat with retirement when she has more control over her movements on any given day.

The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Aesthetic Project

Summer                          Waxing Summer Moon

Vega, the star named puppy, has a level of curiosity and mischief we have learned to associate with intelligent dogs.   She dug again the other night, this time under the deck, a place it had not occurred to me to harden against her energy.  Also, after I repaired the netaphim, she once again took it happily in her jaws and ran off with it, macerating more, ripping out more.  Acchhh!

Chain link fence installers got a call yesterday.  I need a quote on fencing in the orchard.  We have too much money invested in the trees and the drip irrigation to allow a bouncy puppy to destroy it.  Fencing it in seems silly, but right now no other solution presents itself.

A docent colleague, Allison Thiel, has done an incredible amount of research on the pre-Raphaelites.  She has encouraged others, myself included, to do more.  Allison and Wendy and I walked through the exhibit after the docent gathering.   Pre-Raphaelite knowledge has begun to sink into my bones, become part of me.  The aesthetic project of the pre-Raphaelites had large ambitions and each of the early pre-Raphaelite painters:  Hunt, Rossetti and Millais added their own individual life aims.

They remind me of the great urban city planner who did so much in Chicago and here in Minneapolis.  Daniel Burnham, creator of the 1909 plan for the city of Chicago and, if I recall correctly, a plan for Minneapolis that included the Minneapolis Institute of Arts often quoted Goethe,  “Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.”

The pre-Raphaelites wanted to observe nature closely and reproduce it with fidelity.  This also meant not constraining the imagination within the academic styles which created landscapes, interiors and other subject matter from within the Western artistic tradition, especially in a manner influenced heavily by Raphael.  They had no brief against Raphael himself, just the pale (as they saw it) imitation of him in the French and British academies.

They also wanted to use this close observation in service of contemporary issues or at least in striking new directions in traditional subject matter.  Hunt’s Awakening Conscience creates a new paradigm of the fallen woman, a commonplace theme in British Victorian art.  In Hunt’s work the fallen woman rises from her lover’s lap with a new awareness of what her own life, apart from him, could be.

Hunt also wanted to paint religious subject matter that was new.  An example of this effort is his masterpiece, Finding the Savior in the Temple.  Instead of an annunciation, crucifixion, resurrection or Madonna and child Hunt chose the moment when the young Jesus has wandered away from his earthly parents to debate with rabbis in the temple.  Hunt perceives this moment as the point when Jesus realizes he is the Christ, the messiah foretold in the Hebrew scriptures.  This is new subject matter in the Western tradition, though it is a sort of annunciation complete with doves bearing the Holy Spirit which brings him the message of his messianic mission.

Hunt and his PRB brothers, like the Meso-American pre-contact artists, wanted to express reality faithfully, but, also like them, to compress meaning in that expression through the use of symbol.  Thus, Hunt’s works abound in jewel like colors, attentive depiction of the fall of light on clothing, faces, even sheep and depictions of real people and animals and landscapes, yet they also have a level of intricate symbolism that pushes the naturalistic representational surface far beyond what at first appears.

Again, the Finding of the Savior in the Temple, serves as an example.  In it Hunt recorded with ethnological detail the clothing, faces and architectural details of early Jewish temple life.   At the same time the painting has as an overall theme, the confrontation of the old with the new.  In this particular case the old takes shape in the temple, the Old Law, and the rabbis and priests who lead the worship and study there; the new is in the shape of the young Jesus, the New Law.  The rest of the figures in the painting, with only a couple of exceptions, represent possible responses when old ways face the incursion of new ways.  Thus, the whole painting at first appears as a beautifully rendered scene in an exotic setting.  But myriad details in the painting itself push the level of meaning up, up, up, up until the whole becomes a commentary on Jesus and the rabbis, the confrontation between Christianity and Judaism,  the confrontation of old ways with new ways, the capacity of us all to absorb change.

Based on response so far to this exhibition, I would say the PRB in general and Hunt in particular delivered on their grand ambitions; they have created art with the power to move our hearts.

Al Franken wins election to the US Senate.

Summer                          Waxing Summer Moon

Al Franken wins election to the US Senate.  Boy, these election returns took a really, really long time to come in.  The election was in November of last year and today is the last day of June.  We have gone through Samhain, Winter, Imbolc, Spring, Beltane and into Summer while waiting on this decision.  Finally.

He was not my favorite, his politics and his manner jarring to me.  Norm Coleman was certainly not my favorite.  Still, Franken is a Democrat and he will caucus with the Democrats.  He may have provided the necessary vote to pass cap and trade.

I went into the museum today for a confab with other docents touring the pre-Raph show.  So much there, so much.  Only scratched the surface have I.  Not yet ready me.  But soon.

A Friend Has Died

Summer                                Waxing Summer Moon

Gyatsho is dead.  According to this article I found on death in Tibetan Buddhism, he may still be in a liminal state hunting for a next birth place.  The process of hunting for an appropriate vehicle for the next life can take up to 49 days.

Gyatsho lived in exile, first from the mountain realm in which he grew up, Tibet, then in India at Dharamsala, the government in exile for Tibet where the Dali Lama lives.  He served the Dali Lama directly as founder and maintainer of a Tibetan library which kept Buddhist texts, thangka paintings and also preserved the various crafts needed to sustain Tibetan culture away from the home land.

These last few years he lived in Minnesota, part of the intentional diaspora of Tibetans sent out to spread the Tibetan community around the world.

Below his obituary is a brief explanation of death according to Tibetan Buddhist thought.

Here is his obituary from a Tibetan Buddhist website:  (picture–His Holiness the Dalai Lama inspecting the Library’s construction plans with former director of LTWA Mr Gyatso Tsering (Left) (Photo: Tibet.net/file)

Obituary: Gyatsho Tshering, Eminent Scholar of Tibetan Studies
Phayul

[Monday, June 29, 2009 12:17]
by Bhuchung K. Tsering

Gyatsho Tshering, former director of the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives and a respected scholar, passed away on June 25, 2009 at a hospital in Minneapolis, MN, after a brief illness. He was 73.

Born in 1936 in Sikkim to Lobsang Lama and Nyima Dolma, he finished his college education from the University of Calcutta. Following his studies, Ku-ngo Gyatsho la worked in the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Home Affairs of the Government of India, and had served at the Indian Mission in Lhasa. He also served in the Government of Sikkim.

He joined the service of the Central Tibetan Administration in 1963 and worked in various departments until his retirement in the late 1990s. He served in the publications and translation department in 1965. In 1966 he was transferred to the Foreign Department and in 1967 to the Department of Religion and Culture. During his stint there he was a member of the entourage of H.H. the Dalai Lama during his first trip to Japan and Thailand. Subsequently he was promoted as a Secretary in the Department and later as Assistant Kalon. In 1972, he became the acting Director of the newly established the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives (LTWA) until the appointment of Prof. Thubten Jigme Norbu as the Director in June of that year. He was appointed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama as the new Director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in 1974 and served in that capacity from March 1, 1974 until his retirement. Following his retirement he joined his wife, Namgyal Dolma, in the United States and they settled in Minneapolis, MN.

He was an unassuming individual who shunned publicity, but was totally dedicated to his work. He came to serve the Tibetan community during those years when there was a dearth of educated Tibetans with adequate knowledge of the English language or exposure to the world. His most significant contribution would be the development of LTWA as the pre-eminent center for Tibetan studies internationally. He nurtured several Tibetans in the field of Tibetan studies at the LTWA. Also, it may not be incorrect to say that almost all of the Tibetologists serving in various research institutes and universities throughout the world currently have had some educational stint at the LTWA during his tenure there.

His simplicity and his readiness to be of assistance endeared him to all those he came in contact with. Personally, he has been a source of encouragement to me from the time I started working in Dharamsala in the early 1980s. I benefitted greatly from his advices.

As a subject of Sikkim and a citizen of India, Ku-ngo Gyatsho la had quite many work opportunities, often with more attractive compensation than the one he was getting at the LTWA. However, his reverence and loyalty to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his love of the Tibetan people made him reject all such job offers and to continue with his work in the Tibetan community.

He liked gardening and used to have a neat but small garden at his official residence at the LTWA.

He is survived by his wife Namgyal Dolma and daughter Yiga Lhamo.

Death in the Tibetan Buddhist Perspective

The Buddhist view is that each living being has a continuity or stream of consciousness that moves from one life to the next. Each being has had countless previous lives and will continue to be reborn again and again without control unless he/she develops his/her mind to the point where, like the yogis mentioned above, he/she gains control over this process. When the stream of consciousness or mind moves from one life to the next it brings with it the karmic imprints or potentialities from previous lives. Karma literally means “action”, and all of the actions of body, speech and mind leave an imprint on the mind-stream. These karmas can be negative, positive or neutral, depending on the action. They can ripen at any time in the future, whenever conditions are suitable. These karmic seeds or imprints are never lost.

At the time of death (clear light stage) the consciousness (very subtle mind) leaves the body and the person takes the body of an intermediate state being. They are in the form that they will take in their next life (some texts say the previous life), but in a subtle rather than a gross form. As mentioned previously, it can take up to forty-nine days to find a suitable place of rebirth. This rebirth is propelled by karma and is uncontrolled. In effect the karma of the intermediate state being matches that of its future parents. The intermediate state being has the illusory appearance of its future parents copulating. It is drawn to this place by the force of attraction to its parent of the opposite sex, and it is this desire that causes the consciousness of the intermediate state being to enter the fertilized ovum. This happens at or near the time of conception and the new life has begun.

One will not necessarily be reborn as a human being. Buddhists describe six realms of existence that one can be reborn into, these being the hell realms, the preta (hungry ghost) realm, the animal realm, the human realm, the jealous god (asura) realm and the god (sura) realms. One’s experience in these situations can range from intense suffering in the hell realms to unimaginable pleasures in the god realms. But all of these levels of existence are regarded as unsatisfactory by the spiritual practitioner because no matter how high one goes within this cyclic existence, one may one day fall down again to the lower realms of existence

The Grandchildren Are In The House

Summer                                      Waxing Summer Moon

Grandpas Bill Schmidt, Scott Simpson and Frank Broderick (Woolly Mammoths all) prepared me for the wonder of grandchildren.  They were spot on.  Ruth came in last night and said, “Hi, Grandpop!”  She had me at coming through the door.  Gabe got transferred from Dad to me soon after Jon came in the house.  Gabe looked up and gave me one of his trademark smiles, Happy to see you Grandpop.  That’s what I heard, though Gabe’s 1 year plus mouth formed no words.

Herschel, their 6 year old German Shorthair, recently diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma, bounded in as if he had no stinking terminal illness.  He proceeded to pick up a small Ruthie sandal and run from one end of the house to the other with it in  his mouth.  This is Herschel’s way of signaling anxiety.

The Olsons stopped to see the Johnsons in Nevada, Iowa.  Zelma Johnson, Jon’s grandma, still lives in this small Iowa town where Kate and her sisters grew up.  Due to estrangement from David, Jon’s father, Jon had not seen his grandma in a long time.  Jen got to meet Zelma and Zelma got to meet her great-grandchildren, Gabe and Ruth.  David and Kate were high school sweethearts.

Kate got two cloth bags full of kiddy stuff at the dollar store.  Ruth opened her hers and took out each item and showed it to me, exclaiming happily as only small children can.  Retaining the  young child’s sense of of awe and wonder at simple things is a goal worth keeping at the forefront of our maturity.  Who needs a Lexus when she has a bubble maker?  Who needs a fancy house when there’s plenty of chalk to draw on the sidewalk?  Who needs fine clothes when a small electric fan with lights can entrance you?

These visits, back and forth, them here, us there are critical to family cohesion.  They are why I still travel to Indiana and Texas for family reunions.  As Grandpa Frank put it, “You don’t have a family if you never see each other.”  True.

Grandchildren on the way

Summer                  Waxing Summer Moon

Grandchildren.  Those living links to the future who know us and whom we know.  In my case Ruth and Gabe.  Three years old and one year old.  They are on their way here right now, probably someway in the Twin Cities.

Grandma Ellis, Jennie, was a school teacher.  I knew her a bit.  I liked her.  She understood young boys.  I have three memories associated with a visit I made to her house in Oklahoma City when I was 9 or 10.  In the first I took apart a clock Grandma no longer wanted.  She realized I wanted to know how it worked.  Later I tried to knock wasps out of the air with a bug bomb.  In my mind it was a dogfight, fighter to fighter.  If so, I got tagged and plummeted to earth with a huge swollen left hand.  The last memory involved a sinkhole that appeared in the alley behind grandma’s house.  It was big enough to hold a car.

What this means to me, these memories as central to my experience of my grandmother, involves the humility to realize my grandchildren may not remember me for who I am or what I have done, but for what happened when they visit.  Do I accept it and recognize the experience, validate it?  My grandma Ellis did.

I’ve written elsewhere about my namesake, grandpa Charlie Keaton.  He rode the rail at the Derby every year and loved horses and harness racing, too. Again, I remember him making syrup from water and sugar.  He also cooled his coffee in a saucer and drank from the saucer.  He wore green underwear with a flap in the back.  Those are my memories of grandpa.

Grandma Keaton, Mable, was a different story.  Either she suffered from bi-polar disorder like most of her children or she suffered some mental problem associated with child birth.  I remember her as a shuffling, almost mute older person.  Within in our family lore she famously fed a 13 year old growing boy half a weinie and two tablespoons of baked beans for lunch one summer during an extended visit.

Thus, my grandparent memories are thin soup, memory wise, though as the oldest in our family at least I have some memories where my brother and sister have few if any.