Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality

Doing Those Things I Would Not Do And Vice Versa

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58  bar steep fall 29.69 1mph S dewpoint 34 Spring

    Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

“Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

I’ve had two instances of this this week and I seem to have trouble learning the lesson.  On Wednesday AM Heather, who manages the corral in the museum’s lobby, demanded my presence and Grace Googins.  We were needed immediately, at 9:50 AM, to greet our 10:00 tours.  When we showed up a bit later than she liked, she was rude and insistent that “a memo had gone out.”  Later, I confronted her, told her I did not like her attitude.  She had an attitude and her facts were wrong.  Our tour group, it turned out, didn’t show up until 10:10 AM.  She apologized later, but I was still angry.  My reaction to her injured me, a lesson I recognize from years of being angry at my father.  Still, not a lesson I’ve learned.  Such confrontations weigh on me.  I need to learn a new style.

This morning I had a chance to indicate I’d learned a lesson.  Michelle Byfield-Stead was the lead docent for a tour I had agreed to do as a sub for Careen Heegard.  This was the third time I had Michelle as a lead docent.  Each time she has called at the last minute, last night it was late in the evening, and had this excuse or another.  I have never had a tour with her where she was prompt.  This is disrespectful and downright annoying.

So, I could have gone in this morning and assertively explained to her my problem.  Instead, I only saw her in a group and I was rude.  Again, not a positive response.  I was downright passive aggressive.  Geez.  I know better than this, but somehow, every once in a while, especially if I’m really irked, I act out.  Not always, but sometimes. 

Still niggling at me even now.  Sigh.   I expect better of myself, but like Paul, find myself doing those I would not do and not doing those things I would.

Art and Culture, World History

Something Famous, That They Might See in Books

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57  bar steep fall 29.82 3mph SSW Dewpoint 31 Spring

           Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

A highlights tour today with kids from Hudson.  We saw Frank, the Chuck Close portrait, then the Promenade of Euclid by Magritte.  After that the teacher wanted to see “something famous, that they might see in books.”  That’s ok, so I took them to see Van Gogh’s Olive Trees, Goya’s Dr. Arrieta and Rembrandt’s Lucretia.  They had a theme of westward expansion underway in class so I then took them over to the Minnesota gallery and we looked at first, the long rifles, then the painting of Ft. Snelling with the Lakota camped on the opposite shore of the Minnesota River.  The kids were there, engaged.  Fun.

On the way down and back I’ve continued listening to From Yao to Mao, the history of China.  I’m now on disc 17 of 18 and this is my second time through the series.  Mao has just begun to push for the peasant community in China as the vanguard of the revolution, replacing the urban worker, the industrial proletariat, whose communist members had been ousted in raids by the Nationalist Party and the tongs.  This will result in the long march and the eventual attrition of Mao’s forces by the thousands.  In this campaign Mao will create the modern guerilla war, sometimes called 4th generation warfare.

Our Land and Home

The Ex-Urb

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37  bar steady 29.89 0mph SSE dewpoint 34 Spring

           Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

Still absorbing the arguments from the Brueggman lecture on sprawl.  I want to write more when I’ve integrated his thoughts and decided fully how I feel about them. 

The exurban life, the one I’ve lived for the last 14 years, has some distinct pluses.  We have enough land that we can alter the landscape in positive ways.  We can contemplate, for example, adding ponds, a gravity driven stream, an orchard, changing out our lawn for prairie grass and wildflowers or fruit and nut trees, even vegetable gardens.  I don’t know how far we’ll go with all this, but the more I learn about permaculture, the more it makes sense, not only for us.

Also, the relatively isolated nature of our land, both in terms of our neighbors, who are least 2.5 acres away, and  our distance from the metro, over 30 miles, creates a sense of privacy that nurtures creative activity.  As an introvert, I have found this life a perfect fit.

Anyhow, gotta go.  Discovered late last night I do have a tour today.  See ya.

Great Work, Our Land and Home

Is There Such A Thing As Good Sprawl?

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56  bar steep fall 29.97 1mph NNW Spring

         Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

More trees survived.  Two White Pines planted near the road have made it through their first winter as well.  I love seeing plants grow, but there is something different with trees.  They alter the landscape and create memories.  I suppose grass does, too, but not in a way that I like much.  Yards have not made sense to me for many years and I hope this year or the next might be the time when we finally rid ourselves of the damned thing and put in something more attuned to the land and to possible benefits to us.

Forgot to mention during that during our business meeting we have tentatively decided to go ahead on the generator.  As  climate change acclerates and more and more housing gets built up out here, our exposure to significant periods of power loss grows.  We’re trying to sequester certain large cash expenditures in these last years of Kate’s employment, so they will be out of the way after she retires.  We also have a car fund that will have enough money to purchase a hybrid the year she retires.  These are, in many ways, peace of mind issues, but no less important for that.

We got the annual notice from the vet about the dog’s physicals.  Something to look forward to.

At 3PM I’ll leave for the University to attend a lecture on sprawl by Robert Bruggeman.  I bought his book at the Walker last week.  Since I live in sprawl by almost any definition, I’m interested in understanding it better.  He has a different drummer approach, taking a historical look that emphasizes sprawl as a natural occurrence related to urban development.  This makes sense to me since I know the Minneapolis story includes “sprawl” that is now the neighborhood surrounding the Minneapolis Art Institute, Kenwood, and several of the neighborhoods south of the city along Chicago, Portland, Nicollet, Lyndale and other streets.  His question is how to separate “good” sprawl from “bad” sprawl.  More on this later.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Natural Rhythms and Time

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53  bar falls 30.03 omph W dewpoint 32 Spring

            Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

Over to IHOP for some of that down home country fried food.  Always a treat.  Kate and I did our business meeting, deposited several thousand dollars in Wells Fargo and came back home.  Lois was here.  She commented on the amaryllis which have bloomed yet again for me.  I do nothing special to them except take them outside in the summer, then back inside in the winter.  At some point they decided its ready to bloom, so I put them in a window and water and feed them.

I have no tours tomorrow and so have a good stretch with no art tour work.  I like that. 

Went outside and looked at the trees.  Looks like at least five, two Norway Pines and two River Birch got trimmed back to the hose I used to protect them from sun scald.  Those rascally rabbits I presume.  In the other area, though, two white pines thrived during the winter, as did a Norway Pine, an oak and, I believe, a River Birch.  Feels good to see them growing.

The garlic has begun to push through the soil, a bit pale under the mulch, but I removed it and they will green up fast.  Garlic are hardy plants that like a cold winter and they had one this year.  They come to maturity in June/July.  Drying, then using our own garlic will be a treat.

Wandering around outside gets the horticulture sap rising.   I’m itchy to do stuff.

Signed up for a Natural Rhythms and Time course at the Arboretum.  It’s a symposium put on by the University’s Institute for Advanced Studies, a real find.  If you live in the Twin Cities, I recommend getting on its mailing list.

Art and Culture

Fireman’s Robes and an Ugly Bureaucrat

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42  bar falls 2mph SSE dewpoint 26 Spring

          Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

Two tours today, both Weber, but very different.  The first was a Shakopee Japanese language group who had some very sharp kids.  They were with Hotei, the Moon, the calligraphy, the tea ceremony, Genji, the Bull and the fireman’s robes.  The second group was from a city recreational center.  There were 11 kids.  They started out a bit disinterested, but I began with Shokei, the ugly man denied a job as a Chinese bureaucrat after passing the exam.  They liked that story and the fact that he rode a tiger.  They also liked the rice planting and harvesting screen, the rabbit looking at the moon, the tea bowls, the black bull and the cranes.  The fireman’s robes are a great hit with kids of all ages.  We ended by looking at Mickey Mouse on the kimono.  Good groups, engaged and interested.  Fun.

Faith and Spirituality, Family

Leaving A Profession Well Engaged.

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28  bar steady 30.34 0mph SSW dewpoint 24 Spring

             Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

“If you’re strong enough, there are no precedents.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

In spite of the perhaps down note I struck in Climbing the Wall yesterday, most of the time I realize that the decision I took when I met Kate, that is, to leave the ministry and concentrate on writing, took a kind of courage and strength many folks have, but never exercise.  At 40 years of age, to leave the comfort of a profession well engaged and one in which your prospects appear (at least to others) bright, is too much for most of us. 

Without Kate I could not have pulled it off, but I did find this remarkable woman at just the right time.  She has supported me every step of the way, including times when I thought I was climbing the wrong wall again.  Between the two of us we have managed to defy acculturation with her earning the large salary and me at home.  Both of us have brought necessary and key gifts to our marriage, neither more valuable than the other, though, again, the what it means to be male messages of my childhood and those what it means to be female messages from hers could have created shocks too strong to overcome.

It took strength on my part to pull away from the church, but it also took acceptance by Kate of an unusual, even aberrant path for me.  It took, in short, the strength of two of us.  As most of you who know me well know, this path has not been without difficulty, but it has been worth it.

GeekWorld, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Kohler Generators

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32  bar steep rise 30.22 4mph dewpoint 24 Spring

               Waning Crescent Moon of Winds 

“I simply cannot think that human beings will be able to discard their desire and need for something that is sublime, something that transports them, takes them out of time, takes them out of the banality of the everyday world . . . to make something is tremendously powerful in and of itself.” -Sean Scully

“Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long they live, although it is in the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.” – Seneca

One last snowblowing adventure.  The snow has already melted off the driveway and the sidewalk.  It will remain longer on the yard and in the woods, but the days of the snowcover are near an end.  Even so, it was nice to get out one more time and see the arc of white curving up then fall toward the earth.  Good to be outside. (We’ll set aside being there with a two-cycle engine.)

Roger came out today from Allied Generators.  When we went through a spate of disaster planning last fall, we realized our home would not fare well in a power outage.  Why?  No water since we get our pump from a well.  That’s the big one.  We could be here with all the water we needed 180 feet below us and no way to get it to the surface.  Dumb.  Then, of course, there’s powering up the cell phones and the computers for necessary communication.  If Kate is to survive in a reasonably mellow state, we need the air con to work, too.  All of our appliances have electric starter switches.  And so on.  

The result of this got me to looking at generators.  Consumer reports pointed out an obvious problem with gasoline powered generators.  If there’s a problem with the electricity, filling station pumps don’t work.  So, how do you supply the generator?  Gas gets old, too, so storing much at home is problematic.  Anyhow, the Kohler line of generators run on natural gas which solves that problem.  They also supply enough power to manage the whole house.  Roger will send us an estimate this afternoon.  It might be a sledge hammer to take care of a mosquito sized problem, but we’ll see.

Piece of trivia:  Kohler got into the generator business in 1918 so customers could use their flush toilets and their bathtubs.  What da ya know?

I got on a tear this last week or so, completing several major tasks in a short period of time.  It reminded me of the way I used to work, juggling many complicated tasks over long periods of time.  Back then I was productive, really productive.  The old work method felt good to slip into for a while.  Don’t know that I’d want to sustain it anymore.

Art and Culture, Friends, Weather +Climate

Simple, Straight-Forward Human Decency

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30  bar steady 29.83  5mph N  Dewpoint 29 Spring

                  Last Quarter Moon of Winds

“Let us all be thankful for today, for if we did not learn a lot, at least we learnt a little. And if we did not learn a little, at least we did not become ill. And if we became ill, at least we did not die. So let us all be thankful. – Buddha, attr.

This snow is serious.  The rocks in the garden have white cloaks and look as if they will disappear once again.  The winds stay high and the accumulation has weighed down the trees.  Vale and Breckenridge may have powder, but in the late spring we have heart attack snow.  Heavy, wet, voluminous.  Still pretty.

I love the quote attributed to the Buddha.  Put that together with Grandpa’s, “You come from nothing and the purpose of life is to make something from nothing.” and you have a complete philosophy of life without all the dreary textual criticism, dogma and fancy dress.

A docent colleague has organized a food service for Bill Bomash who broke his femur in five places while vacationing in Brazil.  This kind of simple, straight forward human decency is enough.  It allows us to make something from nothing and, as Grandpa said, that’s the purpose of life.   

Faith and Spirituality, Family

A Parent’s Pain, A Young Man’s Journey

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42  bar falls 30.04 2mph S dewpoint 20 Spring

Last Quarter Moon of Winds

Joseph called from OTS.  He sounded dispirited, demoralized.  Drill and military courtesy have tripped him up thus far.  His commander has talked about recycling him if he doesn’t improve.  He had strings on his uniform, two demerits.  Other things, two demerits.

After he hung up, I went into a tail spin myself.  When I drove over to Lauderdale for the Chinese New Year’s celebration, I found I couldn’t listen to the lecture on the Ming Dynasty because the obvious dismay in Joseph’s voice distracted me.

It reminds me, as I write this, of the first day of kindergarten.  I dropped him off and he began to cry, to run toward me as I turned to leave.  My instinct said turn around, scoop him up and take him home.  Try this next year.  Maybe.

The pain, the deep heart pain, a parent feels when their child struggles has got to be the worst agony of all.  Joseph is so dear to me.  My instinct is to get in the car, drive down to Maxwell AFB and take him out to dinner.  Have a talk, cheer him up.  Nope.  This is a road he has chosen and one only he can negotiate.  If necessary, of course, I’ll be there if it doesn’t work out, but until then he walks on his own.

I can, and will, write him letters and leave messages on his cell phone.  Kate and I will send him cookies, but the rest is up to him.

I’m ignorant when it comes to military life, so I don’t know how much of this is the process of breaking down and building back up or how much of it is genuine peril that he won’t finish.  One thing I have learned about him though is this, when he sets his heart on something he has a dogged persistence that makes things happen.  So, based on his past behavior, I have confidence in him now.  The pain, though, is still hard.