Category Archives: Friends

We Got Sizzle

24  rises 29.89  NNW0 wchill 24   Winter

Waxing Crescent of the Wolf Moon

The Internet is a strange phenomenon.  It functions as a time machine, bringing the future just a bit before it arrives and churning the past as old acquaintances find you again through one of the search functions or social networking sites.

It’s a good thing for me, because I was not such a good communicator before the web arrived.  I wrote a few letters, but I’ve never liked the phone much and the only reunions I ever attend are those of my high school.  Now though with Facebook,  Myspace and e-mail those old acquaintances are not forgot and often brought to mind.

Wrote about three pages of a new Homecomer.  Much better.  I needed to make it a continuation of the first two pieces in the Heresy Moves West series.  I had conceived of them as a set from the beginning, but I hadn’t begun the other one as if it fit with them.

We have some kind of frozen precipitation coming down right now, but I don’t what to call it.  Snert.  Sleeze.  Maybe sneeze?  Frozen drizzle is so uninteresting.  Fizzle?  Hey, I got it.  Sizzle.

I bought two new snow shovels.  I have an unfortunate adventuresome spirit in the purchase of snow shovels.  This time I bought one of a kind I saw used on the U.P.  You figure they have 3 to 4 times the amount of snow we have, they must know something.  The other one has a blade made of a tough (I hope) plastic that won’t snag on the nails on our deck–at least that was my conclusion.  I may find out as soon as tomorrow morning.

Just finished a lower body work out and aerobics. Tomorrow AM all morning I’ll write, then watch the vikings.  May Johnny Unitas have mercy on my soul.

A Cold One, Please

-8  bar steep rise 30.33  0mph  S  windchill  -10   Samhain

Waning Gibbous Moon of Long Nights          Day  8hr  45mn

A cold one today.  This week will have the same kind of weather we usually get in late January.  Just fine with me.

A very busy day today with the Joan Herried Lecture at the MIA, then lunch at Butter and a tour of the Transcendental Icons exhibit at the Russian Museum.   This evening it’s the Woollys at chez Schmidt.

Realized I’ve been setting myself up to get tired today.  Thinking, oh, man.  Long day.  Geez, I may have to cancel something on Tuesday night. Well, I don’t have to think that way and I’m going to stop right now.

I’m going to wait just a bit to get at the snow on the driveway.

Cyber Apocalypse Averted

Oh, boy.  Thought I had a cyber apocalypse here.  Opened up AncienTrails and there were no blog entries.  Yikes!

A quick e-mail to my cybermage, Bill Schmidt, apparently frightened the devil in the bytes to flee.  When he turned on AncientTrails, everything was there.  After his e-mail telling me the same, I looked again and there it was.  Whew.

Annual physical today, oh, boy.  Also, prepping for a Renaissance/Reformation European painting tour.

Seeing and Being Seen

37  bar rises 29.59  0mph SSW  windchill 37  Samhain

Waxing Crescent Moon of the Long Nights   Day  8hr 57mn

Lunch with Lonnie.  We ate in Gallery 8, the first place in the city of Minneapolis I saw when I came to seminary in 1971.  I met Lonnie back during the Leadership Minneapolis days, probably 1983/1984, sometime in there.  She was a consultant to the program and did a good deal of work on creative leadership.

My fellow committee chair, Gary Stern, and I were so creative in our response to the question of defining leadership that the entire board got fired the next year.  Although I don’t recall the process, Gary and I facilitated that years class as it sought to understand leadership in its terms.  We all came up with love, justice and compassion as the key qualities of leadership.

Turns out the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, sponsor of Leadership Minneapolis, did not think those terms fit their idea of leadership and cleared out the whole board the next year to start over.  They never did give us their definition, but they must have felt a little stupid when Neal Pierce, a national columnist who focused on urban issues, wrote up our effort and commended its results to a national audience.

The chair of Leadership Minneapolis that year was Sarah Strickland.  Not long after I finished my year as a participant with a year on the board (the one that got fired), Sarah’s husband, Paul, and Lonnie’s husband, Stefan invited me to join the Woolly Mammoths and the rest is hysterics.

Friends of diverse backgrounds and from different facets of life make life richer, like a soup with several ingredients.  There is the comfort of being known and knowing, of seeing and being seen.  Lunch today with Lonnie gave us both.

Today was mild.  Pleasant.

Love and Politics

Another busy week.  Guess it’s a good thing we’re headed to Colorado on Saturday.  Time for a rest.

Yesterday I worked outside all morning, then took a nap, worked out and went to the Woollys at Paul’s house.  We talked about love.  Love was central to each of our lives and, we all agreed, to the Woolly’s.  Scott talked about the tough, tough time financial planners had in the last month and how it had been very difficult for him personally.  Stefan spoke of his children and the active love a houseful of teens requires.  Frank feels bringing novelty to people’s often boring lives is a way to show love.  Bill read poetry.  Love, marriage (31 years), fear and family dominated Paul’s presentation.  My stuff you read yesterday.

This morning I worked on material for the Sierra Club’s Ex-Com, it’s local (Minnesota) board of directors.  I have to present a report on the candidates whose races we chose for targeted effort.  That’s tonight at 7:30pm.

This afternoon the Africa checkout tour tomorrow morning at 9:30 requires my attention.  Then, phone-calling at the Sierra Club tomorrow night.  After that I can return to work outside until we leave on Saturday.

The Ancient Trail of Gratitude

quick note:  Boy, the pace of life accelerated with the coming of autumn.  This last week it felt like I’d gone back to full-time employment.  I’m glad the week-end is here.

Mine is a small life, no encyclopedia entries or feistschrifts, no monuments.  Ordinary.  I’ve been lucky so far.  The major stumbles I made got turned around by mid-life.  Kate came along and made the journey forward companionable.  There are few friends, but good ones.  The things I do, I love.  Dig.  Plant.  Harvest.  Write.  Preach.  Tour.  Spend time with the kids and their kids.  Read.

Thanksgiving is not a one-day holiday, but, rather, a life way, the ancient trail of gratitude.

The Judgment of the Universe

There are times when the judgment of the universe becomes inscrutable.  At best.  The complex interplay among our nature, our nurture and the actual facts muddies the whys of life.  Always.  It is no wonder that humans seek answers, we are pattern seekers, probers, wonderers, wanderers.  Yet, there may be no answers.

I know a family, a small nuclear family.  A man, a woman, a daughter.  Since January the full weight of heaven has fallen on their home.  The man, in his fifties, a government employee, a sailor, an astronomer, a fixer.  The woman, also in her fifties, a quirky domestic with an honesty and unflinchingness that marks her as  unusual.  The daughter, bright, also quirky, a maker of angel wings.  A student of costume.  A lover of the
Renaissance.  Finished college early with a degree in history.

In January the man had a spell, a stroke they thought at first.  Some improvement.  Another spell.  An MRI.  Neurological.  Holes appeared.  Demylenation, a stripping away of the insulating layer of the nerve fibers.  At first, a guarded diagnosis.  After a second and third episode.  MS  Multiple Sclerosis.

Various treatments, but none working very well.  Then, again some improvement physically.  With the realization though that work had come to an end and life as he knew had vanished over night.  The man has become sad, angry, depressed.  He hits the dog with his cane.  The dog will go to a new home this week.  He wakes up at 4 in the morning and wants to argue.  Considers suicide.  Has gone from a detail guy, a traveler and friend to an invalid and a miserable invalid.

Then.  Continue reading The Judgment of the Universe

Chop Wood, Carry Fencing

After years in urban ministry, economic development, affordable housing and responsbility for urban congregations spread throughout the metro area I thought I knew Minneapolis.

Not so.  When I drove over to ecological gardens, Paula’s home at 4105 Washburn Avenue I discovered north Minneapolis, the one that includes Shingle Creek, the Humboldt Greenway, Victory Memorial Drive.  This is a quiet leafy chunk of the city that seems somehow separate, another urban entity, neither suburb nor city. 

Delightful.  I love to drive around in the city, on city streets, to places I’ve never been.  That chance came to me today and I had a great time.

Back home in time for the nap, but no sleep.  A family I know has a terrible weight on them right now and I couldn’t get it off my mind.  What can I do.  What will they do. 

So I got up and moved old wire fencing Continue reading Chop Wood, Carry Fencing

Allison’s Corn Images From Mexico

Charlie,

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Here are three photos I took last year in La Ciudad de Mexico.

One is a portion of a mural by who-else but Diego Rivera.

The other two are from that great Museo de Anthropologica.  I was intrigued by the corn plant that was sprouting men’s heads.  And you will have to agree that the sculpture is pretty powerful.

Allison Thiel

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Men Always Need Help

61  bar steady 30.14  0mph N dew-point 57  sunrise 6:16  sunset 8:19

Full Corn Moon  moonrise 2014    moonset  0554

Whoa.  Did you see the 7th gold medal race for Phelps?  His long, long arms came out of an arcing stroke, reached for the touch pad and, by .01 of a second, arrived ahead of the silver medalist.  To the naked eye it looked like Phelps did not make it.  A later interview with Mark Spitz, also winner of 7 gold medals, showed Phelps a humble and more realistic viewer of his own accomplishments than others.  Others wanted to make him the greatest Olympian; he said he was happy to be among the ones considered great, like Jesse Owens.  All this and modesty, too?  A great American to represent us in a country which understands the value of modesty.

With the Woollies here on Monday Kate and I have begun to get into preparation mode.  We don’t entertain often, hardly at all, but fortunately she’s an experienced suburbanite.  She can throw a party.  Best of all, she’s doing it on her birthday.  I’m lucky and the Woolly palate will be lucky.

The garden will get a spruce up.  I’ll dead-head all the day lilies and pull the obvious weeds if there are any.  The weeds growing up between the patio bricks will come out, too.  They could have come out a while ago, but we’ve had other matters.  The fire-pit can hold a fire, though its not pretty, nor finished, but the pit itself exists.  A bit of shuffling papers upstairs,  some art to the living room, turning furniture in a group friendly circle and we’ll be ready.  I’m looking forward to having the guys over and discussing what it means to be an America.

Kobe Bryant tonight on TV said he was proud to have USA on his team jersey. We’re the best, he said.  Not sure what that means, but that’s the question for Monday.

Apropos of none of the above is a story from the last Sierra Club political committee meeting.  We decided the three Minnesota house races we would target and a male committee member looked at the list after we’d congratulated ourselves on sorting out a complicated task, “Yeah, except we picked all the guys.”  There had been six races, three with men and three with women.

As his comment settled on the group, Katarina, the Sierra Club intern from Lentz, Germany looked up, smiled, and said, “That’s all right.  Men always need help anyway.”  Ooofff.