Category Archives: Friends

Friends, Holidays, Jefferson County, Mountains

Slowly and Over Time

July 4, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer New (Park County Fair) Moon

Kate and I went to a fourth of July party at a friend of hers. The view from their deck (above) includes Pikes Peak in the very far distance. The general rule of urbanists is that the poor live in the place of least convenience. Here in the mountains that rule reverses and the wealthiest live on the peaks, or near them. Getting to their homes entails driving up and up and up, often the latter part of the way on gravel roads, then having a long driveway that also goes up and up and up.

This house has 6,000 square feet, cathedral ceilings, a wrap around deck, tables custom made from beetle kill pine. Its driveway is a one-car wide ribbon of asphalt that winds up from Pine Country Lane to a turn-around with a three-car garage and a vaulted doorway with a cast iron handle. The three floors all face this view. The main floor is at this level, bedrooms above and a floor with a music room on the level below, a walkout onto the grounds seen here.

Steve, husband to Kate’s friend Jamie, calls this, “Our little slice of heaven. Especially for a boy from the Bronx.” He amplified that last by talking about walking through the tunnel into Yankee Stadium and seeing green on the playing field. “Where I lived, it was all concrete. The green was remarkable. And now this.”

Parties are not my natural habitat. This one was no exception. I met a couple of people, Steve (not Jamie’s husband and one of three Steves at this party, two of them, including Jamie’s husband, named Steve Bernstein), an actuary, and Lou, a software engineer, in addition to Jamie and Steve. That’s an effective outing for me. Many of the people at the party were members of Congregation Beth Evergreen, so we’ll see them again and again. That’s the way I make friends, slowly and over time.

This loft is my natural habitat, books and maps, a computer, a place and time to write and read, to work on my Latin. This loft and these mountains. Becoming native to this place is, it occurs to me, identical in process to the way I make friends, slowly and over time: hiking the trails, driving the roads, being present as the seasons change, seeing the wildlife. I’m in no hurry for either one.

Colorado, Family, Friends, Jefferson County, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

You Try to Remain Calm

June 6, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane New Moon of the Summer Solstice

Webcam of Hwy285 near the accident site — Webcam of Hwy 285 near the accident site

“So you try to remain calm and remember your training. Not easy to do as you use the last t-shirt that came home in the box with your nephew from Iraq to try to keep the inside of his head where it belongs.”

“Meantime help from the young man that caused the incident is running around getting in the way crying ‘Please don’t let him die, I didn’t see him. Please don’t let him die’. Tried to be nice but had to tell him to get the f out of the way.”

“Was trying to figure out how to make an airway out of Pepsi bottle or something when he slipped away, as the fire department pulled up.”
Redneck for Hire, Pinecam.com

Life. Like the flickering of a firefly or a summer breeze passing through a mountain meadow. We have it, then we don’t. Tyler, my young helper who will be a junior next year at Conifer High School, had an uncle killed in a motorcycle accident on Highway 285, Saturday. Pinecam.com, that smalltown breakfast joint of a website, had several entries talking about the accident.

One, from a poster who takes the handle Redneck for Hire, was very poignant. He has EMT training and was on the scene before Elk Creek Fire Department. Tyler’s uncle died in his arms while he tried to remember something he could do to help. What was an abstracted source of hometown news became personal, even for me, though only in this tangential way. It’s the slow integration of our life with the lives of others who live near us.

Driveway the day we got home. Eduardo and Holly cleared our driveway. — Driveway the day we got home from Korea. Eduardo and Holly cleared it.

Our neighbor Holly is still in California, having had thyroid cancer surgery at Scripps in San Diego. Eduardo worked on the family beach house outside Tijuana. His father has late stage Alzheimer’s and the beach house is a place for him to enjoy. The two of them cleared our driveway before our return from Korea.

Next door neighbor Jude’s dogs are quieter, the front yard neater. He has a woman friend who has moved in. Jude was fired from his job as a shift supervisor at a casino in Blackhawk about a year ago. He returned to the welding business of his father, having worked there before. Now, he says, he’s so much happier. Glad he was fired.

Jon and Jen are in the early stages of a divorce. Painful news in so many ways. Yet, having been there myself, I know that once a relationship sours the way back can close down forever. Made more difficult of course by Gabe’s hemophilia and both Ruth and Gabe’s gifted, but troubled personalities. As grandparents we’re very limited in what we can do other than that most important thing: love them all, through it all and afterwards.

You might consider this an OMG moment for us since we moved out here to be closer to the grandkids and Jon and Jen. To the contrary. It makes the move make even more sense. We have a chance to be of real assistance, up close. I’ve spent a lot of time talking with Jon already. Nodding. Listening. Reassuring. We will be here.

Yes. life is a firefly flickering or a summer breeze across a mountain meadow, but while it flickers, while the breeze blows, what an amazing experience.

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Friends, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Why grief?

April 29, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Wedding Moon

As you might expect, I’ve been thinking about death, about grief in the wake of Vega’s sudden death. In particular I’ve been wondering how I can have a grasp on my own death, no fear, but be so distressed at Vega’s.

Then, it occurred to me. In movie thrillers the torturers often open their usually neated packet of tools: knives, pliers, dental picks, pieces of bamboo with a flourish. Or, as in the Marathon Man, the dentist goes to work on you without anesthetic. In many cases the torturee summons up inhuman courage or an anti-heroic defiance.

When the usual infliction of pain or disorientation fails, or when the torturer is portrayed as unusually sadistic, friends or colleagues or family members of the torturee are led into the room. Then the torturer goes to work on them. Seems effective in the movies I’ve seen.

Grief, at least in part, is because the universe is such a torturer. Not with malice, of course, but certainly with a sort of intention. Life has an endpoint and entropy sees that it arrives. So, it’s possible to have the notion of your own death sorted out while responding with agony to the grim torture of having your friends removed from the room .

Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Still Pondering

March 26, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Maiden Moon

New thoughts about old problems. My mind spins all day long, doesn’t stop at night. When I wake up, it’s not always monkey mind. Sometimes it’s just the one that wonders about reimagining faith, about what to do next in Jennie’s Dead or Superior Wolf, about the peculiar nature of this year’s primary season, about the nature of reality and life. Seems natural when I think about it this way, an extension into the night by what occupies me during the day. Of course, I still need sleep. But I get it in chunks rather than in a smooth 8 hours.

The friend problem. New information about friendship suggests that those of us who work on our own, on projects that matter to us-a lot-and especially those of us who work on creative or intellectual projects are happiest seeing friends occasionally. Most folks it seems are happiest when they see their friends often. I’ve always struggled with this idea, that I should have more friends, get out more, do more things with other people, but I’ve always gravitated to the quiet, the alone, the private.

In part this is because I am an introvert and I need private, quiet time to recharge and, conversely, find time with others enjoyable, but draining, not energizing. But, I’m also an introvert who has had, for as long as I can recall, various projects important to my own journey. Sometimes it was reading certain authors, other times researching topics like the Midwest, climate change, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Modernism, art history. More recently, the last 25 years or so, I’ve had specific creative projects: novels, essays, presentations for UU churches and two nonfiction works. The first non-fiction project, which is still in me, somewhere, was an ecological history of Lake Superior. The second, Reimagining Faith, remains active.

In retrospect I can see that the Woollies and the docents met my needs almost perfectly. I got to know others-in the case of the Woollies, deeply, and in the case of the docents, well. In both instances there were regular times for meeting, first and third Mondays with the Woollies plus an annual retreat and in the case of the docents, my touring day. Having these regular opportunities were just right for me.

Now that I’m here in Colorado, though I don’t have those regular opportunities, I still have the relationships, the friendships, from those times. So I need to make opportunities to nurture those relationships. And I have been doing that.

What I’m trying to say here is that I no longer feel less than because I’m not seeking new friends here. As I said yesterday, I imagine I’ll find some, at some point. But the bigger point is that I feel fine, happy, content as I am, at work and engaged with Kate, the dogs, family and those fine friends still in Minnesota.

Friends, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Translating Metamorphoses, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

Anchored

March 25, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Maiden Moon

Spoke by Skype with Bill Schmidt and Scott Simpson today. No reason, just catch up. It was good.

Friends. I don’t make friends easily and the almost 30 years of Woolly relationships and the 12 years for my docent friends will not be repeatable here. I’m making my peace with that, too. As long as my docent and Woolly friends will connect with me, I plan to maintain the relationships. There is an easiness, a knowingness, an intimacy that has taken years to develop with these folks.

Also, my work occupies my time, not in an escapist way, but in a fulfilling way. That’s why I don’t feel lonely here. Kate, the work, the dogs, family, casual relationships are plenty for now. And may be enough for the long haul. Even so, I imagine I will find new friends here at some point, but if I don’t, that’s ok, too.

In other words, I am flourishing as an intellectual and creative worker, lodged in a beautiful place, with family and canine companionship. I’m happy as well. A hard combination to beat.

Dogs, Friends

A Significant Day

January 23, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Yule Stock Show Moon

What a day. Todd came to finish up the remnants of the kitchen remodel. It looks wonderful and Kate brought it in for a reasonable price. It’s been difficult, stressful for her, but she’s done a wonderful job. We’re going to the Fort on Sunday night to celebrate her work. Meanwhile she’s happily moving things back in, organizing the kitchen anew, sort of the point of the whole project. Lots more storage space. I’ll post some pictures later on.

But that wasn’t the significant part of the day, at least not the most significant. Ironically, as I wrote Our Friends, Vega was at the vet’s having her left front paw x-rayed again. It’s been swollen for several weeks now. The first x-ray showed infection rather than cancer. So, antibiotics and pain meds. But the swelling has gotten worse.

We got a call from Palmini, the vet. Could we come in at 1 o’clock to review what he’d found? Uh-oh. After several Irish Wolfhounds dying of cancer, we imagined the worst. Tears and reminiscing. Vega is the sweetest, happiest dog we’ve had. Like all of our dogs her place in our lives is special, irreplaceable. That means anticipating a hole where her funny, talkative, bouncy presence is hurt.

Not as bad as all that. It might be cancer, could still be an infection, but we’ve agreed to a biopsy on Monday. The good news is that even if it is cancer, an amputation would cure it. The possible cancers are not aggressive. Amputation sounds drastic, and it is, of course, but for a dog not as big a deal as you might imagine. They quickly adapt to the tripod life and go on. One thing we can all learn from dogs is how to deal with physical adversity. Don’t quit.

We don’t have to lose Vega right now. And, I’m glad.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Jefferson County, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

Meet and Greet

January 12, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Yule Stock Show Moon

Kate’s at the Bailey Library, a sewing day from 9 to 3 with the Bailey Patchworkers. They make stone soup and work throughout, stopping only for a brief business meeting. Quilting and handwork have been Kate’s entré to local folk. She has been invited to join a needlework group, too. It meets next week. All part of settling in.

Even though we’ve had a bumpy road with many of our house related projects, it occurred to me that even a bumpy start still grounds us in the local culture. We’ve learned about the shortage of folks in the skilled trades, an apparent difference of work ethic between here and Minnesota and had to adjust our expectations about how long projects will take, to get started and to finish. There are local habits and customs, a mountain way of doing things, that we have had to adapt to.

Sometime soon we’re going to start attending services at Beth Evergreen, a small Jewish reconstructionist congregation in Evergreen. They have a more relaxed worship schedule, none during the Christmas and New Year’s holiday time and when they are regular they alternate between Friday night and Saturday morning. I’m looking forward to an opportunity to meet folks.

Friends, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Lunch

December 20, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Christmas Moon

Holiseason. Well underway. Two important holiseason gifts with a day of each other. (see post above for the second.)

Tom Crane, who flies the skies a lot, used some frequent flier miles to come out to Evergreen for lunch with me yesterday. We ate at the Willow Creek restaurant across Upper Bearcreek Drive from Evergreen Lake. It was, of course, a great feeling to see this long time friend and his willingness to trade his Saturday for lunch 900 miles from home made it even more special.

(Tom, on the far left, at an end of our 2015 retreat breakfast in Ely, Minnesota.)

It was, in the best sense, an ordinary lunch. We covered children, wives, parents, friends in the Woolly Mammoths and what Tom called an unusual number of infrastructure projects. This last referred to sleep studies, blood pressure measurement, a new furnace and a.c. unit at his house, a split pipe in the shower fixture, my prostate cancer, various arthritic ailments, hearing aids, our new boiler, kitchen and our still ongoing attempt to install the generator.

We’ve been friends now for over 25 years, meeting in the Woolly Mammoths where we’ve spent twice monthly meetings and annual retreats together over all that time. The nature of our meetings have been intimate and personally revealing, the length of our time together adding group history to personal history.

Both of us sense that we don’t have time to replicate that kind of intimacy with others, the third phase has its inexorability. It means we need to go the extra 900 miles to retain and maintain what we’ve created.

Thanks, Tom, for the gift of your presence.

Friends, GeekWorld

Social Media

December 16, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Christmas Moon

Social media. A possible explanation for its rapid rise and spread around the world. Thinking yesterday about Facebook, the app I know best, I realized that it had reconnected me with an outer tier of friends and acquaintances: former high school and college classmates, hometown folk, friends from various organizations with which I’ve worked over the years, random friends from other moments in life. People with whom I would have likely lost contact.

These are people who were at one time significant in my daily life and me in theirs. In the old regime of dial telephones, snail mail and the occasional reunion they would have faded away, not because they were unimportant, but rather because communicating them would have been difficult at best, impossible in most cases. Now I can hear daily from members of the Alexandria class of 1965, the Northstar chapter of the Sierra Club, fellow radicals from college.

This has the effect of expanding my social world, of allowing memory and today to coexist. I feel enriched by the experience.

It’s not such a good medium for close friends and family. We communicate by phone, by visits, by texts and e-mails, more dialogical than a scatter shot post can be.

What I’m saying is that Facebook, in our mobile culture, in this large nation and globe of ours, bridges the distance and makes friendships of the past available still. I suppose in this sense it serves a similar purpose to the small town or urban area where similar folks might have dispersed, but still be close enough for occasional visits. Now that small town can be 12,000 miles across.

I’ve been surprised at how much this means to me. And, gladdened.

Asia, Colorado, Cooking, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Bloody Marys at Breakfast

December 6, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Thanksgiving Moon

Into Denver in the morning today. Unusual for us since our city excursions are usually in the evening.

We went to Lucile’s, Denver for breakfast. I mentioned Lucile’s, Littleton a short while back. The Denver site, at Alameda and Logan, is hip. Full at 8:30 am with whip thin Coloradans, men and women, young families and a few older guys sitting at the bar eating scrambled eggs and drinking Bloody Marys.

Kate had rice pudding porridge with currants. I had red beans, poached eggs and cheese grits. We shared a side of collard greens and finished the meal off with beignets. Tasty.

After breakfast, we made our way through Denver, navigating north and east toward the old Stapleton airport. Jon and Jen live near there. We were bearing those Hanukkah gifts.

On the way home we made a complete circle, taking I-70 to Evergreen, then Brook Forest Drive to Black Mountain Drive and home. This particular route gives us a view of snow covered peaks to the west and lets us drive through more mountains on the way to our house.

Tonight we go to Domo’s, the rural Japanese cuisine restaurant Jon and Jen introduced me to long ago. Scott and Yin Simpson are in town and we’ll meet them there. Lot of driving.