Category Archives: Friends

Aging, Bees, Family, Friends, Retirement

Sheepshead

Leave a comment

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.

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

The Self

Leave a comment

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.

Art and Culture, Cooking, Friends, Weather +Climate

Cooking on A Snowy Day

Leave a comment

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?

Aging, Friends, Garden, Great Work, Our Land and Home, Politics, Weather +Climate

Losing a Friend, More on Dams

Leave a comment

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.

Aging, Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, GeekWorld, Humanities, Politics, Retirement

Gadget Obsessed? Moi?

Leave a comment

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.

Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Great Wheel, Memories

My Friend

Leave a comment

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.

Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Friends

Leave a comment

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.

Dogs, Friends

My Home State In The News

Leave a comment

Fall                                        Full Harvest Moon

HYDRO, Okla. – An elderly Hydro man landed in jail after springing his prized pooch from the town kennel. Instead of paying a $100 fine for not having his poodle on a leash, 73-year-old Edwin Fry decided to bust Buddy Tough out, driving his lawnmower to the city pound Oct. 13 and breaking into the cage with bolt cutters.

As the pair escaped, police officer Chris Chancellor intercepted them.

Chancellor told The Oklahoman officers had received numerous complaints about Buddy Tough, who had been in the pound before. He said Fry had been told he could retrieve the dog and sort out the fine in court.

“I’ve been in law enforcement 20 years, and this is the first time I’ve known of anyone that has busted a dog out of jail,” Chancellor told The Oklahoman.

As for Buddy Tough, he was euthanized while Fry was in jail.

Aging, Art and Culture, Friends

Representative

Leave a comment

Fall                                                     Waxing Harvest Moon

Spent much of the day with stars in my eyes.  Literally.  After those damned dilating drops at the ophthalmologist.  However, my pressures are still below glaucoma level and the photographs of my retina show insignificant change.  The technician photographing my retinas kept saying, “Watch the green dot.  Your eye’s moving.  Watch the green dot.”  Well, geez.  I thought I was doing a damned good job of keeping my eye from doing its normal task, checking out those flashing lights to the left.  Apparently not good enough.  Anyhow.

Over to Cafe Ena, a Latin fusion restaurant, at the intersection of 46th and Grand for lunch with the docent outing crew.  I had mofongoed Yucca.  This involves pounding and cooking it in some way according to our waiter.

After lunch I walked with Allison and Jane MacKenzie from the Cafe to the Weinstein gallery.  Martin Weinstein, the gallery owner, introduced the current show of Robert Mapplethorpe, Alec Sloth and August Sanders portraits.  He represents Alec, a local boy now part of Magnum, and Robert Mapplethorpe’s estate.

Curious about the business side of gallery work, I asked Martin how representing an artist worked.  Turns out he ships art, packing and insuring it, both incoming and outgoing.  He frames all the pieces or arranges for them to be mounted.  He manages the three buildings that constitute his modest, spare gallery space, pays a woman to assist in the complex logistics of the business.  He also collaborates with museums to mount shows of his artists, mostly on his nickel.  In addition he mounts several shows a year with all the attendant costs, including a reception with wine and cheese, plus boarding and expenses for the artist.  This is all sunk cost, paid out long before any commissions come in from sales.

It is, he emphasized, “A very stressful business.  Always this coming, that going.”  Martin is a tall, slightly stooped man with a shock of white hair and round architect type glasses, thick ones.

The photographs were elegant, Martin was entertaining and there was a good turn out.  A fine afternoon.  Thanks, Allison.

Aging, Bees, Family, Friends, Great Wheel, Memories, Travel

Harvest

Leave a comment

Fall                                      New (Harvest) Moon

Second round of apiguard in the parent and the divide.  The top box on the package colony has gotten heavier, but I plan to feed them some more as I will do to the parent once the apiguard comes off in two weeks.  Sometime in early November I’ll get out the cardboard wraps and cover the hives for winter.  That will pretty much finish bee work for the year until late February or early March.  I’ve given away honey and plan to give away more.  Part of the fun.

A quick walk through the vegetable garden shows kale and swiss chard looking good, a few rogue onions that escaped the harvest, plenty of carrots, beets and butternut squash.  The harvest is 2010-10-04_0351not yet over and will go on until the ground threatens to become hard.

While I drove through the countryside on my way back to Lafayette on Monday, I passed field after field of corn and beans, some harvested, some not, about half and half.  Seeing those scenes put me right back at home, especially the corn fields.  Here’s a field near Peru, Indiana with the combine spilling corn into a tractor trailer for transport either to a corn bin, grain dryer or even straight to the grain elevators, all depending on the price and moisture content of the corn.

Indiana is no longer home, Minnesota is, but Indiana has a large section of my heart, the chamber of childhood and early young adulthood, a room full of corn fields, basketball, small towns, a baby sister and brother, county fairs and James Whitcomb Riley poems.  I was glad to be there the last few days and to walk again in the part of my heart filled there so long ago.

We move now toward Samhain, Summer’s End.  Blessed be.