AncienTrails

A Quiet New Year

Winter                            Full Moon of Long Nights

We have gained back a few minutes since the Winter Solstice, so the New Year will arrive, as it does every year, with a bit more daylight than the grimmer days of mid-winter.

The neighbors have begun to shoot off fireworks.  They are a restrained lot for the most part, but when they perceive an excuse for celebration:  holiday, birthday, new year, they always bring out the fireworks.

(Methuselah Grove
The Methuselah Grove with the world’s oldest living things. The oldest living tree at 4,723 years, Methuselah, is not identified for its own protection.)

Kate and I have clinked glasses of champagne (her) and Fre (me), wished each other a happy new year and not shot off a single firecracker.  We did watch Jules and Julia, a middling movie in my judgment, though it had some interesting observations about cooking.  We also watched a great Nature program on the rise of the dog.  Apparently a Swedish geneticist has pinpointed eastern Asia as the origin of all dogs.

Kate’s neck has begun to bother her again this week and her left hip is now  worse than it was before the operation.  The back, though, has improved markedly.   A day at a time.

Well, a happy new year to you, whoever you are.  Back at you next year.

Good-Bye Herschel

Summer                         Waxing Green Corn Moon

Herschel died tonight.  He was a gentle and funny dog, given to picking up shoes and carrying them around the house whenever somebody new came inside.  He spent 5 of his last days here with us while Jon and Jen, Ruth and Gabe went to Chicago.  He had a great time running in the woods, catching mice, being part of our pack.

Dogs enter our lives in many different ways, but they stay there for one reason:  love.   Love and the mutuality it both creates and reflects, an interspecies intimacy so common as to be a cliche, explains the loss, the hole in our lives when a dog dies.

We share this experience with them, death from cancer or heart attack or old age.  We love them and when they die, we are sad.  Life at its very essence.

Merciless Sun

Waning Beltane                   Waning Dyan Moon

Lahaina town, an old whaling village and seat of the Hawai’ian monarchy during the reign of King Kamehameha, sits on the Pacific ocean facing the smaller island of Lana’i.  Lahaina means merciless sun; when gardening in June during the mid-day, Lahaina is not just a place but an experience.

At Summer Solstice the sun stands as high and shines it rays with as little angle as it ever has here at the 45th latitude, halfway between the equator and the North Pole.  The result is more BTU’s per square inch of bald head, exposed arm or bare leg.  The UV index today is 11 out of 16.

Deadheading today.  The blueberries got a mulch of sphagnum moss to help them retain moisture, cool the soil and keep the ph in the acid range.  Potatoes got their third mounding.  They will bloom in the next few days and new potatoes can be dug 2-3 weeks after that.  Various squash and melon mounds found themselves pruned down to three sturdy plants.

The dogs received a present today, a large plastic wading pool.  Now filled with cool water they can walk right in and sit right down, which Vega, the larger of our new puppies promptly did.  She also tried to bite the colorful fish and beach balls printed on the pools body.  Lack of success did not deter her, so she happily snapped into the water for a minute or so until growing bored.

New Dogs

Beltane                      Waning Dyan Moon

Something hinky with the 1&1 servers today. (my web host)  Couldn’t get on until late.  Back now.

I spent the morning and late afternoon working on an America’s tour for a group of design students at the College for the Visual Arts.  The theme came with some difficulty, but I decided on Essential Designs.  The notion is that art of the Americas focused on matters essential to the culture that produced them:  myth, rank, the natural world as a source of sustenance, protection and ritual.  The tour should be fun with students already engaged in the world of art.

Midday Kate and I went back out to Junior Lehman’s and picked up Cleo and Blue, the Irish Wolfhound/Walker Coyote Hound mixed breed I wrote about last week.  The ride back was tough for these two who had never ridden in a vehicle before, but we cleaned that up.

The introduction of new dogs to a pack always has its moments and today was no exception, but nobody got hurt.  It will take a bit of time for all parties to adjust, but we’ve done it before and are confident we can make this work.  Having new dogs is like having new plants, grandkids.  They are alive, vital and have their own way in the world.  That’s what makes having them in our lives exciting and fulfilling.

Pictures. Puppies and Plants.

Beltane                    Waxing Dyan Moon

Poppa (the big gray wolfhound, Guiness) and his children.  Our new pups are in this picture, but I can’t pick them out.

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The orchard early in its first growing season.  Currants in the foreground to the right, cherries and plums the trees in mid-ground.

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A potato eye view of its bed.

Puppies

Beltane                    Waxing Dyan Moon

Kate and I went out this afternoon to Loretto, near Corcoran.  This is a horsey part of the metro, but we wanted to look at dogs, specifically an Irish Wolfhound and Walker Coyote Hound mix.  The man who bred them, Julian Lehman, has the unusual occupation of master of the hunt.  That is, he trains both horses and fox hounds to ride after a scented lure.  He also rides with those who hire his services.  Can’t be many of those in Minnesota.

These dogs were, for us, perfect.  They retain Wolfhound features and personality, but will probably be about 2/3’s the size.  With the hybrid vigor of a mix and a smaller overall body we hope they will live longer.  We went for it, buying two litter mates, this time both bitches.  Our last two Wolfhounds, Tor and Orion, were unneutered and this caused problems for them and for us.  Our fault of course.

We won’t bring them home until after our trip to Indiana, but after that Blue and Cleo (their puppy names) will live with us.

When The Bell Tolls, It Tolls For Tor and Celt and Morgana…

Imbolc   Waning Wild Moon

Our Arcosanti bell has rung and rung today.  A north wind has blown in at speeds up to 24 mph.

Kate bought this bell quite a while ago on a trip to see her father.  When she brought it back, we had just experienced two Wolfhound deaths, I believe it was Celt and Scot.  I suggested we hang it and let it be a memorial bell for all of our dogs.  And so we did.

My day at the capitol yesterday wore me out.  I remember when I would go to the capitol and be there all day, sometimes until late in the night.  Geez.  It’s a long drive in to St. Paul, so I’m going to limit myself to one trip in a week for right now.  As the weather warms and the session gets more action oriented, I may go in more.

It’s important to be there from time to time, to take the pulse of the place myself for the Sierra Club blog.

The Daily Stuff

45  bar rises 30.04  0mph  NW  dew-point 41  sunrise 7:11  set 6:54

New Moon (Blood)

Our orchard installation is complete, except for the remainder of the bill, but that gets taken care of on Thursday.   Mulch covers all the area with the exception of the bare earth seeded with white clover.  We’ve taken one more step toward a more productive home.

The dogs do not understand the fencing I put up around the new orchard, but dogs running through the clover before it roots is not a good thing.  They’ll get back in there next spring.

Our neighbor lived through his suicide attempt.  He’s in the hospital now.  I hope he gets some intensive therapy and has someone who can equilibrate his meds.  This will probably be the new reality, friends and neighbors facing more and more serious health issues until they begin dying one by one.  Fewer weddings, more funerals.  The Great Wheel turns.

Joseph called tonight.  He got a chance to fly in a F-15 flight simulator.  It revved up his interest in flying and he may get his pilot’s license through a base-related aero club.  This Sunday he heads back to Maxwell for a course in how to be a Lieutenant.  This will be a much different experience than his first time there.

Certain Psychic Motors Spin Down

56  bar rises  30.02  0mph NEE dew-point 51  sunrise 6:10 sunset 8:27  Lughnasa

First Quarter of the Corn Moon   moonrise 1633 moonset 0040

Today was a strange day.  After I got up, I read the Sunday paper, most of it.  Came downstairs and wrote a post.  Wandered around aimless for a while.  Not wanting to do this or that.  I went outside, got the machete and cut down nettles, pulled a few weeds around the toddler trees, which look good, with one exception, a Norway with white scaled on the leader.  That was it.

Came back in and fed the dogs their late morning meal.  Watched the end of the Fugitive.  Kimbal still didn’t do it and he still gets the one-armed man in the end.  Movies provide certainty even if they claim to be about ambiguity, because the images remain the same from viewing to viewing.  Watching this movie made me restless, mildly guilty, as if I should be accomplishing something.

Back downstairs.  Computer stuff.  This and that.  Kate called.  We dialed up Skype and I saw her in Denver.  Gabe looked at my image intently, reading my face.  What could he think of the image at 5 months?  Nothing, I suppose.  An unmediated sensation, no computer screen, just my image looking at him looking at me.

Talked to Jon.  Ruth showed me her ponytail and said “I don’t want to do that.” which is the phrase of the week.

Humphrey seems to have caught her cancer early.  The oncologist gave her a good prognosis.

Jon’s plum tree has been vigorous, so Kate made jam.  Give Kate lemons and she will make lemonade.

His shoulder remains stiff, “Daddy needs a new shoulder,” Ruth said.  She also told Kate about the beach where there is sand, all unprompted.

Joseph called.  He’s had success at work with skills picked up as a facility manager in Breckenridge.  He’s helped repair equipment at fitness center and diagnosed and fixed the Captain’s light, “It needed a ballast.  I could tell because they’d changed the bulb.  I had my tools in the car.”  He’s now in charge of the slides all by himself.

He told me a little bit about SERE training:  Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape.

Here’s an explanation from this website:

The department also teaches the SERE Level-C training course to soldiers who are in a high- risk-of-capture category, which includes Special Forces, Rangers and aviators. The course is designed to give students the skill to survive and evade capture or, if captured, to resist interrogation or exploitation and plan their escape. The course includes a classroom phase, a field phase and a resistance training laboratory which simulates the environment of a prisoner-of-war compound.

In the resistance training simulated interrogation and torture can get intense.  Joseph said those who’ve been threw it say they would not want to go through it again, but that they learned a lot.  Hmmm.

Dog Genius, a program on the National Geographic channel, showed the associative learning skills dogs have and the astonishing fact (to evolutionary psychologists–and to me) that dogs can make inferences.  All of this amazes me, but here’s the piece that really floored me.  A German trainer put a treat down in front of a dog and told the dog she could not have the treat.  As long as the trainers eyes remained open, the dog would not take the treat; but, when the trainer closed her eyes, the dog took the treat.  This means the dog has a theory of mind, a real form of empathy.  Then there was the Doberman artist.  This dog arranges toys in discernible patterns:  triangles, straight lines, all frogs, face up, face down, with their arms draped over each other.  An animal behaviorist studied it and said it appeared the Doberman was trying to express himself.  Whoa.

After this, I shut the TV off, sat in my chair and read Alive In Necropolis. Why I don’t do this more often, I don’t know.

Now at the end of the day I have the feeling that a day of hanging out allows certain psychic motors to spin down, come to a rest.  When they rest, it allows other, subtler impulses to emerge, to press their case.  An urge to read Herodotus, for example, or a reminder that writing on the novels needs to get more attention.  Novel study itself, too.

Anyhow, an odd day.

Boogered

One piece of strange news gets stranger.  Even weird.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A woman who made news around the world when she had five pups cloned from her beloved pit bull Booger looked very familiar to some who saw her picture: She may be the same woman who 31 years earlier was accused of abducting a Mormon missionary in England, handcuffing him to a bed and making him her sex slave.

A paper trail of court documents and jail booking information uncovered by The Associated Press suggests 57-year-old dog-lover Bernann McKinney is Joyce McKinney, who in 1977 faced charges of unlawful imprisonment in the missionary case. She jumped bail and was never brought to justice.

British tabloids first recognized the blonde woman’s smiling face when she appeared in news photographs this past week with the five pit bull pups she paid South Korean scientists $53,000 to clone from her pet dog Booger who died two years ago.

There is indeed a striking resemblance between Bernann McKinney and Joyce McKinney. Arrest records and court documents for the two names over the years show other similarities: the same birth date and Social Security numbers, the same hometown of Newland, N.C., and Joyce McKinney’s middle name is Bernann.