Category Archives: Politics

Family, Great Work, Literature, Paganism, Plants, Politics, Science

Blindness

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Samain and the Yule Moon

Sunday gratefuls: For all the ways we learn and express ourselves. The Ancient Brothers on Gardener’s 8 intelligences. My son, Seoah, and Murdoch. Coming in January. Going to Korea in May. Maybe with Ruth. Snow. Mary. Mark. My family spread along an Asian crescent from Korea to K.L. to Brisbane. Far from Rocky Mountain high.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Learning

Kavannah: Enthusiasm (Zerizut) and Joy (Simcha)

One brief shining: Lit the candle yesterday, wrote 500 words on a why/how to celebrate Yule essay, starting with my personal journey this year, intending to produce 8 essays, one for each of the Great Wheel’s holidays, using stuff I’ve written and collected over the years.

 

Spent yesterday in conversation over zoom with my son and Seoah in Songtan, Korea and Mary in Brisbane. Separate calls. Wrote to brother Mark in K.L. A bit weird. Sitting here on top of Shadow Mountain, in the Colorado Rockies, speaking directly to Korea and Australia. No latency. Clear pictures. Sound good. Pandemic tech and habits, a changed reality. Amazing to this small town Hoosier boy.

Shadow Mountain Home as imagined by chatbotgpt

Want to give a big shout out to Zöe Schlanger. An amazing intellect. Intrepid and careful reporting. The Light-Eaters. So many good quotes. Here’s an example. “I think of plants as primary and humans as secondary. Plants can do without us. We can’t do without plants.” Thank you, photosynthesis.

Reminded me of the Iroquois medicine man I’ve often talked about. He delivered a prayer for the Soil and the Rocks, the Trees and the Mountains and the Oceans, those who swim in the Water and fly in the Sky but never mentioned humans. Why? Because, he said, humans are the most fragile and vulnerable of all creation. Without all the Plants and Animals and Water and Soil, humans can’t exist.

In so many ways, so many obvious ways, we receive this message every day. Did you eat breakfast? Where did it come from? What was it? It was either a Plant or an Animal fed by a Plant. Did Night and Great Sol emerge this morning where you are? Imagine if Mother Earth decided to stop turning. How about the Water to fill up your Water bottle, the Water you used for that shower, or to wash your clothes and your dishes?

We humans consider ourselves agents nonpareil, yet we could not accomplish basic tasks without an assist from Mother Earth. Thankfully, she is on our side. Even when we are not on hers. Nor could we continue above ground and taking nourishment without her and her gifts. Why are we blind to this?

 

Just a moment: 45/47 continues to play tiddly winks with appointments to powerful positions. Now Patel, a man committed to gutting the FBI, nominated to head it. This is a revolution of the ill informed, driven by intentional ignorance and malevolence. Will the Senate do its job? Its advice and most critically consent role has never been more important.

Have any good will left over from Thanksgiving? Time to access it now.

Humanities, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History

An Ontological Oncologist

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Tuesday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Paul. Mark in K.L. Gettin’ stuff done. Snow. Cold. Back to working out. Aches to prove it. My Lodgepole Companion. That young Buck with the spike Antlers. Visiting again. Mary getting ready for Summer. My son, Seoah, and Murdoch. Thanksgiving in Songtan. His generosity. The Water Grill. 2:15. Ruth, Gabe, Jen, and me.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Thanksgiving

Kavannah: Perseverance and chesed

One brief shining: Opening a book and beginning to read starts a journey into the unknown, what if this paragraph changes my life, oh no, he didn’t, picked up one yesterday recommended by NYT conservative columnist, Ross Douthat, a dialogue between Olympian Gods favoring an idealistic, almost Bishop Berkeleyan, metaphysic in which all is mind or forms as mind pushes itself into forms. Or something like that.

 

Got my house cleaned yesterday. Ana wielding her dust cloth, vacuum, and other tools of her trade to give me that spiffy home feeling. Not cheap but Furball Cleaning, owned by my friend Marina Harris, shows up and on time, and does better than average work. Hard to calculate how much psychic difference a clean house makes, but it’s a lot.

 

That book I opened yesterday is All Things Are Full of Gods: The Mysteries of Mind and Life. Haven’t read a philosophy text in a while. This one is thick, thick, thick. As near as I can tell David Bentley Hart wants to make the case for something like Bishop Berkeley’s: Esse est percipi. To be is to be perceived. A solution, Hart believes, that could solve the four hundred old mistake in Western culture most often blamed on Descartes: The mind-body split.

I agree with Hart’s definition of the problem. And, how you define is how you solve so we’re halfway to agreement from the start. I might even agree with a version of his solution, but not one that ends up providing a comfortable berth for old fashioned Thomistic theology. Which is where I suspect he is headed.

My agreement with Hart lies in his insistence on a unitary metaphysic, it’s all one, and a rejection, because of this, with dualisms as final expressions of the nature of reality. My difference with him so far? I suspect him of having a static ontology. I may be wrong about that though. I’m a Whiteheadian, Jewish fan of the notion of all becoming new, every moment, in every instant.

BTW: This might be the place for Paul’s addition to my stable of oncologists: urological, radiation, and medical. Paul thought I should add an ontological oncologist. Perfect. Static ontologies are the cancers of a process metaphysic.

I know. I’m sorry. But it’s what I’m thinking about today.

 

Just a moment: So. 25% on Mexico and Canada. 10% on China. Tariffs. First day in office. Dictator day if I recall. Whatever. As the teenagers say. Or, said. Probably a while ago.

As a seed-keeper, I’ll continue reading Thoreau and Emerson, Dickinson and Melville. Madison and Monroe. Throw in a little Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

 

Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain

This and That

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Friday gratefuls: Shabbat. Alan and Joanne. Australia and New Zealand. Richard Powers. Rick. A large mussar gathering. Treyf. The New York Times. The Washington Post. Axios. Colorado Sun. Ground News. Nexus. Almost done. Resistance. Working. Medical oncologist today.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Family

One brief shining: Staring into the abyss, the abyss staring back. A love story.

 

Yet another oncology appointment. In Littleton this time, no longer within visual distance of Swedish Hospital, its tenth floor where Kate died. Another blood draw. Far less angst now. I know the direction we’re headed. More orgovyx and erleada. More blood draws. Maybe a replacement at some point for erleada.

Cancer, as Scrooge might say: Bah, humbug.

 

Tis the week before Thanksgiving and all through the house no one’s talking politics, not even a mouse. Not a problem for me since my Thanksgiving will involve Ruth, Gabe, and Jen. Gloating predicted to be a problem for red visitors to blue homes. Just you wait sentences spilling from the mouths of blue guests to red homes. Whatever happened to this once upon a time refuge for glutting instead of gloating, for football instead of nah nah ne nah nah.

Maybe Native Americans will smile.

 

Had my septic system pumped yesterday. It had been a while. My equivalent of your city sewer system. Since 1994 I’ve lived off the city water and sewer grid. A leech field. A well for water. Had to replace the pump a few years back. Not cheap. Neither was pumping out the septic tanks. That means, BTW, I haven’t had fluoride in my drinking water for thirty years.

In Colorado, when you sell your home with a septic system, you have to pay $800 or so to have it certified as functional. Gives the term deep dive a different inflection.

 

Just a moment: So. Was Gaetz a Trojan horse to let Hegseth and Gabbard in? Was this the plan all along? Cunning, baffling, and powerful. This red tie guy and his minions. Some see Gaetz’s withdrawal as an early win for the Senate. I’m not so sure.

 

How bout that Netanyahu? Now an indicted war criminal. He’ll have to seek asylum in the homeland of his buddy, 47. Maybe get sanctuary in the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem? He’s got indictments at home, too. Like you know who. What a pair.

 

I stand by my Seed-Keeper mode for the next four years. Some of us have to remind others that this is an experiment, these Untied States. No, not a misspelling. If we’re not vigilant, the constituent parts of the United States might well become untied. And, no, not even his long red tie will be able to put us back together again.

Perhaps this Thanksgiving instead of party politics we might try to find common ground on what freedom means. Liberty. On how different paths might lead to justice for all.

And to all a good night.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics

You know

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Wednesday gratefuls: Rubberized weights. Working out. Feeling it. Cold night. 10 degrees. Coloradified. Me. Paul. Robbinston, Me. Lobster Pots. New Brunswick. Canada. New Foundland. Wawa. Marathon. Sault St. Marie. Toronto. Stratford. Pukaskwa. Road signs with the crown.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Body weight workouts

Kavannah: Perseverance

One brief shining: Marked HEAVY the cardboard boxes containing my rubberized weights for in-the-house workouts sat just outside my front door and posed a conundrum for this muscle wasted senior citizen, staring down at them, laughing at the paradox of not being able to lift the tools he needed to be able to lift the tools.

 

No. They’re not still out there. I cowboyed up and lifted each box, one at a time, to the lip of the door then shoved them into the living room. Where they still sit. Knife in hand, I’ll open them, and carry the fifteen pounders one at a time, the ten and fives two at a time, downstairs.

Another chatbot created image. Just what I’ll look like in only a few short months. By Spring I’ll be able to kick sand in the face of all those beach bullies. Like Jack Lalanne promised in those ads in the back of the comics. Or, maybe not.

I’ll settle for being able to open cans and bags. Carry groceries with ease. Not feel like such a wet noodle.

 

Realized last night that I’ve arrived at inner peace. No regrets or worries bother me before my head hits the pillows. My to do list nags me, yes, but not in an OMG, I gotta get this done sorta way. Not to say that on occasion a moment of angst doesn’t squash me. Consider my last visit to the oncologist as an example.

I did have a summer and early fall time of perplexity about my cancer. Didn’t know what came next or how long I had to live. Let that gnaw on me for a while. Even then though I never lost sleep, chewed my fingernails.

Not sure how I got here. Darn it. I could write a self-help book otherwise. A key component I do know. Contemplating my own death. Accepting it. Embracing it as a necessary, even desired punctuation to life. Meditating on my own corpse. Yamantaka to thank for that.

My paganism plays a role, too. The Great Wheel turns. The growing season ends, then the fallow time, finally the Winter Solstice and the long dark night. Death as part of the natural cycle.

Judaism does not emphasize life after death. Though it considers the possibility. Some kabbalists believe in reincarnation. I’m willing to be surprised. Joanne said, “You know you have to give up heaven and hell!” Never believed in it anyhow. Three story universe. Yesterday’s notion.

 

Just a moment: Oh. Well. Linda McMahon. WWF exec. With the necessary qualifying sleaze and scandals. For Education Secretary. A Cabinet department red tie guy has promised to gut. Foxes. Hen houses. Scorpions riding frogs. You know.

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Mussar, Politics

Tears and Laughter

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Tuesday gratefuls: Susan. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Her house. Beautiful. Jamie. Rich. Elephant Company. Tara. Marilyn. Ron. MVP. Going to bed late. Dreams of travel. lodging. As some pundit observed, long tie guy has flooded the zone with too many bad picks all at once. Orion, my buddy. The Mountain Night Sky.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Habeas Corpus for Elephants

Kavannah: Perseverance

One brief shining: We sat in Eames chairs around a large Camelot table, a spotlight outside revealing a beautiful outcropping of Rock, 15 foot glass windows, the east facing wall, showing the glittering lights of Denver, down the hill and far away, while we talked about anavah and sinah: love and hate, trying to find purchase in our lives for growing both as soul traits, character traits.

 

Every once in a while, like last night at Susan Marcus’s architect designed home, I feel blessed, blissed to sit with people smarter than me as we try to figure out how to lead our lives in a soul-full manner. How we can we express the essence of ourselves as sacred beings, using the medieval practice of mussar as a guide.

In those conversations we move from our lives into learning, from learning back into our lives. We struggle with the usual things: parents, children, marriage, existential angst while trying to place them within the context of developing our ability to practice humility, enthusiasm, love, hate (or repulsion), our ability to let the light of our own divinity shine unobstructed. Not easy work, but done with love and compassion. Confidentiality. Honesty.

A lot of laughter, occasional tears. Befuddlement is common. And, admitted. Gotta say I love being a Jew and part of Congregation Beth Evergreen.

Also, food. Last night butternut squash soup, chicken wings, cowboy caviar, a fancy salad, hummus, carrots, and for those who drink, a red wine labeled, 7 Deadly Sins.

 

Just a moment: Harder than I thought it would be. Getting back into working out. Deciding this time to privilege weight training, resistance work over cardio. My heart rate has remained excellent, but my muscles have given way even more to that old devil, sarcopenia. Where once I opened jars and bags with practiced ease, I now often have to resort to tricks and accessories. Not acceptable. And remediable.

Plan to make sure my resistance routine is solid, making gains. Then, I’ll add back in the cardio on my treadmill. Self-care, it’s not just a river in Egypt. Oh, wait…

 

In spite of myself l find a habit gained during 45’s reign of error returning. Opening the New York Times to see what he’s done now. Who’s he appointed? Why? Of course the why question has no answer. Whim. Some strange political calculus. An indecipherable conclusion based on misinformation.

When the revolutionaries take over the government, they usually turn out to be same as the old boss. Since this is a revolution based at root on greed and fear, it may stretch things farther than any of us hope, certainly more than we want, but the U.S.A. has and will recover. That is my Seed-Keeper faith and one I will help make happen.

 

Asia, Family, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain

Could Get Ugly

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Monday gratefuls: Ancient Brothers and chesed. Coffee. Coffee mugs. From the Gunflint Trail. From Kate and mine’s 25th anniversary. With Dogs. From the Polar Express. World’s Greatest Grandpa. Southern Poverty Law Project. Memories in ceramics.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Another wakin’ up mornin’

Kavannah: Perseverance

One brief shining: Turn on the coffee grinder with dark roast beans, fill the coffee pot with filtered water, tighten the lid on the pot, separate out one filter for the coffee basket, measure two-thirds of a cup of ground beans, place the basket in its holder, pour the water into the reservoir, close the lid. Minutes later. Ahhh.

 

Morning rituals like making coffee. Saying the Shema. Touching the mezuzah. Breakfast. Reading the news or a morning book. Waiting a half an hour before exercise. Get my day off to a good start. The golden hours from waking up, around 6 these days, until 2 or 3. A life.

 

In Nexus Harari points to stories as those things that can connect us, many, many of us, in a shared enterprise: family, state, nation, passenger on spaceship Earth. Becoming human. I agree with him. Even family, which we take as a given, easy to define and know depends on the kinship story that our cultures teach us. In the U.S. we have pared down the family through our emphasis on individualism. The nuclear family tends to be the hub until the kids get older, then even family can narrow further to a couple or a single person. All held together by increasingly thin cords of memory and affection.

Ruth on her own at UC-Boulder. Gabe and Jen. Me on Shadow Mountain. My son and Seoah and Murdoch in Korea. Mary in Southeast Asia. Kate and Jon dead.

This frays the old patterns of families caring for their aged memories. This is a crisis, too, even in traditional societies like China and Japan where birth rates have plummeted, marriage is suspect, and adult children there often want the kind of freedom American culture offers. Especially mobility and choosing their own partners.

I’m lucky in that Kate left me enough money to sustain my life on my own. That I have good, close friends here and far away. I can manage. But my circumstances are not shared by many, perhaps not most of my age peers. Culture changes more slowly than jobs do. Than desire and ability to live a life of your own making does.

Again, my family. Mary and Mark in Asia and Saudi Arabia for much of their adult lives. Me in Minnesota, then the Rockies. Far from the Sycamores on the Wabash. Far from Madison County. Alexandria. As my analyst Jon Desteian put it: an atomized family.

All this now put in the alembic of an unserious man and his many hatreds, his colleagues yearning to reshape reality in an even more atomized direction, hoping to dismantle the New Deal, strip away the thin gruel offered by Medicare, Social Security.

Could get ugly.

 

 

Art and Culture, Fourth Phase, Politics

Seed-Keepers

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Friday gratefuls: Tom. Mussar. Rabbi Jamie. Luke. Ginny. Rick. Great Sol. A blue Colorado Sky. The West. The Rocky Mountains. No Bike Park. The Mountain Meadow remains. Colorado. Livin’ in a Blue State. Mark. Mary. Diane. Riley. Richard. Cut Throat Cafe. Happy Camper.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Eagle at Tom and Roxann’s

Kavannah: Friendship

One brief shining: Why did you put on what you’re wearing today, Mindy asked, and we went around the room, learning one wanted to cover her stomach, another takes a shower on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays so she had on what she had on Wednesday, another wore brown jeans and a green t-shirt to look like a tree, and when it came to me I said, I bought a pair of Keens, a lot of white socks, a bunch of jeans, and several plaid flannel shirts so I don’t have to think about it.

 

BTW: I asked chatbotgtp to create An American themed image of a group called the Seed-Keepers whose role is to honor the spirit of liberal America. Anti-racist, anti-misogynist, and anti-homophobic. I’m more interested in the Seed-Keeper theme than anything else

Seed Keepers, Chatbotgt at my request

Seed-Keepers. Who among you might become a Seed-Keeper? If you take on this role, expect it to last at least four years, perhaps longer. You can be a solitary Seed-Keeper, dedicated to remembering and speaking who we are as a country and as a people when not driven by fear and demagoguery. One of our Seeds, there are so many, lies in our history. Perhaps you will be the one who goes back to the beginning of our nation and learns in even more depth how we came to be. Warts and all. 3/5ths clause and fugitive slave clause and white, propertied men as voters, the electoral college and all. Enslavement, too. Jim Crow. The Indian Wars. Yet, too, the Civil War. Checks and balances. Federalism. The Federalist Papers. How we became a city on a hill attracting new citizens from afar.

Or, you might choose to have a Seed-Keeper group. Perhaps one interested in the American Renaissance (as I am) when American thinkers and artists began to tease out the distinctive features of living on this amazing land. Reading together the works of Emerson, Thoreau, Parker, Whitman, Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Mary Fuller. Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Not to ignore either painters and sculptors like Mary Cassatt, Bierstadt, Henry Tanner, Church.

Seed-Keepers #2

What might you do as a Seed-Keeper? You might gather those close to you for story evenings, perhaps around the fireplace to discuss questions like what does it mean to be an American? What has it meant? What does it mean in a time dominated by reactionaries and autocrats? You might write essays, letters to the editor about how the other half of the 2024 electorate sees things.

You might locate yourself in the work of a state Humanities council and help them introduce American Seeds through their speakers and book groups.

I’m sure you have more and better ideas than these. A Seed-Keepers primary role is to hold the liberal to radical ideas that make America a nation in which all want to live and to pass those ideas along to family, friends, and others in a digestible manner.

I’m gonna keep spinning up this idea, see if it can gain traction. No where near done with it.

Garden, Great Work, Politics, US History

A Victory Garden

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Thursday gratefuls: Tara. Arjean. Tom. Diane. Paul. Workouts. Diet. Conifer Cafe. Aspen Perks. Primo’s. Dandelion. Parkside. Wild Flower. Bread Lounge. Breakfast. Still an important meal out for me. Mussar. Veronica. Mineral Water. 8,800 feet. Mountains.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Visits

Kavannah: Perseverance Netzach  נֵצַח tenacity, grit; literally “to last”

One brief shining: Above the fold and a dagger to the heart, Matt Gaetz for Attorney General and Republicans take the House, wish I’d built that bunker oh so long ago, a Rip Van Winkle place where I could lie down in a futuristic pod, go gently to sleep, and wake up when this is all over, but no, being a Seed-Keeper is more important than ever.

 

The waning years of my fourth phase have climate change and a MAGAnified country. Not what I wanted for Christmas or Hanukah. So let’s look again at the Seed Keeper idea. I finished the novel which inspired this thought. Recalled after reading the acknowledgments (what an odd word, I just realized) that Kate and I had lived a Seed-Keeper life. We used only heirloom Seeds from the Seed Saver’s Exchange, planted our Orchard in the permaculture way, kept Bees, gathered Wild Grapes and Morels from our land. Loved all our Wild Neighbors and all our Dogs. It is a beautiful way to live.

I no longer have the oomph or the desire to resist what’s coming. I will write about it, will talk about it, sure, how could I not? But my focus will be on loving and supporting those younger than me. Helping them remember why loving the neighbor still makes sense. Why no one left behind should not be a slogan only for the military. Why equality before the law remains an essential American value. Why a nation of laws dedicated to the lives of all its citizens has not vanished as an ideal. A nation of laws that guide us toward love, justice, and compassion. Why those values are not only worth dying for, they’re also worth living for.

These are the three sisters of our country: the Corn, Beans, and Squash out of which a new nation dedicated to old propositions can grow. You and I are the Soil to mound and out of which the strong Corn stalk can push toward the Sky, the Bean Tendrils can clasp that strong stalk for support, while the bountiful Squash with its huge leaves grow over the Ground.

We will plant a Victory garden.

 

 

Politics, US History

When it began

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Wednesday gratefuls: Being able to type. See a blue Sky and Great Sol lighting up my Lodgepole companion. Take care of myself. Tom. Diane. Brother Mark. Trash day. Cold night. Toyota. Snow tires. All weather. Tara. Marilyn and Irv. Differential/AWD fluids replaced.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Cold chicken

Kavannah: Compassion

One brief shining: Marilyn and Irv sat across the table at the Blue Sky Cafe, one of Marilyn’s old haunts when she worked nearby for the Jefferson County school system, menus opened, we ordered coffee, and I laughed at one of the menu items, a specialty coffee named The Flying Elvis.

 

Stevinson’s Toyota. Snow tires. AWD. Reading Seed Keepers. Hiding from the ubiquitous television screen. Background noise. Marilyn and Irv picked me up and took me out to breakfast. A nice break from the normal routine of the waiter. I did have an hour plus of reading. A good, sad, hopeful book.

Not ignoring the fact that Stephen Miller will be deputy chief of staff. Or, that Uncle Elon has already got his talons in. Paying attention, not absorbed. Looking at the Democrat’s analysis of what went wrong.

I know when it began. 1974. General Motors began shuttering its supply chain factories like Delco Remy and Guide Lamp, two near my home town that employed most of the people in Alexandria. Foreign cars began to dominate the US market. I drove one, a VW Beetle, the old kind, not the spiffy newer one.

Working class guys began to lose their jobs en masse. Many white, many of color. Flooding unemployment rolls, creating a glut of persons vying for the few remaining jobs, those often paying a half or a third of their old jobs. No health care. No pensions.

Proud homeowners drew the drapes in their homes and left in the middle of the night, another property for the bank. Scroll forward ten years and plywood covered storefronts, those homes had no paint, front doors hung crooked, roofs began to leak.

The Democrats forgot their core working class constituency. Let them drift into McJobs, the bottle, confused anger. Creative destruction. Ha. My friends from high school, their parents. Only a handful of us went onto college, untouched by the grim hand of a capitalist economy chewing through another generation of workers.

And the Democrats. Where were they? A shifted focus. Not bad in and of itself. Continuing the Civil Rights era successes, focused on African-American realities, on women’s rights, later on the rights of LGBT folk. Important work, sure. And pretty successful.

But we took our eyes off the folks who put us in office, the working class. Eventually working class whites drifted and/or were prompted into believing their continuing plight was the fault not of cold capitalistic calculations, but of the somehow evil machinations of African-Americans, immigrants, others.

And who had the Democratic parties focus: others. Including persons with sexual preferences outside the experience and compass of most working class folks.

Let me be clear. Championing the rights and fortunes of the other is a critical and necessary political act. But in the perception of the former base of liberal politics, union represented working class folks, they were the enemy.

Perhaps a difficult circle to square, but we didn’t even try.

Fourth Phase, Garden, Memories, Minnesota, permaculture, Plants, Politics, Seed Keepers, Weather +Climate

It will be us. And, it will be so.

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Monday gratefuls: My sweet, kind Ancient Brothers. The Seed-Keepers. Veronica. Ruth. Gabe. Samain. The fallow time. Snow. Boulder. Snarfs. Shadow Mountain. Election 2024. Clarity. Warming. The Great Sol Snow Shovel. Tara. My Lodgepole companion. A Colorado Blue Sky.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Lunch with Ruth

Kavannah: contentment and joy

One brief shining: Strange to recalibrate a life at 76 yet I did just that a year ago this month, having my penis-my penis!-pricked (hah), disrobing and immersing myself in the mikveh, explaining my reasons for embracing a new way of life to a beth dein, house of judgement, and taking a new name, Israel, one who struggles with God.

 

Israel. Part of my nom sacré, Herme Harari Israel. My fourth phase name. In the direct toledot, generations, of Abraham and Sarah. My now forever ancestors. This name also signals my continuing pagan life as the hooded man of Shadow Mountain. Feel free to refer to me by any name you wish.

The Moon of Growing Darkness. A bit of explanation. You may think this refers to the election of long tie guy, but no. It refers to my joy as the days grow shorter and the nights increase, headed toward the Long Night, the Winter Solstice. Yule in the pagan way. My affection for the dark, for the night long proceeds long tie guy, proceeds cancer, proceeds Judaism.

No, I’m not an owl. I love the mornings when my strength and intellect and creativity peak. But as much I love the darkness. Might have begun during those fall days in Andover when I would dig out and replenish the soil in the flower beds that arced around our lower level brick patio.

As I worked, Folk Alley radio played in the background and a chill Minnesota fall day would make the task a deep joy. Lying not far from the tarp onto which I put the Soil would be brown bags full of Corms, Rhizomes, and Bulbs. With the Tulip Bulbs, I would place them in slightly raised rectangular wire baskets, place them at the right depth, then shovel Soil back over them with a bit of Organic matter mixed in. The Rhizomes,  new Irises that Kate had chosen, might go in next to the Tulips. On the next tier up of this three tiered bed I would sprinkle Daffodil Bulbs and plant them where they landed, going for a mass of yellow in the Spring.

The Crocus Corms would go into the bed next to the front porch and that would come a bit later. This was a twenty year ritual, one I looked forward to because I loved the thought that within the nurturing Soil, beneath the Snow, tucked in warm against the bitter Minnesota Winters were these small capsules, no less amazing, perhaps more amazing than a space capsule, of life, holding within them enough nutrients and ancient wisdom to throw up a stalk when the temperatures signaled safety, push out leaves that would begin to gather more food for the all important Flower, that seductive botanical invention that draws Pollinators, and would, in time, die back as Seeds formed. Even though most of these Flowers never propagated by seed.

How could a gardener not be in love with darkness? Seed-Keepers will work in the darkness of the coming red tie guy years. Tucked in warm against the bitter autocratic Winter, small communities ready to send up stalks when the political temperature is right. Then to send out Leaves and power a movement into Flowering. It will be us and it will be so.

Yes, we had Morels in our Woods