Category Archives: Colorado

Colorado, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Park County, Plants, The West, US History

A Westerner

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Friday gratefuls: Shadow and Tom’s nylabone. Morning darkness. Hawai’i. Hickam. Honolulu. Diamond Head. Pearl Harbor. Big Island. Kona. Hilo. Volcanoes National Park. Mauna Loa. Kilauea. The Mauna Kea. Waimea. Kauai. Kalalau Trail. Hanalei Bay. Maui. Mama’s Fish House. Haleakala. Lahaina. The Weston. The Pacific. Surfing.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Hawai’i with Kate

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Yesod.  Groundedness.

Tarot: paused

One brief shining: Funny how peace can soothe us, make us dance in the streets, as if that long long period of death and destruction existed only to show us how much peace means to us, how much stability and order provide the framework for a rich, calm life. Why can we not remember this before we start a war?

The West:  Woke up this morning to find my back door open! Geez. Must have been high winds over night and a not quite closed door. Glad no hyperphagic Bear discovered it. Or, a hungry Mountain Lion. Will make me more vigilant. Shadow Mountain at night. Not a place for open doors.

Been thinking about The West. About becoming a Coloradan. Which happened a few years ago. Not sure I could pinpoint a moment, more like a gradual realization that turning toward the Mountains meant turning towards home.

Becoming a Westerner is different. It has not only a specific and important geographical connotation, but also a mind set, a way of seeing what’s important from a spot that begins, at least for me, at the Front Range where the High Plains fall away and the Rockies begin.

In Indiana and later in Minnesota my attention turned toward the East Coast. To its prominence in U.S. history, its storied Universities, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C. The birthplace of our nation.

When I went to college, I chose Wabash, which styled itself as the Harvard of the Midwest. I wanted, for a long time, to live in New York City or D.C. The ocean I thought about was the Atlantic. Somehow destiny and greatness could only be found by going East.

No longer. While in Minnesota, as Mary, Mark, and eventually my son took up residence in Asia, my gaze began to turn West, toward the Pacific. Toward Asia.

As a result, when Kate and I moved to Colorado, I had already begun to redirect my gaze toward the West, toward that region of the country long associated with escape from the fuss budgets and robber baron capitalists, even from the often ossified social status of the Ivy Leagues. Go West, young man!

It has however only been of late that my inner world has fully shifted from those long years of focus on the East Coast as the region of primary importance for our country. Of course, Harvard and Yale. Still there. D.C. Still the center of U.S. political power. New York City. Still the financial center and the locus of the old world’s art and culture.

But. For me. They are all far away. A distant land of strivers, over achievers. Of people who put success before family, even before the nation. I no longer yearn to find my place in the world of their values.

Today my U.S. has Fourteeners. Mountain Streams. Huge amounts of unsettled land. Mule Deer and Elk. Mountain Lions. It is a U.S. defined more by its topography than its ability to shape the wide world. I wonder why I was ever drawn to the kinds of achievement typified by Ph.D.’s, fat bank accounts, ruling the world.

No, I’ve not replaced my suit with a Stetson, blue jeans, and a Western shirt. Although I might some day. Instead I watch Fog cover Black Mountain. I brake for the Elk Cows and their Calves crossing the highway. I live up high, not only distant from the East in miles, but also in altitude. In attitude.

I’ve abandoned the historic early U.S. for the ages long journey of Rocky Mountains, of their Hills and Valleys. For Wild Neighbors. Want to make policy? Consider them. Support and encourage a melding of humans and their natural environment rather than making the world safe for Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Business, Big Egos.

Come out here to learn the human place in the world. Then write your dissertations, create IPO’s, pass laws.

Art and Culture, Colorado, Humanities, Literature, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Music, Myth and Story, Shadow Mountain

Art Years. Mountain Years.

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Luke at 34. Bella Colibri. Rabbi Jamie’s Rosh Hashanah sermons. Shadow, the morning kisser. Artemis’ Cucumbers. Pizza and Burger plants in my son’s garden. Seoah’s half marathon. Mary’s political neighborhood. Mark and West Texas. From afar in Hafar. Ruth and Gabe, students. The Never Ending Story. Fourth Wing. Iron Flame.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Harvest

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Malchut. Wonder.    “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”  Socrates.

Tarot: Five of Pentacles. (Druid Craft)

  • Focus on internal resources: For a querent, this version is a powerful reminder that sometimes the help we need is within us, but our focus on the problem prevents us from seeing the solution. It is a prompt to shift perspective, recognize internal resources, and understand that our perceived limitations may be an internal block rather than an external lack. 
Festival Theater, Stratford

One brief shining: Trumpets blaring we would file into our seats at the three-quarter round thrust stage of the Guthrie Theater when it stood attached to the wonderful Walker Art Center, find our seats, and wait as the Gospel of Colonus, or the Bacchae, or the Christmas Carol came to life, poor players strutting and fretting upon the stage until they were heard no more. Applause!

 

Minnesota: Though now a Coloradan, a Rocky Mountain guy, a Jew, a widower, I once was a Minnesotan and happily so. Especially when it came to the arts. Those trumpets I mentioned? Oddly, when my family vacationed in Stratford, Ontario I had encountered them years before. Why? Because Michael Langham, the director of the Guthrie when I first attended on a student discount, had been the director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival during those long ago family vacations.

The Walker allowed all of us tucked into the rarely visited Upper Midwest of the Heartland access to the latest and the greatest of modern and contemporary art. What a gift. The MIA, an encyclopedic museum, covered art from ancient Chinese ceramics and bronzes through impressionists and abstract expressionists and had its own contemporary art exhibitions.

I spent twelve happy years guiding tour groups through the Asian galleries discussing the Jade Mountain(s), the Japanese Tea Ceremony, Song dynasty ceramics, and Korea’s amazing celadon glazed pottery. Yes I also led tours that included Goya and Rembrandt and Kandinsky, Chuck Close and Egon Schiele, but my heart remained always in the Asian collection.

It was a distinct privilege to immerse myself in the thousands of years of art in the MIA’s collection, to have my understandings of the modern world upended at the Walker, to have the Western world’s best playwright’s effort brought to life while I attended the Guthrie.

Too, there was and will always be for me: The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Decades of attendance acquainted me with Mozart, Teleman, Bach, Ives, Copeland, Fauré. And, ta dah! Kate.

Today my chamber music is the golden swathes of Aspen Leaves on Black Mountain. My Guthrie is the rain swollen Maxwell Creek while the Arapaho National Forest recapitulates the MIA and the Walker. So be it.

Ancient Brothers, Colorado, Friends, Holidays, Judaism, Mountains, Park County, Photography, The West, Wild Neighbors
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Erev Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Shadow, my sweet girl. Kate, always Kate. Ruth and Gabe. The gathering darkness. The Siddur for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Machzor. Nylabone. Kongs. Artemis, ripening Tomatoes. First salad soon. Talmud Torah. Red tie guy. Burger King. His paper crown. Ruby. The boiler. The mini-splits. The Fireplace. All ready for fall. And, winter.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Aspen gold on Black Mountain

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Yirah. Awe and Reverence

Tarot: King of Pentacles, reversed (Druid Craft)  It indicates a need to loosen up and take responsible risks to grow.  Gemini

One brief shining: Plucking ripe Cherry Tomatoes, taking in the Plant’s earthy, acidic perfume, popping them into my mouth, tasting the sweetness no store bought Tomato can deliver makes the expense and fuss of Artemis more than worthwhile, it makes it an ordinary miracle.

 

Judaism: The Siddur, order of service for the High Holidays- Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur-weighs in at 1200 plus pages of prayers, psalms, poetry, Torah, blessings, and much more. The first written service siddurs came into existence in the 9th century, but it took the invention of the printing press to accelerate their use in most synagogues.

We studied a parsha from Deuteronomy used on Yom Kippur and a major prayer, the Amidah, yesterday morning at the bagel table. Rabbi Jamie, Ginny, Luke, and me.

As I’ve written here before, I’m more of a Sukkot, Simcha Torah, Passover, Shavuot,  sorta Jew. More focused on the strong linkage between earth-focused holidays that celebrate the harvest, Sukkot, or spring planting, like Passover, and the long tradition of their celebration within Jewish communities over thousands of years.

Yet. Modern day Judaism focuses a bright light on the Days of Awe. This year I plan to attend outside services for Rosh Hashanah, possibly Yom Kippur. See what the contemporary focus means. I say possibly for Yom Kippur because its two days coincide with the lidocaine injections for my ablation procedure.

 

A few photographs from the Beaver Dam trip:

 

Colorado, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Paganism, Wild Neighbors

At Least They’re Up Front About It.

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Lughnasa and the 3% crescent of the Korea Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Book publishers. Books. Authors. Eyes. Reading. Learning. Studying. Thinking. Sharing. Libraries. Institutions of Higher Learning. Humanities. Poetry. Painting. Sculpture. Music. Theater. Literature. Languages. Herman Hesse. Romain Rolland. Theodore Dreiser. Sinclair Lewis. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Henry David Thoreau. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Goethe. Mann. The Glass Bead Game.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Opening a book

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Histapkot. Contentment.

Tarot: Knight of Bows, The Fox

“This card carries the themes of movement, change, and taking a new path. It suggests the need to be cunning, alert, and resourceful, like a fox.” Gemini

One brief shining: Jefferson County has a culvert repair project happening now, with a back hoe and dump truck, cutting slices of earth from the shoulders all along Shadow Mountain and Black Mountain Drive, flushing out the old crimpled culverts like mine. Where do many foxes like to live? The culverts.

 

Life for Wild Neighbors in the W.U.I. has its definite downsides. Don’t eat from garbage cans. Or bird feeders. Stay away from the Chicken coops. Please don’t forage my Lettuce, Spinach, Beets, Kale. A new threat now. Jefferson County public works flushing out your den. Not to mention crossing the road. Any road.

Of course, if we think about it, everywhere has been a wildland/human interface at some point. Even indigenous communities displaced some animals. So. A constant and ever changing interplay between human residence and Wild Animals.

Some Animals have turned this interplay on its head. See White Tailed Deer, Coyotes, Canada Geese. Raccoons. Bats. Even Monkeys in Asia. My sister sent pictures from K.L. of signs about Monkeys. There were Otters in Singapore.

Sighting a Bear waddling through the Forest, a Moose standing near a house, its head above the gutters, Elk Cows and their calves crossing Highway 74, that Fox I saw last week heading into the Trees, Mule Deer dining on my Grass. All a great joy of living in the W.U.I.

Why do we all slow down, or stop, if we see a harem of Elk guarded by a majestic Bull? We’re not tourists. We’ve seen it before. Not often, maybe. But more than once.

I suspect we have an innate appreciation for the Wild, for those Animals who live by their wits and ancient knowledge stored in their DNA. We may see them as brave, on their own in a predator/prey world that seems on the surface quite different from our own.

Yet. Watch the gutting of Medicaid and S.N.A.P. to fund tax breaks for American oligarchs. Drive through almost any Native reservation. Visit urban neighborhoods filled with unemployed teens and young adults. Or prisons filled with many from them.

Where’s the predator/prey dynamic in American culture? At least, and this may be a key to our fascination with Wild Neighbors, they’re upfront about it. Prey have developed strategies to protect themselves. Predators develop strategies to foil those protections. Nobody pretends that isn’t what’s happening.

Who’s the more honest?

 

N.B. on the images. These images show the bias built into large language models. I wanted an image with Animals and humans wary of each other, but also curious.

Asia, Colorado, Family, Fourth Phase, Korea, Tarot, Travel

The Fourth Day

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Ruth and Gabe. Georgetown Loop Railroad. Appa and Umma. Dongoon. Min Yun. Her husband. Their daughter. Seoah’s brother. My son and Seoah. A family knitting itself together. Slowly. Slowly. Beau Jo’s pizza. Swimming. Hawai’i. Shadow, too many people, too many changes.

front: Dongoon, his sister, Min Yun, Back: l-r Seoah’s brother, Seoah, my son, me, Min Yun’s husband, Appa, Umma at my house

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Blended families

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Ahavah. Love.

Tarot: Six of Stones, Exploitation*

One brief shining: A young Korean boy with round wire glasses talking about how humans got bigger brains, a book in Korean with an English title, Origin Stories, on the table between us after the pizza and gyros had been put away, his father stroking his hair.

 

The Jangs:

The gentle, circuitous creation of an Asian American family made up of many disparate persons, places, and experiences.

At first I didn’t understand the Tarot cards I’d been drawing this week.

Perhaps I would have seen this anyway, but possibly not. These cards and this week have opened my eyes to an unusual, slow motion event that has been building ever since Mark and Mary set off for parts unknown over thirty years ago.

Then, Raeone and I adopted my son, a Bengali. Who experienced 9/11 as a freshman in college and shifted his focus from pre-med to a future in the military, defending the country that had given him so much. (his words)

As a result of Mary’s living in Singapore and my desire to see Angkor Wat, resourced by an inheritance from my father, I made my second trip to Asia in 2004. My son, Kate, and I visited Beijing in 1999.

In his Air Force career he took a two year deployment to Korea (do you see an Asian pivot slowly turning our lives?). During his time there he met and married Seoah Jang. They will celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary next year.

I know. But I’m getting there. Kate and I went to my son and Seoah’s wedding in Gwangju. 2016. I officiated. That was the first time I met the Jangs, going to their home in the small village of Okgwa where Seoah grew up. Slowly. Kate and I went on to Singapore after the wedding.

Seoah got stuck here for four months during Covid, unable to return to Singapore where my son had been chosen to attend the Singapore War college. That cemented Kate and mine’s relationship with Seoah as their year in Singapore cemented their relationship with my sister, Mary.

After Kate died, I returned to Korea for five weeks in 2023. I got to know the Jangs again, revisited Okgwa during the fall festival.

Ruth met the Jangs this year in May when she went to Korea to attend my son’s transition to command. Now, only two months later, they’re all here in Conifer.

Slowly. They want to learn English so they can talk to me. I want to see them more because I enjoy their comfort, their warmth, their sense of family.

Seoah wants Ruth and Gabe to consider Dongoon and his sister as cousins. Apparently a primary goal of this trip for Min Yun was for Dongoon and I to talk. Not sure why. Not sure it matters.

The effect has been to lay down, to paraphrase Lincoln, more mystic cords of memory between the United States elements of this widely dispersed family and its Korean members.

We have the chance to become a true international, interracial family. One I want to devote time and resources to nurturing. Seems like a worthy final push before the Hawai’ian sunset.

The left Reverend Doctor Israel Herme Harari

 

 

 

 

 

Asia, Colorado, Family, Korea, Politics, Travel, US History

The Third Day

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Appa and Umma. Seoah. My son, their rock. Min yun. Dinosaur Ridge. Buffalo Bill Cody. His grave on Lookout Mountain. Shadow. Sleeping beside me. Ruth and Gabe, coming up today. Artemis, protector of Plants. Buchanan Rec Center. Sue Bradshaw. Post-polio syndrome. Steroids in right hip working.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Talking politics with Seoah’s father, brother, sister, and brother-in-law

Year Kavannah: Wu wei

Week Kavannah: Ahavah. Love.

Tarot: Three of Bows, Fulfillment. (If I don’t post the question, it is: What do the cards have to say to me today.)

One brief shining: Smart phones out, language apps called up, gyros and hummus and basmati rice from Ali Baba put away, we sat around the dinner table, Seoah translating for Appa, her brother and sister, her brother-in-law as we all vented against Trump, against oligarchs, for governments that serve the people and not the rich, a common fight, one we all recognized, my people, my family.

 

The Jangs: The Jangs and my son went to Dinosaur Ridge, where the first Stegosaur bones were found, and Buffalo Bill Cody’s grave.

Appa had a great time, riding on a faux horse, then getting a cowboy hat and chaps, continuing to ride. I saw videos. He’s a very in the moment guy, open and full-hearted. Whereas Umma holds her emotional cards close. She smiled last night, a rare and happy experience.

The whole family and my son then went to Ali Baba and picked up enough gyros to feed us all. I drove over to the air bnb and enjoyed a meal and an evening with the Jangs.

They’re a friendly, happy family. I enjoy being with them. Even with the language barrier. Seoah took on the difficult task of translator as we discussed the predations of Trump tarrific, the ills of societies structured for the wealthy and against the rest, the common bond we felt as persons who believe government’s role lies in leveling the playing field with affordable housing, decent health care, good education and food available to all citizens.

My sister and brother, both long time expatriots, have had, I’m sure, many similar meals with their Singaporean, Thai, Arab, Malaysian, Aussie friends. I’ve not had the experience often and mostly with Seoah’s family, but I cherish the moments when the realization arises, hey, we have similar feeling and dreams across cultures.

I used to believe that America existed to support such common feeling, support it enough to include dreamers from other nations who wanted to share their dreams with us as fellow citizens. Now I see that dream turning into a nightmare, one that would gather up the Jangs, put them in a concentration camp, then deport them to any random country that would take them, if they chose to stay past their tourist visas.

Sigh.

 

Just a moment: It’s Andy Warhol’s birthday. And yesterday was International Owl Awareness Day. More pertinent to me, August 11th is International Mountain Day. Perhaps Shadow and I will gather inside Artemis to celebrate Shadow Mountain.

 

Asia, Colorado, Family, Feelings, Korea, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The West, Travel

Culture

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Monday gratefuls: Appa and Umma. Oon and his very tall father. Seoah’s sister, Min yun his wife. Their daughter. Seoah’s brother. My son. Seoah. Air BnB. Aspen Perks. Korea in Colorado. Nathan. John Wayne. Westerns. The American West and its cinematic distortions. Rivers. Elevation. Farming.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son

Year kavannah: Wu Wei

Week kavannah: Ahavah. Love.

Tarot: The Pole Star, #19

One brief shining: In the midst of the Jangs at Aspen Perks I tried to follow Appa’s eager questions, his weathered Korean face alight with curiosity about John Wayne, rivers like the Colorado and the Mississippi, mechanized farm equipment harvesting, yet the languages we spoke landed in each other’s ears with little meaning save tone and willingness.

 

The Jangs: My son and Seoah came to Shadow Mountain around 8:30 am after having spent the night in the Air BnB with rest of Seoah’s family.

Seoah sniffed the air, said, “I remember this smell.” A smile on her face. She’s spent a lot of time here over the years, especially during Covid when she couldn’t get back into Singapore for three months.

We all hugged. This time with surprising force, missing each other in ways only the body knows how to say. Tactile spirituality, love. My son’s muscled back and arms, Seoah’s eagerness. Her affection. No zoom equivalent possible. Only sorry I couldn’t run my hand through Murdoch’s ruff.

Later, after my son got some work done and Seoah had done laundry, we drove over to the Air BnB. A nice space with four bedrooms, an updated kitchen, and a Mountain view to the south.

When I walked in, various pairs of shoes lay next to each other against the wall and Seoah’s sister came over, bent down, and helped me slip on the slippers they had brought for me. Culture reigns.

They had locked all the windows because of Bears and a television/movie driven sense of the American propensity for violence. Away from home in a strange, yet strangely familiar place.

The language barrier rose right away when I tried to explain the Continental Divide to Seoah’s brother, a mechanical engineer for Samsung. I did not succeed. Appa (father in Korean) motioned me into a chair and sat next to me on the couch. We rested while everyone got ready.

Appa and I met for the first time in 2016 when Kate and I went to Okgwa for my son and Seoah’s pre-wedding feast prepared by his and Umma’s neighbors. Served at a low to the ground table I’m not sure I could have gotten up from today.

They wanted to thank me for my contribution to the trip so Appa paid for the meal. Ten of us. Expensive with the conversion from wons to dollars.

After the meal, the party moved over to Shadow Mountain so every one could see my house, meet Shadow. Nathan was here, working on the greenhouse and my son recruited him to take a family picture in front of the house, similar to one we took during our 2016 visit.

Not sure whether it was  lack of sleep or my introverted battery drained dry by trying to communicate, but after everyone left to go to H-mart, I sat back exhausted. Really exhausted.

Colorado, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains

249 Years

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

4th of July gratefuls: Cousin Donald. Hyper Masculinity. The Commander’s Cup. Seoah. Murdoch. Songtan. The United (?) States of America. Oklahoma. Indiana. Wisconsin. Minnesota. Colorado. Judy. Raeone. Kate, always. Shadow. Her chewed leash. Work yet to do. Planting. Seat cushion for Ruby. CBE Men’s group. Suffering. Luke. Rebecca. Leo. Tara. Eleanor.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Long time friends

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei. Find the flow of life’s force, follow it

Week Kavannah: Savlanut. Patience.

One brief shining: Walked up the slight rise past the wonderful Ponderosa and the jagged Granite Boulder, pre-schooler rendered chalk drawings on the sidewalk, and pressed the doorbell necessitated by the oldest hatred to join my friends discussing the mussar virtue of self-confidence.

The 4th of July. On the 249th birthday of this country I sit on Shadow Mountain, in purple Mountain majesty above the fruited plains. Somewhere below amber waves of Grain ripple in a morning Breeze.

Meanwhile, faraway in the land of broken toys a mean-spirited tyrant and his too loyal minions prepare concentration camps for immigrants who came here seeking a better life: ICE prepares detention blitz with historic $45 billion in funding.

The Elk Cow and her Calf that crossed the road in front of me Wednesday night do not know this. Their world continues, following a thread of ongoing life rooted millions of years in the past, honed to the ways of Mountain life, to seasonal change, to knowing the ways of predators.

Nor does Shadow know. As we work out our life together, a struggle and a joy for both of us, she too follows a path begun thousands of years ago when friendly Wolves joined human encampments for shelter, food, and joint protection.

How I wish I could be a non-human animal, wild or domesticated. I could live according to the ancient rules of nature. Eat. Reproduce. Play. Rest. Die. Not live according to the cruel rules of human society, the unnatural ways of my often thoughtful, loving, compassionate species.

The Elk do not shun their own, round them up and move them out. Sure, animals may contend over territory for survival, but we humans contend over territory for power and for purposes driven by fear and hatred.

This fourth of July I join many Americans who no longer find great pride in their country. National Pride in the U.S. Sees Dramatic Decline. Or maybe not quite.

The Mountains and the Plains. The fertile fields of the Midwest. The great Boreal Forests. The Atlantic Coast and the Pacific Coast. Redwoods. Sequoias. Bristle Cone Pine. Wolves and Grizzlies. Wolverines and Lynx. Squirrels and Marmots. Fishers and Pine Martens. Rabbits and Chipmunks. All the Wild Neighbors. I take great joy and, yes, pride in living among and with all of these. America the Beautiful.

I also stand with all the humans, all of them, who live here with love, justice, and compassion in their hearts. Who know that the word neighbor has no color, no gender, no religion, no national origin. Who know that the warm and beating heart of this historic experiment in self-governance cannot be stilled by the cold dead hands of those without mercy.

Colorado, Dogs, Greenhouse, Health, Politics, US History, World History

IMHO

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Beltane and the Greenhouse Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Tom. Paul. Shadow, early riser. Halle, the teacher. Back pain and leg pain better. The Jangs. Coming to America. Morning service. Morning darkness. Great Sol waiting to be revealed yet again. Heat returning. Along with Wildfire risk. Ginny and Janice, Annie and Luna.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The 25 brightest Stars of the night Sky.

Week Kavannah: Bitachon. Confidence.  “A feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s abilities or qualities.”

One brief shining: Stopped again at Taco Yazi’s, the new place cohabiting with the Wicked Whisk Bakery, this time for a tortas, or the beautiful mess, a sandwich with lots of vegetables and meat and a drippy sauce, a meal before my next delivery from Cookunity.

 

Dog journal: Colorado has a distinctive culture around Dogs. Many restaurants have Dog friendly dining spots, will even bring out bowls of water, maybe a treat.

If a Dog escapes their yard up here in the Mountains, folks take them in if found, post notice on Next Door, or take them to a vet to read the chip. If the Dog won’t come, we post photos.

When a Dog is in crisis, like Takota, it’s not unusual for their human companions to talk about it, show their feelings. Abraham Lincoln, Rich Levine’s long time companion, went everywhere with him, even in his last days of mobility.

It did not feel unusual at all for Nathan to take two days off from building the greenhouse. His old Dog and his Dad were both hurting. Needed him. More than I did. Fit right in with Colorado culture.

Shadow woke up today at 4:15 am. Oh, joy. I mean, I’m an early riser by nature, but… Gives me plenty of time for the Shema, the Morning Service, checking my e-mails, writing Ancientrails. And, since it’s Wednesday, putting out the trash.

I don’t mind. I now go to bed around 7:30 pm so I can get all my sleep.

 

Just a moment: IMHO. Trump will not be able to resist dropping a big, beautiful bomb or two. Only the U.S. (see, only) has the MOP, or Massive Ordnance Penetrator, and a plane, the B2, that can deliver it.

Trump’s narcissism, with which he also conflates white supremacy and the U.S. government, will not allow him to deny a moment when he, read the United States, holds the only weapon capable of exploding Iran’s Fordow bunker where its main nuclear enrichment facility resides deep underground. The only weapon. Only the U.S. Only Trump can fix it. Today or tomorrow I’d guess.

 

Back and leg pain: Turns out getting up every hour, doing something for five minutes or so, even longer, has helped the pain a lot.

My mobility remains pretty limited and I still can’t stand long enough to cook, but I have made strength gains. Yesterday was evaluation day and Halle put me through the same exam she gave when we first started working together.

I took a full second off my five squats time, for example. Slowly, slowly. Digging myself out of a hole partially of my own making.

Asia, Colorado, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Travel

A Dog. A Family.

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Beltane and the Greenhouse Moon

Monday gratefuls: Less back pain. Morning darkness. A Shadow next to me when I woke up. Tara and Eleanor. Alan. Ginny and Janice. Luke. My son. Seoah. The Jangs. Colorado. The Rockies. The Shaggy Sheep. Guanella Pass. Georgetown. Georgetown Loop Rail Road. Pikes Peak Cog Railway. A world class location.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Family

Week Kavannah: Gratitude. Hakarot Hatov. (recognizing the good)    “Who is rich? Those who rejoice in their own portion.” Perkei Avot: 4:1

One brief shining: The Rocky Mountains rise in Southern Colorado, extending north well into Canada, a spinal column for the American West, filled with Mountains and Valleys, hotsprings and wild neighbors, remnants of indigenous peoples, ski towns and mining towns, rugged wilderness, high Mountain Lakes, and Glaciers all near to my home here on Shadow Mountain.

 

Dog Journal: Woke up this morning to find Shadow curled up next to my head. Don’t know when she got up there, but it made my heart go pit a pat. Another bit of good news in a half year that has needed some.

The whole Shadow experience has been an exercise in humility. There were times when I didn’t think I could handle her. That I’d made a mistake. Perhaps been unethical. Adopting a puppy at 78? With cancer and a bad back. What was I thinking?

Yet now. Now that she played all afternoon with Tara’s Eleanor. Now that twice unbidden she has chosen to sleep in my bed. Now that she’s close to accepting the leash. Now. So sweet.

The ethical question. Competing goods. Little Shadow needed a home where she could be loved. I needed a companion, or at least badly wanted one.

However. Shadow will live into her teens most likely. I don’t know how much time I’ve got, but I imagine it’s less than that. Cattle dogs bond to one person. Also, her energy level far, far exceeds my own. Does she get enough stimulation here?

It was not, all in all, a perfect decision. It may have been, may be a selfish decision. I hope our mutual journey towards and with each other will compensate. Most relationships are imperfect in some way. I do have that codicil in my will that ensures her care in a new home if that becomes necessary.

 

The Jangs: The plane tickets have been purchased. An air BnB booked. Plans for excursions being tossed about. Between August 1st and 7th Seoah’s mom and dad, her brother, her sister and her husband, and their two kids will join my son and Seoah on a trip to the Colorado Rockies.

The air BnB is in Evergreen. I haven’t seen it. My son and Seoah chose it. I’m looking forward to their visit especially since I haven’t seen my son since his promotion or in person since February.

Also, I’ve been to the Jang’s home in Okgwa twice. Returning the favor is a family thing. I’m happy to help make it happen.