Beltane and the Beltane Moon

Monday gratefuls: Groveland. The Ancient Brothers. Alan. Devolution. Thinking. Miguel de Unamuno. Philosophy in the key of human. Secular sabbath. An at home retreat each week. Kya. Will she be Kep’s new girlfriend? Snow. Falling. Not the Snow. Me. Because of the Snow. Ouch. Breakfast. Road trip. Del Norte. Saturday. Meet Kya.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Mouse that got away

I’ll post Devolution later in the day. I have to make some changes to the word file and I don’t have time right now. Going out to breakfast with Alan.

Enjoyed the presentation. Trying to write like I talk. More and more. Felt like it hit home for the folks listening. Though. It seemed to engender talk about climate change and that was not really my point. Though it is a subsequent point for sure.

Got me excited again about the book. The non-fiction book about faith in the seen. The known. Look at what you see.

Oh, man. Wore my tennis shoes. Mistake. Stepped down with my dog bowl of dead Mice and slipped on the rubber mat intended to make an unsteady place safe for Kate. Cue irony. Fortunately I hit only my back muscles, but I went down hard. Ooof. Have my help me I’ve fallen button on but I could get back up. Lucky. Shows the risks of living alone are real. Intractable.

Reading Miguel de Unamuno’s, The Tragic Sense of Life. He was a philosopher who intrigued me in college. Never went back to him. When I looked again at Santayana’s material, he reminded me of Unamuno. Bought books of both. Both Spanish though Unamuno is a Basque and might have resented that identification. He’s funny. And contrary. An existentialist. Reminded me again why I loved him long ago.

Like returning to this kind of reading. It informs my thinking and with a guy like Unamuno, my heart. I’m a secular guy with a heart attachment to the universe through the particulars of Mother Earth, Luna, and Sol.

This is the week of home maintenance. Altitude Electric for work on the generator. So it works next time there’s a power outage. House cleaning. So the house is, well, clean. Coyote HVAC for seasonal maintenance on mini-splits. And, a doggy time with Kep in for his shots and annual physical.

The usual classes in Kabbalah: Astrology and the Sefer Yetzirah. Mussar. And my first acting class tonight. Treading the boards again at 75. We’ll see.

Kate’s yahrzeit observed at the Kabbalat Shabbat service this Friday. 6 pm. Jon and the kids coming up for that. Then Gabe’s meal at Brooke’s Tavern.

On Saturday a journey to Del Norte, about 3 hours south. To an Akita breeder. Rehoming a 9 year old female, Kya. She doesn’t like dominant females. No joking about this please. I’m taking Kep with me. We’ll see if they seem compatible. If so, I’ll bring her home for a trial. Kep needs a buddy. Bad.

BTW: As I suspected. Ravens. Eating the mice. A bit of Snow last night and I found their distinctive tracks. Happy to help these magnificent Birds. Cycle of life.

On one of the traps the red light blinked. The peanut butter had disappeared. But. No mouse? Smart mouse or a resurrected one? I dunno. A mystery.

Spring and the Seoah Citizenship Moon

Monday gratefuls: Better energy. The Ancient Brothers. Kep. The Grandma wall. Loading the last, for now, donations to Mountain Resource Center and/or Goodwill. A dull gray day. Uncommon. Snow. Light. Flash bulb memories. Sabertoothed Tigers. Skulls. Dancing Bears. The Grateful Dead. Music. Mozart. Ives. Faure. Bach. The Beatles. The Band. Neal Crosby. Bob Dylan. Jefferson Airplane.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Surrealistic Pillow

Third day of exile from my blog. Little dot keeps going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Usually solves itself, but not this time. So with extreme reluctance borne of many calls to technical assistance I broke down and called my webhost, Ionos. No joy. They haven’t called me back. Maybe they’re down? Frustrating.

I’ll be back when I can. It does like Ionos has had some problems. The whole server farm industry and its business model remains opaque to me. Yet this blog, the most consistent thing I’ve done over the last 17 years can’t be seen without it. I don’t know where on the planet they are, who runs Ionos, why they’re having trouble. I have a regular backup for my blog but it’s saved on Ionos, too.

On with them now. It’s a glitch on their end. My website is one of some still affected by a web programming issue.

Yesterday was a weird day. I got up achy, feeling crummy. Headache, muscle aches, general yechh. Got on the call with my Ancient Brothers and my check-in echoed that. When we were done talking about flash bulb memories, I felt better. My energy level had improved.

Still fatigued, but I could get stuff done. Loaded Ruby with the last of the donations from pruning mine and Kate’s things. Probably will be more, but that will require another pass that sits in priority well behind the kitchen, the loft, hanging art, even the outdoors.

With spring will come cleaning out the garage. Oddly, I was well underway with this task when Kate got sicker. It fell away from my attention. Over 3 years ago. It’s going back on the board. Power wash. Seal the concrete. Get rid of the old freezer. Eliminate clutter. Organize tools. That sorta thing. Look forward to it.

Energy level seems still improved. I hope this also clears up some of the brain fog I’ve been experiencing. The low stamina included intellectual work. I couldn’t read or think about one thing very long before I tired out. Didn’t like that. It can be an effect of hypothyroidism.

Got started with Ada Palmer’s Too Like Lightning. Amazing world building. She’s a professor at the University of Chicago which means very brainy. It shows. Her area is medieval and renaissance literature.

Feel oddly disconnected when I can’t post. Like there’s a core element of writing missing. You. I hope they hurry up and get this fixed. I only know a handful of my readers and I’ve communicated with them. But perhaps you I didn’t know read my blog. I hope you keep at it even after this caesura.

Spring and the Moon of Seoah’s Citizenship

Sunday gratefuls: Fatigue. New meds. Being alive. Feeling crummy. Kate, always. Spring. Yes. Rosh Chodesh. Men’s group at CBE. Sleep, good sleep. Those two or three hours of discomfort each afternoon. Psychological discomfort. Kep. Award Winning Pet Grooming. Marina Harris and her team. Cleaning the loft. Rich Levine. Alan Rubin.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Blue Colorado Sky

Ooof. Something’s off. So hard to tell what. Levothryoxine? New statin dose? Erleada acting up? Don’t think I’m sick. Got past that. Weaker yet. A bit woozy. Don’t feel rested after a good night’s sleep. I mean, dude! WTF? If this lasts into the week, I’m gonna see Kristine again. I see Eigner (oncologist) on April 4^th. Will be part of the discussion.

Tough to get stuff done. Tough to not get stuff done. Gosh, gee whillikers. Feeling like a bit of a mess right now. Don’t like it. Kate struggled a lot with the meds and therapies supposed to heal her or at least give her comfort. Getting a better idea of what she experienced.

Enough of that. Now onto the good news. It’s the Spring Equinox. Ostara. Easter bunnies. Dying and rising gods. Day and night on a roughly equal footing. Light beginning to stay with us longer. I’m usually reluctant to see Winter go. Not this year. Give me warmer weather, some flowers. Let me dance a jig on my back deck. (right now has a mound of snow about three feet high so it will be a while.) Migratory Birds. Fawns. Elk Calves. Kits. Moose Calves. Bear Cubs. Babies of all kinds. Life shows up in all its wonder.

Sure, a fallow season. Cold. Snow. Food in short supply. Beautiful. Yes. Necessary. Yes. But warmth and green Grass, flowing streams, Trees leafed out. Good, too.

I forgot to mention chocolate. Bunnies with their sweet little ears missing. Marshmallow chicks. Candy eggs. Hunting for eggs.

Easter. Passover. Pesach. Liberation. Defeating slavery. Defeating death. That’s all good stuff. This year? I’m leaning in to overuse this overused but helpful phrase.

I need a dash of resurrection, a soupçon of parting Red Sea. Give me that Moses’ staff. Roll away the stone in front of my energy. Let me race across the bottom of the Sea. I wanna see it fold in over Pharaoh’s soldiers. Even that was a Cecil B. DeMille’s thing.

The fertility of the Rabbit. The goddess Ostara mentioned in the venerable Bede’s The Reckoning of Time. General rollicking good fun along with all the serious death defeating and liberating going on.

Oh, boy do I need that energy. Big time. I image I’m not alone. It’s been a long Covid. Which, I think, made Winter even tougher for us temperate zone folks. For me it’s been a year filled with death and scrabbling to get hold of my own illness and its sometimes-ornery treatments. Then the hypothyroidism. I needed that. Though. If levothyroxine can return my energy level, then I’m glad we found it.

I’ll let you in on something occult. I always feel better after I right this. One of the reasons, I imagine, that I’ve stayed at it for over 17 years! Feel better now. Breakfast. Then, the Ancient Brothers consider Flashbulb memories.

Imbolc and the waning crescent of the 3/4 Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Jon, struggling, trying. Making prints and entering them. Ruth, happier, easier. Gabe, a sweetheart. Rigel. Kep, using the doggie bed he’s ignored for months! Ciabatta rolls from Bread Lounge. Sourdough from same. Reading. And, more reading.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Remembering the old dream

Tarot: Nine of Stones, Tradition

An interesting Tarot pull this morning considering my first topic this morning. Theory. By the end of college I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do. Theoretical Anthropology. That fit together well with my double major Philosophy and Anthropology. Theory folks look at a discipline from a meta level, considering how assumptions and conceptions in the field match up with the field actually does. They can also propose next steps for field work, or suggest whole new fields of inquiry. Say, bio-linguistics, or one that was just emerging as I graduated, Cognitive Anthropology.

I would have been the first Ph.D. in Anthro from Ball State and the Department was behind me. The religious affairs advisor sponsored me for a Danforth fellowship for graduate study.

Three problems. I never finished the Danforth fellowship application. Both Brandeis and Rice accepted me but could offer no fellowships. Fellowships for theoretical anthropology didn’t exist, at least at the time, in those programs. The third was the real stopper though: I decided that university education was a tool of the establishment (it is) and inculcated capitalist/militarist values in its often unwitting students. It does.

I decided to take a principled stand and not try anymore to get into graduate school. In hindsight? Dumb. Of course education was a tool of the establishment, but I didn’t have to be. Especially with the tenure system. Of course, it inculcated capitalist/militarist values. Those are establishment values. But I didn’t have to inculcate them. I could have worked against them.

Also, something I can admit now, but could not then. I was afraid I would fail. Ashamed of that as I look back. But, the combination of all these factors ensured I would end up in the winter of 1969, cutting rags in the Fox River Paper Mill, owning a house in Appleton, Wisconsin, and trying to live up to the promised I’d made to be in an open marriage.

Again in hindsight I wonder I didn’t go into treatment for alcoholism even earlier than I did. I was a living embodiment of the adage: If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.

Those were painful years. Each morning excruciating as I tried to combine living as if I was Christian with anxiety about my future, my marriage, my drinking. Those years and that anxiety continued through seminary, ameliorated a bit by the heady intellectual work in seminary. Which I had not expected, but loved.

Judy and I divorced

Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Vince. What a good guy. Kristine Gonzalez. What a good and thorough doc. Maren, for getting me past the electronic gates of the patient portal. Finally, a good medical practice. And, local. Cheryl, too, at Quest in the practice. A good phlebotomist. A local team for medical and Snowplowing/handyman needs. Jodi and Bowe. A good team for the kitchen. Ruth, Jon, Gabe. Coming up at 3 pm. Safeway pickup. Alan and the Bread Lounge this morning.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Irreducible Mind, Edward Kelly, et al

Tarot: Nine of Vessels, Generosity

Digging into the books written by Ed Kelly and his collaborators. Many flashes across the dark desert, a storm coming that will bring rain to the arid behaviorism of the Watson-Skinner crowd.

These books, there are three: Irreducible Mind, Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality, and Consciousness Unbounded: Liberating Mind from the Tyranny of Materialism, fat ones, heavy on my sturdy Stickley chair, reflect the work and interaction of a multidisciplinary team. Ed says in the preface to Irreducible Mind (IM) that the purpose of these volumes is to get to advanced undergraduates and early graduate students in disciplines like philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology before they experience, and I love this phrase: hardening of the categories.

Guilty. I am guilty of a hardening of the categories on just these issues. Skepticism has its place, oh yes, but when it turns, it turns bad. It creates walls that can’t be breached even by new data, creating the very situation that it purports to avoid. Ed offers several antidotes to this rotten form of skepticism.

Francis Bacon, 1620: “The world is not to be narrowed till it will go into the understanding…but the understanding to be expanded and opened till it can take in the image of the world as it is in fact.” p. xxii, intro to IM

Also, and you’ll like this Bill, by Philosopher F.C.H. Schiller: “For the facts to be ‘discovered’ there is needed the eye to see them.” ibid.

Gotta lot more good quotes. Ed is a funny and acerbic guy. Here’s my favorite: “chess-playing computer programs represent real progress toward real intelligence in roughly the same sense that climbing a tree represents progress toward the moon.” xxv, intro.

This feels like a spot I could have inhabited a long time ago if I had not allowed my flat earth empiricism (a variety of rotten skepticism) to keep me on a conventional and conservative line of thought about these matters.

Combining this work with kabbalah, tarot, and astrology should be enough to keep me busy for the next quarter of a century if the docs can keep me kicking that long.

This kind of stuff excites me, makes me eager. I’m getting this house set up for good eating, good exercise, good study, good thought. Now I have subject matter that actually conforms to my old reimagining faith project. Wow.

A strong and unextinguishable part of me is an academic, episodically trained in esoteric fields like philosophy, theology, kabbalah, and now the war between physicalism and idealism. I like that part of me and want to feed him over the next few years. Feed him better, more consistently. The Hermitage. A good spot for all of this. And, for conversation about it.

Thanks to Ode for putting me on this path.

Yule and the Moon of the New Year

Follow this link to see the Webb in a 3d solar system.

Friday gratefuls: Brian finished. Bowe comes on Monday and should finish then. Fire Danger low. Snow fresh and white. Mussar class on tzedakah, justice, went well. Jon’s print in a gallery show. Spark Gallery. Oncologist today. The Mountains in Winter. All the wild Critters living rough. A warm house. A wonderful library.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Spark Gallery

Tarot:

Finally will see Kristie today. Oncologist PA. Scheduled first for January 3rd. Then for January 25th. Now, scheduled for today, Friday, January 28th. I’m pretty level about this but when my old Doctor’s group wouldn’t give me a referral for the 3rd I get angry. The 25th cancellation was because I didn’t yet have approval for Prolia, a once every six-months shot for bone health.

Glad of that one because the Snow came down hard all day. Unlike Minnesota, if you wait a day here, conditions often improve almost back to a dry normal. Weird from a Gopher State perspective, but true.

I have a touch of anxiety. I find out the results for genetic markers related to prostate cancer today. This shot, Prolia, protects me from tipping over into osteoporosis. Wonder how much it costs? In a note after the first cancellation Kristie indicated I may get another new drug today. And what does the PSA not all the way down mean? So, reasonable concerns, I think. But, too, part of the process of living with cancer.

Brian, the slow cabinet maker, has now come twice in the last two days. All the way from Fairplay. An hour’s drive in good weather to the West. He’s done, Jodi says, except for backordered hinges on one cabinet door. We both took a chance on Brian to get an earlier finish date. December 25th. Jodi checked him out, even went to Fairplay.

Brian’s basic excuse is that he can’t hire help. Which I believe. But. He also over promises and under performs rather than the much more customer sensitive and business savvy, under promise and over perform. He’s old enough to have learned this already. Nope. His work is good. Not great. But good. And good enough.

Still happy with the overall results. Will be happier still when it’s finished and I can start reorganizing the cabinets. Even better, cooking with all my tools and dishes available without a walk across the living room floor.

Finished Klara and the Sun. It is science fiction, but it’s also literary, more like Franzen than Asimov. The story involves Klara, an AF, artificial friend, and her charge, Josie. The Sun plays a prominent, even decisive role. Will reread it. Something I don’t do often. It’s deceptively simple.

Gonna start a new book by an author new to me, Becky Chambers. The Long Way to a Small and Angry Planet. She’s gotten a lot of press in the sci fi world. I’ll find out soon.

Spent yesterday morning studying Sefer Yetzirah. This is dense material. Sanders uses material from many different texts, short sections, maybe a page or a page and a half. Some comes from the Middle Ages, some from more recent scholarship. All of it reads like philosophy or theology. Which, I guess, in a sense, it all is. Historically philosophy and theology have been brother and sister disciplines. They share a convoluted writing style and ideas that often don’t make immediate sense.

One I’m wrestling with right now is the idea that language is the conduit between the sacred and the profane. Of course, that’s an obvious yes if you’re a literalist Christian or a Muslim who believe God spoke or inspired all the words the Bible or the Koran. Not obvious to me because I’m not sure what constitutes the sacred. Even after all these years, it still eludes me.

Time for breakfast and a shower. Get ready to drive down the hill. Till next time.