Monday gratefuls: Corn dogs. State Fair corn dogs. The Minnesota State Fair. The Great Minnesota Get Together. The Great U.S. stay apart. The bailout. I think. Being alone with Kate and Seoah. Those pictures of Murdoch from Brenton. Life in a world historical event. Life. Death. The power of Monday.
Here’s what I’ve seen. A black SUV, a Lexus, next to me at a stoplight. Latex gloved hands on the steering wheel. On the road to Loveland Saturday all the LED road signs read: Avoid Non-Essential Travel. A cascade of it’s gonna be later messages from Instacart. So many maps and graphs and charts. Fewer cars on Black Mountain Drive, especially when I go out for the newspaper around 5:30 am. Empty parking lots. A closed outlet mall. So many e-mails starting with we care about you and that’s why our business is doing X. Friends and family on zoom. The rabbi on zoom, singing about breath. A sign at Bergen Bark Inn. We’re taking care of the dogs of essential workers like doctors, nurses, firefighters, police, grocery store workers. The worker at Starbucks extending a credit card reader so I could insert the card, then remove it on my own. My own gloved hand on the hose nozzle at the Phillips 66. That bottle of hand sanitizer in my cup holder. Seoah with her lysol spray hitting each package that gets delivered.
When will it ever end? When will it ever end?
And, yet. A moment in time like no other. Yes, the Spanish Flu. Yes. But, no. Not in this millennia. Not in my lifetime. Not in this century.
The first quarter of 2020 has not gone so well. What with all the dog bites, then Gertie’s death, then the plague. Yes, the Moronic plague. And, the virus. True.
However, I find it exciting, too. What will happen next? How bad can this get? Wow. Really? The ways people are coping. The empty streets of big cities around the world. The bravery. The stupidity and the cupidity.
Like one facebook meme said: This is the first time we could save the world by watching television.
Sunday gratefuls: Technology, not our savior, but a friend. Brenton and his 3,500 steps. Bob Dylan and his new song, Murder Most Foul. The Weight, by the Band. Pictures of Murdoch coming from Loveland. Zoom. Over the wires, over the air, over the ocean and across the desert. Wow. Each one of you, readers. Whoever you are. I love you.
Zoomed. Again. The new hang out, like the ol’ Kid Canteen on Harrison Street. Mark in Riyadh. Mary in Singapore. Diane in San Francisco. Kate. Me. On Shadow Mountain. Bombs over Riyadh, Mark said. Have you heard? Singapore’s like normal, almost, Mary said.
Diane was cold, doing a Mark Twain version of the coldest night he ever spent. We talked, decades of back story, going back even into the 19th century. All of us linked by genetics, by fate, by Indiana. Kate looked good.
Paul in Maine. Tom, Bill, Mark in the cold place. On Shadow Mountain. Cranes flying up, up, weighted and buoyed. The mystery of flight. Caretaking, its weight. Wondering how we can survive. Can we keep it up?
All of us gone viral. Lives infected. The future uncertain. How can we survive?
We’re all monastics, huddled in our apartments, our camps, our homes. Rattlin round in them like ol dry bones. Is it life without others? I would say yes. I would say no. I would say, well, I just don’t know.
Fear the moronic plague the most. He and his will kill us all if it might lift the Dow. Plenty of money for some, for most, none at all.
Hear, oh, world. The one is the lord god, the lord. Can you follow an ancientrail created by slaves, crossing seas, and wandering? I thought so for a moment last week. Put Kate in a prayer, held her there. Tears came to my eyes, I wanted it.
But, no. No longer me. No way back into Easter, either. Following the bird, the rock, the sky, the lake, the trout, the love of one for another, all the spirit in all the things all the one. Must be enough.
Tuesday gratefuls: Sleep, much needed sleep. Resolution for Gertie. A peaceful house. No doggy conflict, no tension. Another six inches of snow. Pho with Seoah yesterday. Murdoch’s happiness at seeing Seoah and me. The kindness of the staff at Bergen Bark Inn. Another heart to heart with Kate. Our life together. My healing. Orchid, beautiful and white, from Tom and Roxann.
The day after. Gertie is at peace. Murdoch in the kennel. For the first time in our married life we have only two dogs, Rigel and Kep. The house is quieter. Peaceful. Gertie is no longer suffering on her bed in the living room. Murdoch is no longer here, creating a constant possibility of violence. It feels, good.
Not glad Gertie is dead, but very glad her suffering and pain has ended. We couldn’t control it and that tore at Kate and me.
On Tuesday night last week Gertie still had enough will power to go outside to pee. She came in through the downstairs door and I decided to lift her up into the bed with us for the night. She slept between us for the whole night. At about 3 AM she woke up giving me lots of kisses. She kept at it for a long time. It was unusual. Now I imagine she was saying good-bye, letting me know how much she loved me. I will treasure that memory forever.
Yesterday lack of sleep and grief had me. Both battered my sense of self. Why did you let Gertie suffer? Why did you bring Murdoch into the house? Why did Kate marry me? Why am I such a screw up? Went down into that place we can all go, that dark place where our fears, our anxieties wait to trap us, hold us hostage.
Again, Kate came out, sat in my chair while I perched on the ottoman. We talked. In the way only those long together, long in love, bonded, can. She saw me. And in her seeing me I saw myself again. She challenged how I saw myself. And, then, so did I. Oh. The grief. The exhaustion. The last two years. Oh. Yeah.
Our talk allowed me to feel the peacefulness, the quiet in the house and to take some of that and put in my heart. The needle probe withdrew from my psyche.
This morning I fed two dogs. Went out for the paper. Not here. Snow always deters this delivery person from her rounds. Made coffee. Shoveled a path to the loft stairs. Came up here and wrote.
Final note. You might be interested to know that it was difficult for me, missing two days last week. Writing Ancientrails is part of my morning meditation, a freeing of my heart, a way to stay connected with a wide community of friends and family. So important. Glad to be back at it.
Monday gratefuls: Kate’s feeling better. Stefan and Lonnie on zoom. Tom’s gift of cartoons by Sack. Beau Jo’s pizza, novel and tasty. Driving in the mountains. The three deer I saw on the way to Evergreen, especially the tiny one. The bare rock, the cold streams, the lodgepole and aspen. Steep slopes. Florence and its art.
After a somewhat comical series of no-goes, I gave up on going to Vail to see Lonnie and Stefan. Stefan had a new hip done at the Steadman Clinic. Snow came to Vail on the first two days I offered. Not unusual, but enough to not make me want to do a two hour drive in it. Yesterday, my third choice, was MLK weekend. The second busiest of the entire year for ski traffic. And, Sunday, the Denver Post said, would be the busiest of the four day holiday. So, zoom.
Good to talk to them. Four years ago they decided to learn painting in an atelier in Florence. They’ve become patrons of the school as well as students, spending much of each year in Italy. Now they face an existential choice between remaining most of the year in Florence, where they’ve become part of an international crowd of artists and art students, or returning to the Twin Cities where their family lives. Would be a tough call for me.
The mood here is lighter. After a tough period of dog bites and exhaustion, I’m rested again. Kate’s had some issues, but eliminating tramadol from her daily meds has given her easier breathing. It’s nice to have a respite from angst.
Today’s MLK. I wonder what he’d do right now? Would he organize mass marches in the face of the rising right wing threat? Would he stay away from such events as the pro-gun rally in Richmond, Virginia today?
Will the MLK holiday become a neo-nazi, white supremacist rally day? A day to show “racial solidarity” and protest for the right to gun ownership. IDNK.
His dream, MLK’s, is mine and probably yours. I’ve always been soothed by his quote from Theodore Parker, Unitarian clergy and anti-slavery activist, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Still am though this seems to be a time when it’s not bending very much in the direction of justice.
Friday gratefuls. Deb and Dave at On the Move Fitness. Seoah’s life joy. The inventor of kettlebells. Treadmills. dumbbells. Television. The transformer. The circuit board. The CPU. Software. Sputnik. Laika. Koko. Any random elephant, giraffe, lion, hyena, rhino, cheetah, zebra, hippo. All of them.
Back to the future. New workout from On the Move. Stepup. TRX pushup. TRX row. Kettlebell one arm shoulder press. Quadraped with a three second hold. Reverse crunch circles. Bridge hold. Step and hold, balance. Deb recommended high intensity cardio for the COPD. Did them up until the radiation started in June. I’ll get back to them, slowly.
She pointed out that the COPD will make me feel fatigued. Oh, yeah. Sarcopenia from aging and sarcopenia from lupron, too. No wonder I’m feeling like that guy on the back of the comic book. You know, the one getting sand kicked in his face? Not much to do but keep exercising, wait for the lupron to drop away. Maybe June of next year.
The Mayans considered the last 5 days of the year as useless days. I used to take that week and do a research project on something of interest to me. Now I’m going to expand that time to December and this year I choose painting. I will poke around in color theory, mixing paints, continuing to paint using shades of intense blue as background. Composition, too. I’ll take Ruth to Meiningers art supply store. Might pick up some new Princeton brushes, some new Williamsburg paints.
Then, there’s the issue of the next decade. The 20’s. Whoa. I’ve lived well into the future. But. Where’s my time traveling Delorian? My transport portal? My brain implants? Why haven’t I met a cyborg yet? You know, like from this year’s Blade Runner.
For the first time I’ve considered whether I’ll live out the decade. Hardly impossible. I’d just have to reach 83 and I know two guys that have already made that or very close to it. Frank’s already there. Bill will be on April 8th. But, who knows? Of course, dying is always possible, but with cancer and copd, my clock may have sped up.
If I knew I would die in the next decade, what would I do differently? Anything? Not sure. I’d like to travel more. See more of Colorado. Make it to Taipei and see the National Museum. Paint more. Write more books. But I already do those things. Love more. Laugh more. Again, not new. Maybe it will be the proportion of those things. Or, maybe something new will appear. Whatever happens, it will be the 2020’s! Buck Rogers time.
The 32nd Woolly Mammoth retreat. Or, so. Happening near Stillwater, Minnesota at Dunrovin retreat center. Soon. The topic: Friendship and Solitude. The last full retreat I attended was in 2015 shortly after my prostate cancer diagnosis. Given the recency of our move to Colorado and the shock of that news that retreat was especially important for me.
Friendship and the Woollies. In many ways the Woollies, my men’s group for over 30 years, was a tutorial in alternative methods of male friendship. We did not bond over the Vikings, not even the Packers. We didn’t start out as a poker night or a hunting group or as fishing buddies. The Woollies were an outgrowth of the Men’s Movement, furthered in Minnesota by Robert Bly, yes, that Robert Bly, in particular.
We learned that friendship could be nurtured through intimacy, with each other. Not a shocker, I know, but far from the norm when men gather for just about anything. In the early years we had retreat topics like Fathers, Mothers, Death, Pilgrimage.
During the year we met on the first Monday and the third Monday of every month. That was another learning. Friendship requires commitment and work. Frank always took March so he could serve corned beef and cabbage in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. This honored Frank’s Irish blood, not the Roman Catholic Church. At Scott’s Yin would put out a Chinese meal and until her death, Yin’s mother, Moon, would help. At other homes it was soup, or barbecue, or turkey chili. We would eat together, then have a meeting on a topic the host chose.
On the first Monday we would gather at a restaurant, in the early years at the Black Forest in Minneapolis. We talked about that son, the Asperger’s one, who was difficult. Or, the movie we’d just seen. Might have been Spirited Away or a blockbuster. Sometimes work, but most often about relationships.
At Villanova, a Catholic retreat center on the Mississippi, there was a lunar eclipse. Our retreats then were usually in January. A group of us went outside around midnight and stood in the snow and well below zero weather to watch the moon turn red. Another January retreat at Valhelga, a family retreat center designed by Woolly Stefan Helgeson, the temperature was -30. The Minnesota January was part of our year.
Now I meet once a month with five of these men using Zoom the video conferencing software. These friendships are lifelong. Amazingly, for a group of ten men, none of us have died though two are into their eighties.
Solitude. Mostly introverts. Solitude preferred. One Woolly moved to northern Maine. Paul. I moved to the Rocky Mountains. Jimmie, though not an introvert, is in South Dakota. Another, Charlie, lives on a lake in northwestern Wisconsin. There is a Woolly diaspora and where we chose to live reflects the preference for solitude.
Solitude accepts our inner life as worthy. Necessary. It’s about nurturing a friendship with whoever narrates your life right now. It allows us to grow as individuals, to honor ourselves, and be able to honor others.
Perhaps I would have added memory to this retreat topic. Friendship and Solitude are complementary for sure. But it is the memories that bind us together. The broomball on the ice at Valhelga. The visits to Richard Bresnahan’s pottery studio at St. John’s Monastery. Meals at the Black Forest, Christo’s, Sawatdee. Frank’s ongoing hate affair with the Roman Catholic Church. Warren’s articles on aging written as a reporter for the Star-Tribune. That one guy that got shot at by his wife. The night we ate in what turned out be a former Nazi military commander’s house, ironically in the very Jewish suburb of St. Louis Park.
My friends, my brothers, the Woollies. Then, now. Forever.
Worked out yesterday. Was sleeping really well, really well. Until. Cold noses in my face. Yes, Kep. Yes, Gertie. A yip from Gertie. Kep jumps up on my legs. OK, OK, give me a minute. Forces head back onto pillow, hopes the dogs will disappear for about fifteen minutes. Nope. All right, all right, I’m getting up. Geez. 4:30. Right on time, but no slack for a tired dad.
Rigel, “Who, me?”
Kate had a dentist appointment in the morning. We took Gertie and Rigel with us since it’s cooling down up here. I drive because her ability to walk very far has diminished. I can put the car as close as possible to the entrance. She came out with brighty whities.
requires moving 5 tons of river rock. 10,000 pounds.
We’re scheduled for an absurd temperature drop on Thursday along with some snow. Hope the cold and snow calm down the extreme fire conditions we’ve had for the last month or so.
The CBE Mitzvah committee may help with my fire mitigation. My energy level for doing it is low. My desire to get it done is high. Susan convinced me that she might find some folks willing to help in some way. Here’s my e-mail to her after we talked:
Susan,
How I feel most days.
I needed your directness. It’s tough for me to ask for any help, ever. I know, I know, I’m a guy. Partly that. Partly, too, I want to do as much as I can as long as I can. It’s about love.
I promise when I wear out, before I wear out, I’ll give you a call. Right now I’m really fine. Except for that fire mitigation stuff.
It has surprised me how much having people out there that care matters. As you say, just knowing that is so much.
I’m pretty self-reliant, one of those blessing and curse sorta things, but I’ve always needed friends and community. Beth Evergreen is both. And, more.
So, gratitude to you, to your committee, to the ancient path that breeds such caring folks. We’re in this together and that makes all the difference. Really, not rhetoric.
Kate’s had a tough weekend. Short of breath, feeling tired. We didn’t make it to Rosh Hashanah services last night. A year and two days after her bleed. She’s made great progress on weight, nausea, even her Sjogren’s is less problematic. Her stamina, up till this weekend, had increased and she was doing more.
Her daily life involves a lot of tubing and schlepping. At night she carries her Inogen, portable CO2, as well as her pump and feeding supplies. Heavy for her. She does remarkably well with all of it, but this alone takes a toll, too. Hoping for a better day for her today.
Need a lung disease diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment plan. So slow.
Yesterday was Tom and Roxann’s 16th anniversary. At their wedding they featured the mandorla. “In icons of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the mandorla is used to depict sacred moments that transcend time and space…” Wiki Marriages, good ones at any rate, live into their own mandorla. Happy anniversary! It was also the 7th anniversary of Regina Schmidt’s death. Bill continues to honor her and their love. A mandorla still, I think.
Tomorrow, October 1st, I get my second Lupron shot. 9 am at Urology Associates Swedish offices. In the butt. Thank you, Sherry.
works for both paragraphs
Then, let the fun begin! Hot flashes have become more frequent, a bit more intense. Still only annoying, but, they are annoying. They creep up the body, making it flushed and warm. Last night I had my sweatshirt off and the window open, the cool night breeze a relief.
Extreme fire danger here. Red flag warning yesterday and today. We have a higher fire risk rating than the area around Paradise, California. One of the highest in the country. Good times. I’ve been too nervous about the fire danger to get my chain saw going. Maybe this week.
My friend Dave, personal trainer, had bad news about his brain cancer. The tumor is back after surgery only a few months ago. He’s at the extreme end of survival time for glioblastoma. As he said, it’s a horrible place to be. 53 years old.
You might think I would be stressed and anxious, but I’m not. Living today. Will wait for tomorrow.
42 degrees this morning on Shadow Mountain. Orion standing guard over the Southern gate, the sky black. Walked out to the white Denver Post tube nailed next to our mailbox, picked up the paper, took it back inside. Put it at Kate’s place so she’ll have it when she gets up around 7.
Spent most of yesterday with buddy Tom Crane in from the Twin Cities. We went to the Cutthroat Cafe in Bailey for breakfast. Have to remember that the room there is very live, lots of ambient noise.
front left, Mark, front right, Warren. Back left Jim, Bill, Paul, Tom, Me June, 2012
Catching up. The Woollies, our men’s group, the place we met as sort of initiates well over thirty years ago, continues to age, but with no deaths. Two Woollies turn 75 around now: Warren and Mark. Frank and Bill are 82. Or is Frank a bit older? Can’t recall. Haislet’s over 75 as is Jim Johnson. Paul and I are 72. Tom’s 71 and Scott must be about that. Stefan is the youngster, still in his mid-sixties.
Tom made an interesting comment about friendship, recalling something I’d said about foreign travel. I travel, I said, to see how other cultures eat, love, do the ordinary things of life, and to then, in turn, reflect on the options my own culture has chosen. Long term friendships are the same, he suggested. A way we can see how others live their lives.
Yes. We’re all anthropologists to one degree or another, trying to draw understanding from other cultures and from the lives of others we know well, about ourselves, the paths we’ve chosen.
It was a topic we discussed, our own paths now since we’ve laid aside some of the paths we loved. Tom the pilot is in the past. Tom the CEO, mostly in the past. Charlie the horticulturist, the beekeeper. The docent.
Bill (foreground), Tom. On his boat on Lake Minnetonka, August 2018
We drove up the Guanella Pass, repeating a journey Tom, Bill Schmidt and I took a few years ago. At 11,670 feet it’s almost exactly 3,000 feet higher than Shadow Mountain. And, chilly, with a stiff wind. While up there, I mentioned to Tom how much I love the mountains, their wildness. Later, over ice cream in Georgetown, he said much the same thing about the ocean. These are paths we’ve not given up.
Tom keeps a boat on Lake Minnetonka, a cabin cruiser, that continues his passion for the water. He built a boat, an eight-footer, when he was young. Went to sea as an officer in NOAA’s uniformed service. Spends downtime often in Mendocino, California and on Maui.
To see yourself as another sees you is to receive a gift, a gift of self-awareness stimulated by an honest, loving gaze from outside. A rare and precious thing.
Friendship, family, marriage. And unique communities like Congregation Beth Evergreen, the Woollies. That’s where we go to find out things about ourselves that we’ve overlooked, underestimated, suppressed. In a real sense the examined life is not possible without others, an irony of a sort.
Tom sent me this photograph, Guanella Pass Summit, with a caption, “You’ve found your path.” Not sure if he meant that literally, the path there beside me, or metaphorically, but it hit me in a profound way. Oh, yeah. The mountains. They’re my path. Altitude. Wildlife. Wild and stony places.
A quote often seen here on t-shirts, back windows of cars and suv’s, attached to the ubiquitous Thule cargo carriers on tops of Subarus: “The mountains are calling and I must go.” John Muir. Kate and I chose for Muir, for the mountains.
Gabe, ninth birthday, 2017
While Tom and I ended his visit with a meal at Sushi Win in Evergreen last night, Kate called. Gabe was in the hospital again. This time with a bowel obstruction. He had surgery at 1 am this morning. Seems he had swallowed a couple of magnets that screwed up his small intestine as they danced around each other. WTF.
We’ll see Gabe today after Kate’s pulmonology appointment. This one, we hope, will move us toward a diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment plan for her lung disease. National Jewish docs this time, not Colorado Pulmonology Intensivists.
New workout. Met with Dave, personal trainer at On the Move Fitness. He’s a thin, muscled guy, a bicyclist’s physique with a hearty, but haunted manner. The curving scar from just above his left temple to parallel with the middle of his left ear explains the haunted part.
He’s an outlier in the world of glioblastoma patients. His surveillance scans were, up until this April, clear. It looked like he had been cured. Then, boom. A seizure. Then, another one. Trips to the E.R. Another scan. The cancer was back.
Since his journey and mine share a lot of similarities, we’ve bonded. Seeing him yesterday was a chance to catch up. He’s been at home most of the time since his surgery, taking chemo and getting his mojo back. I mentioned the awful decision he and Deb had to make about whether to radiate after surgery.
I didn’t want to take all my cards off the table, he said. Meaning he didn’t want to become cognitively deficient, yet alive. A real possibility if he chose radiation. Not radiating made it more likely the cancer could return. Hobson’s choice*. There are instances when living itself becomes a problem. I talked to a lot of smart people. The chemo is a slow trickle. He shook his head, I didn’t want to take all my cards off the table.
We agreed that this cliche has real meaning for both of us: get living or get dying. There’s a choice even here. Do you face toward your life and the world or do you face the disease and death? How you choose matters. The irony of our being together to make my body strong was not lost on me.
Lodge skillets
Afterward I drove over to Evergreen, where I bought a 12″ cast iron skillet. Been wanting one for a while, mostly to sear steaks and roasts. I had a tenderloin roast in the fridge. Tony’s Market, again. Went to the King Sooper next to the Village Gourmet and picked up some potatoes for the evening meal.
Stopped at Congregation Beth Evergreen and made copies for my bagel table on Saturday. I like that we’re merging back into congregational life there.
Guess who was coming to supper? The eminence grisé of the former Crane Engineering. He even has a card, designed by mutual friend Mark Odegard, that says so. Tom’s here for a visit.
Speed Queen 7000 series
Before that though there were matters domestic to take care of. Had to order a new dryer. A Speed Queen. 10 year warranty. These folks trust their work. Appliance Factory. Buy new sheets for our bed. Amazon. Also had to get the malfunctioning O2 concentrator ready to go off for repair. Harder than it could have been. Or, should have been.
Plopped that tenderloin roast on the heated to high cast iron skillet and seared away. Worked well. Coulda been on a chuck wagon on top of Shadow Mountain instead of in our kitchen.
It was good to share the table with Tom. The dogs clambered around him, saying hi. We caught up on his life. Saw each other as only long time friends can see each other.
He and I head over to Bailey this morning for breakfast. We’ll plan, in a very loose sense, our day. Friendships require nurturing. Tom’s excellent at it.
Thomas Hobson
BTW: The phrase is said to have originated with Thomas Hobson (1544–1631), a livery stable owner in Cambridge, England, who offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in his stall nearest to the door or taking none at all. wiki
