Category Archives: Woolly Mammoths

Aging, Family, Woolly Mammoths

The Grandchildren Are In The House

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Summer                                      Waxing Summer Moon

Grandpas Bill Schmidt, Scott Simpson and Frank Broderick (Woolly Mammoths all) prepared me for the wonder of grandchildren.  They were spot on.  Ruth came in last night and said, “Hi, Grandpop!”  She had me at coming through the door.  Gabe got transferred from Dad to me soon after Jon came in the house.  Gabe looked up and gave me one of his trademark smiles, Happy to see you Grandpop.  That’s what I heard, though Gabe’s 1 year plus mouth formed no words.

Herschel, their 6 year old German Shorthair, recently diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma, bounded in as if he had no stinking terminal illness.  He proceeded to pick up a small Ruthie sandal and run from one end of the house to the other with it in  his mouth.  This is Herschel’s way of signaling anxiety.

The Olsons stopped to see the Johnsons in Nevada, Iowa.  Zelma Johnson, Jon’s grandma, still lives in this small Iowa town where Kate and her sisters grew up.  Due to estrangement from David, Jon’s father, Jon had not seen his grandma in a long time.  Jen got to meet Zelma and Zelma got to meet her great-grandchildren, Gabe and Ruth.  David and Kate were high school sweethearts.

Kate got two cloth bags full of kiddy stuff at the dollar store.  Ruth opened her hers and took out each item and showed it to me, exclaiming happily as only small children can.  Retaining the  young child’s sense of of awe and wonder at simple things is a goal worth keeping at the forefront of our maturity.  Who needs a Lexus when she has a bubble maker?  Who needs a fancy house when there’s plenty of chalk to draw on the sidewalk?  Who needs fine clothes when a small electric fan with lights can entrance you?

These visits, back and forth, them here, us there are critical to family cohesion.  They are why I still travel to Indiana and Texas for family reunions.  As Grandpa Frank put it, “You don’t have a family if you never see each other.”  True.

Bees, Family, Woolly Mammoths

A Sunday

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Beltane                  Waxing Dyan Moon

A second cold wet day reminds me of the time I just spent on Hilton Head Island.  Why travel if I can experience a southern coastal climate right here in Minnesota?

The cold weather and drizzle today made working outside unattractive, not impossible, but I didn’t get out there.

Mark Nordeen intended to come over to check on the hive this morning, see if we need to put a third hive box on the two we have now.  He called and said bees don’t leave the hive when it’s cool and wet; they resent intrusion then so the better idea is to wait until the weather warms.  We settled on early Thursday.

This afternoon Melina, Taylor and Chaska Helgeson had a big graduation party with asian themed food and rapping by Nerve, aka Taylor Helgeson.  There were a number of people there, though few I knew.  Sarah and Paul Strickland were the only guests I recognized except for Stefan’s dad.

The noise and the mix of people made hearing difficult so I eased away after about an hour.

We spoke with Jon and Jen on Skype tonight.  Ruthie got an owie at a birthday party.  Gabe had an elbow bleed and required three doses of factor.  He has small veins so it took a lot of needle sticks.  It sound painful and frustrating.  Herschel, who has hemangiosarcoma, is home from the hospital and feeling pretty good.  He has three months as a prognosis.  Sad.

That’s about it.  A quiet Sunday.

Art and Culture, Letters, Literature, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

A Bit of Literary Criticism

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Spring                  Waning Seed Moon

“This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. There is my creed.”   D.H. Lawrence

And a damn fine creed at that.  I might just worship at this church.

I’ve noodled over a criteria for reading that Stefan put forward last Monday.  Something along the lines of If I don’t come away changed or with an altered perspective, then it’s not worthwhile.   He made this comment in relation to the Bill Holms’ essay, Blind is the Bookless Man.  Stefan found the essay too quotidian, too reportorial and, perhaps most important, too small.  The content of the essay concerned Bill Holms’ youth in Mineota, Minnesota and a couple of solitary Icelanders, friends of his family, who shaped his education, especially through books.

Holms’ follows a strategy I would call thick description, an almost ethnological narrative in which details pile upon details, in this case details about the homes and the reading habits of Stena and Einar.

I did not come away from the essay much changed, nor did I have my perspective altered.  Instead, I had my world expanded to include the early days of a young Icelandic boy growing up in unusual circumstances.  I now have Holm’s memories to include with my own.

Stefan’s criteria is a valid criteria for good literature, but not the only criteria.  Another criteria, also valid, gives us empathy, expands our sense of what it means to be human.   We may admit to our small clearing in the forest a god we had ignored.  We may see, for the first time, the god in another’s small clearing, clasp our hands together and say, “Namaste.”  Or, we may simply sigh, settle in to ourselves or to the quirks of another and say, “Well, interesting.”

I have a different reason altogether for liking the Holm’s piece.  That lies in the peculiar journey I have followed since college, that of a regionalist.  I did not set out to walk this ancient trail, that of one who loves the place of his days and dedicates himself to its expression in diverse ways.  But I ended up there anyhow.

The regionalist finds the universal in the particularities, the idiosyncrasies of their homeland.  Willa Cather.  Sherwood Anderson.  Henry David Thoreau.  Annie Dillard.  Wendell Berry.  Zane Gray.  Faulkner.  James Joyce.  Mark Twain.  Robert Frost.  All of these are either wholly or in good part regionalists.  Bill Holms.  Garrison Keillor.  James Whitcomb Riley.  Marquez.  Octavio Paz. Isaac Bashevis Singer.

This crowd often receives a gentle wink and a nod from the high literary crowd, but so what?  In the galactic context the whole of our planet is but a region.  All literature, all art must spring from some person, a person formed in some environment.  That some choose to focus their art on the way of the Mississippi River or the plains of Nebraska,  the ghettos of the Hasidim or uplands of Colombia is a matter for their heart.  Whether it speaks to you is a matter for yours.

Friends, Great Work, Health, Woolly Mammoths

Feelin’ Glum

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Spring              Full Seed Moon

Today was the second organ day in a row.  Yesterday, eyes.  Today, skin.  Tomorrow, ears.  Doing fine on all counts so far.  Even so, I find visits to the doctor a bit stressful.  The waiting room.  The waiting for the doctor.  Their evaluation/assessment.  I have a good relationship with all of my doctors and intend to keep it that way.  Bill Schmidt and I had lunch today and I told him I view doctors as health consultants.  I’m responsible for my health, but they help me stay healthy and intervene if something gets out of whack.

After seeing Dr. Pakzad I came home and had a sit down with Kate.  I’ve been feeling glum, an unusual state for this time of year and unusual in intensity for me over the last couple of years.  It’s a little difficult to sort things out.  In part the Sierra Club work may be more of a challenge than I anticipated.  In part I found myself counting up all the little insults that make me realize my age, no, not really my age, but my sense of competence.  Do I have it anymore?  A tough question to answer from the inside and one always colored by mood.

Kate thinks that may be the wrong question.  I’ve prodded her several times over the last year about retirement and whether she’s ready for it.  She turned the question around on me, “I wonder you’re ready for retirement?  To let go of the need to have to have it?”

Hmmm.  Projection isn’t just a machine in a movie theater.  She may well be right.  Pondering this pushed me to wonder about the last regression I had where I got credentialed for the UU ministry.  I did that during a time when I was down about the writing.  But, John Desteian said, in a regression, you always go back to pick up something left behind, or unresolved.  Stuff to bounce around.  Enough for a coup contrecoup injury.

Good lunch with Bill Schmidt.  We covered a lot of ground from genetic modification of seeds and nuclear energy to motorcycles and dealing with difficult personalities.  I came away still opposed to nuclear energy, but willing to hear arguments about how to handle the waste.

Aging, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

A Locked Car Mystery

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Imbolc    Waning Wild Moon

The Woolly’s met tonight at the Jasmine across from the Black Forest.  Food is noveau Vietnamese, French accents.  I had spring rolls and mangoes on sticky rice.  Just right.

Got to give everyone a head’s up on labyrinthitis.  Tom has a friend who visited him yesterday and may be dead from multiple myeloma in two months.  Whoa.  Paul and Sarah have purged their home, shined up and have neared the day of the first open house.  Changes.

Stefan locked the keys in his car while x-skiing at Hyland Park.  He asked a cop if he could help.  The cop said sure and gave Stefan a ride down.  When he got out to work on Stefan’s car, he inadvertently locked his keys inside as well as Stefan who was in the back seat.  In a police car.  A locksmith had to be called for both cars.

The trip in is always worth it, a chance to connect and renew the connection.  Got several happy birthdays.  Guys just don’t remember birthdays well.

Woolly Mammoths

Of Monks and Men and Woolly Mammoths, Too

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Imbolc   Waxing Wild Moon

Blue Cloud Abbey

We met with five monks:  Fathers Michael and Chris, Brothers Bob and Benet and Abbot Denis.   The conversation had a lot of heart, touching on why each of us belonged–and continued to belong–to our respective communities.

We discussed with them the creation of a rule, a Way of the Woolly Mammoth.  If done well and distributed widely, it might have an impact on those men who now live solitary male lives.  A solitary male life, we believe, is the norm.

As Father Michael suggested, the man who says his wife is his best friend puts a burden on the marriage relationship.  That is, in fact, a solitary male life with work and family being places where the man has definition by role:  husband, employee or owner, but has no place  as a man.   This may seem peculiar or idiosyncratic to our perspective, but we know the richness of having significant male relationships held together over time.

That richness informs the gender specific aspects of our life by giving back to those roles a renewed sense of what it is to be a man, a man in whole, in relationship with a woman or a business or another partner.  A renewed sense of what it means to be a father, grandfather, uncle or mentor also grows with organic vitality from this soil.

More on this later.

Woolly Mammoths

Tonight We Dance On The Prairie

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Imbolc     Waxing Wild Moon

Blue Cloud Abbey            Marvin, South Dakota

A group of about 30 Missouri Synod Lutheran church women have come for retreat.  Their energy differs from ours.   A lot.

Frank played a wonderful adagio movement by a Spanish composer named Rogdriguez.  A very moving piece.

We have a conversation started about a Woolly Way, a brief evocative expression of our Tao.   Our 20 + years together commend us by their evidence of stablity, intention, commitment.  We have never tried to spread or split ourselves, though we have taken on the occasional international associates.  We have two in St. Petersburg and one somewhere else I can’t recall right now.

Blue Cloud Abbey has a distinctive Plains Indian imprint.  The American Indian Cultural Resource center has a collection of Lakota beadwork, parfleching and quill work that contains several museum quality pieces.

The Wild Moon has grown fat, swelling almost full.  It colors the clouds and gives the night sky a romance.  Venus also hangs in the northern sky.   Here the sky runs on and on, the earth gives little obstacle to the eye.  The spirit takes a breath here, fills my lungs with the light of the Wild Moon.  Tonight we dance on the prairie, the wind in our hair and moonlight shining out through our eyes.

Woolly Mammoths

At Blue Cloud Abbey

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Imbolc      Waxing Wild Moon

Somewhere in the Coteau Hills.  Blue Cloud Abbey sits on a prominence great enough to give a view of the plains in all directions.  To the east, back toward the Twin Cities, the city of Milbank glimmers in the night.

We have been here since last night, Thursday and will stay through breakfast on Sunday.  This retreat has a much freer form than our usual scheduled time with each person.  Much has been said already, enough to make the heart open and tears to flow.

More on that at another time.

The Abbot spoke briefly to us at lunch yesterday.  He said they had an interest in us, the Woolly Mammoths, since we, too, are men on a journey together, a fraternity.  His comments have sparked some interesting thoughts already.

Later, I’ll tell you of Frank and mine’s encounter with Bud of Peterson Earth Movers.  Time to huddle up.

Faith and Spirituality, Woolly Mammoths

Blue Cloud Abbey

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Imbolc      Waxing Wild Moon

The next 3 days + I will be on retreat at Blue Cloud Abbey in Marvin, South Dakota.   The annual gathering of the Woolly Herd finds in eastern South Dakota at a Benedectine Abbey.  As usual, what the retreat will be like hides behind the curtain of our relationships.

My part will consist in a reprise of the 25 random things about me exercise for everyone and discussion of an article on solitude in the cyber age (the Deresiewicz piece I mentioned here) and an Economist article, The Frat Boy Goes Home, about the departure of GW.

On a personal note I plan to focus on my non-existent meditative and contemplative life.   Both meditation and contemplation have been, at various times, part of my spiritual practice, but have fallen away in the last few years, fallen away it seems in favor of a more tactile devotional form:  gardening.  I also have to consider, however, the Deresiewicz possibility, which is that my life has flattened out as I have gone more cyber, that I have pulled my root system up to a different layer of the soil.

What I do know for sure is that I want some more contemplation and meditation in my life.  This retreat is an opportunity to get going again.