All posts by Charles

A Pale Orange Orb

January 22, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

4 64% 18% 0mph WSW bar30.07 windchill4 Winter

Full Winter Moon

The moon hung low on horizon as I came home from the grocery store, a pale orange orb occluded by dirty gray clouds. It gave off the aura of Samain in the depths of late January. As often happens with the moon, I felt a pinch of privilege; I saw this and felt it. A privilege we all share, if only we look up at the sky instead of down at our feet.

Back to Ultimate Electronics to pick up my Blu-Ray player. I traded in the HD player when Warner Brothers announced they were going with Blu-Ray. Now I have to hook it up.

Worked out in shorts yesterday and it was the first time in years I can recall fitting into the collection of shorts I gathered before I began bulking out. A proud moment.

Cinema and Television, GeekWorld, Politics

OMG! Bush Lied!

January 22, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

-1 72% 18% 0mph W bar30.10 steady windchill-1 winter

Full Winter Moon

I now have sound going from the DVR/Cable box to the receiver and the 5 speakers. I also have sound going from the new Blu-Ray DVD player to the 5 speakers. This is close to total success, but I still have two hurdles remaining. I have not been able to get any radio signals yet, in spite of connecting the antennas and I have not run the test microphone which will balance the speakers. Still, I feel largely done with this project.

In order to get Blu-Ray quality movies you have to get Blu-Ray discs. Not cheap. I watched one this evening, Beowulf and Grendel. This movie takes a spare approach to the story and gives a backstory for Grendel. It is gorgeous, shot in Iceland by an Icelandic director. I liked it a good deal, though I’d not heard of it.

The big screen, HD TV setup came from my love for movies. This is a stunning way to watch movies at home and, with the surround sound, surprisingly close to the cinema experience. Movies are as important to me as literature, music and the fine arts. I’m glad to have this way to view them.

Now: It can finally be said.

“WASHINGTON (AP) – A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.”

The life and times of celebrities must be difficult. Heath Ledger’s death today, whether suicide or accident (and I would wonder if accident isn’t suicide by another name), puts another name in the column of this felled by fame. To those in the limelight all the time there must be a moment when you either choose life or choose self-destruction, a decision many of us face only obliquely, perhaps at the dinner table.

Faith and Spirituality, Woolly Mammoths

Cows With Guns

January 22, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

4 65% 20% 0mph SWS bar30.06 steep fall windchll2 winter

Full Winter Moon

Here is a wonderful movie from the BLF, the Bovine Liberation Front: Cows With Guns. Thanks to Paul Strickland (and a Golden Plump Warrior Chicken Tip o’ the Hat to the Helgeson’s: Beware of the chickens with choppers.)

The Woollies met last night. We discussed our memories of the Civil Rights movement and the time before it which we can remember well. Paul remembered white’s only drinking fountains, segregated movie theatres and a grandmother who said of a man beating a dog, “I wouldn’t treat a nigger like that.” Scott Simpson told of two and a half years as a member of an African-American Pentecostal church in north Minneapolis. When he brought a lady friend home one evening, his mother quietly asked him, “You don’t plan to marry her, do you?” I recalled the bitter and often painful days when white radicals like myself marched and acted in solidarity with Blacks. We were all struggling to find our identity and we accomplished some of that in angry confrontations with each other.

We debated how far the culture had come since those days. Some of us thought we’d come a long ways, others (myself, for instance) thought not as far as it seems. I cited this incident from that went to trial in September of last year:

“Al Hixon installed some carpeting for his residential construction business one Saturday morning. Then he took his Jaguar out of winter storage and stopped for some fresh oil at a Sinclair station near his Golden Valley home back on April 2, 2005.

The next thing he knew, police officers were throwing him face down on the pavement, jumping on his back, handcuffing him, placing a boot on his neck and shooting pepper spray in his eyes and nostrils, according to his testimony at a federal excessive-force trial Friday in St. Paul.”

Warren told of an African-American friend who found an Eveleth restaurant accepting and a Virginia bar, only a few miles away, hostile and threatening. It’s the randomness of these experiences, the not knowing when racism will rise up, that makes life still stressful and unpleasant, at the least for most African-Americans.

Oh, and we set up our calendar for next retreat, decided on a theme for the retreat and the next year: All Themes Considered. This is astonishing productivity for a group of usually slow to come to a decision men, but we liked it anyhow.

Cinema and Television, Faith and Spirituality

Shinto and the Tao

January 21, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

7 75% 19% 0mph WNW bar 30.38 falls windchill7 Winter

Full Winter Moon

Just purchased an online course of Taoism. This is a subject I want to explore in greater depth and this will add to my knowledge.

Spent a few hours today writing Transcendent Thinking, a presentation for Groveland UU. Instead of recapitulating Emerson I decided to write as the free, transcendent mind I am. This lead me quickly to Miyazaki, the anime master whose features rely on Shinto as their underlying ethos. I hopped to Shinto itself, then Taoism (which lead me to the course work). This is more the direction I’d hoped to go with the Ge-ology, now I’ve got a beginning.

I’ve also written a ritual, a sacrament for the way of nature which I’ll post here at some point.

Woollies tonight. The retreat.

Weather +Climate

The Undergods

January 21, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

4 70% 19% omph W bar30.55 windchill4 Winter

Full Winter Moon

The Giants are the undergods–oops, I meant to write underdogs, but I like undergods, too–against the Übergods, the New England Patriots. Long years ago, when I began to love anthropology, a favorite professor, David Scruton, said Americans are infracaninophiles, that is, lovers of the underdog. Maybe we’re also infratheophiles, lovers of the undergods. Anyhow, I wouldn’t count the Giants out. Their defense seems pretty sticky and Eli Manning and Plaxico Burress have a groove going. If they can get Bradshaw and Jacobs going early, they’ll have a chance. We’ll see.

A light snow. The slightly warmer temps produce more interesting weather. The cold builds character and the days are usually bright and clear, but warmer weather often brings back the snow. We need some snow since the older snow got thinned out during the January thaw and we look a bit straggly here.

On to the Transcendentalists and life in the thought lane.

As Bill Schimdt noticed on yesterday’s post, the NFL pinged back. Bill said he was sure only the computer read my post. I’m sure he’s right.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel

Transcendentalism and the NFL Playoffs

January 20, 2008 Charles 2 Comments

-5 61% 17% 0mph W bar30.64 Windchill-5 Winter

Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

Got out the discussion materials for the religious influence on art session with the docent book club, March 17th. That’s one item finished.

While I watched first the Patriots beat the Chargers and, then, the New York Giants beat the Packers, I read snatches of material I printed out about transcendentalism. Gotta admit, I’ve had a backward idea of it for a long time, unless I learned it once and forgot it. Always possible, how would I know? Here’s the backward part. I thought the transcendent was about leaping the surly bonds of earth and heading for the Platonic/Gnostic heavens. Nope. It was about opposing the empiricism and rationalism of John Locke, et al. Transcendental refers to the Kantian notion that there are important a priori structures in the mind that allow it to function at all. This rules out the empiricist idea that our understanding (reason) works only on data brought to the mind through the senses. First, there is the mind and its structures like time and space that order and create intelligibility with sensory data. Besides, Kant believed that we can never touch reality, the ding an siche, the thing in itself, since all we ever really know are the data our senses bring to us; in other words we (our mind) never reaches the source of the sensory data which are secondary to the thing in itself.

There is, of course, much more to the debate and the idea, but getting this straight will help as I write a presentation on Transcendentalism for Groveland UU. By happenstance I also read today an article about Shinto in the work of Japanese anime artist Miyazaki published in the journal, Religion and Popular Culture. The close correlation between Transcendentalist treatment of nature and Shintoism was so obvious it took my breath away. Likewise, if we add Taoism into the mix we have a sort of triad of nature focused faiths that I think speak profoundly to our current reality.

The Giants/Packers game had my attention the whole way. (I read during the commercials.) The two teams played more or less evenly for four quarters, though the Giants looked better. With the score tied at the end of regulation the Packers won the toss and elected to receive. Favre threw an interception, then Eli Manning took the Giants down to the field for a shot at a 47 yard field goal. Tynes, the Giants field goal kicker, had missed two shorter kicks in the fourth quarter. He hit it. And the crowd went wild.

Art and Culture, Family

The Miracle of Hydraulics

January 19, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

-13 64% 19% omph WSW bar30.43 steady windchill-13 Winter

Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

Annie came over and we moved the old TV out near her car. But, it was -10 and I couldn’t lift the damn thing into her car. A real Minnesota moment. The air blistering cold and I’m trying lift this way too heavy TV in the back seat of a Chrysler generic car. I’m a little guy and even when I work out I have real limits. This was one. So. I backed the truck out of the garage, put down the lift gate and horsed the TV onto the gate. Lifted it up with the miracle of hydraulics and Kate will take it out to Annie on Monday. Course, I have to secure it in their before she takes off with it.

I’ve got enough on the religion and art historical perspective to write tomorrow. My packet for the docent book club will contain a book recommendation, James Elkin’s The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art and an essay by Camille Paglia entitled, “Religion and Art in America.” I’m going to summarize the beginning of Elkins because he lays out 5 different positions toward the religion and art question, each one helpful in its own way. The bottom line appears to be the corrosive affects of modernism, seen first in what is now often called the early modern period which includes the Renaissance. I’ll finish with this tomorrow and start work on Transcendentalism next.

This is great way below zero work.

Art and Culture, Weather +Climate

Art’s Beginnings

January 19, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

-2 46% 20% 0mph S bar 30.37 steep drop windchill-4 Winter

Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

As predicted the day has continued cold, thought we’ve warmed a bit from the early readings. Still, when the high is below zero, you know you’re dealing with a bitter time. We have the most trouble with the whippets when the temperatures drop. They have zero body fat, so they do not like to go outside. This increases the pressure on their bladders. Accidents do happen.

The work of the day involves the waning religious influence on art in the modern era, though, as I’ve learned, the decline can really be seen post-Renaissance. James Elkins makes a creditable argument for the pervasive nature of religious art during most of the millennia of human existence. Art’s beginnings lie somewhere in our murky transition toward full consciousness, a transition accelerated when humans realized they would die. If not in the service of the hunt, a ritual activity in its earliest form, then in the service of funeral rites, early humans drew elegant animals on cave walls and adorned their dead with red ochre, feathers and other items felt necessary to the afterlife.

This general trend continued for many cultures well into the modern era, but in the West, sometime in the Renaissance/post-Renaissance period, religious art became a particular kind of art, rather than the primary purpose for artistic work. It was during the Renaissance that an emphasis began on the skill of the artist in addition to the importance of the subject matter rendered. These two factors, appreciation of the talents of individual artists and the addition of subject matter like history, portraiture and mythopoetic themes opened a fissure between what had previously been art’s sole domain, the religious, and other forms of art.

Sunny and Cold

January 19, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

-14 67% 21% 0mph W bar30.42 steady windchill-14 Winter

Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

We hit -18 at 7 AM this morning. Sleep comes easy when the nights are cold. We have down duvets that adjust without the need for extra blankets or wiring. The day is clear and bright, though the outdoors has a certain foreboding at this temperature; cold weather can kill you and it wouldn’t take long.

Having said that I’m inside, warm and looking outside. Today I hope to finish my work on the religious influence on contemporary art piece I have to do for the docent book club in March. I want to get off an object list, book recommendation and an essay or two for advanced reading along with a series of questions/observations.

Kate and I will have our money meeting this AM, made much easier by her recent earnings and deferred compensation. We’re going to have to get another TV (darn) because the workout TV has developed a wavy line pattern that annoys big time. This means we’ll be all HD all the time, at least when we have HD programming.

Annie’s coming up today and will get our old Sony and the DVD player that goes with it. It’s a fine TV and never gave us any trouble, though we bought it in 1994. TV’s last a long time these days, so spending a good bit on one is not quite as illogical as it may seem.

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

A Gospel for These Heavens and This Earth

January 18, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

-10 59% 23% 0mph WSW bar30.36 steep rise windchill-12 Winter

Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

How low will it go? Pretty low. These are the days for staying inside, watching movies, drinking hot chocolate, reading and studying. I’ll do all these tomorrow.

Driving into the MIA this week, on Monday and then again today, I saw sundogs. A sundog creates a rainbow like lens, in this case pointing toward the west. As I understand the presence of a sundog indicates ice crystals in the air which act as a prism. Just checked, that’s right. Also, it says they always form at 22 degrees on either side of the sun.

Both days an earth centered faith was on my mind, as it often is these days, in fact, these last few years. It is not, perhaps, most accurate to say earth centered, since the sundog itself is a good reminder that any faith which grounds itself in the material reality of this world also relies, for life itself, on the heat and energy received from the sun. So, I don’t know, perhaps a solar system centered faith. The earth’s orbit around the sun orchestrates the seasons and the moon pulses the oceans through bays and onto beaches with tidal flows. Even a rudimentary understanding of the creation of the solar system acknowledges the intimate nature of our relationship to other planets that share Sol. So, there’s a puzzle here in terms of where to focus, but I don’t think the parameters are much wider than the solar system, although there is the whole star formation, interstellar dust cloud thing which makes us part of the ongoing galactic reality. Even so, those relationship are distant both in distance and in terms of direct affect, if any on our daily lives, where Sol makes our life possible and its planets are our neighbors.

Anyhow, more thoughts on the notion of Ge-ology. What I might write, rather than a Ge-ology, is a gospel for these heavens and this earth, a faith focused on the intricate and delicate and complex interdependence between and among life and the inanimate yet critical context in which it exists; a celebration of the wonderful and the awesome we experience each day. Our heart beats. The winds blow. A lover or a child smiles. The sun warms our face. We recall times that seem long ago; we think and imagine. The stars shine. Snow falls. These are miracles which do not require walking on water, a Pure Land or a night ride to Jerusalem. No exodus or burning bush.

Gospel means good news. I see this faith as good news for all humankind and for all living creatures on our planet. It means we can turn our face toward each other and our hands toward the earth in love, not lust.

As I see it, this is the ur-faith, the one prior to all the others. It came naturally to indigenous communities through faith traditions like Taoism, Shintoism, Native American faiths, the faith of those who painted Lascaux and who erected Stonehenge. Are all these the same, no, of course not; are they all similar in their insistence on loving attention to the reality within which we dwell and move and have our being? Yes. This is the ur-faith because it was one we all know in our deep heart; it is not exclusive, if you want to follow the path of this ancient faith and the way of Jesus or Buddha or Shiva or Mohammad, there is no conflict.