Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Our Land and Home, Sport, Weather +Climate

An Existential Cry?

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-8  falls 30.32  SW0 wchill-8 Winter

First Quarter of the Wolf Moon

The Great Horned Owl who lives in our woods calls tonight, right now as I write.  Whether he, or she, speaks to a lost love or wayward children I do not know.  On a night this cold it could be the existential cry of the world, proclaiming the season at its depths.  I often imagine this owl whose wingspan extends longer than my body and whose talons can lift a small dog or a young child with ease; I imagine this owl perched on a top limb of our tallest poplar.  The gaze of this fierce predator, the apex predator of our woods, rakes the Wolf Moon, perhaps blinded by the light, but looking just the same.  Because, like us, the moon attracts the eye.

The Vikings lost to the Eagles.  I don’t feel as let down as I have when the Vikings have lost other playoff games.  Not sure why.  Maybe because they did not come into this game a prohibitive favorite, then give it away.  Perhaps because they played with heart and made some young team mistakes.  I don’t know.  But I’ll watch again.  Peculiar, eh?

Writing Homecomer took up the writing juice today.  Little left over for this blog.  I’ll let it sit a day or two, then read it with a red pen in hand. Go back to the computer and revise it.  Then let it be.

Now, back to The Given Day by Dennis Lehane.  If you have not read it, and enjoy period pieces with rich characters and real historical drama as I do, then you’ll find this a treat.

Friends, Sport, Weather +Climate, Writing

We Got Sizzle

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24  rises 29.89  NNW0 wchill 24   Winter

Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

The Internet is a strange phenomenon.  It functions as a time machine, bringing the future just a bit before it arrives and churning the past as old acquaintances find you again through one of the search functions or social networking sites.

It’s a good thing for me, because I was not such a good communicator before the web arrived.  I wrote a few letters, but I’ve never liked the phone much and the only reunions I ever attend are those of my high school.  Now though with Facebook,  Myspace and e-mail those old acquaintances are not forgot and often brought to mind.

Wrote about three pages of a new Homecomer.  Much better.  I needed to make it a continuation of the first two pieces in the Heresy Moves West series.  I had conceived of them as a set from the beginning, but I hadn’t begun the other one as if it fit with them.

We have some kind of frozen precipitation coming down right now, but I don’t what to call it.  Snert.  Sleeze.  Maybe sneeze?  Frozen drizzle is so uninteresting.  Fizzle?  Hey, I got it.  Sizzle.

I bought two new snow shovels.  I have an unfortunate adventuresome spirit in the purchase of snow shovels.  This time I bought one of a kind I saw used on the U.P.  You figure they have 3 to 4 times the amount of snow we have, they must know something.  The other one has a blade made of a tough (I hope) plastic that won’t snag on the nails on our deck–at least that was my conclusion.  I may find out as soon as tomorrow morning.

Just finished a lower body work out and aerobics. Tomorrow AM all morning I’ll write, then watch the vikings.  May Johnny Unitas have mercy on my soul.

Writing

Errands Before the Storm

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18  steady 29.90  ENE7  wchill11  Winter

Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

Gotta run a couple of errands before the next snow storm.  Gas for the snowblower.  A new snowshovel.  Old one delaminated at the handle insertion point.  Hit the grocery store.  Then, continue writing on Homecomer.  Started off in one direction yesterday, got about three pages in and decided I needed to start over.  It happens.

GeekWorld, Travel, Weather +Climate

After the New Year, Backup

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orchard-inwinter300.jpg-3  bar rises 30.00  SW0  windchill -3  Winter

Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

The Orchard in Winter

2009 has well and truly begun.  The new year crept in on snow shoes, covered in a snowmobile suit and holding a cup of hot cocoa.  This was a Minnesota new year.

We’ve had a cold winter so far and it looks like it’s going to continue for a while.  Somewhere around the end of January most of us begin to have fantasies of being somewhere else.  Many fantasize someplace warm, but I tend to go with just another location.  My escape this year may be to the UP or Ashland, Wisconsin.  Still gathering information for that Lake Superior book.

Bill Schimdt suggested I back up this website onto my own computer since it hangs out in the cloud most of the time. I did that.  It was an interesting excursion into the bowels of the system.  It comes out in a form determined by mysql, the open source data base used by many servers.  The format is strange, made up of tables with columns of numbers.  They all make sense, once you begin to read carefully.  Anyhow, this is a once a month operation Bill suggests.  After I do it, then the regular backup I do every day will collect it and convey to my external hard disk.  I actually have two, but I still have to configure them the way I want.

Today I start writing Homecomer.  Look for it to be posted on the Liberal Faith page sometime after January 11th.

GeekWorld, Our Land and Home

And A Happy…

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7oaks250.jpg9  bar steep fall 30.12  ENE9  windchill 9   Winter

Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

Friend and cyberwizard Bill Schimdt reminded me of a wonderful show the sky put on tonight to celebrate the New Year.  The moon with Venus in its arms.  This is the waxing Wolf Moon, a sliver facing up toward the east with Venus just above and centered over it.  The moon has an immediate tug on my memories, often creating a flood tide of associations from Islam to nursery rhymes to Neil Armstrong and Jules Verne.  It also fires my love of the night, creating a light in the darkness, a light that does not cause the darkness to flee, but makes it more accessible.  And they say lunacy is a bad thing.

This new year’s I plan to celebrate in dreamland.  My new habit of a 10:30 bedtime is too fragile to wreck watching Dick Clark’s face-lift as the ball descends in Time Square.  Windy and -1 there.  Ouch.

The new year comes this time with genuine opportunity for change, change that matters.  I plan to be part of it and hope you do, too.

Sometimes I refer to our property as 7 oaks.  This is a photograph of those seven oaks, white and red.  They grow on a small hill, visible from where I write. They are a grove, a fine companion in all seasons.

-30-  until 2009

Faith and Spirituality, Memories, Weather +Climate

Home and Heart

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winter-solstice-08cbe2.jpg1  bar steep rise 30.42  WSW0   windchill 1  Winter

Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

Oh, man.  To get the trash out I had to blow the snow.  Underneath the snow is ice.  The snowblower with its knobby tires spun out and the only reason I stayed on my feet was the firm grip I had on the snowblower.  Never before had taking out the trash had a hint of danger to it.  Tonight it did.  After the snowblower and I went slip sliding away, I still had to roll both the trash containers down the long slope of our driveway.  Risky business.  Made it ok.

In doing research for Homecomer I looked back over many of my sermons for Groveland and noticed that I’ve written several that deal with home as an idea.  Home has a certain poignancy for me, since my estrangement from my father and his subsequent marriage to a woman who made the problem worse.  The town and the house where I grew up seem faraway to me, as if the warm and comfortable feelings associated with home got eaten away by the acids of my family quarrel.

The rightness or wrongness of it all has long been moot, yet the hollowness with which I’m left when it comes to home and nuclear family must have lead me to consider this theme.  It is a rich concept, one with so many layers and metaphorical possibilities that I have not tired of it.

Perhaps out of this search of mine for home I’ll  find ideas useful to others.  The current environmental crisis both has its roots in and is made more intractable by our American sense of mobility, of looking over the next horizon for a new frontier.  This makes it hard to learn about the home that greets us each evening.  Well, more on that in Homecomer.

The cold has come again and that will make the sleeping even better.

Weather +Climate

Snow and Blowing Snow

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12  bar steep rise  30.18  W9  windchill 5    Winter

Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

We have had snow and blowing snow most of the day.  Do not know how much right now, but the weather reports indicate as much as 6-10″.  That means snow blowing in the AM before Lois comes to clean the house.

Maybe tonight.  Forgot the trash goes out tonight.  Hmmm.

At 5:30 the webinar (new word I do not like much.  It feels clumsy.) on posting to the StarTribune weather blog set up.  Don’t imagine it will be too tough.

Did my upper body resistance before the call.  Aerobics after.  Yesterday my pulse rate stayed higher longer than usual.  Hope that is not a trend.

Still working on Homecomer, may start writing on New Year’s Day.

Sport

Half-Time

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23  bar steep fall 29.90  0mph SE  windchill 22   Winter

New Moon (Wolf Moon)

Vikings played well the first half against the Giants.  67 yard touchdown by Adrian Peterson.  Yeah.

Order in to Seed Savers.  Baker Creek next.

A sunny, warmer than last week day.  Shadows from the south in early afternoon.

Dreams

All These Years

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Dream last night.  I walked home, down Monroe Street in Alexandria, Indiana.  A man named Mr. Jones was with me.  His son, Bud, worked in an office tower in downtown NYC.  We walked three blocks to the stretch of Monroe Street on which I lived.  I turned, pointed to the skyline behind us, and said, “Look.  What do you see there?”  “Bud’s tower.”  “Yes. And right next to it?”  “St. Patrick’s.”  “How about that over there?” I asked, pointing to building, orange metal and looking somewhat like the Sydney Opera House.  “Hope.”   “Yes,”  I said, “Imagine. All these years I’ve been living in Alexandria and never realized it was so close to NYC.  I don’t have to go away from home to be there.”