Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Great Work, Woolly Mammoths

Undercurrents and Subtext

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74  bar steady 29.75 3mph W dew-point 49  Summer, sunny and pleasant

Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

A party.  Kate and I are not party people.  We both prefer a night at home or the theater or classical music, but we’re headed out tonight because of Paul Strickland’s kids.   Kate Strickland, oldest, heads out in two weeks for Japan.  She’s going to Kyoto prefecture to teach English as part of the JET program, a government sponsored ESL that places applicants in the Japanese school system.

The backyard party at their 4900 block Colfax Avenue home in Minneapolis had many people we did not know, but Stefan Helgeson and Lonnie were there.  Stefan, Paul and I represented the Woolly Mammoths.

Such parties have, like family reunions, undercurrents and subtext.  The lines of relationship, for example, the casual observer would assume ran strongest among Paul, Stefan, and me.  Only partly true.  Lonnie and Sarah (Strickland) were friends of mine for a couple of years before their husbands pulled me into the orbit of the Woolly Mammoths.

There was Kate Strickland’s closing of this chapter in her New York life.  Why?  Unsaid.  There was Lonnie’s recovery, less than a month along, from cancer surgery.  A rare great outcome.  No chemo or radiation needed because they caught the uterine cancer at its earliest stage.  Paul’s work, entangled with his across the alley neighbor, is in uncertain times.  Stefan has had a come to Jesus moment with Lonnie’s cancer surgery, “I find it difficult now to not do the things I want to do.”

Overhanging the whole is the generational tide sweeping those of us over 60 toward years of a new time while our kids go to Japan, have their own children, become 2d Lts in the Air Force, head off to college, or graduate from college.

This event was in no way unusual in these subtexts and undercurrents and I’m confident there were more, perhaps darker ones, about which I know nothing.   Any time we human beings gather we bring with us the scent of our current life and the trail on which we have walked to get there.  As social creatures our scents intermingle creating a perfumed community while our paths (ancientrails) intersect and deflect, generating paths of a slightly different direction than the one we were on before.  This is life as we live it, as we must live it.

Running through my mind today has been a bumper sticker I saw years ago during the controversy over the Boundary Waters.  I was in Ely and noticed a local pickup truck.   Plastered on the gate the bumper sticker read:  Sierra Club, kiss my axe.  That was redolent of a real debate, an actual conflict between parties with drastically different visions.  Politics and its cousin the law are the arenas in which, in a democracy, we slug out conflicts without, hopefully, violence.  I like conflict and the clash of ideas, the taking up of the sword in defense of an ideal, a vision.  Being back on the battlefield brings sparks to my eyes.  Fun.

Politics, Weather +Climate

Stop in the Aisle, Say a Prayer

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75  bar falls 29.78  2mph  SSE dew-point 52  Summer, warm and sunny

Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

These are the dog days, so called because the Romans believed that the bright Sirius, now in night sky, added its heat to the sun, magnifying Sol’s effect. (affect=verb, effect=noun most of the time.  I have trouble with this one.)

While in the dog days, thunder storms are welcome.  They drain the heat up into the atmosphere where it cools into clouds; rain drops form and, if they get heavy enough, fall to earth.  The whole process results in cooler near earth weather.  Like today.  Yesterday in the 90’s with a dewpoint in the high 70’s; today 75 with a dew-point in the 50’s.

During the dog days my gardening energy declines and I work on inside projects like the Twin Cities/Minnesota UU history I’m crafting right now.

It is so easy, to walk the aisle in an American grocery store.  So easy to take the abundance and its affordability for granted.  Those of us raised in the US since WWII have not known want, at least those of us in the working class and up economically.  Mercados take the place of grocery stores in much of the world.  We visit farmer’s markets for the quaint experience of buying food from those who grow or raise it.  Most of the world knows only that or their own garden, their small chicken coop.  A few still hunt and gather, yes, but most of the world has entered some form of economy based either on barter or cash.

Millions have no food to buy, no clean water to drink, no sanitation to stop disease, no medical services.  We have healthy water, food to put in a grocery cart, plumbing and doctors.  No, everyone does not have access to all of these, but at least here it is because the culture is too indolent or too callous; in other places the services themselves are simply not available.

It’s worth it, now and then, to pause in the aisle of your favorite grocery and say a prayer of thanks to mother earth and to the dumb luck that put you here.

Family, Friends, Garden, Weather +Climate

Vegetables Amidst the Flowers

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70  bar steady 29.82  6mph SE dew-point 54  Summer, cool and sunny

Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

The storm has passed and the air shines, cleared of dust.  Clarity is a July morning after a rain.

The lilies open more and more with each passing day.  The squash and cucumbers we planted in the perennial beds beside the patio have begun their long and winding way.  Yellow squash blossoms promised fruit to come.

In several places now we have combined perennial flowers with vegetables.  In one raised bed Asiatic lilies have risen and now bloom amongst heirloom tomato plants with sturdy branches, heirloom beans and a few leaves of lettuce not yet picked.  The beets and the carrots have a Stargazer lily and a daisy in bed with them while the green peppers grow amidst bearded iris, Asiatic lilies and Russian sage.  The garlic grow only with their own kind, likewise the onions though the corn has bush beans in between the rows.

This mixture appeals to me because it defies expectation.  It is wonderful to see plants with such different missions growing alongside each other.  Is it optimal for either?  Maybe not, but who cares.

Kate sewed yesterday.  She has made Gabe two small suits, same pattern with different cloth.   He will be quite the little gentleman in them.  She’s happy to be back at the sewing, creating.  It’s important to her sense of self.

Groceries this AM, then more UU history.  Later on a party at the Stricklands for Kate and Clair.

Weather +Climate

Mammatus and Derechos

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66  bar steep rise 29.68  0mph NW dew-point 64  Summer, muggy night

Waxing Crescent of the Thunder Moon

Another line of storms moved out of the north west, along I-94.  They hit us about 8 PM, the skies green like pale mashed peas.  Kate noticed some mammatus clouds and a lightning display in the east, already headed toward someone else.  There were tornado touchdowns, far away this time.  These storms are our tsunamis, our earthquakes, our hurricanes.

They come here because of our location, our spot on the globe.  They usually spawn from cool arctic air meeting humid Gulf of Mexico air drawn up by circulating lows.  Their paths have a general line, north west to south east, but the specific spots along the way that experience damage varies wildly.  A couple of storms ago a tornado touched down south of us about 2 miles.  A couple of years ago a tornado hit an eastern part of Andover.  That may have been the storm which hit us with hail, requiring new siding and a new roof.

If a tornado hits your house, it may as well have been a tsunami, a hurricane or an earthquake.  The damage will be considerable, your life in danger.  Straight line winds generated by wall clouds can and do reach ground speeds of 90 mph.  In the first four years after we bought this house we had two straight line winds that took out several large trees in our woods.

In certain instances these are derechos. The bow-shaped echoes that get meteorologists excited are distinguishing characteristics.  So are sustained straight lines above 58 mph, over a long front.  These are mostly a North American storm.

Faith and Spirituality, Politics, Writing

One Thunder Storm of a Word

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88  bar steep fall 29.48  3mph SE dew-point 73   Summer, hot and sticky

Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

Passion.  A violent word.  One thunder storm of a word.  An Angel Falls and Victoria Falls of a word.  A 500 mile race, first-lap pile up in the first curve word.  

from the Latin, patior: to bear, support, undergo, suffer, endure

Latin words bad, anglo-saxon words good.  To bear.  To burn.  To bind.

Buddha cautions us against passion.  Desire.  It binds us to our weird.  Throws straps around our hands and feet, lashes us to the pillar of the material world.  To move toward nirvana, extinction, we must move away from passion.  Eliminate desire.  Exist in the moment.  The self, the passionate self confined to a moment, gone in an instance.

The world for now exists in me in two:  the passionate one who would bear burdens, burn with the fire of action, bound to this world for I love this world.

The calm one who watches.  Observes.  Lets things pass by.  Become old or yesterday.  Who lives right now.  Here typing, interactive with the screen and the keyboard.

These two have me locked in an inner dance, twisting up then down.  Around a helix shaped stairway down into the my soul and up into the Self.  Opening a gothic iron gate into heaven.  Wielding a hammer to crack apart the bonds of oppression and injustice.  A whirling, sitting dervish in my own body.

Cinema and Television, GeekWorld

Sweet, Honest, Funny, Heartbreaking

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65  bar steady 29.75  2mph NW dew-point 62  Summer night

First Quarter of the Thunder Moon

Peanut butter.  Never thought of it as a problem food, but it seems to have entered that category for me.  Makes my tummy hurt.  Darn it.

The slippery slope of cell phone life.  Tonight I entered the phone numbers of all the Woolly Mammoths into my cell phone.  They are the first non-family numbers.  Each day I draw closer and closer to becoming a cell phone user.  Since it has not yet become the electronic leash I did not want, I don’t mind, but I have this sneaking suspicion that as it becomes more of a common place in my life, it will move in that direction.

Watched Stranger Than Fiction over the last two days.  This is a trippy movie.  It is meta-fiction, a story about fiction intruding on reality and fiction in turn altering reality.  If you’ve seen it, you’ll know what I mean.  Like Existenz, which I mentioned a couple of days ago, it plays with epistemology and, in a strange (trippy) way with ontology.  The Truman Show, even the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Vanilla sky dance on the same floor.  Will Ferrel was brilliant, I thought he gave an Oscar worthy performance, sweet, honest, funny, heartbreaking.

Faith and Spirituality, GeekWorld, Great Work, Weather +Climate

Say a Little Prayer for the Miracle of Mother Earth

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70  bar steep fall 29.80  6mph NW  Dew-point 62   Summer, a thunder storm watch until 6PM.  One’s already rolled through our area.

First Quarter of the Thunder Moon

The Thunder Moon has seen its first storm even before it became gibbous.   When I went downstairs today to shut off and unplug the computer, as I always do before a storm, it made me think.

In cities it is possible to live a life pretty isolated from the natural world.  Yes, you get wet when it rains if you can’t drive from covered parking to covered parking, but it’s usually a short term experience.  Out of the car.  Dash across the parking lot or sidewalk into the shelter of a building.  Yes, up here in the northland you can’t avoid the snow and the cold, but there again, unless you go outside with snowshoes or hiking boots, your exposure does not interrupt your day very much.

Out here in the exurbs, where the cities reach has become tenuous, houses have 2 acres, 5 acres, 10 acres between them.  When the thunderstorm looms, it looms over you.  A lightning strike on or near the house would send a surge throughout our circuitry blowing out sensitive devices.  The computer holds so much of my life and work that I protect it.  But, from what?

Yes.  Mother nature.  She’s whimsical and unpredictable.  No matter what we do somewhere the river rises.  Electricity coming in a storm carries a voltage of 100 million to 1 billion volts.  It can reach 50,000 degrees fahrenheit.   Four times as hot as the sun’s surface.  A hurricane generates unbelievable power and as they intensify they endanger increasing amounts of our wealth and health as a country.

Just think back over the last couple of months.  The cyclone in Burma.  The earthquakes in China.  The worst natural disaster in our history, Katrina, was not long ago.  These events kill and or disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.  The earthquake in Pakistan or the Kobe earthquake in Japan.  Huge, nation altering events.  The tsunami in the Indian Ocean.  We remember these not only for their human suffering and property loss, but because they remind us that we are not in control of the planet.

Our own little apocalypse, death, comes from the evolution of life.  Life comes with a sell-by date.  We are not in control even of our own lives.  This is either frightening or invigorating.

I choose invigoration, so when I head downstairs to shut off the computer I say a little prayer of thanks for the miracle of mother earth and my chance for a brief stay here.

Great Work, Politics

Windows Down and Moon Roof Open

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66  bar steady 29.87  0mph NW dew-point 52   Summer night

First Quarter of the Thunder Moon

First meeting of the Sierra Club political committee is under my belt.  I am delighted to say that there were several things we did that I cannot talk about yet.  It was fun, sitting around the table again, considering political strategy, making decisions.  There was a volunteer opportunity, but, unlike many times in the past, I did not step up.  The Sierra Club has a well conceived and well run political operation; it will require some time to understand.

Margaret Levin is an excellent staffer.  Her presence reminded me of my work with the Presbytery, helping things happen, supporting when necessary, providing guidance, prodding at times.  Josh Davis, the chair, is very knowledgeable about state level politics.  He came tonight with a map of the state house districts color coded by safe seats, 5% margin and 2% margin races.  In addition there were districts Sierra Club allies have targeted in blue.

There were two past chairs of the political committee on the committee which is great.  Continuity and experience.  This will be an educational process and I look forward to it.

Drove home with the windows down and the moon roof open, listening to a lecture on Thomas Hardy.

News of the Strange

Flames near Paradise, Calif.

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 Only in California  could Paradise go down in flames.

AP “Thousands of people were ordered to get out of Paradise on Wednesday as an out-of-control wildfire threatened the Northern California city that also was devastated by flames just weeks ago.

Authorities ordered residents of 3,200 Paradise homes to evacuate after the wind-stoked fire destroyed 40 homes and 10 structures Tuesday in the nearby rural community of Concow. Evacuation orders remained in effect for 1,000 residents of Concow and Yankee Hill, about 85 miles north of Sacramento.

Officials said more than 3,800 homes were threatened by the flames Wednesday. Another wildfire destroyed 74 homes in Paradise last month.”

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Writing

The Fireworks I Like Best

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79  bar steady 29.90 1mph NW dew-point 53  Summer, warm and sunny

First Quarter of the Thunder Moon

Research this morning on UU history in the Twin Cities.  The liberal religious tradition, as represented by the Unitarians and the Universalists, came here, at least it appears at this point in my reading, with Yankee businesspeople.  Lumber and land were the initial draw.  The Unitarians were an educated group who believed in education.  The Universalists were lumber folk initially.

Both groups had the stamp of privilege, what one author calls Old Stock American, early residents of the colonies whose culture bore, for the most part, the stamp of Great Britain.  One article on the Bisbee/Tuttle controversy referred to Minneapolis as a Universalist town.

I enjoy this kind of research, just as I enjoy the art history research.  As I have collected data over the years, each new accrual both gains from and adds to the context, the rich web of history, philosophy, literature, paintings, sculpture, theatre and political analysis that remains from years of study.  This gathering of threads together is one of the chief benefits of aging.

The garden has finally gotten its heat and the vegetables have jumped up in response.  The squash have spread, the beans have climbed, beets have pushed above the surface and the corn has begun to reach for the sky.  The firecracker lilies and other Asian lilies have also opened and the first hemerocallis, too.  Soon the liguria and the clematis.  This is the true independence day celebration, the kind of fireworks I like best.