All posts by Charles

Aging, Memories, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Third Phase, US History, Woolly Mammoths, World History

It’s Not Even Past

Leave a comment

Summer and the Moon of Justice

Sunday gratefuls: The Laramide Orogeny. The chance to see its starting point frequently. The chance to see the actual end of the Great Plains frequently. Stump grinders. Arborists. Lawn service folks. Asphalt. The Snow plows and their drivers. Jackie, our hair stylist. (Not that I have much left to style.) Seoah’s 5th day in quarantine. Only 9 to go. Kep’s hotspots healing.

The Past.  Our own, our family’s, our country’s, our specie’s.  How do we view the PAST regarding forgiveness, compassion, learning, loving, and, perhaps most of all, how we live in this one precious day of this one precious life NOW?

Buddy Tom Crane’s prompt for our meeting this morning on zoom. Old Friends. Bill, Mark, Paul, Tom, me. Over 30 years of jawin’.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” William Faulkner Whatever else the past is it only exists right now. Because everything that exists exists right now. At least from the perspective of our consciousness. Free beer tomorrow.

Ever learned anything? Faulkner’s right. Ever been in a relationship? Ever lived? Time’s arrow is an argument in physics. Maybe everything exists all at once. Or, maybe everything moves in the direction of less entropy. But, is that time? Don’t know.

What I do know is that until I could entertain the memory (a ghost from my past) of Vega looking up at me, willing me to do something about her bloat, I was trapped by the fear it caused. Glancing away from it. Pushing it out of consciousness. She died. And, I could do nothing. I loved her, she trusted me, but I couldn’t save her.

Finally, I went the whole way into the memory. Touched her again. Felt her stomach. Reassured her. Remembered that awful time at Sano when Kate and I knelt inside the metal crate. “Her heart stopped,” the vet said.

Now Vega romps through my doggy memories, being a rascal, chewing our shoes, peeing on our rugs, but also delightful and loving and funny. I had lost her to my fear.

So, the past is with us. And, within us, the past can change. Or, rather, our acceptance of it can change. When I went into treatment for alcoholism, I had years of hangovers, drunken one night stands, the grief over my mother, fear cutting jagged holes into my day to day to life. Fear that receded when the God Dionysus took over.

That guy, the one I’d been since the purple Jesus parties at Phi Kappa Psi in 1965, had to widen his arms, embrace all the pain, all the missteps, all the avoidance and denial. Had to come out of his own groundhog hole, look for the sun, as he had done many, many times. And, finally find it. Yes, I can live in the light, seeing all of who I’ve been, gathering all of it in close. Not in judgment, but in acceptance. Because, though I can’t change the past, how I live with it can change me.

Here’s a point where I get confused. That I. The Buddhists: no self. My kabbalah experiment with watching the watcher. Many selves, many masks. The long march from infancy to old age. Who was that masked man? At 40? At 30? At 10? Was he me? Or, do I have to believe that I somehow arrived at this point in my life sui generis? No past, no self. Just this accretion of cells that somehow insists on having a history? Let’s say Buddhism has a low view of the Self. Kabbalah a fractured one.

My common sense understanding? A solid Self. And what is that Self? The one who can access, retrieve memories that only this body has experienced. Yes, it’s true that this Self is not the one who experienced those memories. It exists in this moment, shaped by those experiences, yet changed by its survival into the now. And, it is not the self of the next moment since it will be changed yet again. No self? OK. Many selves, many masks? OK. A solid Self? OK. All at once, expressing a different view through the prism of consciousness. OK. After all, William James called consciousness a “blooming, buzzing confusion.”

General

You Cannot Abandon It

Leave a comment

Summer and the Moon of Sorrow

Saturday gratefuls: Watermelon. Tomatoes. Bacon. Sourdough bread. Water. Coffee. Eggs. Hardboiling Eggs in a steamer. Natural Gas. Rain. Thunder. Lightning. Lodgepole Pines. Aspen. Yes, even the Pollen. Wind. The Sun. The Moon of Sorrow. The Coronavirus. The World Ocean. Lake Superior. Minnesota Lakes. The majestic White Pine. The Wolf. The Sled Dog. This Air I breathe.

Stump grinder guy coming on Monday for an estimate. Will James coming by next week, too, for an estimate on felling the Trees too close to our house. Derek’s removing logs. I’m going to mow the back today. Cut the fuel, the fines, so a Fire won’t jump from the Grass to the lower branches of a Pine. Slowly getting the yard work underway. Fire mitigation continues.

Another tack. Many compare this multi-crisis time with the Spanish Flu era. An obvious choice, given the Plagues. I realized the other day that another era with a similar feel was the ’60s. Remember? Civil rights. Martin Luther King. Riots. Malcolm. The Vietnam war killing Americans and Vietnamese. The anti-war movement. Feminism, a bit later. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

There was then, too, an overarching cultural sense that things were about to change. In a big way. Powerful forces led by college age kids roiled the country. Many fled the cities back to the Land. Many kept the protests moving. The establishment rocked on its heels. A small nation taught us a big lesson in humility.

I remember a moment, somewhere in the early ’70s, when we thought it was possible Minnesota could lead a radical political wave. Guaranteed work. Health care for everybody. Affordable housing available to those who needed it. An education system tuned to everybody’s needs. A mini-Norway. A Northern Way instead of the third way.

Real, lasting change felt within our grasp.

Then, the pushback. Kent State. Ronald Reagan. Boomers lives tending toward married with children, quiet streets. Except in those neighborhoods where the occupiers continued to put their boots on necks.

Flash forward 50 years. I have that feeling again, the possibility of radical change. Change policing. Surely health care for all will rise up from the ashes of lives burned away by the Coronavirus. The web of systemic racism: housing policies, discrimination in hiring, microaggressions, voting rights interference, murder by authorities, four hundred years of oppression might break.

Powerful energy pulses in the streets right now, feeding the fight. Political and corporate actors need to face forward, listen. Act.

This is just a note of reminder that pushback will come. Is already underway. It’s not bad, it’s a message that the work is succeeding. Rabbi Tarfon said: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

General

Essential Work

Leave a comment

Summer and the Moon of Justice

Friday gratefuls: Calming down after Seoah’s departure. Getting into a rhythm with housework, cooking. 45 degrees this morning. Derek taking away our logs. Paper. Computer screens. My hand held computer. Day. Night. The power of the people. The screeching evidence that Trump is bad. Those seeing it now and changing their minds. Living in interesting times.

A nod to the nobility of housework. Seoah taught me many things, one of them being the nobility of housework. It’s not a burden, a distraction, rather it’s an expression of love. Those who know this have their own cache of knowledge and skills.

Cleaning has been unveiled, again, as critical to our survival. Hospitals came to this realization a while ago with the spread of antibiotic resistant strains of various bacteria. Cleaners became “essential” workers. Note, and this is important, that essential does not mean worthy of more pay or status. Just like women or men doing housework.

Seoah would take our cutting board and, after dousing it with vinegar, leave it out to bask in the sun. She was scrupulous in her cleaning. And, she cleaned frequently, using this product and that product, but mostly relying on muscles. “Since Americans (leave their shoes on), it’s important to clean the floors.” Each night before she went to bed the sink and the stove had to be clean.

Her cooking showcased the sort of skills a different culture brings to this necessary task. She steamed small carrots, sweet potatoes, and cabbage to use later, as snacks, appetizers, pickups for other food (the cabbage).

She made rice in batches, showing me how. Always rinse the rice three times. Then put water into the pot just above the first knuckle on a hand palm down on its bottom. Instapot on rice setting.

Her cooking emphasized sauteing, boiling, sesame oil, vegetables. All of her Korean foods were done from scratch, drawing on years of cooking, first with her mother, then on her own. I learned some of her dishes, but mostly I paid attention to her thinking as a cook. What goes with what. When to stop cooking. What ingredients do I need to keep in stock. How her culinary imagination worked.

It is my pleasure, she would say when we thanked her. She meant it. Her work was always done with eagerness, a smile, even joy. Keeping house, making a home are critical to our sense of well being, especially in these stay at home times. Seoah taught me a lot about how to do it well and, how to engage it with love.

Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Friends, Health, Mussar, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel

One Day at a Time

Leave a comment

Summer and the Moon of Justice

Wednesday gratefuls: Simplicity. Does this idea bring me joy? Kondoing my thinking. Maybe. MVP. Rich. Susan. Marilyn. Tara. Judy. Zoom. Covid’s forced introspection. What matters in our daily life? What doesn’t? Seoah between Narita and Singapore. Picture of her with mask and faceshield on the plane. Kate finding Kep’s hotspots. Sano. Going down, coming back up.

On Shadow Mountain. The Sun rising, Black Mountain lit. The Air still cool. All the promise of a new day. Each day is the only day in which you’ll ever live. We’re all one day old, every day. Each morning we can choose to continue old patterns, the remnants of other days, or we can choose new habits, new actions. Even new thoughts. Each day is New Year’s. Old Mother Time melted away last night and the infant wrapped in the sash titled TODAY has succeeded her.

What will you do with this one wild and precious day?

We’re taking Kep to the vet. He has several new hotspots that have shown up on his back. Not sure why, not sure what to do next. So, we’re calling in Dr. Palmini.

Kate’s spirits took a dive yesterday when she discovered Kep’s hotspots. Seoah’s gone. She can’t hug Ruth and Gabe. Her stomach acted up. All got to be too much. She’s resilient though. Look at how she’s handled the multiple insults to her body.

Seoah will touch down in Singapore today. Or, rather, tomorrow. The mysteries of the International Date Line. Her flight gets in just after midnight Singapore time.

First Wednesday with no Kabbalah class since January. School’s out. Teachers let the monkeys out. Gonna take a rest over the summer, then pick up the Kabbalah thread again in the fall.

Groveland U.U., the congregation I joined soon after I left the Presbyterian ministry, wrote me a note yesterday asking if I would do some presentations for them over Zoom. An unexpected pleasure, made possible by your friend the Coronavirus.

MVP (Mussar Vaad Practice Group) met last night. The middot (character trait) we discussed was simplicity. As I’ve mentioned here before, mussar involved identifying a character trait and then creating a practice for yourself that you can use to strengthen it. There are many different lists of soul traits, some exhaustive, some short.

Once you find the middot or middah (plural) on which you need to work, you’ve defined what the mussar teachers call a soul curriculum. Judaism is very clear on the journey. You’ll make mistakes, regress. What’s crucial is to not stop. That may sound zealous, but it’s not. It’s a recognition of our humanity.

My practice, if I should choose to accept it, is to ask what thoughts bring me joy. Not sure yet whether I like this. I created it, so I can change it, but it seems interesting. Just not sure whether joy is a good criteria for thoughts. Even so, it intrigues me. I’ll give it a go for a while, see where it leads.

Great Wheel, Holidays, Myth and Story, Science, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Leaning In. To the Sun.

Leave a comment

Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Saturday gratefuls: The Moon of Sorrow comes to an end. Rain. The smell of the Forest, Pine needles and Pine resin, wet Soil. Petichor. A perfume created by the mistress of all perfumery: Mother Earth. Extra bonus: smelling it while I walked out to get the newspaper. Seoah’s wonderful time with us. She helped us through Gertie’s death, through the Murdoch/Kepler wars, and the coming of the coronavirus. Family. Yes. The sun at its most northerly. And, the longest day.

To a world on fire with virus infections, economic destruction, and spreading demands for real, permanent change, the sun climbs to its highest spot in the north for the year. The Summer Solstice. A fire festival.

Though most of the new age pagan types see the Summer Solstice as a masculine, Sun god holiday, I’m more drawn, again, to the Asian understanding, specifically the ancient Chinese who had the summer solstice as the peak day for yin, feminine energy. They saw this holiday as an earth focused holiday.*

Yin makes most sense to me since the next months grow the crops, fertility as a feminine focus. (BTW: just so we’re clear. Animus and anima, yang and yin, masculine and feminine, active and receptive modes are in all of us-all of Us).

The Earth gives birth to the foods that feed Us all. Us=all living things. Yes, a few exceptions like extremophils which subsist on sulfur or cyanide, but for the rest of Us-Mother Earth or Mother Ocean. The Sun is yang energy, Mother Earth yin. Both required, necessary. Each complementary to the other. This is a day to get naked and dance around the bonfire. If you’re Swedish. If not, you can go ahead. I give you permission.

This holiday celebrates fecundity, mutuality, heat, procreation, gestation. It celebrates those aspects of our lives which support our work, inner or outer. Whatever has emerged from your garden, again inner or outer, will need care to bloom, to fruit, to nut, to mature. Celebrate what you do to lift up yourself, your family, your friends. Make sure that part of your life has enough sustenance, so those relationships, your projects, don’t wither, turn brown before the harvest.

The Earth tilts fully toward the Sun today. 3:44 pm MDT. 23 degrees and 26 minutes, pointing the Tropic of Cancer directly toward our Star. And, it rises as high in the northern Sky or as low in the southern Sky, as it will all year.

Which brings to me my favorite fact about today. This is the longest day of the year. From this day forward the nights grow longer until we get to the yang holiday of the Winter Solstice. Hello, darkness my old friend. I’ll come to visit you again.

*see Ancient History for a brief summary

Aging, Anoka County, Coronavirus, Denver, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Jefferson County, Kabbalah, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

At Her Funeral

Leave a comment

Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Thursday gratefuls: Gauze sponges. Wax o-rings for Kate’s leakage. Stoma powder. The chance to care for Kate. A forty degree morning on Shadow Mountain after 92 degrees in Denver on Monday. That silly Rigel, not acting her age. At all. Kep, the serious. Dog groomer today. The Kabbalah class. Folks liking my presentation. Workout yesterday.

Pine pollen season. Yellow streaks on the asphalt. Pollen lying on wooden tables, adding some color. The winds rushing through the Lodgepoles, shaking loose enough for a yellow storm. Part of the turning of the Great Wheel. That I could do without personally. But, how would we get baby Lodgepoles otherwise? Sneeze and bear it.

Wildfire danger remains high. Dry, Windy. Yesterday the Humidity in the loft was 2%, outside 6%. The arid West. A positive note. It was 80 degrees up here and a slowly rotating fan was all I needed to stay cool. Rigel, we’re not in Andover anymore.

A woman in my kabbalah class wants my Grammar of Holiness read at her funeral, “…whenever that may be.” A strong positive reaction to it from the class. Rabbi Jamie’s going to reprint in the synagogue newsletter, the Shofar.

Always thought my reimagining faith project would be a book, a radical theology with chapters and footnotes and acknowledgements. Nope, two pages. There it is. It feels said to me. We’ll see if I continue to feel that way.

After reading several pieces about Covid and underlying medical conditions, Kate and I have decided to become coronavirus hermits. Our hermitage, Shansin, on top of Shadow Mountain. We’ll ride it out with as little flesh and blood contact as we can stand. Would sound bleak, but Zoom helps, and we’re introverts, happy with each other, ourselves, and our dogs.

And, given recent news, I will add: white, privileged, financially secure, and aging with good medical care.

Still no word from the Singapore government. Seoah may fly there next Tuesday. May not. Covid has impacted lives in so many different ways. This is just one of them, but it’s personal, right here.

From Shadow Mountain, where the sun is rising and the morning is cool.

Aging, Health, Science, Third Phase

Cyberknifed

Leave a comment

Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Wednesday gratefuls: Spaghetti. Marco Polo. China. Cool morning. Kate’s physical. Telehealth. Dr. Gidday. The loft in the morning. The heat. Wildfire. Trees. Lodgepole Pines. Aspen. Colorado Blue Spruce. Dogwood. Lilacs. Iris. Shrub Roses. The New York Times. The Washington Post. The spread out Keaton Clan. The Human Narrative. Holy Land. Holy Water. Holy Air. Holy you.

One year ago today: Cyberknifed. 1st of 35 treatments.

Since then. Luproned. Hot flashes. Suppressed testosterone. Fatigue. Weakness. In the pursuit of a cure. 9 months later now, after the end of radiation. I think much more about the Lupron than I do about cancer though cancer is always present. The Lupron reaches out and touches me while the cancer is either gone or asymptomatic. It feels gone to me.

Think today, for a moment, if you will, of all those impacted by cancer. Those living with it, trying to cure it. Those caring for them. Their families, their friends.

Cancer is global just like Covid. Deadlier, too. 9.7 million deaths in 2017.

Beyond the Boundaries, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The Move

A Year Ago

Leave a comment

Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Tuesday gratefuls: Lululemon, it delights Seoah so. Arlet, the clerk at Lululemon who wants to be Seoah’s friend. The Highlands neighborhood of Denver. Its shops and restaurants. Hwy. 285. I-70. All those other drivers. Evergreen. Safeway. Curb pickup. The Mountains. Snow on the Continental Divide. The winds.

Had an idea for yard cleanup. I’m going to text my neighbor Derek, see how much of our wood he wants. Then, I’m going to post on Nextdoor Shadow Mountain for anyone else who heats with wood. Free fuel. You move it, it’s yours. That’ll get rid of the trees. The slash will go to the curb for chipping. I should be able to handle the rest along with Jon. Some of the remaining stuff belongs to him.

One year ago today two Elk bucks jumped in our yard and began eating Dandelions. Shansin, or his Rocky Mountain avatar, sent those angels to our house. You belong here, Charlie. Neighbor.

Resonated then, and now, with the Consolation of Deer Creek Canyon from 2015. The Mountains rising on either side of Deer Canyon Road spoke, but I was still deaf to the full meaning. The unimaginable age of these young mountains, millions and millions of years since the Laramide orogeny pushed them up, let me put my diagnosis, just received, in a different context.

I drove back from Dr. Eigner’s office, stomach hollow and sour, thoughts flitting from imminent death to it’s a mistake to I can handle this. I can handle this. I can handle this.

Deer Creek Canyon helped me see it was just death. Nothing more. How many deaths since the Laramide mountain building? Uncountable. Insects. Deer. Elephants. Mammoths. Humans. Dogs. Whales. Barracuda. Coral. So much death. Yet, these Mountains were young. My death had nothing unusual about it. I would become part of that uncountable number. That soothed me. Not sure why. Maybe because I didn’t feel singled out, picked on, targeted.

With the recurrence a lot of those old fears and those old reassurances came marching back onto the field. No, said the Angels. This is new. We have come, neighbor, to tell you it is both new and old. The Mountains will embrace you each day as you drive to and from the radiation. Our brothers and sisters will hold you in their wild hearts, as you hold them in yours. We know death and pain and whatever your journey, your ancientrail becomes, we will not abandon you.

Three Mule Deer bucks stood in my backyard on Samain, 2014, when I came for closing on the house. We spent a long time together. They were the wilderness welcome I didn’t even know we needed, yet there they were.

This year three Elk bucks came. This year, probably not until November, I’ll find out whether I have a cure. Again. Reassurance again, from the wild hearts beating all over our home in these Rocky Mountains. More than enough for me.

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Kabbalah, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Dance, Twirl, Leap

Leave a comment

Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Monday gratefuls: Old friends. Ancient friends. The Sky. Roads and their romance. Saudi Arabia. Singapore. San Francisco. The Rocky Mountains. The Clan. Newspapers. Headlines. Journalists. Freedom of the Press. Freedom of Assembly. Freedom. Both from and for. July 4. Seoah’s birthday. Lululemon. Seoah’s favorite store. The fans here in the loft.

Spent most of yesterday working on my presentation for the kabbalah class. Wednesday morning. Hard time. I knew what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t find a way in to it. Several false starts. One with double spading forks. One with the dark world I entered after Mom’s death. One with Becoming Native to This Place. Couldn’t get purchase. Kept slipping off with interesting but beside the point narratives. Decided to go right at it. No metaphors. No build up. No explanation. Claims. How I see the world. This is the first draft. It won’t change a lot. Some though. I’ll post the second draft

                          The Grammar of Holiness

All right. This Land is holy Land. That Land is holy Land. All Land is holy Land. The world Ocean is a holy Ocean in a vessel made of continents of holy Land. The Atmosphere is holy. All of it, not just the oxygen we need to breathe, all of it.

We spin and dash around the holy Sun, pushing our way further and further away from the holy Milky Way, traveling though holy Space.

We came from this holy World, are made of this holy World, and return to It the very elements It loaned us.

We are of this wide, large, Universe. And our World will return to It the elements loaned to it at the beginning.

This then is Israel.

When I put my hands in the Soil, the living Land that sustains us, I touch the holy. The sacred gets under my fingernails. When I drink water from the aquifer on Shadow Mountain, I bring holiness into my body, my sacred body.

That Tomato is a holy Tomato. That Cow is a sacred Cow. The Moose a sacred Moose. The sacred Elk Bucks who jumped our fence, ate holy Dandelions and holy Aspen leaves, and lounged among the holy Lodgepole Pines. Angels. Messengers of the holy Mountains.

Holiness means a necessary, unique part of the whole. Sacred means the same.

The One spans this holy Reality, is this sacred Reality, contains that Land and this Land, that Ocean, this Atmosphere, this World, that Galaxy. Whenever we move through the Atmosphere, on the Land, or on the Ocean, we are on pilgrimage to a holy place.

The same for the Blue Whale, the Krill, the Pine Marten, the Mosquito, the Mountain Lion, and the Mule Deer. The same for the Brook Trout, the Staghorn Beetle, or the pollen of the Ponderosa Pine. All on pilgrimage to a holy place.

My faith is this simple. It has neither God nor Bible, neither Savior nor Torah though it can be found through them.

What is faith? Confidence. Acknowledgment. Attention. Focus. Seeing what you are looking at. Touching what is in front of you. Hearing the sacred music of the Land, the Sky, the Waters. Smelling the odor of sanctity in a flower bed or a landfill. Tasting the food that sustains you. And knowing you belong.

Make your puja. Offer yourself. Offer your life. Light incense. Daven. Bow your head. Throw your hands above your head. Shout hallelujah. Prostrate yourself on the holy Land. Say yes. Say no. Dance, twirl, leap.

May as well. This holy World’s for you and you are for this holy World.

Aging, Anoka County, Colorado, Cooking, Coronavirus, GeekWorld, Jefferson County

Imminent

Leave a comment

Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Saturday gratefuls: Our Kenmore 19 Frostless Freezer. Its good years of service. A good temporary solution to its imminent demise. Crowhill Appliance. Dave, the tech. Seoah’s help. Kate’s smile when Rigel lay down on her quilt. The gift of pleasant days. Pine pollen. Fish. Curtis Spitler Ellis. Gertrude Eliza Ellis. Judy. Raeone. Saturdays.

Symptoms of a pandemic. Remember all those folks buying toilet paper? Even though Covid doesn’t have g-i effects? Or, the whole PPE scandal with no masks for medical personnel? Out of stock items on Amazon like hand sanitizer, toilet paper? Discovered another one yesterday.

On Wednesday Seoah told me about an alarm going off in the garage. I spent my usual minutes of frustration trying to find it. Not the cars. What else could it be? Oh. The freezer. Temperature alert. Red light flashing. Uh-oh. Remember those meat bundles I bought from Tony’s? Yep. In danger.

I looked at it. Opened the door. No frost buildup. The meat might have just started to defrost. I pushed the quick freeze button, shut the door, and the alarm went off. OK. On Thursday it was beeping again.

We bought this freezer near the time we moved to Andover. That was 1994. It’s been a good mechanical servant for all those days. I even hit it with the car once and it kept on ticking. Had an incident last year when it frosted up. I removed everything, left it open for a day, and the frost melted. I loaded it back up and it continued to work. Until Wednesday.

Time for a new freezer, it seemed. I started looking first at Consumer Reports. OK. GE makes good freezers. I hunted for them online. Looked at Best Buy. Ah. They have it. $900. Reasonable. Wait. That button changed from yellow to gray. Oh, out of stock. Well, understandable. It’s a good one.

I checked Lowes. It was out of stock there, too. Appliance Factory. Out of stock. Specialty Appliances. Home Depot. All out of stock. Ok. I looked for one of the others Consumer Report recommended. Out of stock, too. Decided to check for any old freezer. Out of stock. Kate suggested I look for a chest freezer. Out of stock.

There is nowhere in Colorado that you can buy either an upright or chest freezer. I suspect that’s true everywhere. According to a salesman I talked to, only two manufactures of freezers remain, Amana and Frigidaire. They make all the other brands. Not sure what that means for all the Consumer Reports subtle gradations. Anyhow, they’ve told all their customers there will be no stock again until early to mid-fall.

That put me in a funk yesterday. I like to solve problems and when I have a problem that seems unsolvable. Not good. Hundreds of dollars of top quality meat in a dying freezer. Damn.

Went to bed for a nap. See if some sleep might refresh the circuits. While waiting to go to sleep, I remembered the freezer in our refrigerator. It’s a pull-out bottom freezer and has a fair amount of space. I imagined the packages of meat I’d bought from Tony’s. Huh. They should fit.

My funk lifted. Today Seoah and I will switch the lower value foods stored in the refrigerator with the meats in the dying Kenmore. When I asked Dave, the tech from Crowhill, how long he thought the freezer would last, he said, “A day. A month. Several months.” And shrugged.

They don’t do compressor repairs anymore. That’s because at $900 to $1,000 they’re more costly than a new unit. If, of course, you can find one. I thought briefly about going ahead, but then realized I’d have a brand new compressor in a freezer over twenty years old. Other stuff in it is old, too.

We’ll continue using the Kenmore until the compressor ceases to function. If we lose some popsicles, frozen veggies, or tater tots (yes, sue me. I like’m.), that’ll be ok. It was the thought of losing all that meat and not being able to do anything about it…

And, when Amana and Frigidaire crank back up, we’ll get ourselves a new freezer. Sometime this fall.