Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Friday gratefuls: Vampire Kate. Four new teeth for her. Rigel’s good appetite this morning. 2020, year of tragedy and transformation. Cooling down of our days. The blood red sun. Again. The zombie GOP, haunting itself. Annie. That very cute chocolate lab pup that Brenton White gets in 9 days.

The Pine Gulch Fire on the Western Slope has become the largest fire Colorado’s ever had. It surpassed the 2002 Hayman fire last night. A long drought, climate change, reduced snow pack = bad times for the Rockies and the rest of the West.

Wrapping himself in flags, multiple flags, Trump stood at the White House, the White House!, and spoke to the Republican virtual convention. Uncle Sam wept. Lady Liberty, too. Blind Justice. His carnival show of an administration has barkers, thrill rides, and rigged games, but only one ringmaster, a clown.

This is a dangerous moment. Between now and November 3rd the United States is in as much peril, more, than even war time. We may see more teenagers, or adults with teenage executive function, “deciding to keep order.” as Tucker Carlson said of Kyle Rittenhouse, the Kenosha shooter. We will see attacks on Kamala Harris, on BLM, on the very notion of national responsibility for the poor, the elderly, the immigrant.

Trump is right on this score. The nature of this country is in play. If you want to ignore climate change, eliminate any form of national health insurance, sanction racism, empower police to be even more violent, seal our borders, and go even further down the path of pariah nationhood, he’s your man.

Just say no.

Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Kate and her 76th. Veterinarians. Their love of dogs. Rigel in their care. Still. Kate’s teeth. Emergency fund. Ruby. A fine car. Window cleaners coming today. Angelique. New house cleaner. Kep. Tears. Again. Sweet Corn. Cool morning. Cooling nights.

Getting this out before the meeting of the clan. Rigel has endocarditis, an infection of a heart valve. She’s being treated with IV antibiotics and fluids, still at VRCC. The cardiologist there says guarded prognosis. Hard to treat and it can slough off detritus that leads to a stroke. Wait and see as SeoAh says.

Meanwhile the birthday girl, Kate, discovered yesterday that she’s going to lose four teeth on the bottom of her jaw, the ones between the bicuspids. Sjogren’s. Old age. Impressive bill. This happens next Thursday. Happy birthday, Kate!

My beloved females. Please hold them in your hearts.

Summer and the Moon of Justice

Not sure, but I think the security guard at the Happy Camper (marijuana dispensary) said, as I left, “Have a nice flight!” If he didn’t, I wish he had.

Summer and the Moon of Justice

(see below for Wednesday gratefuls)

Been wandering around in the corridors of my mind, feeling a little lost. Not writing. Not taking a class. Not going to CBE. Not seeing the grandkids or Jon. Not gardening, which for some reason has risen in my heart as important. No bees. Two great dogs, but only two. No trips. No trips planned or likely. I know, defining myself by what’s not in my life. Not good. (lol)

Thinking like this does not bring me joy. Remember my simplicity practice: does this idea bring me joy? Well, these ideas don’t. And, yet, they are true.

What to do? Over the last couple of years especially this question has appeared here a lot. Even more. In my mind and heart. BTW: I increasingly think and feel, like the Hebrew word lev suggests, that these two are the same.

I set aside the question while I reorganized the loft, allowing that process to to cleanse me. Really, I allowed it to put off the reckoning. Now, after weeks of off and on work, I’m almost done. A few articles to file. A very few books to find shelves for. One black walnut shelf, beautiful still, handmade by Jon, to clear. Oh, and that back corner by the door. Well, ok. Not almost done. Let’s say, nearly. Expecting some sort of internal lift off when I walk in here and everything’s in its place. But, to what?

The last four and a half months, the time Seoah was here, saw a lot of lingering stress resolved. Murdoch and Kep separated. Gertie died. Kate’s life has become happier. I had a long break from cooking. Family bonds grew tighter. Over the same time I undertook this Augean stables task of cleaning up the loft. Nearly done.

What am I now? Not who am I. I’m comfortable with the guy rattling around in the walkways of his heart. But, what I am for, today?

Coordinator of outdoor projects. Cook. Cleaner. Nurse. Husband. Radical theologian. Father. Father-in-law. Grandpop. Writer? Painter? Sumi-e’r? Activist?

Not all who wander are lost. Just recalled this. True. I don’t feel lost, just lacking direction.

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.”

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.

Spring and the Corona Luna

An unfolding, yet so far under reported story, A Perfect Storm is Gathering in the South. The author, Margaret Renkl, has become one of my favorite NYT op ed people. She’s had interesting columns on animals and plants in Tennessee and her coverage of the tornadoes that struck Tennessee last month were tender, evoking the good news of community at its best.

When I read this article, it confirmed a conclusion I’d come to while looking at a map of travel reductions over the last month. The map showed blues, greens, tans over most of the U.S., representing significant reductions in miles traveled since the shut down orders began to take effect. There was however a large swath of red, indicating no decrease in travel and in some instances, actual increases. The red outlined the deep South, went over to Texas and up a ways into the Midwest.

This map shows the problem. Travel declined by far the least in the South. A conservative columnist writes that this is demonizing the south. His argument seems to focus on rural areas that require longer trips for essentials like food and medical visits. Thus, the red. Of course, that could have some merit, but it doesn’t explain the other rural counties in states not in the south. Most of them have managed to slow travel.

He also doesn’t take into account the most salient reason for travel remaining high in those states. Their governors, again with some emerging exceptions, have not issued stay at home orders. All Republican. All saying something along the lines of individual liberties come first. My guess? They’re not really so concerned about individual liberties as they are about political backlash if they become “tyrannical” like those governors in other states.

Whether you agree with their logic or not does not matter. What they’ve done is set up an unintentional experiment. Were lock down orders necessary and did they flatten the curve? Or, were they a serious contravention of the right to assemble, the right to go anywhere you damned want? If, over the next few weeks, virus cases begin to abate in the north and west, but not in the south, we’ll have an answer.

If the southern governors were wrong, we’ll still have a huge problem, because the United States is a federation with no passport controls between individual states, much like Europe. The infected will stay be able to move freely and as the rest of the nation begins to open up a bit, the virus will have a chance to take hold again.

Sigh.

Spring and the Luna Corona

Rushed this morning. Wanted to add a couple of things this afternoon.

First, feelings of sadness, grief have washed over me this afternoon. Close to tears. Not sure why though confinement, continuing difficulties for Kate, she’s down to 93 pounds, and blood pressure that won’t stay stable don’t give me joy. The virus itself, too.

Second, I finally caught up on my Talmud reading. Finished Shabbat 19, today’s daf. Feels good, opens up time for other things now. We’ll see.

Spring and the Corona Luna

Wednesday gratefuls: The chicken. Carrots. Onion. Celery. Peas. Corn. Water. Gas, piped up the side of Shadow Mountain by Colorado Natural Gas. The stove. Makers of pots and pans, wooden spoons, ladles. That old recipe off the Golden Plump chickens. The frozen egg noodles.

Kate’s got a fingers appointment this morning. The rule is: she can go into the main entrance of the hospital. I can’t go in at all. They check her for symptoms, then escort her quite a distance to the doctor. She’ll call me when she’s done. Soothed that they’re so careful, sad that they need to be.

We’re getting ready for Murdoch’s transfer to Loveland. Hopefully that happens on Saturday. Seoah bought food for him, and treats. Seoah wrote up some “rules” for Brenton White, the foster parent from dogsondeployment. I typed them up and printed them. She’s collected his toys, his bowl, his e-collar, his medicine. No food on Saturday morning for Murdoch. He throws up in the car.

Speaking of the evil bastard, if you weren’t already. Babies and their grandparents (us) into the maw of the American economy. And on Easter. Geez, doesn’t he understand blasphemy and apostasy? Let me say that again, evil bastard.