All posts by Charles

Weather +Climate

Skinner and Snow

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34  74%  37%  7mph  windroseNNE  bar steep rise  dewpoint27  First Quarter of the Snow Moon    Holiseason

At 9AM this morning we had snow.  A bit accumulated on the outdoor furniture on our deck, then it was gone.  The season teases us, reminds us how it could be while withholding what we want, a daylong nightlong daylong snow complete with howling winds and drifts as big as cars. 

In years past, back when I was, say, 40, Minnesota would reliably produce such weather, but now it falls in that strange realm of behavioral psychology, intermittent reinforcement.  Any Skinnerian can tell you that that intermittent is the most powerful reinforcer.  It explains gambling’s dark charm and the peculiar frustrations of Viking’s and Cub’s fans.  It also explains why we Minnesotan’s now look so eagerly at each new flake in the sky hoping that this will be the one when the land returns to normal, at least for a day.

Snow seems faraway right now.  Oh, well, I have plenty to do today.  Construct a magic of myth tour, grocery shopping, cooking supper, a workout.  And, if I have time, finish my filing.  Got a lot done yesterday, but not all.

GeekWorld

So, whadd’ya think anyhow?

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41  50%   36%  4mph windroseNNE  bar steady  dewpoint23  Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon    Holiseason

Bill Schmidt found the weather plug-in which now inhabits the right side of the page.  Thanks, Bill.

If any you who read this would like to comment on the new site, as it is or compared to the old one, I’m interested in your thoughts.  One of the reason I switched to WordPress was the easy availablity of the discussion function.  So, discuss away if you have a mind.

General

Night’s Clarity

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 28  76%  37%  0mph windroseWSW bar falls  dewpoint22  Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon    Holiseason

 Living should be perpetual and universal benediction. – Why Lazurus Laughed by Wei Wu Wei…

The great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
  – Thomas H. Huxley

Haven’t added any quotes as I’ve gotten used to WordPress.  I’m getting there.

As I do this final post of the day, the time ahead has grown clearer.  Tomorrow Kate and I have a business meeting.  I’ll finish her Hawai’i travel arrangements.  After, or around, those two, I will complete my filing–some of it left over from the finish of the docent program in June.  If I have time tomorrow, I’ll sort out the objects for my Magic of Myth tour.  Saturday I’ll have two things to do:  finish up the tour and dig that fire pit.  Oh, and put out the marker stakes so the snowplows don’t dig up our lawn and bust sprinkler heads.  This is a suburban gig.  The city gives out stakes with fluorscent orange paint.  They’re about three feet high and presumably stick up above the snow.  Not always true, but by the time its not, the plows have cut a groove and hopefully it’s all on the road.

Night.  This is no longer the gentle dark of summer; this is the darkness that is metaphor for lonlieness and meditative silence. 

General

Out of Whack

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33  59%  35%  0mph windrose WSW bar steady  dewpoint 20  Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon   Holiseason

Extra long nap.  Up.  Work out.  Glad to have the new routine.  It seems to make sense.  I do the regular phase 4 movement prep, pre-hab and strength routines and add the advanced endurance aerobics.  Feels about right.

Feeling fragmented, unfocused.  Priorities seem out of whack.  Not long term, just in the current moment.  Don’t like the feeling.  As if the center (which, if I understand Buddhism correctly, does not exist) will not hold, different motivators come to the surface, push me in this direction or that.  Less conscious choice. 

The fire pit, if it’s to be finished this year, needs to get dug before the ground freezes.  A tour on Sunday needs constructing.  There is overdue filing that demands attention.  I’ve spent the last couple of days working on the Hawai’i trip, too.  Just a lot of stuff to do, and no work on the writing at all.  All one me.  Still…

General

A this and that morning

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37  51% 34%  1mph  windroseWNW  bar falls  dewpoint 20 Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon    Holiseason

A blah, somewhat disorganized morning.  Tried to book Kate’s travel and hotel for Hawai’i.  Had to use a travel agency and they don’t have a website and will not handle stuff over the phone.   “We have to have it in writing.”  That means fax.  Which means finding the long phone cord to connect our Swiss Army Knife copier/faxer/color printer/bottle opener to the phone.  Just occurred to me. Wonder if a computer link can do it?  Have to check.

Also looked up info on bath towels. How to tell a good one.  Answered a few e-mails.  Put object files back in their places, info for tours at the MIA.

Bill Schimdt introduced me to the world of RGB (Red, Green, Blue) hexadecimal codes and  how to use them.  He’s gradually giving me tools so I can futz with my computer.  He’s a good, patient teacher.

Fed the dogs.  Ordered an ankle strap for the Vectra, our home gym, so I can do some more sophisticated work with it.  Ate lunch. 

Art and Culture

Groceries and Bauhaus

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34  57%  37%  5mph  windrose WNW  bar steep rise  dewpoint20  Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon   Holiseason

Spent an hour in the Modern design galleries discussing the Frankfurt kitchen, Tatra, arts and crafts, bauhaus and art moderne with people from Supervalu. 

The event started at 5:30 PM and I showed up at 4:45PM.  Went up in the gallery, 3rd floor, new wing to check out my objects.  The museum announced closing and a guard checked to see why I was still there.  Supervalu.  Oh, OK.

That gave me a half an hour after the museum closed to the public and before the Supervalu folks began to trickle into the galleries.  It was strange, like being in a store after closing.  The feeling is intimate, as if for a suspended moment the museum, or at least these galleries, had only me to appreciate them.  

To carry the store analogy a bit further, as I walked the two galleries of my assignment, I had to engage people ad hoc, as they looked at an object.  At first it felt intrusive, then a long ago memory floated into consciousness, working the floors at the WT Grant company when I was in managment training.  It was the walking back and forth, seeking moments to engage people that resonated, partly aimless, partly repetitive, partly hopeful.  The only difference was that at WT Grant I had pets and toys while here I had a hundred years of skilled design.

The time went fast, only an hour, then I was away, back into a blustery November night with a cloudy sky, headed home.

GeekWorld

New land, New language

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37  54%  37%  6mph  windroseWSW bar steep rise  dewpoint22  Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon    Holiseason

Learning how to use a new program is a little like visiting a foreign country, one where you may understand a bit of the language, but not all.  The customs and folk ways of the new country are odd, unfamiliar.  If you don’t follow them, you might get by ok, but you also might find yourself in a world of trouble.

The program that drives this site is WordPress.  The old website used FrontPage, a Microsoft product.  WordPress is an open source, Linux based program which means anyone can fiddle with the code and it uses Linux, the open source operating system.  All this may seem like babble to you, but it is as if you landed in Rome and tried to read the street signs based on high school Latin.  Sometimes you’ll guess right, sometimes not. 

Let me give you an example.  I liked the first theme with the Hubble horse-head nebula shot, but I found this moody lake and forest scene and liked it better.  Bill Schmidt had showed me how to upload themes, so I did that, clicked it into use and went on the site to observe my handiwork.  Ooops.  I couldn’t figure out how to get to the admin. page.  Important because that’s where you write posts and manage the overall blog.

So.  I called Bill.  He got into the admin. pages by clicking on edit.  I could have thought of that, but didn’t.  The folkways of this new land had me bamfoozled.  Bill is the local who knows the language and knows your language, too.

Faith and Spirituality

The Dark Night Comes

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40  60%  40%  5mph  windrose SSW  bar steep rise  dewpoint 27 Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon  Ordinary Time

A great wind blows through Andover today.  Literally.  40 mph gusts.  The grass in my window bends to the ground, leaves swirl up from the ground and my shed door, left open yesterday, bangs against the frame.  A change in the weather, air coming from the arctic.

This is the brown season, a season in which the only garden color is green.   The bleakness corresponds to a certain wildness in my soul and I revel in it.  Lower the lights, crank up the wind, bring on the snow.  Then, then we can get down to it, the travel toward the deep places, the caverns and secret gardens hidden by too much light. 

This is holiseason, a time when external beauty and easy movement vanish, clearing away a swath of maya, leaving us bare before ourselves.  The Winter Solstice is the well, the sublime and darkest moment.  St John of the Cross gave us the phrase “dark night of the soul.”  He saw the dark night as a place of challenge, of despair and hopelessness, the extinction, or near extinction of faith, salvaged only by re-emergence into the light of faith.  This is one ancient trail.  There is another that sees the dark night as the very place, the site of connection with the sacred depth.  Here in the darkness from which we came and toward which we move our entire life we embrace fecundity, the richness inherent in blackness.

Great Work

What is the Great Work?

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54  44%  37%  2mph windroseW  bar steady dewpoint32  Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon   Ordinary Time

Thomas Berry, an ecological visionary and Passionist monk, has written several books concerning the way forward to a healthy planet.  He summarizes his ideas in The Great Work. In this wide ranging, readable book, Berry, a cultural historian, defines a great work.  The Greeks had a great work in applying reason to the natural order.  The Romans had a great work in bringing order to their known world.  The Chinese have a great work that has created a humane and human scale culture.  Native Americans have a great work in their symbiotic relationship with the natural world in which they live.

Our Great Work, the work of our generation, lies yet before us.  It is this:  create a  relationship between human beings and the planet in which our presence is at least benign and at best a positive good.   I have begun work, in fits and starts, on this, because in the end it has to be each of us, acting in concert, who will call this new world into being. 

There are many actions we can take, but they need to move beyond recycling and buying green products at the grocery store.  Here a few I’m trying to work into my life:  being a locavore (eating food grown in our region), rationing trips by car and plane, planning for a hybrid car as our next purchase.  In the main though I believe I need to become political again, working on my old issues of economic justice, but this time in a way that will move a double agenda forward, justice for those left behind captialism and rethinking our economic order so that it develops positive signals for ecologically friendly business decisions.  More on this at another point.

Faith and Spirituality

This is a test for file linking

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I will post, from time to time, sermons and short works, sometimes fiction, sometimes non-fiction and link to them here.  

Groveland UU fellowship asked me to focus this year on history of the liberal faith tradition. 

Just prior to the Civil War Unitarianism had bottomed institutionally.  A creative response to the war boosted Unitarianism into a rich post-war period of growth.  Meet Henry Bellows, Frederik Olmsted, Dorothea Dix and Elizabeth Blackwell.

Unitarians and the Civil War period