Category Archives: Friends

Faith and Spirituality, Friends

After this life

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Summer                            Waning Summer Moon

Life keeps coming at us until this one stops.  Gyatsho has been on my mind since his death.  As I indicated the day I discussed his death here, the Tibetan belief is that he is now in a possibly 49 day process of finding a home for his reincarnation.  As I’ve worked outside, I’ve looked up from time to time, imagined Gyatsho’s consciousness, his very subtle mind, making a transit through the invisible world, hunting for a new home, working toward enlightenment.

As I’ve considered this, it comforts me.  The notion of a next life, especially a next life focused on learning left over lessons from this one, makes sense to me in a way.

What has not made sense to me since early high school is the binary logic of Christianity:  heaven or hell.  One lifetime, then out to eternal punishment or eternal bliss.  Even when I worked as a minister, my theological system did not include such a cramped afterlife.   God is love.   If so, then love will rule a soul’s disposition in the afterlife and love forgives all things.  No need for hell.  This seems to collapse the present into amorality, but only so for persons devoid of gratitude or unaware of grace.

My belief now runs more toward composting, but I’m open to the notion of survival.  If we do survive in some way, I like the Buddhist idea.  Even though I like it, I find it hard to believe because the evidence we have from returnees is nil.

The metaphor that works best for me is the chrysalis.  This body I have now is a chrysalis, death triggers the next transformation, mutation.  Perhaps we pass into one of the multiverses and never even know it happened.  The next great mystery.

Art and Culture, Friends, Great Work, permaculture, Sport

Superman

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Beltane                           Waxing Dyan Moon

“It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.” – William G. McAdoo

Boy, is that true.  Look at Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, oh my.

Had lunch and a by the seat of the pants tour with Mary and Frank Broderick.  It was fun, wandering around the museum looking at art with friends.

Obama is such a smart guy.  Speaking to the Muslims yesterday, visiting Buchenwald today.  He does not allow the dust to settle in any one place before he moves on, readjusting the tunic of America’s presence in the world.  In such a short time he has restored my feeling of good fortune in living here.  Geez, just to have a President who can string together a complex sentence is enough to make me cry.

Following the low bar of the Bush presidency has eased Obama’s transition, but he would have looked good at any point.  Now he looks like superman.

The first phase of the growing season, planting and amending soil, has come to an end.  Almost.  Now mulch goes down newwork09and surveillance for pests.

This is part of the new work we had done last week.  The vegetable garden area has no more grass, just chips.  It also has new beds with flowers, shrubs and space for some more vegetables.  We have made another step toward a permaculture suburban acreage.  The small white form in the upper left is the bee hive.

Bees, Friends, permaculture

A Good Night at Cards

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Beltane                          Waxing Dyan Moon

“After another night of losing sheepshead, it finally came to me.  These guys have been playing a lot longer than I have.  Bill since childhood.  Roy and Dick since high school and Ed since entering the Jesuits.  Now I view them as my mentors.  That way I can lose and learn, instead of just lose.”   from a May 7, 2009 post after I finished at the bottom again.

Some nights the cards change and the tide flows with  you.  Last night I got great cards and did well.  Anything I’ve learned in this reprise of my brief sheepshead career in Appleton, Wisconsin, I’ve learned from these guys.

Those cells I thought were queen cells were drone cells.  Drones have a life devoted to the vain pursuit of sex.  Sounds like the American teenager when I grew up.  Drones fly out and around, hoping to find a queen who needs him.  This is a very rare occurrence, so only the most fortunate of these bee princes ever become king for a day.

Yesterday I planted squash, melons and beans, thinned the turnips and replanted carrots and beets.  The last time I dicentra09planted carrots and beets I didn’t water them in.  Probably should have.  The potatoes needed mounding and I discovered that the beets and turnips both benefit from mounding too.  If a portion of these tuberous vegetables stick up above ground, they turn green and inedible.

The red car got expensive again and will get a bit more so.  This time it needed a new radiator and coolant flush, a flush of brake fluid and steering fluid, a new transmission gasket and a flush of the transmission fluid with new replacement fluids.  It probably also needs a new master brake cylinder, but I said no to that out of sticker shock.  After consulting the mechanic, I’m going to order the part and have it replaced.  Suddenly having no brakes is not a good thing.

Bees, Friends, Garden

Hive 2 In Place

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Beltane                     Waning Flower Moon

Mark came over and we suited up.  The bees have been busy.  I saw the small larvae curled up in the very bottom of a comb’s cell, several of them.  We investigated each frame, finding one frame with many capped cells, maybe 60%.  The bees did not seem interested in us.  We only used the smoke once and that was as we removed a frame with a large number of bees working on it.

Mark said it was a little early, but we decided to put hive 2 in place, moving up into it one of the frames with brood and spreading the others out a bit on the bottom since it left only 9 frames below out of 10.  Much of this management of the hive involves swarming.  If the bees feel their space has become  too cramped, some of the hive, maybe all, will fly away into a tree, then send out scouts for a more roomy place.  This means less to no honey at the end of the season.

After this next phase, we will switch the top one onto the bottom and put the bottom on it.  The third and last hive goes on top of both of them.  After this last swap, the supers go on.

Lydia came over from next door.  She’s going to do some weeding and some heavier work like taking out yew that died over the winter.  Much of her initial weeding will happen over the week we’re gone.  It will be good to have some help.  Weeding becomes a chore around this time of year.

Friends, Garden

Peas, Turnips and Parsnips Oh, My

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Beltane                    Waxing Flower Moon

Many daffodils bloom outside the writing area.  No tulips yet, but they should bloom in the next few days.

Snow peas, sugar peas, garden peas, snap peas all went into the ground this morning.  This took a while because there were several steps.  First, loosen the soil with a spading fork.  Rake smooth.  Create a taut twine line marking the location of the trellis.  Scratch a half inch to one inch furrow on either side of the twine.  Lay down inoculant in the rows.  Then, one by one, place the peas.  Do this over and over until 4 rows run parallel to each other.

In between the 1st and 2nd rows and the 3rd and 4th rows, reachable with ease from the bed’s edge, white globe turnip went into the same soil.  Turnips like pea companions.

Another bed, this one with a nice daisy and a star-gazer lily, got loosened up, too.  After a smoothing with the small garden rake, parsnip seeds fluttered down onto the scratched surface, tiny space ships with feathered brown edges and a cockpit containing the parsnip seed.  The parsnips, after thinning and trimming, get a mulch and then remain in the ground until next spring, achieving their nutty flavor through hard frosts and a hard winter.

At that point the noon sun had made me hot so I came inside to write, have lunch and take a nap.  Later this evening I’ll plant greens, beets and carrots.

One more thought on garage sales.  Here in Minnesota, after a hard winter, they are also the equivalent of a  social event for post-hibernation bears.  Minnesotans love the winter, but during the winter our travels outside of our home usually have a distinct purpose and almost always head away from the house.  There are no yard parties in the winter.  Well, not many anyhow.  Some folks just gotta barbecue.

When the weather warms up, though, lawn mowers come out.  Lawn chairs.  And, garage sales.  Neighbors drop by to say hi, see if you made it through the winter, and coincidentally, to check out your stuff.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Politics

Why We Need Universal Health Care

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Spring            New Moon (Flower)

A word for the ones in silent despair, hiding behind doors and well-kept lawns, all those in trouble.

A while back I mentioned a neighbor whose life turned upside down over a week-end.  He went from  a productive, active guy to a suicidal victim of a progressive form of multiple sclerosis.  After his diagnosis and subsequent treatment brought little relief he tried to end his life, bringing paramedics and the blue and white Allina ambulance to his door.  He did this  while his wife talked with us about our new orchard.

Now, six months or so later, their bank account is empty.  They are putting necessities on credit cards and the “disabilty insurance” they have is not insurance, but a loan, a loan they have to repay.  Their lawn is neat, the flower beds tended and ready for plants.  The small evergreens they planted when they moved in some years back have grown into mid-size trees.  The American flag flutters from their flag-pole, lit with lights.

He built an observatory a few years back, I may have mentioned this.  It now sits there, a white dome with a go-to Celestron telescope, abandoned by its maker.  His MS is advanced stage 2, of which, when I asked Kate about it, she said, “It’s not good.”

Vulnerable people have had their vulnerability magnified by the economic crisis.  That’s what this has driven home to me.  Imagine being in a situation where a medical condition threatens not only your retirement, but your house, your family.  Now imagine all that in a situation where the economic eats up what little cash you already have.

Their situation is an argument, the argument, for universal health care and a safety net for persons with debilitating illness, a safety adequate to maintain gains they have made over ther course of a working career.  I’m not talking here about pleasure boats, expensive vacations and country club memberships; I’m talking about a house, food, health care and family security.

This cries out for justice.

Friends, Great Work, Health, Woolly Mammoths

Feelin’ Glum

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Spring              Full Seed Moon

Today was the second organ day in a row.  Yesterday, eyes.  Today, skin.  Tomorrow, ears.  Doing fine on all counts so far.  Even so, I find visits to the doctor a bit stressful.  The waiting room.  The waiting for the doctor.  Their evaluation/assessment.  I have a good relationship with all of my doctors and intend to keep it that way.  Bill Schmidt and I had lunch today and I told him I view doctors as health consultants.  I’m responsible for my health, but they help me stay healthy and intervene if something gets out of whack.

After seeing Dr. Pakzad I came home and had a sit down with Kate.  I’ve been feeling glum, an unusual state for this time of year and unusual in intensity for me over the last couple of years.  It’s a little difficult to sort things out.  In part the Sierra Club work may be more of a challenge than I anticipated.  In part I found myself counting up all the little insults that make me realize my age, no, not really my age, but my sense of competence.  Do I have it anymore?  A tough question to answer from the inside and one always colored by mood.

Kate thinks that may be the wrong question.  I’ve prodded her several times over the last year about retirement and whether she’s ready for it.  She turned the question around on me, “I wonder you’re ready for retirement?  To let go of the need to have to have it?”

Hmmm.  Projection isn’t just a machine in a movie theater.  She may well be right.  Pondering this pushed me to wonder about the last regression I had where I got credentialed for the UU ministry.  I did that during a time when I was down about the writing.  But, John Desteian said, in a regression, you always go back to pick up something left behind, or unresolved.  Stuff to bounce around.  Enough for a coup contrecoup injury.

Good lunch with Bill Schmidt.  We covered a lot of ground from genetic modification of seeds and nuclear energy to motorcycles and dealing with difficult personalities.  I came away still opposed to nuclear energy, but willing to hear arguments about how to handle the waste.

Art and Culture, Friends

Ordinary Catastrophes

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Spring            New Moon (Seed Moon)

My preparation for sheepshead foundered on two factors:  1.  I could not discipline myself to count points and keep track of trump.  I tended to lapse back into not counting.  2.  I had poor hands and bad luck in addition.  A tough combination to overcome.  Still, I can learn. I’m sure.

Two tours tomorrow then over the weekend I will have time to work on setting up my new Gateway.  Must be the way guys used to feel when they went out to the garage to work on the car.

Busy Busy Busy.  Not enough time to blog. Good tours today.  Interested kids and chaperons.  Ate lunch with three docent friends between tours.  One woman has a daughter on the east coast who just gave birth after a dangerous operation to remove a benign growth on her liver that could, the doctors felt, hemorrhage during the pregnancy.  Mother and baby are doing fine, but the birth, just this weekend was a long affair and left grandma tired.  This was in DC.  Meanwhile in LA a second daughter has begun another round of chemo to take down some metastases from the lung cancer she developed, at 31, last year.  She’s a non-smoker.

Grandma seems exhausted, strong but emotionally wasted.

Came home and took a two hour nap.  Now ready for the treadmill.

Friends, Garden, Great Work, permaculture

Let The Grass Green And The Plants Grow

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Spring          New Moon

Lunch with Paul today at Origami.  When I lunch with friends, I find we often go back to the same place we first went, even after years and years.  I had lunch with an old friend last month and we returned to Gallery 8 at the Walker even though it had been seven or eight years since our last meal together.

Today and tomorrow I have tours to prepare, and I’d best get to them.  Nuclear hearing tonight at 6:30.  Lots of stuff happening right now.  I’m feeling a bit distracted, maybe over stimulated, but it won’t last.

I missed the thunder storm in this blog and the couple of days of rain, but when I woke up to snow this morning I had to get on and say, enough.  I mean, really.  OK, I know it’s not unusual, that March is a snowy month, that winter lingers, yes, but even so, enough.  Let the grass green and the plants grow.  Let some color appear.

A friend has decided to head to the Smoky Mountains next week to hike and see some green. I get it.

This is not cabin fever, I don’t have a longing to be somewhere else, somewhere warm; but, I do have a hankering for growth.

There, that’s off my chest.  On another, similar note, my seedlings have gone from the sprouting stage to the small leafy stage.  This is onion, kale, chard, eggplant, huckleberry, leeks, broccoli and cauliflower.  On Monday I put them all in separate peat and coca pots, getting my hands in the potting soil.  That took care of some of my green desire.

Aging, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

A Locked Car Mystery

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Imbolc    Waning Wild Moon

The Woolly’s met tonight at the Jasmine across from the Black Forest.  Food is noveau Vietnamese, French accents.  I had spring rolls and mangoes on sticky rice.  Just right.

Got to give everyone a head’s up on labyrinthitis.  Tom has a friend who visited him yesterday and may be dead from multiple myeloma in two months.  Whoa.  Paul and Sarah have purged their home, shined up and have neared the day of the first open house.  Changes.

Stefan locked the keys in his car while x-skiing at Hyland Park.  He asked a cop if he could help.  The cop said sure and gave Stefan a ride down.  When he got out to work on Stefan’s car, he inadvertently locked his keys inside as well as Stefan who was in the back seat.  In a police car.  A locksmith had to be called for both cars.

The trip in is always worth it, a chance to connect and renew the connection.  Got several happy birthdays.  Guys just don’t remember birthdays well.