AncienTrails

This Is Brigit’s Time!

3  65% 20%  0mph NE  bar30.22 falls windchill3 Winter

             Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

Tomorrow is the Celtic holy day Imbolc, a cross quarter holiday marking the turn from winter toward spring.  The Catholic’s used to call this day Candlemas.  All the Candles to be used in the home for the coming year were brought into the church and blessed.  And no wonder. Here’s a sentence from the online Catholic Encyclopedia:

“We need not shrink from admitting that candles, like incenseand lustral water, were commonly employed in pagan worship and in the rites paid to the dead. But the Church from a very early period took them into her service, just as she adopted many other things indifferent in themselves, which seemed proper to enhance the splendour of religious ceremonial.”

It was a Catholic custom to take into itself certain pagan customs and holy days and consecrate them, like candles, to a Christian purpose.  Some pagans have seen this as arrogant and typical of a patriarchally organized church while others have taken advantage of this and continued to conduct their own faith tradition’s ritual under the colors of the church.  The manipulating has gone both ways.  Voodoo is a good example as are many Celtic Catholic traditions, especially concerning rites for the dead. 

In the instance of candlemas the Celtic observation of Imbolc, which focuses on the triple goddess Brigit, she of the eternal fire tended in her name at Kildare, had a fire emphasis and its absorption by the Church was not hard.  The good news is that reclaiming the holiday is not hard either.  I light a white pillar candle and let it burn all day for Brigit, the goddess of the smithy, the hearth, and poetry.  She is the Celtic goddess of creativity, be it in the arts or in the domestic realms.

This is also the feast of lambing, that of the young sheep still in the belly–Imbolc–but about to be born.  This important event insured meat and wool in the next year and brought milk back to the diet with the quickening of the ewes.

I take time on Imbolc to consider what things are in my belly, waiting for birth into the new year of my life.  I’ll let you know about those thoughts tomorrow.

Joseph and the System

12  48%  17% 2mph E  bar30.35 steep fall windchill9  Winter

Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

Joseph called.  The Breckenridge Ski Medical Clinic charged him $2,000 for his ambulance ride and emergency care after his broken femur now two years ago.  The bill has bounced around from his insurance provided to the clinic to debt collectors with various promises, threats and general hassle.  The debt collector, with whom he is by now friends!, sympathized with him.  He’s gotta call everybody back and make this happen.  The damn insurance companies, just hanging onto money to arbitrage every last nickel.  We need single payer health insurance to cut out all these entities:  billing departments, coding, debt collectors so honest folks and dishonest folks can get the health care they need.  Damn it!

Temps are on the rise and this time they look likely to stay somewhat up for the forseeable future.  Since I’ve had a long bout of stay at home time, I’ve not cared too much, but it will be good for others.

Kate and I had our family business meeting.  We look over our investments and our cash accounts, post our payments and deposits to balance the checkbook, discuss upcoming financial matters, check calendars and manage other things, like the upcoming trip to Hawai’i.  It’s taken us awhile to get this whole financial management clear and clean, but it is now and it feels great.  The money’s there for retirement; we have enough to donate money and give gifts, pay our bills and let us travel some.  Makes the whole life business a good deal simpler.

Off for errands then back to workout.

Watch My Heartbeats

1  64%  17%  3mph NNE bar30.47 waindchill-3 Winter

          Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

A light snow has begun to fall though we don’t have snow in the forecast.  A good three inches of snow would be good about now.  A freshening.

Yesterday evening I had begun to feel adrift, purposeless.  This sometimes happens to me after a productive time, when I slow down the engine keeps racing for a while.  Need one of those fans that cools the engine after the ignition’s turned off.

This morning, rested and fed, I know I have plenty to do.  There’s always that novel to write and stories to market.  The vegetable planning needs to move forward a few more steps.  I can always study Chinese characters, read Taoism or plow into one of the Asian art books I have.

Something I need to do sooner is prepare an hour’s worth of presentation for the Woolly Retreat next week, though I suppose I could do that during my day at Dwelling in the Woods ahead of the others. 

This morning Kate and I have a family business meeting, an every Thursday thing, and I have some errands to run.  Meds and a new battery for my Polartech watch.  The watch gives me my heartbeat during aerobic workouts, hard to do them without it.

What Do Holsteins, Large White Pigs, Rhode Island Reds and Leghorns Have in Common?

-8  62%  18%  0mph WWN bar30.40 steep rise  windchill-8  Winter

            Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

Just read about two strange consquences of global climate change.  The first is that land preserved by conservation organizations for protection of certain wildlife species may, probably will in many cases, no longer support the protected species.  This means that wildlife preservation, always a moving target to some degree anyhow, will have to become even more fluid and agile. 

The second lies in the global spread of particular species of livestock.  The example in a New York Times article was the spread of the Holstein, a milk making wonder.  In Uganda where the native Ankoles cattle have adapted themselves to tropical diseases and tropical climate for millennia Holsteins have begun to replace them, largely through interbreeding.  Why?  Because the Holstein produces an incredible amount of milk, up to 20 to 30 more than the Ankoles in  a comparable setting.  What’s the problem?  Holstein’s don’t like heat.  Their margin of error in a climate to which they have not adapted is small.   Also, since they don’t have natural immunities to  tropical diseases, their care can be expensive. 

Here’s another dimension of the problem, a shallower and shallower gene pool, this thanks to the wonder of insemination.  Apparently Chief and Elevation, two Holsteins bulls, have their genetic material in all of today’s Holstein’s.  That’s right.  Two bulls.  There are equally narrow gene lines in the Large White Pig, and the Leghorn and Rhode Island Red chickens.  Why is this a problem?  A lot of the world’s meat, eggs, and milk come from these four animals.  These four.  The world. 

Something to chew on with your warm glass of Holstein milk before bed time.

Just read a suggestion to list twelve benefits to myself from maintaining a healthy weight:

1.  Reduce exposure to lifestyle diseases like type II diabetes and heart complications

2. Feel better about my body

3.  Fit into all those clothes I have hanging in the closet

4.  Buttress my sense of my self as someone who gets things done

5.  Buttress my sense of my self as able to change

6.  Increase my aerobic fitness by allowing me to work harder not longer

7.  Set a good example for our children and grandchildren

8.  Increase the likelihood that I will see all of my grandchildren and get to know them

9.  Support my general physical fitness which benefits gardening

10. Reinforce my ongoing physical fitness workouts to increase agility, strength and balance

11. Increase my capacity to bounce back from illness

12. Reinforce my sense of self discipline

 A good idea.  Now I’ve got to print this out and carry it with me to Hawai’i

The Confederate States of America

-7  57%  17%  0mph WWN bar30.33  steep rise windchill-7  Winter

             Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

Watched a strange and disturbing, but also funny, movie on the Independent Film Channel, “The Confederate States of America.”   Produced by Spike Lee this is a satirical take on American history if the south had won the Civil War.  I’ve not read much alternate history and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a movie version of alternate history either.  This movie manages to do several things at once.  It does show the value of the North having won the Civil War.  At the same time it shows that much of our post-civil war history does have its roots in slavery.  For example, the urban riots of the sixties have a parallel reality in this movie as slave rebellions.  During the rise of Hitler the movie positions the US as the friend of Hitler and the Nazis since both have a race based science at the heart of their politics.

Made for a fictional TV broadcast, this movie also has faux commercials for products like Niggerhair Tobacco, Sambo Motor Oil, and Darkie Toothpaste.  At the end the movie documents these as real American products (Niggerhair was made in Milwaukee.) and their origins.  The movie worked for me.  It reminded me of where we are and how much further we still have to go.  Made me think of the conversation the Woolly Mammoths had at Paul Stricklands, vis a vis MLK day.

Gulf Streams Stops

-3  44% 17% 1mph WSW bar30.24 rises windchill-5  Winter

                 Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

The day continues cold.  We reached -15.8 this morning at 6:24AM.  Since then, we’ve gained about twelve degrees. The windchill all day has been brutal. 

Kate finished cushions for the window seat in the kitchen.  I put Hilo on it while it was on Kate’s worktable to see if she would like it.  She seemed nervous.

This week I’ve slept like a rock.  An odd phrase, but apt in the nothing till morning meaning I intend here.    

Yesterday I finished Fifty Degrees, the second in Kim Stanley Robinson’s eco-thriller/near future sci-fi trilogy which begins with Forty Days of Rain and ends with Sixty Days and Counting. His Mars trilogy is better as science fiction; it’s wonderful; but, this trilogy strikes closer to home and imagines a time period when we pass some of the tipping points talked about in the news these days.  The Gulf Stream stops because the thermohaline barrier breaches.  Weather patterns swing wildly from one extreme to the other.  The West Anarctic Ice Shelf begins to leave land and drift into the ocean, causing several centimeters of sea level rise. 

The book imagines a loose team of scientists, policy wonks and politicians who in their various spheres create solutions and fight to realize them before the worst becomes worse.  There is also some Buddhist material, too.  The characters are interesting and make the books worth reading, as was true of the Mars trilogy.  Robinson imagines, however, a science  triumphant, even dominant which I find suspicious.  It was industrialists and technocrats who got us in this mess, with our individual complicity, and to imagine that rationalism, their primary tool, will dig us out seems suspect at the core.

The facet of it that rings true to me is the paradigmatically American approach of, keep trying until solutions come.  That the scientific will play a necessary and perhaps even lead role I don’t question.  I just don’t want an approach that leaves aside the many individual decision makers, those of us in our cars and at home with our dishwashers.  This is science-fiction, not political-fiction, or a novel of manners (though it has some aspects of this genre), so the focus is congruent, yet I want to see us stretch all the way out for solutions.

The Mobius Strip of Consciousness

-10  48%  18%  2mph WWS bar30.16 rises windchill-12  Winter

             Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

Ordered a teaching company course on the brain.  I hope this will jump start a dive into the small library of neuroscience books I’ve purchase over the last few years.  The whole brain/mind debate fascinates me, as did the physiology of the brain, that is, just what is in the brain and what function does it have?  Another question of deep interest to me is the gathering and processing of sensory data.  How does it happen?  What does it mean for our connection to the apparent world beyond our senses?  (a philosophical question)

The most important question is that of the mind.  Is it a function of the brain only?  Or, does the mind arise as a thing sui generis?  A small group of thinkers on this problem call themselves the Mysterians.  They believe the problem can never be solved.  Since the brain/mind question involves a human organ and the defining human quality investigating themselves, it may be an endless loop, a mobius strip of a problem with no clear beginning and no clear end.

Kate has long ago burnt out on the corporate medical context in which she practices.  It’s attention to insurance codes and revenue capture.  It’s attention to happy talk and consumer satisfaction.  It’s routinization and cook-booking of medical practice.  The speed-ups which demand 5-6 patients an hour with no distinction for the levels of complexity.  The random and chaotic applications of accounting esoterics to physician compensation and benefits.  And on and on. 

She wants to retire.  I look forward to her retirement, too.

Blue Stretching Away and Away

-2  52%  21%  7mph WNW bar29.58 steady  windchill-9

                Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

I have passed into that curious liminal state before a longer trip.  The threads that hold me here release, one at a time.  Newspaper.  Mail.  Obligations at the Art Institute.  Dogs.  Obligations I can fulfill that will arise soon after I get back.  Notifying the neighbors.  The police.  Tickets.  Reservations.  Car rental.  Those are done or have a schedule.  At some point the attachment to this weather, this season, this place and its changes over the next four weeks will slip their knots and come unmoored.  

There is not only release.  There is also memory and anticipation.  That first night in Hawai’i, spent, improbably, at the Hawai’i Prince Hotel in Honolulu due to a late arriving flight from the mainland.  The curious Japanese appointments in the room.  Looking out that first morning to Waikiki beach.  The blue stretching away and away while white rollers hit a sandy beach. The palm trees.  All so other to a transplanted northerner. 

Exercise at 5AM, taking advantage of the cool before day break, walking on the wet beach sand, packed and unyielding.  Salt spray, ozone and suntan lotion, coconut oil still redolent from yesterday’s sun worshippers at their ritual obesiance.  Passing hotel after hotel, lounges closed, beach chairs chained together, patio cafe chairs turned up on their tables.  Onto to the common sidewalk, sweating.  The sun rays striking the apex of the sky long before light, as if Lady Liberty lifted her crown just behind the ancient volcanoes of Maui.  

Hikes up Haleakala.  One night up there well before sunrise with crescent moon low in the sky, breaking clouds scudding over its face.  The cold.

Dinners at Mama’s Fish House.  Ti leaves with rice and banana.  Fish caught that day, the fisherman’s name on the menu.  The windsurfers in their colorful rigs tempting fate on the sharp rocks.

Two times, both on Kauai, where I’ll spend two weeks this trip.  On a trail in the Waimea Canyon State Park.  I followed a trail, noticed it thinned out and got narrow, but I felt I could handle it.  Then, the rock and sand giving way, my hand grappling with a root, below me a 900 foot drop to a rocky canyon floor.   It was not the trail.  I had missed it.

The other time, on the Kalalau trail that winds along the Napali Coast.  Steep, rugged.  Up and down with slick rocks.  I explored a bit, going back up one canyon all the way to the wall, where the waterfall dropped from the canyon rim–the same distance I would have fallen–and splashed into a pool of water.  On the way back, I’d been on the trail 5 or 6 hours, I sat down, exhausted, drinking.  “Are you o.k.?” a kind woman asked, “I thought you might be having a heart attack.” 

Papaya.  The sunrise and the sunset.  Gentle winds.  A temperature which fits the human body.  More, so many more.  

All these memories begin to wend their way across the ocean, over the mountains and plains to ensare me as I sit here in the middle of the North American Continent waiting for the plane.

The Scent of Spring

2  56%  22%  6mph W bar 29.54  steep rise windchill-5

                Last Quarter of the Winter Moon

Kate brought me a spray of yellow tulips two days ago.  They have opened now and have the scent of spring.

We’re seeking another dog, looking at Irish Wolfhound and  Scottish Deerhound rescues on the internet.  We won’t do anything until we get back from Hawai’i, but both of us have a sense of incompleteness in our family without a big dog.  I would like a mix with a breed a bit more long lived, since we still grieve the loss of each one of our eight Wolfhounds.  Grief underlines the bond developed with these dogs and, in a paradox, draws us back towards them in direct proportion to our sorrow. 

Getting ready.  I have the portable DVD player, which I’ve never used, plugged in and charging the battery.  I do have a fix it role, but it entails electronics, not internal combustion engines.  Those I manage through repair services, but often the electronic stuff I can fix myself.  Go figure.  A partial credential for Geekworld.

Sat down the other day and read a Taoism lesson.  As I read, I realized a strange feeling had crept over me.  It was contentment.  In fact, I feel it now.  I had, for many years, a knot, a frissón of unease lodged in the lower left of my gut.  Even when I felt otherwise comfortable, a gut check would reveal a free floating angst speaking to me, soma telling psyche all is not yet right.  Right now, it’s gone.

A Sacrament From Mother Earth

35  91%  23%  2mph ESE bar29.06 steady windchill34  Winter

              Last Quarter of the Winter Moon

Something I’ve thought about for a while.

                                                   A Sacrament

water from our well, bread from local grain and cheese from Minnesota, candles

Light candle(s).

Say to all:  See this light, not as symbol, but as energy brought to us by fire from the sky and fire from deep beneath the earth.  By the light of this fire we see this water, this bread, this cheese.

On the table or altar have the pitcher, a cup, a plate with bread not broken and cheese not broken

Water in an earthenware pitcher. Pour into a single cup.

To each person as they take the cup:  take this and drink it, not as symbol, but as substance, the necessary liquid of all life as blood is the necessary liquid in our body.

Break the bread and hand pieces to each person

Say to all:  Eat this bread, not as symbol, but as substance, the marriage of earth and sun which gives birth to grain.

Break the cheese and hand pieces to each person

Eat this cheese as a gift from one mammal to another, food which sustains us.

 Say to all:  This water, this bread, this cheese transforms itself even now into your body, one link in the sacred chain stretching back to the one-celled organism, our common ancestor, and forward to our descendants, who may be as different from us as we are from that one cell.  This is a miracle.

Go now in peace.