Category Archives: Woolly Mammoths

Health, Woolly Mammoths

Medicine

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Fall                                                                          Harvest Moon

Medicine, for all its grandeur and power, still presides at those moments when things go bad.  When a clot breaks loose and heads toward the brain.  When a portion of an inner wall opens, allowing things to move beyond their proper place.  When a child has cancer or a brother, too.

No matter how strong and how grand, medicine is not our bulwark against death.  No, it’s a bulwark against death’s timing.  So far though, and the Taoists of the Qin and Han dynasties in China tried mightily, there is no immortality.  We all end our journey, our ancientrail.

Medicine can delay death’s arrival at our door, sometimes delay it for a long time, but it can not ban death’s presence.

Especially when we seek the shelter of hospitals, most especially when we end up in hospital ICUs, medicine’s work can be tender, to the mark and in vain.  We know this in my family as my mother went into the ICU at Riley Hospital and never came out.

But, too, these are where the modern miracles occur.  I’m hoping for one for Regina.

 

US History, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

The Healing

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Lugnasa                                                        New (Autumn) Moon

Woollies tonight.  Warren, Scott, Stefan, Mark and Frank.  We met in Wayzata on the grounds of the old Cenacle Retreat Center, now a treatment center for addiction.  Sheepshead buddy Dick Rice works there.  They have a retreat house that we’ve used from time to time as a meeting place and Warren chose it.

We met with Jonathan Odell, author of The Healing.  Kate read it and told me to read it, but I didn’t get around to it until a couple of weeks ago.  If you’re reading this blog and have any interest at all in the Civil War, post-Civil War south, from the slave and freed persons’ perspective, read this book.  It’s a moving story, told from the perspective of a freed woman and her life both on the plantation and after the war.

It’s a powerful evocation of womanhood and the mystical strength given to women through the act of creation.  It’s an equally powerful evocation of what could never be taken from the slave and what, in this story, certain slaves claim.

Jonathan’s writing process and his story as a writer made me cheer.  It can be done.  Requires stamina and courage.  He’s a strong and amazing person.

Woolly Mammoths

A Small Clan

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Lugnasa                                                              Garlic Planting Moon

A small clan of Woollies met at the ghost of Shelby’s Woodroast in St. Louis Park.  All the decor is there, but Shelby has left the building.

We got caught up on missing bags of money, a grandson’s trajectory through treatment for sarcoma–positive at this point, family–family–family and a son with a lack of regard for others and the continuing struggle between cancer and will, between cancer and peace of mind.  Though these may seem like dark topics they become lighter when passed around the table.

I’m glad one of us had the good sense to ask for a meeting.

Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Patently a Martian

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Lugnasa                                                        Garlic Planting Moon

Cybermage Bill Schmidt has two new gold stars on his life resume.

1.  His signature is now on Mars.  He has a friend who works at JPL who, about three years ago, showed him around the place, pointing out during the tour the rover now named Curiosity.  Behind it was a book.  “Sign the book,” his friend said.  Bill did.  “What’s it for?” “We’ll take a picture of all the names, put them on a chip and send them to Mars with the rover.”  Mission accomplished.  Bill’s a Martian. Sort of.

2.  Over the last few years Bill has worked at his favorite activity, coding, to make an invention by a local psychotherapist even more useful.  The invention records on video both sides of a conversation and allows easy tracking back through the dialogue later.

The company applied for a patent and Bill’s name stands as one of the two applying.  The patent has 38 claims for uniqueness.

 

Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Paul and Sarah – Before They Left

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Summer                                                           Under the Lily Moon

Over to the area of Lake Calhoun near the Bakken Museum today.   The lake had people biking, running, exercising, doing yoga, lying on towels.  A busy place with people grabbing the Minnesota summer when it let up from rains.

An open house for Paul and Sarah Strickland.

Paul and Sarah have a place in a great part of the world, on the St. Croix River, looking across the river the land they see is New Brunswick.  The famous Bay of Fundy is not far from them and the tides there are legendary for their extremes.

Saw Bill and Regina, Warren and Sheryl, Mark Odegard there.  Scott Simpson and Yin were coming as we were leaving.  I came home to get a nap before the drive out to Woodbury.

This part of Woodbury has very upscale homes settled on Wild Canyon Drive and Wild Canyon Trail.  It’s lovely, with mature trees, some elevation and many homes set far back from the road.

The ceremony tonight featured Paul and Sarah and how their friends, their family, the “people who see us” as Sarah said, had connected with them and sustained them through the years.  Warren and Sheryl, Tom and Roxann, Stefan and Lonnie were there representing the Woollies.

I confess to some dis-ease with the Native American cum Mayan slant to the ceremonial part of the evening.  It feels like poaching, taking this and that into a melange that ends up being a little hokey.*  If I put that aside, the evening allowed for time together with Paul and Sarah, a chance to chat with others and a chance to express feelings of loss and connection.

Ross Levin, a financial planner who writes a column for the Star-Tribune was there, as was Eric Utne of Utne Reader fame.  They were part of Paul’s second men’s group, the Outliers.

It was a classic Minnesota summer evening.  A twilight with rosy clouds backlit the St. Paul Cathedral and the Minnesota Capitol Building, framing, as they did, the business center of downtown St. Paul.  The Mississippi reflected back both the darkening blue of the  sky and the rose and gold tints in the sky.

An evening, in the end, of good-byes.

*addendum  I know this may be harsh and in one sense my inclination is to say so be it.  But.  While the frame had questionable elements, the caring and love demonstrated did not.

In that vein I realize that my judgments on these matters may reflect a concept of purity and authenticity too strong for these instances.  Cultural patrimony is always fluid and cultures do absorb and adapt learnings from others all the time.

All of these folks have a genuine spiritual journey on which a Native American sensibility has come to have meaning.  In the end it is not the container but the ancientrail that is important and the ancientrail here is one of love and care for each other and for our mother, the earth.  Blessed be.

Woolly Mammoths

La Revedere, Stricklands

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Summer                                              Under the Lily Moon

After taking Kate to work (below), I went over to Paul and Sarah Strickland’s, ready to help them move.  Funerals, hospice and moving vans have been big themes for the Woolly Mammoths this last year or so.  Paul and Sarah drive away on Monday with the last load of Minnesota stuff on its way to Maine.  Includes, by the way, several large rocks lugged back here on airplanes.

Turns out they had hired movers so we weren’t necessary and I was glad of that.  Allowed me to come home, get a nap, feed the dogs and work on Rembrandt.  Tomorrow are two different leave taking events for the two of them so this is not the last chance to say good-bye.

 

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Retirement, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Changes

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Beltane                                                                       Beltane Moon

Received a second invitation to a going away party for two friends moving to Maine.  They’re part of the Woolly change, the moves and deaths, the losses that accrue as we head past 65.  They seem pretty energized by this move to a home in Robbinston, a spot near the Atlantic and New Brunswick.  And why not?

Change can give us a fresh perspective, a place to begin again or to continue, but in a different direction.

Over the last several years I’ve chosen to embrace change as a deepening process, crossing thresholds into the unknown in areas with which I have substantial familiarity:  literature, arts, gardening, politics, family, religion.

In literature, for example, I moved into a different kind of book, a fantasy epic instead of the one off novels I’ve written up till now.  This change exhilarated me, made me stretch, thinking about the long arc rather than the shorter one handled in one volume.

The Latin learning and translating I’m doing is in service of deepening, too.  Deepening my knowledge of Greek myth and Roman culture.  I have, also, now peaked behind the veil of translation, learned something about the kinds of choices translators have to make.

In the arts I’ve chosen to focus most of my learning in Asian arts, probing deeper into Chinese history and the role of context for the art we have at the MIA.  This part year didn’t see as any Asian tours as in the past, but I’ve continued studying, reading Chinese literature and learning more history.

My grasp of photography has increased considerably, too, as has my understanding of contemporary art.  Going deeper.

As Kate and I have gotten wiser about our garden and how we actually use it, we’ve gone deeper into vegetable and fruit growing and preserving.  The bees increased our appreciation for the engagement of insects in the plant world.  And for honey, too.

In religion I’ve stepped away from any organized groups or lines of thought, trying now to penetrate how changes underway across the world might demand a new way of faith.  This one’s proving difficult.  But, that’s where the juice is, right?

Finally, I’m learning, still, how to be a grandparent with my two instructors, Gabe and Ruth.  Also, I’m learning the role of parent in children’s mid-life, where demands of work and family consume them.  Again, a deepening and a change.

Emerson said long ago that we do not need to travel to Italy to see beauty.  Beauty is where we see it, not only, perhaps not even primarily, where others see it.

 

Aging, Health, Retirement, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Yet More Loss

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Beltane                                                              Beltane Moon

Got back from the retreat about 12:30.  Took a shower, rested a bit, then hopped in the car for Moon’s reviewal at Washburn-McCreavy in Bloomington.

The bulk of the mourners were Chinese, the Fong family, but there were friends of Scott and of Yin who, like me, are round eyes.   A bowl of red envelopes, take one please, sat next to cards of hand-written calligraphy and a second bowl of hard candy.  An order of service for the funeral the next day had a color photograph of Moon on the cover.

Moon lay in a casket at the end of the first hall, hands crossed over her chest, fabric work and calligraphy with her.  Next to the coffin a video played, showing pictures from Moon’s life, including one with a curly headed Yin, young and beautiful.

Mourners wore red bands to indicate celebration of Moon’s life, though a few wore black bands to indicate her centenary; while 97 at her death, Chinese custom adds four years, so her age according to Chinese tradition was 101.

There were the usual clots of well-wishers gathered around person they know, wandering from board to board of photographs and watching, again, the video shown in two places in a hall separate from the reviewal room itself.

I spoke to Yin, then to Scott, said we’d talk later and left.

When I got home, I had an e-mail from Warren that his father, Wayne, whom he had put in hospice care only Wednesday, had completed his journey.  Warren’s phrase.  Warren, referencing the end of Longfellow’s Hiawatha, said he thought his Dad might last longer, but “he was in a faster canoe.”

These are times of transition, of change, of loss, of gathering in the lessons of a lifetime and using them for this third, last phase of our own journeys.  We knew it before the retreat and now we have fresh and poignant evidence.

 

Woolly Mammoths

Retreat: Day III May 5th

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Beltane                                                 Beltane Moon

 

Day III  Dwelling in the Woods   May 5th, 2012

Very interesting morning.  We started out sharing dreams, then begin talking about dreams.  Lots of flying, traveling, wandering.  Moments of addled confusion and moments of astounding crystallization. We spoke of dreams we had in the past, of repeating dreams.

Mark wanders with his gang of rascals and a dog from long ago; Charlie H. flies; Stefan goes outside in  long t-shirt he wears to bed, with nothing else;  I travel, to the south on land, visiting southern cities or floating along the southern border of the US on the Mississippi (my dream ego is not strong on geography).

I shared a pivotal dream for me, some years into Jungian analysis and after my divorce from Raeone.  In this dream I had a wide stance and held a sword above my head with both hands, a flaming sword.  A crowd in front of me chanted, “He has the power.  He has the power.”  I took it then and now as the moment when I claimed my power, became my own person, shucking off the chains of the past, the distortions of alcoholism.

Ode said, “Think what it would have been like if, ever since, we had called you sword on fire or sky sword.  How that would have reinforced that moment.”

His comment then triggered another discussion about “medicine” names for each of us. It may happen. If we can figure out a way to make it authentic, our Woolly names, say.  This feels important to me.

Later in the day Ode and I went for a walk along the Soo Line Trail.  This gravel trail, wide enough for a single car to drive upon, runs through swamp (trees), marsh (grass) and bog (soggy stuff) punctuated with occasional high ground filled with birch.  A convoy of ATV’s came by, loud and kicking up gravel, waving.

It’s not often I go walking with a friend.  Could do it more.

We also discussed a sacred fire and a ritual with the fire.  I suggested we might do a sacred fire for each Woolly in major transition and, too, that we might do a death dance for that left behind, perhaps work.   Tonight we will honor the deaths of three parents in Warren’s life and the imminent demise of the fourth as well as the death of Moon.

This all feels like the Woolly’s moving to a different place, a place of the dream world, a place of more mystical gathering.  We’ll see how things go.