• Tag Archives moon
  • Mighty Possum Warriors

    Summer                                         New Moon  (Grandchild’s Moon)

    From this point forward (if I remember) I’m going to start naming the moons in ways that make sense to our life here at Artemis Hives and the Seven Oaks.  The Grandchild’s Moon is in honor of a yearly visit that takes place most often in this moon’s ambit since Jon and Jen return to work as teachers in early August.

    The mighty possum warriors finally gave up and came inside to the cool, flopped down on the couch and promptly went to sleep.  A hard day hunting the wily critter had done them in.  I’m 99% sure that the possum only has shattered nerves.  All that barking.  Right out on the patio.

    Jen called today and they leave Chicago tomorrow and plan to be here Sunday night.  They are going to come up on the Minnesota side of the Mississippi, stopping in Winona at the National Eagle Center.


  • Fall Out?

    Spring                                             Waxing Awakening Moon

    The awakening moon has a quarter lit up tonight (though it’s half of the side we always see).  Orion rests below it, sinking down below the horizon earlier and earlier now that spring has come.  He’s a winter time friend, the opposite of a snow bird.  I hope you’ve had a chance to consider the thinks in your life that need a little extra nudge as they grow, parts of you that need encouragement to awaken.  Maybe it’s that painting you’ve always wanted to start.  Buy some canvas.  A garden?  Get a shovel and a seed catalog.  Meditating?  Clear out a comfortable spot and buy a comfortable chair or big pillow.  Whatever it is spring and the awakening moon will push you along.

    In my life it’s Latin, the novel, the Sierra Club’s legislative agenda and the new gardening year plus, of course, the bees.

    This health care vote will not lose the Democratic party congress or the Whitehouse for the next two generations.  I’ve heard people make comparisons to LBJ’s famous observation about passage of the Civil Rights Act.  He was right.  Passing the Civil Rights Act upended the solid South and kick started the rise of the moral majority.  The result was 40 years of conservative politics from which it will take us a long time to recover.

    (The Democrats will not need a fallout shelter.  The party of no will.)

    Health care is in no way similar.  The opposition to it is smoke, driven by the disinformation and fear mongering of right wing shock jocks and the little old lady from Stillwater with the big hair and the desire to smooch the Bushmaster.  There is no comparable bloc of votes lost by providing health care to all in the richest country in the world.  Are there mad people, some foaming at the mouth, tea drooling out of every orifice?  Yes, I guess there such people.  They are the party of no we can’t.  Now, at least for this brief shining moment, the Democrats have awakened (see what I mean?) to the principles that used to inform Democratic platforms, principles that demanded a fair shake for the poorest of the poor and made sure that workers got fair wages and decent benefits.


  • Awakening in the Dark

    Spring                                              Waxing Awakening Moon

    Rolled down the car window–oops, anachronism.  Pushed the button which slid the window down–and the scent of moist earth rolled into the truck.  Peat moss mixed with new plant and freshly unfrozen water carried along by a light spring breeze.  Tonight the awakening moon continues to swell, move toward full, growing in synchronicity with the planet 250,000 miles away; its dance partner in this long running marathon.  We squeeze her, she pulls our waters and squeezes us.  A dancer and her consort.

    The world for now, our part of the world, moves in darkness and I find the quiet soothing.  The night calms this exurban area down to peaceful.  Silence does not need to be sought; it comes to us as the hour moves past 9:00 pm or so.  If only for these dark hours, we have a hermetic isolation, nothing visible out the windows except stars and the moon.

    The longer I study art history, mix with the objects at the MIA, the more I tend to see much of the world through the lens of art.  It’s not a matter of finding art that fits a moment or an idea; rather, it’s as if paintings or sculpture or movies or prints or masks rise up from the unconscious, suggest themselves as a way, a path into an experience.  Here on the website I often choose, usually choose, literal relationships but in day to day life the moments are more ephemeral, less one to one.

    Let me see if I can think of an example.  A train whistle late at night may call to mind Honthorst’s “Denial of St. Peter.”  Perhaps it’s the association of a night scene and a sound transformed by being heard at night.  I don’t know.

    This is hard, it doesn’t really happen exactly like that, it’s more suggestive, subliminal.  Evanescent. Like the dying tone of the train as it moves further away into the darkness.


  • President Shoots the Moon

    Spring                                                 Waxing Awakening Moon

    Moon viewing.  We don’t do it much here, except as a casual thing, a walk outside, look up, oh a nice moon tonight or shine on harvest moon for me and my gal then on to the drive in or what’s on your play list dude? In Japan they take the moon viewing a step further, ok, a whole nighttime stroll longer.  They build moon viewing platforms, have parties, and produce some wonderful art that features the moon.  Tonight the waxing awakening moon hung just above the trees in the west, behind a scrim of clouds, a faint glow surrounding the upturned crescent.  It is a moon to remember.

    This crescent awakening moon will now memorialize for me the day the Democratic party got some balls.  Obama wanted to pass health care reform.  I saw a representative, I don’t know his name, with silver hair, looked about my age, get up and say, “Before we were born, reform of the health care system was begun, just waiting for this day.”

    This is not a victory for Democrats, however, it is a victory for the American people, a victory for those who have lived their lives in fear of a cough, a broken leg, a child’s fever.  In this country, which can bail out billionaires and support subsidies to bank robbers, that is, banks that rob, to have 32 million people with no health insurance has been a crime of long standing, a crime that has produced serial deaths over and over with no fear of prosecution.

    It is my hope that Republicans will understand that many of the folks who swallow the tea party line are the very people who will wake up some time soon with health insurance, health insurance they have never had. If you don’t believe me, just look at the Gallup map below and consider it with an overlay of the Bush and McCain presidential votes.

    Obama has won a victory here, a hard fought victory and he should get his props.  He should also get more credit for calming the Great Recession and ushering in a period of up ticking economic news.  I imagine we will see more such substantive wins for him as his presidency continues.

    Hurray for the red, white and blue!

    Now a moment on partisan politics and post-partisan politics, the so-called third way.  Yes, our politics have become so polarized that it is difficult to recall the times when it wasn’t.  Yes, there is acrimony and ill will and yes, it does make governance more difficult than it needs to be.  Here’s the thing, though.  In the end it is politics.  This clumsy, broken, dysfunctional process is the way we have chosen, and keep choosing, to mediate our substantive differences.  I read a very compelling argument for changing the system of representation in the Senate where 10% of the states have 90% of the population, but have only a tenth of the votes.  The author of the argument went on to say that fixing this dysfunction was not possible and that we needed to work with the system we have.

    It’s not ideal, but there is no system for managing the affairs of human societies that is and ours is better than most.  This vote proves it.


  • Look. In the Sky. It’s A Woodpecker. And a Moon!

    Lughnasa                               Full Harvest Moon

    What a beauty!  This moon blazes its soft light, a gentle luminosity, inviting us to look.  It does not make us turn away or shade our eyes, no, this moon says come on, look at me!  That big planet Jupiter puts a sparkle in the sky at about 4 0’clock beneath the harvest moon, for me and my gal.

    Right now I wonder why I   would ever do anything more than write about woodpeckers and the moon.  They require no historical research, no elaborate mental gymnastics.  They are.  Woodpecker.  Moon.  As I experience them, they have no past and no future.  There is the woodpecker and the moon.

    They are part of my world and I part of theirs.  I’m more aware of them (I imagine.) than they are of me, but it does not matter because there is me, the woodpecker and the moon.  We three, a trio of quite different entities, all unique and occupying a never again to be occupied spot in the vast web of spacetime.  A wonder.  A true and unmediated miracle.

    This would be a good time for Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.


  • Wish They All Could Be California…Wines

    Lughnasa                                 Waxing Green Corn Moon (99% illuminated)

    Kate and I watched Bottle Shock, a movie about the U.S. Bicentennial year taste test between French and American wines.  California’s Napa Valley wines won.  The British oenologist who created the test redid it in 2006 anticipating that the French wines would win.  They did not.  Napa again.

    It’s a bit difficult for me to tell whether I don’t get it because I don’t drink alcohol, but the whole veneration of vinculture and its products seems overblown.  Just sayin’.

    Tonight the almost full Green Corn Moon is a yellow orb hanging high in the southeast sky.  It makes the evening enchanted.  The Japanese have moon viewing platforms.  Seems like a good idea to me.

    More medical visits tomorrow with Kate, trying to track down the elusive next and hopefully better treatment.

    Not sure whether I wrote anything about the whole Favre who-ha, but here it is:  thank god it didn’t happen.  Any superbowl won by the Vikings with Brett Favre at the helm would have tainted the experience and us long suffering Viking’s fans deserve a clean win, straight up with no cross state retired quarterback in the mix.  That said, it does not appear to me that either Tavaris Jackson or Rosenfels have the stuff, but I hope I’m wrong.


  • A Yellow Moon

    Lughnasa                        Waxing Green Corn Moon

    A yellowed moon hung in the sky tonight, almost full.  It made the drive back in from Minneapolis a delight as it sailed in and out of view.

    In tonight for the Land Use and Transportation Committee meeting.  What a dynamic group!  They are still fighting the Stillwater Bridge issue after all these years.  They also have transit oriented development on their agenda as well as a new issue called Complete Streets.  In essence Complete Streets wants street planning to have all users in mind (pedestrians, bicyclists, cars and the handicapped in particular)

    A crisp meeting that ran on time.

    Thunder has begun to roll in so I’m going to have shut down soon.  After the Sierra Club meeting, I drove over to the Black Forest where the Woolly’s first monday meeting had just begun to wind down.  I saw Mark and Frank and Stefan before they left.  Warren and Scott stayed and we talked about Moon, Scott’s 95 year old Cantonese mother-in-law who lives with them.  She’s having a show of her calligraphy and painting at the Marsh.  It goes up on August 16th.  There will also be a book of her work available at the show.  Amazing.

    China tour tomorrow for 7-8th graders.  I added a tour this Friday of Chilean students connected with St. Johns who want a tour of American art.


  • A Deere John Article

    66  bar rises 29.91 0mph N dew-point 56  Summer night, cooler

    Full Thunder Moon

    I went out tonight for a bit of moon viewing.  I’ve always thought a moon-watching deck would make a nice addition to the property.   We don’t have one so I stood in the driveway, watching the moon while Lady, the brittany next door, howled at me (instead of the moon).

    This moon rides low in the sky, just below the tree tops, so I had to walk almost to the end of our driveway until I could see it free and clear of the treeline.  It is a polished coin of a moon, bright and sparkling in the sky, a moonstone on jeweler’s velvet.  A night out well rewarded.

    From tonight’s Washington Post

    Deere John: It’s Been Good Knowing You
    Lawn Behemoths Are Going Out to Pasture “The riding lawn mower has long been a barometer of the American dream, been a symbol of having arrived in the suburban middle class. It says, “I have so much lawn to mow, I need to sit down.”

    It says, I’ve made it, I’ve escaped that funky old rowhouse neighborhood with the asbestos siding and yards like dirt-scabs. My land, my spread, not enough to plow, but way too much to mow the old-fashioned way. It says, I’m Jefferson’s dream of the yeoman farmer. It says, I’m rich enough to not only raise a worthless crop, but to pay money for the privilege. It says, I’m a boy with a boy’s rightful toys; a real American man.

    Or that’s what it said back when city dwellers would gather around the riding mowers at the old Hechinger north of Capitol Hill, and dream the dream.

    Now it’s saying something else. It may be a measure of the forces lined up against us. The riding mower seems to be on the wrong end of every headline. If economic news — from gas prices to shrinking nest eggs — is like the magnifying glass focused by an 8-year-old to fry a bug with sunlight, riding mowers are the bug.

    The news: The riding mower industry “is deeply troubled by the decline in housing starts,” says Kris Kiser, spokesman for the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute in Alexandria. “New home construction is a good barometer for us. But you add foreclosures, decline in housing starts and the decline in housing sales, and you have the trifecta.””

    Dehn’s 4 Seasons, the lawn appliance store where we bought our chain saw, our riding mower, our snow blower and super charged weed whacker closed up shop and didn’t alert us at all.  I drove by there one day a few weeks ago and the place was empty.  Capitalism’s creative destruction is at it again.


  • The Crescent Moon’s Gentle Spell

    61  bar steep rise 29.87  0mph WNW dew-point 52  Summer night, pleasant

    Waxing Crescent of the Thunder Moon

    I dug up a couple of garlic to see if descaping had any affect.  It has.  Bulbs have begun to form.  I hope if I leave them in a bit longer, I’ll get fully developed bulbs.  This is important because I can then plant the cloves from the best bulbs in the fall and harvest more garlic next year.

    The crescent moon casts a gentle spell over human kind.  It ends up on flags, in religious symbols and in children’s books.  The Thunder Moon crescent is in the west, just below the tree line, but visible through some our poplars.  Hidden, it takes on even more allure.

    Back in the 80’s I used to practice a form of contemplative prayer; it carried me into many strange places.  One of them was sitting on the cusp of a crescent moon with Jesus on one side and Moses and Abraham on the other.   We spoke, but I don’t recall the conversation.  The crescent moon made that possible because it has that curve.  Could not sit on a quarter or whole moon.  A gibbous moon does not seem right either.


  • And the Soothsayers Predicted Snow

    55  bar falls 29.79 0mph SE dewpoint 54  Spring   light rain

                    Waning Gibbous Moon of Growing

    And the soothsayers predicted Snow.  Oh, no.  Really, not a big deal.  Slush is more likely.  The precipitation now is all good.  As the weather continues (generally) to warm, the combination of rising soil temperatures and moisture puts plant life on the quick track up.

    Randy, from Randy’s plumbing, called.  He will come out Friday am to install the gas piping to the generator.  Center Point will come out on Tuesday afternoon to give us the bigger meter necessary to provide adequate gas to the generator when it works.  Soon we will have protection against power outages.  One more block for the retirement security perimeter.

    Membership in Permaculture in a Cold Climate is another one.  As we make the transition here to more and more home grown produce and hopefully some home captured energy, we will reduce our need to leave the property for grocery trips.  All this moves us toward a smaller and smaller carbon footprint. Although, I have to admit, the steam room probably eats up more than we’ll balance for awhile.  Gotta figure that out one of these days.  When we get that Prius two years from now, our balance sheet will look better.

    Allison has asked me to consider a short article on astronomy for the summer Muse.  She wants me to focus on the moon since there’s enough written about sun cults. (her language)  Made a quick survey of objects in the MIA collection.  If you thrown in those with stars, there are over 100 objects that have either a moon or star connection.  Finding a good 8 or 10 for a Moon and Stars tour would be easy.  This plays to an interest I developed in archaeoastronomy while I belonged to the Minnesota Astronomical Society.  We’ll see what she wants.  More later.