Category Archives: Friends
Nick
Samhain Waning Thanksgiving Moon
The Nick Caspers murder trial will not happen. Nick decided to plead guilty to Felony A Murder, a charge that gives a chance at parole, as opposed to the Felony AA that he faced at trial. That one carried life without parole.
As Woolly Paul Strickland said, we all have done things in our lives for which we were not brought to account, not so for Nick. I share with Paul a hope that the judge will be merciful in his sentencing. The extraordinary impact an event like a drunken fight in a small North Dakota town can have on individuals and families near and far makes me aware of the lives impacted by each person involved in our criminal justice system, victims and perpetrators alike. On TV the criminal is often a bad person and the prosecution and the victims good people; in life, the shades of gray cover the just and the unjust.
Nick enters the darkest part of this long and unfinished journey in December. There is, of course, the irony of his situation counterpoised to the holiday lights and Santa Claus and families gathered in churches singing Christmas carols. Not so ironic, and perhaps more helpful, is the season seen from the perspective of the Great Wheel. In December the earth reaches the point in its orbit, the Winter Solstice, when the darkness that has gathered strength ever since the Summer Solstice reaches its zenith on the longest night of the year.
The Great Wheel teaches us that the descent into darkness is never the whole story. In fact, it shows us that even the darkest night bears within it the seeds of increasing light, an increasing light that will lead, in time, to a new growing season. Owning the descent for what it is, a trip down into the underworld, but a descent that has a path leading back to the surface world, is a strong narrative for Nick and his next few weeks and months.
Mikki and Pete, Nick’s adoptive parents, Nick, Jim and all the South Dakota folks: we’re with you as you make this journey. You don’t have to go it alone.
Not Stepping In The Same River Twice
Samhain Waning Thanksgiving Moon
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. You, too, tiny Tim.
Stayed up late last night reading a novel about a Chinese detective in Chinatown, NYC. Not sure how it happened but China has become my favorite country, much like Germany used to be and Russia before that. Instead of Buddenbrooks I read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, instead of Steppenwolf I read Chinese mysteries. No more War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, though I could read them again, I choose, as I always have, to plow new ground, read things I have not read before.
I tend not to read things twice, except poetry. A big part of reading for me is the journey to somewhere new, following a trail with no known ending, a similar joy to the one I find in traveling, especially to countries where the culture disorients me, leaves me little room for my old ways.
New disciplines give me a similar boost: art history, Latin, writing, vegetable gardening, bee keeping, hydroponics. I’m sure I miss something in my search for the novel, which may explain why I find living in the same house for 16 years, driving the same car for 16 years, being married to Kate for 20+ years soothing. As Taoism teaches, life is a dynamic movement between opposites, the new and the old, the familiar and the strange, the taxing and the comfortable. The juice flows as the pulls of masculine and feminine, life and death, youth and age keep us fresh, vital.
My buddy Mario uproots himself and moves along the earth’s surface, finding new homes and new encounters. He changes his work with apparent ease, finding new friends and new experiences as he does. Brother Jim, Dusty, constantly challenges his present and his past, leaving himself always slightly off balance. Both of these men take the juice and mold it into art.
There are many ancientrails through this life, including intentional disorientation, familiar surroundings, ambition, compassion, politics, nurturance, keen observation, delight, dance. The key lies in finding yours and staying with it, getting to know it and to be it.
When you can, you will find every day (well, most days) are Thanksgiving.
Sheepshead
Samhain Waxing Thanksgiving Moon
The card gods were pretty good to me. I had some good hands, some good luck and a lot of fun tonight at sheepshead. We had a great evening with a lot of laughter. It’s nice to be with guys who can see the humor in their own lives.
The wisdom teeth began to throb tonight, a bit surprising after a calm period since the extraction. I’ve felt fatigued and a bit spacy, but no real pain until today.
I will be happy when Kate’s work is done in early January and she goes on casual time. Having her here will make our home feel more vital.
Over the weekend I plan to put the bees to rest for the winter and make some more soup with the last of the leeks. Latin tomorrow.
The Self
Samhain Waxing Thanksgiving Moon
Woollies at Stefan’s house tonight. Bill, Frank, Warren, Stefan, Scott, Tom, Mark, me. Paul was there for a bit before he left to have dinner with his daughter Clare.
Topic tonight was what role a higher power plays in your life, if any. We wandered here and there, but came back to a few themes: some found matters of this sort best expressed through loss of the ego, others found the idea of a higher power important for their journey. A few of us focused on the self, the authentic self or the integrated self or the deep self, a self that is sufficient to itself for worth, but eager to belong: to belong to the earth, to each other, to a past, to a family, but in that belonging still the self remains what it is, validated and grounded in an accidental combination of genes that is unique and separate, yet also a part while remaining apart. The key element to this perspective then becomes personal responsibility, willingness to make choices and accept their consequences.
We touched on the notion of the sacred as a created sense of belonging, of a self located in a context, a place, a family, a cemetery, a house.
Some found this perspective a product of aging, of graceful self-acceptance, of knowing who we are, warts and all, and loving that self, not an ideal self that others or external systems would have us mold ourselves toward.
We have different toe holds on our reality, on what we need to feel whole and authentic, but we agreed long ago to take this journey together, and we’ve accepted responsibility for the ride.
Cooking on A Snowy Day
Samhain Waxing Thanksgiving Moon
A nap, then, making more chicken pot pies. I have the various skills down now, so I make it up. This one has a leek, onion, garlic bottom with a layer of chicken topped with corn and peas, all drenched in thickened chicken stock made from Kate’s boiling the chickens. 40 minutes or so in the oven and we have future lunches, dinners ready to freeze and one ready to eat. A lot of standing, the only part about it I don’t like. Otherwise the cooking is a creative act for me, one I enjoy.
I haven’t been outside today since I will neither shovel nor plow these thick snows, heart attack snow. It’s just too clumsy and heavy. Besides, the snow will melt before it is anything more than a nuisance. Glad we live in the burbs where we have no sidewalk on days like this.
Looked over my plan for my Thaw tour and I plan to keep it the same. I’m not sure what happened last Thursday. Might have been first time through jitters or somehow the chemistry between me and the group didn’t click. Something. If it happens again, I’ll assume it’s something to do with the tour. Then I’ll look at change. Of course, I’ll still be in the equation. Wherever you go, there you are.
A friend is in this photograph in front of the Swedish Institute. He’s on the left in the blue vest. This is the Minnesota Santas group at their pre-season social event. What would a five year old think?
Losing a Friend, More on Dams
Samhain Waxing Thanksgiving Moon
“In the view of conservationists, there is something special about dams, something…metaphysically sinister….the absolute epicenter of Hell on earth, where stands a dam.”
John McPhee Encounters with the Archdruid (1971)
We lost half a cedar tree in our backyard to heavy snow and wind. We nurtured this tree from a small cedar bush into a two trunk tree that shaded our small patch of grass just beyond the deck. These early heavy snows can be hard on evergreens since they retain needles throughout the winter, making them vulnerable to the wet and often large snow falls of late fall. We’ll have a chance to do something new out there come spring. Kate wants a lilac tree.
Here’s another thing about dams. They generate, in addition to hydroelectric power, strong feelings. People love’em or hate’m. After they are built, they often become so much a part of the local ecology that people defend them from destruction with much the same fervor that folks oppose their construction in the first place.
There are a multitude of problems created by dams: river flow is often altered and in turn alters the ecology both upstream and downstream, sediment pools at the base of dams robbing downstream deltas of needed material, archaeological sites can be destroyed or rendered extremely difficult to discover, populations are often displaced and, often, are denied access to the power produced by the dams which relocated them.
Equity questions abound as in the case of waters diverted to Los Angeles and Las Vegas from the arid Western states of Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Arizona and as in the case of a dam on the Zambezi river, built by Mozambique but because it needs military protection from rebel forces, forced to sell its electricity to South Africa at 1/7th of the world price. Dams concentrate capital and political power in often unhealthy ways, especially in third world countries and especially when used as elements of a geopolitical strategy by such bureaucracies as the US Bureau of Reclamation.
More as the week goes on.
Gadget Obsessed? Moi?
Samhain New (Thanksgiving) Moon
To call me gadget obsessed might take reality a tad too far, but not much. I saved up some money and bought a TIVO. It took me this afternoon to get it set up and working, putting the cables in the right places, getting the codes right, creating a few channels on Pandora, wondering at the limited Netflix options when the full menu is available on my new Play Station 3, (OK, maybe it’s not quite far enough.) and deciding whether or not to ditch the cable tv subscription from Comcast, my least favorite company of the week.
In spite of myself it looks like keeping the cable subscription is still the best way to get the most out of the TV. I’m gonna keep checking though since new ways to watch movies and broadcast shows keep popping up. Most of what’s on tv is low culture, but often compelling anyhow and even the stuff I like that’s not compelling entertains me. With streaming movies the content available at home on demand has increased a hundred fold.
As a general rule, I don’t watch tv to get educated and I’m rarely disappointed.
Even with the increased quality and options though, nothing on the tube–that phrase dates me like saying icebox–compares to the live music, open studios and visiting with friends at Art Attack last night. Remember Alvin Toffler? The futurist from a long time ago. He talked about high tech, high touch and I’ve found him right on that score. I use the internet, the facility of cable tv combined with the internet and software like WordPress and Microsoft Word to make me much more productive in the work I choose to do, but going in to the MIA and seeing my docent friends or over to Paul’s house for a Woolly meeting, a Sierra Club meeting on Franklin Avenue are equally important to me. Without them I would be a hermit.
A lot in the hermit’s solitude appeals to me, so I’m happy Kate and I have created a place here where we can be alone and creative, just the two of us, but I need face to face time with others, too.
My Friend
Samhain New (Thanksgiving) Moon
Thursday night around 9 pm I went out to the mailbox to drop The Book of Eli in the mail back to my buddies at Netflix. It was not a cold night, a slight chill, but the night was clear. From nowhere in our house can we see the eastern horizon, neighbor’s houses and woods block our view, so it came as a surprise to me to see an old friend there when I opened the mailbox and glanced to my left.
Orion’s brawny left shoulder and his glittering belt had begun to emerge. Back a long while ago, the winter of 1968 and 1969, my last year in college, I worked at the magnalite corporation as a week-end night watchman. I had a round leather clock with a shoulder strap and a key hole and every hour I had to walk a circuit in the factory, find a key hung from a metal chain, insert it in the clock, turn the key, remove it and move on to the next station. I had no protective duties, rather I served at the leisure of magnalite’s insurance carrier who insisted on hourly inspections when the plant was empty.
When I was not on my ten-minute round, I spent time in the guard shack at the entrance to the parking lot. I often divided my time between studying and dozing off since I had the 11:00 pm to 7:00 am shift, but when I left the shack for my rounds or to wake myself up, Orion was there. Being in a large factory complex alone, at night, on the weekend, is lonely duty. I liked it for that reason, but I found Orion’s presence companionable, and it gradually grew into a friendship. He and I could talk. We both stood watch in the night.
Since those days, now 41 years ago, each fall when Orion rises, I greet him as an old friend, a true snowbird, one who returns when the snow comes and leaves as it does. My old college friend has come for his annual months long visit. And I’m glad.
Friends
Samhain Waning Harvest Moon
Talking with the woollies at the Black Forest. Scott, Frank, Warren, Stefan. Eating here at this lasting monument to Gemütlichkeit we lived it. Sharing with each other in our cozy, intimate way, a way borne of decades now together. My claustrophobia, anothers workshop on codependence, Frank’s tooth, Scott’s restructuring of his hours at work, Warren’s cold. All of these and the usual commentary on the upcoming election, the Vikings and the waiver of Randy Moss. Friends eating together, putting another layer of mortar on the linkages among us.
Yet another trip through the night from downtown Minneapolis to the exurbs, from bright lights and people jaywalking, biking, loitering to the dark drive north of Coon Creek Road, past the eutrophying Round Lake and the vast peat bog across the road from it, the basis for Field’s large truck farm.
Now home, letting the dogs out, a note here, then upstairs to read, watch TV, relax.