Lughnasa                            Waning Harvest Moon

Up since 4:00 am.  Why?  Not sure.  A lot of stuff to do today, a full day tomorrow.  Maybe.  Sleepy.

Could be the Vikings.  I mean, we have expectations this year.  Real ones.  Now we have to see how they look.

Off to the grocery store.

Lughnasa                           Waning Harvest Moon

No rain yet, but we could use some on our new plantings.  If it doesn’t rain, I’m going to have to schlep hoses out and water them that way, something I really don’t like to do.

Nothing on anybody’s docket today.  That means garden, decluttering, maybe some more research on liberalism.

Fills like we’re in a lull here, poised between summer and fall, ready to make a change, but not committed to it.

Lughnasa Full Harvest Moon

Sneak peek. I have just added Roots of Liberalism and Its Contemporary Branches to the Liberal Faith page on this website. If you’re interested, have a look. I’ll present it tomorrow in Wayzata at the Minnetonka UU Congregation on Rice Street.

Lughnasa                          Waxing Harvest Moon

Writing.  Writing.  Go to meeting.  Come back.  Write.  Go to meeting.  Write.  That’s it right now.

In to an 8 am Sierra Club meeting of the Blue/Green Alliance.  Back to work on the sermon.  Out again at 7:00 tonight, then back to write tomorrow.  This liberalism project has challenged me, forcing me back into philosophical modes of thought, struggling to make it straightforward for an educated audience and, also inspiring, since this will be a religious service.  The combination proves difficult. It’s so easy to get bogged down in historical and intellectual minutiae, which, no matter how interesting, can obscure rather than clarify.

Lughnasa                           Waning Green Corn Moon

The ice has gone into the dog’s watering bowl.  The beer is back in the fridge.  The remains of the meal have new temporary housing in glad plastic boxes and the last of the dishes feel the heat of the wash cycle right now.  Done, then, except for the memories and they are good ones.

Summer                    New Summer Moon

Bees.  Netaphim.  Trencher.  Chain saw.  Plant cover crops.  Harvest.  Life runs full speed in the next three month, perhaps even a bit more.  A lot better than slow.

Gotta get outside and get to work.  Bye.

Summer                          New Moon

A.T. noticed that the new moon came the day after the fortieth anniversary of the first moon landing.  A new moon, a dark spot in the sky where the moon normally transits, has an appropriate feel since after the last moon landing in 1972 we have gone dark as the new moon as far as manned space exploration.  A.T. listened to a Science Friday conversation with astronauts who landed on the moon.  They did not want to look backward to the past, but forward to the moon as a training spot, a transit station, a research laboratory, perhaps even a manufactory center for ships designed for Mars and beyond.

Space exploration by humans gets short shrift from many scientists who claim a greater range of information can be gathered at greatly reduced price by robots and other mechanical surveyors.  A.T. reported this observation by Andrew Chaikin, space journalist on July 11th:

“If any real scandal attaches to Project Apollo, it’s the extent to which hard science was allowed to dominate the astronauts’ hours on the moon.”

In A.T.’s mind this quote displays the value of the humanities and the sciences working together, in tandem, as ways of knowing.  While science alone may inspire some, science with a human face, with human responses makes the work come alive.  Archimedes in the bathtub.  Galileo and the Catholic Church.  Madam Curie and the exploration of radium.  Lewis and Clark.  Newton’s apple.  Albert Einstein’s luminous hair and cherubic cheeks alongside E=MC2.  Even Oppenheimer and the Trinity mushroom cloud.  The list could go on.  Schrodinger’s cat.  Rachel Carson.  John Muir.  Of course not all science, not even most science, has a photogenic star or a great back story, but we need the match up between person and science to become excited, enthusiastic.

Summer                        Waning Summer Moon

Proof that someone is, in fact, reading this.  I promise only to  report further if and when the ring is found.

On a different subject:  if you don’t stop writing about searching through dog poop, I may just stop reading your blog.

Allison

Summer                          Waxing Summer Moon

There is, here, much of the transitional moment.  Kate’s last year of full time work will begin in just a little more than a month.

The two puppies have to adapt to us and we to them.  We have not yet settled on sleeping arrangements for them and they went outside tonight with great reluctance.  Like feet spread wide and butts dragging on the floor.  We’re not great animal trainers.  We’re animal lovers.  Our role is clear in the pack, but it does not come from obedience training.  It comes from living together.

Herschel is here right now and he has cancer.  Gabe and Ruth are transiting through early childhood; Jon and Jen through the early years of marriage and family.

The garden has made it to mid-season with its abudance growing each day.  That means a transition to food preservation:  canning, drying, storing.

Tomorrow I have my first meeting related to the Sierra Club legislative work.  That’s a transition for me from committee volunteer blogger to committe chair.

There is, too, this.  Each moment is a transitional moment, so in that sense this time is not special.  Just life moving along.