All posts by Charles

Dogs, Far Right, Friends, Politics, Shadow Mountain

A Very Doggy Shabbat

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Sunday gratefuls: Shadow returned. For an hour. Nathan and his journey. The Dog run. The igloo Dog house. Natalie. The season of Yule. Veronica in Brooklyn. Mary down under. Mark in Hafar. Joe in Korea. Diane in San Francisco. Shadow Mountain. The Twin Cities. Robbinston, Maine. Evergreen. Denver.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow, my sweet girl

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Gevurah   strength, discipline

In your daily life, practicing Gevurah might mean:
  • Setting Boundaries: Knowing when to say no to preserve your energy or integrity.
  • Ethical Discernment: Evaluating situations clearly rather than acting on blind impulse.
  • Discipline: Committing to a path and having the strength to stay on it, even when it is difficult. 

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: A very Doggy shabbat with Nathan coming by to make final measurements for the Dog run, talking with him about Montana and Colorado Mountain Dogs as Natalie showed up with boarding school girl, all wiggles and wags and kisses, happy to be in her own home with her Dad.

 

Dog journal: Shadow came home for a visit. Natalie knocked on the door and came in with Shadow on her yellow leash. Shadow barked at Nathan, turned to me, then went behind Natalie. Overwhelmed. She soon settled down and went outside, happy to be in her yard. Not too long after she came in after a brief hesitation and got her cookie.

As Natalie and I talked, Shadow, a bit tentatively at first, came over to me, then jumped up with her front legs on my lap, wagging her tail, smiling as we hugged. Lots of kisses. That felt so good.

She’s only on the doggy prozac now. Her reactivity, much diminished. Her personality, intact. A good result.

She comes home for good a week from yesterday. The Dog run will mean a less spacious yard for her until she reliably crosses the threshold. Could be a while.

Natalie wants me to walk her away from the house. I’ll probably take her to Flying J. I can walk a bit, walking her will be good for me, too. She allows the leash to be put on now, though she still doesn’t like it. However, after the leash is on, she’s comfortable with it.

Also going to try, at Natalie’s suggestion, Dog pheromones diffused through a plug-in diffuser. These pheromones replicate the ones Bitches express while nursing, the reason Puppies become “milk drunk” and often sleep after feeding. Natalie has been using them with her dogs and has found they do have a calming effect.

What a long, strange trip it’s been.

 

Just a minute: As my knowledge of the alt-right has increased, I’m beginning to see potential fault lines in the MAGA movement itself and among those few remaining Republicans of the old G.O.P.

The most commented upon fault line lies along the America First pledge and Trump’s promise of a laser focus on affordability: prices at the pump, grocery receipts, and mortgage interest rates.

As he’s gotten entangled in Ukraine, Israel, Iran, and now Nigeria, and as he’s sought peace making merit badges in pursuit of a Nobel peace prize, his MAGA base feels he’s abandoned his efforts on affordability.

Fourth Phase, Health, Holidays, Writing

Habits Old and New

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Shabbat gratefuls: Snow. Shadow here for a visit. Noon. Vincent and Julia home  for the holidays. Tara. The sixties. The anti-war movement. In loco parentis. Student’s rights. Civil rights. Philosophy. Anthropology. My 1950’s Chevy Panel Truck. Ball State. Wabash. Anti-draft movement. Second wave feminism. Judy. Fox River Paper. Appleton, Wisconsin

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Creole Food

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Gevurah   strength, discipline

In your daily life, practicing Gevurah might mean:
  • Setting Boundaries: Knowing when to say no to preserve your energy or integrity.
  • Ethical Discernment: Evaluating situations clearly rather than acting on blind impulse.
  • Discipline: Committing to a path and having the strength to stay on it, even when it is difficult. 

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: The deafening sound of silverware on porcelain, the normal conversations in a full restaurant, the kitchen with waiters coming and going overwhelm my hearing aid, placing me outside even the table where Joanne, Alan, Cheri talk to Josh, the happy Hummingbird chef, while I sit there smiling and nodding, the fool on the hill.

During the Moon of New Beginnings I plan to recapture old habits and pick up one new one. I have already begun resistance work as my primary workout. Leaving out cardio, at least for now. I have a modest, but important to me, goal. Opening the wrapping on a protein bar with ease. Hey, I said it was modest.

I will also continue Ancientrails, as if I could stop at this point after almost twenty-one years of regular morning writing. I hope to add a rewrite/revision of Superior Wolf to my day. My focus on the kavannah of gevurah includes setting aside time for this writing project.

The new habit I want to add? I have been active in and read about politics since my teenage years in Indiana. That reading has included newspapers, magazines, books, and websites. I mostly read to give shape and reason to action. With no gevurah, no discipline however.

Like most folks I’d look at a front page and read what struck me. Same with a new issue of a magazine or the offerings on a website. Part of the new habit involves adding gevurah to my reading about politics. Chatgpt and I have developed a beginning plan for daily, weekly, and monthly reading on specific topics important to me and, I believe, others.

Those topics are: Christian Nationalism, New Apostolic Reformation, granola conservatives, white supremacy, MAGA, post-MAGA far right politics, anti-Semitism, democratic socialism, strategy within democratic socialism and the Democratic party for winning elections, state and city level politics expressive of any of the above.

Disciplined reading and thinking about these topics will inform columns commenting on what I’ve learned and how I see that learning affecting both the present political moment and movement toward a more just, compassionate, and loving world.

I will probably write these columns in Substack where I already have a spot which I’ve hardly used.

 

Humanities, Literature, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home

Riders on the Storm

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Boxing day gratefuls: Shadow, my sweet girl. Feeling no pain. Global warming. Climate change. Chatgpt. Snow in the forecast. Sorta. Football. How bout those Broncos? And, those Vikings. Joe. Seoah. Murdoch. Ruth and Gabe at Christmas dinner with Jon’s friends. Gabe looking through his dad’s art. Joanne and Alan today at the Hummingbird. Garlic in winter. Yule. Shema. Chesed. Yirah.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Resistance work

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Yirah.    Radical amazement, awe.

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: On Christmas day I heard the heralds sing, Vikings in yet another takeaway from the Lions, that Viking’s running back leaped and got the ball over the pylon, touchdown, Bo Nix scrambles for another first down, and Bronco’s keep the ball moving downfield, proving that Christmas day did send good cheer to me, and to all Viking’s and Bronco’s fans, a happy New Year!

 

Riders on the storm. Into this world we’re thrown. Jim Morrison, who died too young, knew his Heidegger. Thrownness is a Heideggerian idea that seems obvious once you understand it, yet has profound implications for understanding anyone’s life purpose.

Thrownness means birth locates you not only in a family and a place, significant enough, but also in an era, a moment in time neither in the past nor in the future, but in what becomes for you, as long as you live, your time. Sorta obvious, right?

Its profundity comes from this: Even though I may want very much to be a Druid in the peak era of Celtic civilization, I can’t. The past. Even though I may want to live in an era without Trump, I can’t. We share this time. Damn it. Even though I may want to live in a time long after this one. I can’t. The future.

Thrownness positions us where we are, with this body and its gifts, its flaws, these relatives and friends with their gifts and flaws. With the joys and possibilities available through computers, electric cars, zoom calls, good medicine, a prosperous nation. But also within a time straining to solve civilizational problems through old, time cursed solutions like oligarchy, fascism, and bigotry.

We cannot be anywhere else, with any other world around us. We must, therefore, act within this one. And, we must act as the person we are, not one we wish we might magically become.

In case this is all too abstruse, and it probably is, let me anchor the idea in my life. I was thrown into post-WW II America with two veterans of that war as parents. It was a time when polio still raged among the young. It caught up with me. I grew up in a small Indiana town with displaced hillbillie’s kids as my classmates and friends. My mother died when I was 17, almost out of high school.

Let’s stop there. I had no choice about any of these things. They were the realities of my life in the same way being raised as a  Masai warrior’s child of the same era was theirs. My development physically, emotionally, intellectually, had to have these influences.

In other words who I am today at 78, sitting on Shadow Mountain, remains anchored in how I chose to respond to those realities. Could not have been otherwise. Though my choices could have, potentially, been different, they were the ones I made and I cannot go back and remake them.

As this 21st century year comes to a close, give some thought to the world into which you were thrown. It is your only world, for this lifetime, and only you can offer yourself to it as healer, servant, bringer of justice and compassion, artist or engineer.

Family, Health

Christmas Edition

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Christmas gratefuls: Children, all the children. Christmas Trees. Wassail bowls. Yule logs. Mistletoe. Holly and Ivy. The whole pageant of pagan appropriations. Merry Christmas, everyone. Snow. Ice. Wherefore art thou? Shadow of the morning. All those who are alone, bereft, unloved on this day in particular. Friends and family. Wild Neighbors and the Rocky Mountains.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara, Marilyn and Irv

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Yirah.    Radical amazement, awe.

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Tara brings all black, curly haired puppy Eleanor and all white, curly haired Kingsley; they run down the stairs yin and yang on four legs, out the back door and into doggy freedom, while they play Tara and I talk. Humans, eh?

A Christmas edition of Ancientrails. Nostalgia carries me into Christmas, any Christian embers long extinguished. The pagan accretions, the family and friends celebrating. Yes. The incarnation. No.

Jacquie Lawson, the e-card company, puts out a fun animated Advent calendar and I buy one each year. It’s heavy on traditional Christmas themes like Snow, sledding, Santa, hot chocolate, with a soupcon of baby Jesus. This year’s version had an English village setting with the village gaining buildings as the days progressed. A sweet immersion in the parts of Christmas that still matter to me. Very well done.

Yule makes more sense to me with its Evergreen Trees, Holly, and Ivy. Its emphasis on Fire as the human imitation of Great Sol. Wassailing, feasting, singing songs. Celebrating the essential and inextricable relationship between humans and their parents: Mother Earth and Great Sol.

So throw that Yule log on the Fire, drink from a flagon made of Elk Horn, listen to the lute and the zither, and sing the night away into the coming of the light. You pagan you.

 

In saying my piece about the difficult realms of my inner world I put them out there, on the page, away from the clanging cauldron of my doubts. They no longer have the power of hidden things. Does not make them dissolve, no.

Yet. Their power diminishes in the air. Looking back to yesterday’s post, I can see them as part of my larger whole, and only part. That alone puts them in conversation with the strength of my will, with the love of friends and family, with  the sacred energy of my nephesh which joins  my Self to the collective unconscious. In that broader, richer context the self-insulting and self-negating thoughts have to contend with years of reflection and self-understanding. Their obscurantism evaporates, sending them back to their subterranean homes in Kubla Khan’s caverns measureless to man (sic).

Also, when they’re out folks can raise them with me. Diane helped me today with two stuck places: exercise. I committed to resistance work only for the next few weeks. Being weak really bugs me. She also helped me see that reading and writing can indeed be my purpose now. Thanks, cuz.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase

Fallacies

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Wednesday gratefuls: Luke and Leo. Snowpack Pizzeria. Safeway pickup. Sheetpan meals. Climate change. Being a Jew, a son of Avram and Sarai. The Shema. The Far Right. Democratic socialism. The whole, wide world. Everywhere and everyone. The blessing and grace of the one. This darkness. This light.  Purpose. Meaning. Love. Joy. Compassion. Angst.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Ninth Wave

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Yirah.    Radical amazement, awe.

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs.  Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  ― Howard Thurman

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Natalie sent a video of Shadow crossing her threshold with no hesitation, tail up, ready to sit with the other dogs for her come in the house treat, then running upstairs with the other four, headed off to bed, in her third week away from home, away from me. An ache in my heart.

*The Ninth Wave” by Ivan Aivazovsky
Year 1850

I suppose most of us, if we felt so inclined, could document the thousand doubts our mind is heir to. I know that.  I’ve shared mine the last couple of days. So here’s another vantage point, a perspectival shift.

The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead warns us against what he calls fallacies of misplaced concreteness. That is, taking an idea and removing it from its context as if it were a thing sui generis. For example, imagining that there is such a thing as intelligence, justice, love instead of understanding that they are all part of a process of ongoing life, embedded in persons and situations and never existing in any other sense.

So when I place my finger on the doubts, the fears, the weariness and conclude from that I am melancholic or even depressed, I commit just such a fallacy. Yes, those doubts, fears, and weariness are part of me, yes. The key word in that sentence being part. Over the last couple of days I’ve obscured-through a fallacy of misplaced concreteness-my whole self. Imagining that the map I’ve written with those words is the true territory of my soul.

It is not. As Whitman wrote, I am many, I contain multitudes. I am no more explained by doubts and fears than I am by my knowledge and compassion. Probably less so. Why? Because the doubts and fears are more like flotsam and jetsam in the ocean of my Self. Sometimes certain currents swirl around, collect them, force them to the shore, to consciousness.

Oh, yes, I am these, too. No, wait. They are all I am. I cannot see beyond them. Never ever true.

Always a part of larger, more complex and wonderful whole. Not to be ignored, not to be pushed away in fear or pushed down in frustration, but to be felt and known and embraced and then put back out to sea, their work done. For now.

Not quite ready to stop listening to and learning from my doubts, my I can’ts. But I will be. Soon, I hope.

*Ninth Wave (Russian: Девятый вал, Dyevyatiy val) is an 1850 painting by Russian marine painter Ivan Aivazovsky. It is his best-known work.[1][2]

The title refers to an old sailing expression referring to a wave of incredible size that comes after a succession of incrementally larger waves.[3]

It depicts a sea after a night storm and people facing death attempting to save themselves by clinging to debris from a wrecked ship.   Wikipedia

 

*

Feelings, Fourth Phase

I Can’t Quite

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Tuesday gratefuls: Ruth, who sees me. Joe coming in January. Shadow in her third week of boarding school. Going to public spaces. That old debble melancholy. Deep darkness, nurturing. Now more light, let the growing season show its first tiny shoots. The dance of light and dark. Shadows. Shadow Mountain.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Self

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Yirah.    Radical amazement, awe.

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs.  Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  ― Howard Thurman

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Can you feel the trembling heart of children, ones who await not gifts but special dispensations from the holy Santa Claus who once a year accomplishes the miraculous, Reindeer powered sleigh landing on rooftops, finding a way in even to non-chiminied homes, eating millions of cookies and drinking gallons of milk, knowing what each child’s heart needs, and bringing a present that speaks love and caring.

 

And so. I’ve mostly said it out loud. I can feel, often feel, boxed in by my choices, living a tentative life with medicine offering temporary balms, welcome, yet always with the awareness that this drug, that ablation, will fail.

Chips away at my sense of self, my fantasy of permanence. I feel myself too often sliding into no, I can’t, rather than my usual, from a life I remember well, I can. I can’t travel. I can’t take care of this dog. I can’t engage large tasks. I can’t stand long enough to cook. I can’t.

When I can’t takes over, the self does not lose agency, it relinquishes it. No wonder sadness follows. What a pitiful excuse for a human being. Who’s old enough to know better.

Ah, as Shakespeare wrote, there’s the rub. I do know better. But knowing is a weak cousin to action and an even more distant relative to healing a wounded heart. From this well, I look up and see others handling their lives, doing this and that, keeping their life going while I languish. The one who can’t.

I know. For sure and certain.  This view flows from a crippled heart. And yet, I can’t seem to find that Archimedean lever to move my inner world.

It’s not for lack of love. Not at all. Friends and family, yes. Who see me. Care for me. It’s not for lack of self knowledge gained the hard way over years of analysis and honest self-reflection.

Then, what is it? I think, sometimes, that I should sell the house, move into a condo or an apartment, or assisted living where the burdens I feel in this independent, introverted life I lead would fall away. Then I remember AA, wherever you go, there you are. No to geographic escape.

I need to figure this out living in this place I love, with the Dog and human family I love, with my friends, with my wild neighbors both of whom I love. With Mother Earth, from her I  came and to her I will return.

Feelings, Fourth Phase

Seeking Joy

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Monday gratefuls: No fire during the high winds. No downed Trees. Nathan starts work on Friday. Will finish before Shadow comes home. Ruth and Gabe, my empaths. Joe, too. Hannukah. Food in the fridge. Water from the well. Septic system. Generator. Internet. Friends checking in. Mother Nature and her powerful ways. Pagans at Stonehenge and Glastonbury Tor. The Winter Solstice. Light returns. Slowly.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Melancholy, my old friend

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Yirah.    Radical amazement, awe

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” ― W.B. Yeats

Tarot: Paused

One brief shining: Those moans and sighs, the pulsing of windows, the generator’s gentle music have seized; but this day, a day when the sound of the chain saw will dominate, more high winds, yet all the while neighbors and businesses have barely begun to set things right again, squaring up life today with what’s left from yesterday.

 

Ruth gave me a spiral bound calendar of positive affirmations. When I asked her if she thought I was depressed, she hesitated, then nodded. Later on I told her that yes, sometimes I wonder if I’ve just had too much. Too much loss. Too many medical interventions. I guess the word, better than depressed, might be melancholic.

If I’m honest, and I try very damn hard to be nothing but, I’d have to admit that I’ve often shrugged off exercise. Often spent most of my day watching television. Something I despise. I have three major projects I could work on: Seed Savers, a new Superior Wolf novel, a regular schedule of reading, then commenting on the news. But I only get to the planning. Eating enough has become a challenge.

Perhaps I’ve been  down a long time. Longer than I’d like to admit. Am I coping? Oh, yes. Handling things, even or especially in tough times, I consider a strong part of my character. Yet handling things, too, can take its own toll.

Judaism holds joy to be a religious obligation and I agree. Perhaps my most necessary task this Yule and in the new year will be to focus more on the joy that surrounds me and is within me. To both see it and feel it, let it in.

Like what, you might ask? The generator. Ruth and Gabe’s love. Shadow. No pain in my left hip and back. A constellation of friends, near and far. This delightful house now molded to my life. Great Sol rising. Seasons changing. Family who love me. Memories of a great life with Kate. A mind that continues to sharpen itself on the whetstone of experience. Prostate cancer treatments to keep me alive. More than adequate money. Each Lodgepole and each Aspen. Each species of Moss, Ground Cover, each Wildflower at Shadow Mountain Home. Artemis. Ruby. Electricity. Positive affirmations, eh?

Joy, joy, joy to the fishes and the deep blue sea, joy to you and me.

Family, Holidays, Judaism

Grandkids

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Gabe. Hannukah. Presents all round. Positive affirmations. Yule. Winter Solstice. Alan. Joanne. Hummingbird. Mechanical puzzles. Challah. French toast. Donuts. Shadow away. Gabe admitted to Hamline. Joe. His smile. Applications for school. Shadow Mountain Home. Nathan and the Dog run.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Puzzles

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Yirah.    Radical amazement, awe.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
― Albert Einstein

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Blue and white Hannukah gift bags assembled on the table when Ruth and Gabe came inside after their drive up the hill from Denver; Gabe got the menorah and a box of Hannukah candles from the Judaica closet, brought them down to the breakfast table where Ruth busied herself lighting each candles base to seat them in the menorah.

 

The best thank you. As soon we’d finishing opening our presents, Gabe had a puzzle in his hands, already determined. Later on, Ruth, too. These aren’t garden variety puzzles. They come from Kubiya games, ranked in level of difficulty, 1-5. After Gabe finished last year’s puzzles pretty fast, this time I got all 5 level.

He asked me if his struggle was making me happy. I said yes. He laughed.

A season pass to A-Basin, Ruth’s big Hannukah present, had a few smaller ones added to it. A wall-size chromatic color chart, a jigsaw puzzle, vintage, of the human skeleton, and a Silence, Please coffee mug from the Bodleian Library. Gabe got a mug, too.

We’ve been doing Hannukah together since Kate and I moved here eleven years ago yesterday. Some of those early years Jen, Jon, Ruth, Gabe, Kate. Apres divorce no Jen. After Kate died no Kate. After Jon died no Jon. Now the three of us carry on, adding memories and time together.

Gabe got admitted to, and wants to attend, Hamline College in St. Paul. Hamline sits on Snelling Avenue which, further south, runs past St. Paul Central High School, Joe’s alma mater.

My old buddy, Howard Vogel, taught Constitutional Law at Hamline’s law school for many years. Jon graduated from Augsburg College not too faraway in Minneapolis. I lived in St. Paul for several years and Kate and I bought our first house together on Edgcumbe Road. A lot of family history in St. Paul.

Both Ruth and Gabe have finished their semesters. Gabe wants out of high school. So bad. High school sucked, he said echoing more than one senior with only one semester, or as he put it, the final eighth to go.

Ruth completed her first year of pre-med, maintaining her 3.9 gpa and earning the opportunity to become a T.A. in her Chemistry class next semester. She holds down two jobs and carries a full class load.

The grandkids are doing ok.

Dogs, Friends, GeekWorld, Politics, Shadow Mountain

Internet Refugees

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Samain (last day) and the Moon of New Beginnings

Shabbat gratefuls: Arjean and Tara. Eleanor and Kingsley. Generator. High Winds. The Grid. C.O.R.E. Lenovo. Ana. Natalie. Making the NYT. New computer. Getting it setup. Winter Solstice. Reading the news, books, magazines. Poetry. Morning darkness. Exercise. Shadow in boarding school. Joe in the U.S. Shabbat.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Starlink

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Yirah.    Radical amazement, awe.  “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
― Albert Einstein

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: The days have begun to march toward the end of another year, another orbit completed in our circular, cyclical, non-linear path around Great Sol, yet before we get there: Winter Solstice, Yule, Christmas Eve, Christmas, Kwanza, New Year’s Eve how wonderful, these are my days of awe brilliant with legend, filled with memories, wedded to us by centuries, millennia of human longing.

 

Friday: Internet refugees. With my generator chugging along and my Starlink antenna aimed toward the northern sky, I had both power and the internet. Tara and Arjean had neither thanks to an Xcel intentional shutdown. Both of them had work they needed to do, homework as it is these days, yet could not.

Tara asked if she and Arjean could come and work here. I’m delighted you want to. Come when you need, stay as long as you like. In addition to electricity and internet, I also have a large fenced in back yard. Eleanor and Kingsley needed a place to romp.

The generator, with very brief interruptions, ran from Wednesday around 1 pm to Friday around noon. Made me feel good to be able to share what it made possible.

Due to family Ana had to wait until yesterday to clean the house. For a while, I had three adults and two dogs here. Shadow Mountain home buzzed with energy.

To complete the day Natalie came over to pick up Shadow’s heartworm meds and we chatted about Shadow. She will come to Natalie and let her put on the leash. “Though,” Natalie says, “she still looks like she’s going to die.” She crosses the threshold coming in from outside, yet Natalie says she’s reluctant to go back out. Well, geez.

I’ve recovered my exercise rhythm and had completed my workout before everybody showed up.

A good Friday.

 

Just a moment:  For reasons I don’t fully understand, I’ve begun to feel optimistic about our political future. 11 months to the day in this abysmal simulacrum of governance the cracks in DJT’s obsessive, unfocused, unintentional approach (which have always been there) have begun to widen enough to include Republicans, even some of his MAGA cult members.

Yes, he has three more years and one month (no, I don’t believe he can get around the 22nd amendment) and can still do more damage, but my gut tells me the political zeitgeist has begun to turn against him. We will see.

 

Shadow Mountain, Sport

Power

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Samain and the Moon of New Beginnings

Friday gratefuls: Generator. High Winds. Mountain living. Fresh Snow. Hanukkah. Damaged Dog house. Waiting on Nathan. Shadow and her heartworm meds. Natalie. Dr. Josy. Tara. Eleanor and Kingsley.  The Hummingbird. Alan and Joanne. Marilyn and Irv. C.O.R.E. Our electricity co-op. 80433 still 98% dark. Mother Nature can have a heavy hand. All our Wild Neighbors confronted with loss of body heat.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Automatic Transfer Switches

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:   Netzach   “Endurance and Tenacity: Netzach represents the inner strength and fortitude required to pursue a goal or a passion over a long period, especially when faced with obstacles.”

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Maybe an hour or two yesterday evening of connection to the grid, then with a flicker and a thrum, the sound of the generator was once again heard on the Mountain, back to its already over a day of constant on, giving me water, internet, light, warmth, a feeling of security as I switched on my oxygen concentrator last night and went to bed.

 

Hard to value a generator. The whole home sort that Kate and I bought ran between nine and ten thousand dollars when we bought it well over 15 years ago. A lot more now, I’m sure. I said in the post yesterday that Kate’s heat intolerance made the decision. A big chunk of it, yes. The clincher though was water.

Ever since we moved to Andover in 1994, we’ve lived on properties with their own water and septic. Septic works on gravity and hydraulics which power outages don’t affect. Water however relies on an electric pump. Hand washing. Cooking. Showering. Irrigating in the case of Andover. Not to mention staying hydrated. We plunked down our money.

The proof of its value comes over the years. When it comes on with the easy grace of the automatic transfer, a sigh of relief. The longer it runs, the more grateful I am to have it. Beats lighting with candles, heating with a fireplace meant for aesthetics, and cooking by opening cans or roasting something over the fire. May sound romantic, and if voluntary, sure. But all day, all night for two plus days? Not so much.

 

Sports: OK. I’ll admit it. I like football. Watched the first half of the Seahawks v Rams last night. Wish I didn’t go to bed at 7:30, but I do. Got crazy near the end and the Seahawks won in over time. I’m allowing myself more football watching even though it includes advertisements which I loathe and pays ridiculous amounts of money to men, enough to make them ignore concussions and later life altering injuries. If I watch, I’m complicit.

Still. The intricacy and the elegance. The struggle. The crash of behemoth linemen, the beautiful running of a back squeezing through the line. A pass arcing just over the arms of a defender then to be caught one-handed. The occasional play that breaks loose: a runback of a kick for a touchdown, a back headed for a first down who breaks a tackle and rumbles on for thirty, forty, fifty yard. Poetry.