AncienTrails

Ancientrails Goes Dark

57  bar falls 29.59  0mpn N dew-point 56  Beltane, cloudy and misty

                   Waning Crescent of the Hare Moon

Just a quick reminder note that Ancientrails will go dark for almost a week during my Colorado trip.  I head out in just a few minutes, once more down 35, then to 80 and finally to 70. 

Look forward to connecting with you all when I get back. (BTW  Almost 350 people a day check in on Ancientrails according to the last count.)

Their Lawlessness Got out of Hand

57  bar steep fall 29.94  7mph  ENE dew-point 52  Beltane, cloudy and cool

                       Last Quarter of the Hare Moon

Can this possibly mean what it says?  “While cities are hot spots for global warming, study finds people in them emit fewer gases.”  Washington Post, 5/29/2008   In this same vein I watched part of a National Geographic Program on an outlaw biker gang, the Mongols.  The narrator made this surprising statement, “Their lawlessness got out of hand.”  Hmmm.

When I travel by car, I spend more time picking reading material, movies and audiobooks than I do clothing.  This will not surprise some of you who know my fashion sense, late sixties college student unregenerate, yet it always surprises me. 

Each trip has a theme.  Don’t know when that started, but it helps me make decisions on the road and to deepen the experience.  This trip to Denver, in addition to the obvious theme of tribal initiation (the bris), nature writing and trees will occupy my time.  Not hard to figure out where this came from.

My first nights stay is at the Arbor Day Foundation in Nebraska City, Nebraska.  I’m taking along a book I bought awhile back called Arboretum America.  It tells the story of trees in the history of the US.  Also a book of nature writing.

Years of Change

58  bar falls 30.01 0mph SW dew-point 52  Beltane, cloudy and cool

                  Last Quarter of the Hare Moon

RJ Devick has his offices at 169 and 394, a tall building, 20 stories, for the burbs.  It has a glass curtain wall and looks like the generic office building.  We go out to see RJ once a year.  At those  meetings we examine our portfolio and its performance–fine–any changes in our financial situation, all positive.  More money in savings.  Kate’s income stayed up rather than decline as we had imagined when she made the shift to managed care.  Kate is within 2 years of retirement.  2 years.

These are years of change, not so much in the purpose of our lives, as in the external actions related to it.  Kate will stop working at Allina, but will keep her license up and volunteer more.  Her change is my change, of course, as the stay at home spouse.  She will enter the homeworld full time and we will have to adjust to that.  I don’t anticipate any major issues.

I leave tomorrow morning for Denver and since Kate uses the laptop for her work, I will not be posting for the next week.  Look for a trip summary next Thursday or Friday.

The Most Ancient Trail of All

54  bar falls 30.06  1mph NE  dew-point 51  Beltane, cloudy and drizzly

                   Last Quarter of the Hare Moon

A change has begun to creep over the Woolly Mammoths.  It is at least late fall for us.  One of us had an episode of Bell’s Palsy over the weekend.  He first thought, as I would have, stroke.  The effects lingered into this week. 

Late last night came news of a Woolly spouse.  Cancer of the utereus.  Adenocarcinoma.  A hopeful prognosis if tests next week find it in an early stage.  Even so.   

Frank’s heart attack before he came to the Woolly’s and his bypass surgery after have kept medical issues in front of us, yes, but these are new.  Fresh.  Signals that we have begun to age.  The fact is that such matters are no longer unusual in our period of life.  While still not common, they will begin to pop with increasing incidence until, one by one, this herd of Woolly Mammoths and their spouses follow those of the Ice Age on that most ancient trail of all.

On a cloudy, cool day with a light rain falling this news could be depressing, but I find it just so.  These matters are as key to our developmental age as were graduations in our 20’s and weddings in our late 20’s and early 30’s.  Like those earlier rites of passage, the action is not in the event itself, but in our reaction to it over time. (to paraphrase Saul Alinsky)

I spent an hour and half outside today, planting and transplanting.  Cloudy, cool, drizzly.  Perfect for that work.  Blue fescue, Maiden Grass, cucumbers, watermelon, squash and morning glories will each enjoy the rain on their first day in their new locations.  The daylily transplant project was part of this and continues, in dribs and drabs, as it will until we finish it, probably some time in July. 

We go out to see RJ Devick, our financial planner/money manager, today.  These situations become more and more pertinent as Kate nears retirment age and I  enter that time when eligibility for both pension and social security are upon me.  Considering these matters thoughtfully are also part of our development period.  We are at the cusp of a major change in our lives.

The Generator Failed

60  bar falls 30.16 0mph NW dew-point 36  Beltane, twilight

              Last Quarter of the Hare Moon 

 This story grabbed me.  See below it to see why.

“MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - A woman who spent nearly 60 years of her life in an iron lung after being diagnosed with polio as a child died Wednesday after a power failure shut down the machine that kept her breathing, her family said. Dianne Odell, 61, had been confined to the 7-foot-long machine since she was stricken by polio at 3 years old.

Family members were unable to get an emergency generator working for the iron lung after a power failure knocked out electricity to the Odell family’s residence near Jackson, about 80 miles northeast of Memphis, brother-in-law Will Beyer said.

“We did everything we could do but we couldn’t keep her breathing,” said Beyer, who was called to the home shortly after the power failed. “Dianne had gotten a lot weaker over the past several months and she just didn’t have the strength to keep going.”

Capt. Jerry Elston of the Madison County Sheriff’s Department said emergency crews were called to the scene, but could do little to help.

Odell was afflicted with “bulbo-spinal” polio three years before a polio vaccine was discovered and largely stopped the spread of the crippling childhood disease.”

 I learned a couple of years ago that I spent some time in an iron lung during my episode with bulbar polio.  It was a shock to me.   Paralysis struck my left side and lasted for about a year.  I recall one event in an emergency room or an operating room, lights above my body, people in white working on me.  I saw all this from a spot up near the ceiling.  I know this sounds weird, but the memory has permanent residence in me.  The remarkable part is that no one from the family was in this  room.  Just me.  And the medical team.

Seeing this story reminds me of all the others, like me, who were victims of the post-war polio epidemic.  Most of us made it through with little physical aftermath, but some died.  Some still wear braces.  Some required breathing support of one kind or another for their entire life.  It all seems so long ago, but this woman was exactly my age. 

I wrote some today on Superior Wolf, about 1,500 words.  Moving forward.

Vanished

67  bar falls 30.34 1mph WSW dew-point 29  Beltane, sunny

                    Last Quarter Hare Moon

The piles are no more.  One more phase’s detritus has gone into the trash bin or file folder or magazine holders.  It feels good to have them gone, a relief.  Financial information up to date.  Philosophy News, SF Bulletin, Parabola, Scientific American and Wired are in places where I will read them now.  Hmmm.  Guess the upstairs on the kitchen table pile remains.  Gotta work on that.  But not now.  It’s of more recent vintage.

Sleepy.  Nap time.  Then some outdoor work and some more writing on Superior Wolf.  Had a good idea yesterday that I will implement today.  It’s an old idea, in a way the first idea for this novel.  It has energy.  Which is good.

Hey, I’ve Got Pictures of My Grandkids! Wanna See?

59  bar steady  30.37  2mph W dew-point 41 Beltane, cloudy

                    Last Quarter Hare Moon 

“Mythology is what we call someone else’s religion.” - Joseph Campbell

“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind it only the slime of bureaucracy.” - Franz Kafka

These two quotes have a hidden relationship.  Max Weber, a famous sociologist, author of among other books, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, has a famous definition of bureaucracy. (well, famous among those who study sociology anyhow)  It is:  Bureaucracy is the rationalization of charisma.  In a nutshell he contends that all organizations grow from a charismatic founder think Jesus, the Buddha, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs. 

Over time the founders charisma attracts followers. As the followers grow in numbers, some means of keeping the movement alive begins to take shape.  Leaders come into being, they have organizational units for which they are responsible.  At first this is organic and unplanned, just the consequence of having larger numbers of people gathered around the same person.  Later, the charisma of the founder begins to fade, especially after their death.  Then, you get the Roman Catholic church and later Protestantism.  You get the Ford Motor Company in near bankruptcy.  You get a Microsoft that is so large it lumbers along and produces products like Vista.  

Then, as Kafka notes, the revolution evaporates and has left behind only the slime of bureaucracy.

The grandkids, big sister Ruth and little brother Gabe:

A Summer of Red, White and Blue

51  bar steady  30.32 3mph NE  dew-point 33  Beltane, cloudy and cool

                      Last Quarter of the Hare Moon

45 degrees this morning.  A low of 36.6 last night.  That’s 36 degrees.  I know this is up north, but.  I mean.

Pile reduction morning.  When I focus on one thing, I tend to allow others to collect in piles.  If this goes on for awhile, as it did when I was in the docent program, the task of clearing up the piles can be daunting.  When May began, I began a focus on yard work:  landscaping, removing buckthorn, planting, cleaning up from the fall, amending the soil.  It’s now the end of May and I have some piles accumulated.  Today and tomorrow I will focus on them.

I have a list.  I’m checking it twice.  Gonna find out when I’ve been naughty or nice–in an organizational sense.  As always, it will depend on where you look.  Garden-nice.  Filing-naughty.

Kate and I had our memorial day meal this noon.  Shrimp on the barbie, pasta plus her sauce, peaches with cottage cheese.  We spent a few minutes talking about the old days in a small town.  In particular the pervasiveness of patriotic holidays like Memorial Day and July 4th.  In Alexandria and Nevada you couldn’t miss Memorial Day or July 4th.  There were parades, decorations, special speeches and events.  In addition of course our childhoods were in the days not long after the end of World War II and immediately during and after the Korean War.  The cold war also kept patriotism an upfront matter.

I remember the American Legion color guards with hairy bellies sticking out from shirts that fit 30 years and 50 pounds ago.  And the tanks.  They left tread marks in the asphalt softened by summer temperatures.  The marching bands.  The wave.  Lots and lots of flags. 

Mom and Dad were both vets, which made our family a bit unusual, at least in the fifties.  My sibs and I skipped the whole military thing, but now Joseph is in the Air Force.  His experience is more normative than ours.  Strange.

Sensuality Awakened in a Hindu Temple

47  bar steep rise 30.04 6mph N dew-point 38  Beltane

            Waning Gibbous Hare Moon

There are frost warnings not 75 miles north of us.  Frost.  On Memorial Day.  OMG.

Kate came home after a busy holiday clinic, today and yesterday were both very busy.  I cooked walleye, pasta with morels I found in our woods with a sauce Kate made earlier and asparagus.  We ate it while watching Passage to India.  This is an old movie, so you probably saw it long before I did, but it’s a stunner visually.  David Lean and Merchant Ivory, goes without saying.  The plot worked well in exposing the basic contradictions in the colonial exploitation of India by the British Raj.  The major plot point, however, an incident in the caves of Marabara still eludes me. 

It seems that Adela, played by Judy Davis, awakened to her sensuality while visiting a Hindu temple in ruins.  It seems further that her on again/off again marriage to the City Magistrate created a level of cognitive dissonance with this awakened sensuality.   It all came to a head when she fled a wonderful day organized by a Muslim doctor.  She made an accusation of attempted rape, or, was manipulated into making one.  Then she recanted.  Puzzling.

Kate’s off to bed.  I plan to finish Lush Life by Richard Price tonight.  A wonderful novel in many ways, though it is so thick in its content that I become weary of it and need a rest.  It is a tour de force of urban conflict, parsed out on the shockwaves of a brutal murder on the lower east side.  If you want to read a genuine American voice on a quintessential American topic, I recommend it.

No writing by me yesterday or today on Superior Wolf.  In a bit of a general funk, the dream surfacing some of it.  Not sure where it’s going, doesn’t seem so oppressive tonight.

First Ever Image of Final Descent of Another Spacecraft on Its Way to Another Planetary Body!

59  bar steep rise 29.87  5mph NW dew-point 58 Beltane, cloudy

Waning Gibbous Hare Moon

A pleasant hour spent nailing down reservations for my trip to Denver for Gabe’s Bris and to Maxwell AFB for Joseph’s graduation.  I booked a night at the Arbor Day Foundations tree farm outside Nebraska City, Nebraska about 50 miles south of Omaha.  Since I’m in the midst of several different tree related projects, I figured some time there would be good.  After I stay there, I’ll head up to the S.A.C. museum that Jon discovered on his first trip to Denver.  This time I’ll look for graduation gifts for Joseph.

Going down to see Joseph I’ve book a B&B, the Plantation House Inn in Prattville, Alabama for three nights.  Afterward, I’ll head up to Gettsybury where I’ll spend a couple of nights in the Passages Inn in downtown Gettysburg.  The Civil War/US history obsession that strikes me each summer has come on full force.  This trip will see Joseph through a rite of passage and visit sites related to the Civil War.  Someday I want to visit Revolutionary War sites, too.

A nap gave me a better perspective on reality. Onto the treadmill to finish “Harsh Times,” a bleak movie with Christian Bale as an Iraq war vet, a Ranger, whose lifestyle keeps interfering with his desire for employment.

NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander can be seen parachuting down to Mars, in this image captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is the first time that a spacecraft has imaged the final descent of another spacecraft onto a planetary body.  Wow!