Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon
Wednesday gratefuls: David Sanders. Rebecca. Claire. Bonnie. Elisa. Snow. Coming down hard. Shingles vaccination. Safeway pickup. Rigel’s meds. Kep’s good appetite. Kabbalah Experience. Their classes. The kitchen. Mostly remodeled. The Mountain roads in the Snow.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Language, mediator or creator? Or both?
Tarot:
Today. Trash out early in advance of snow too deep to move the bins through. First push for Vince, tomorrow. See how he’ll do. I’m hopeful.
Talked about soul mates in Torah and the Stars. Is there some one, perhaps only one, who can complete you? Kate considered me her soul mate and I considered her mine. Took me a lot of relationships to find her. Worth it. In the class following Torah and the Stars, Sefer Yetzirah II, David Sanders quoted Eric Fromm: love is being committed to the growth of another. Excellent. Kate and I fit that definition in so many ways.
It also allows for the sort of love I have with Kep and Rigel, with my ancient brothers, with Jon, Ruth, and Gabe. The sort of love that CBE has shown to me.
I felt energized after the two classes. I needed it because I still had to go back to Safeway, after a jaunt there around 8:30 am to pickup groceries and drop Rigel’s prescriptions at the pharmacy. After Mark Odegard’s bout of shingles, I committed myself to getting the vaccine(s). Did it. Got the first one. Two months later, the second one.
Picked up Rigel’s meds, muscle relaxant and oxy, got a poke in the right arm. Which hurt, btw. Came back home.
Next up tomorrow: getting started on kitchen reorganization. I plan to savor the opportunity to organize plates and silverware, herbs and spices, bread box and coffee maker. Getting them in places that will not recreate the clutter I had before the work began. When I see how long that will take, not long I imagine, I’ll call Modern Bungalow and schedule the furniture delivery.
Ellen Arnold, Jamie’s mother, served on a subcommittee of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) vetting the new social studies standards for Colorado Schools. She asked those of us in the Thursday mussar group to read the ADL’s positions and to comment to the school board.
This is what I submitted:
As an old man who’s seen the changes in our country since the early 1960’s, I’m proud to be part of a state that takes history seriously. But.
The ADL’s comments on these revisions, which I have read and with which I agree, make me remember the adage that history is written by winners. While this may be true in the short term, the job of historians and educators is to balance the winner’s version with the facts of how others were affected by the winner’s victories.
This would include at least the facts about Native American deaths and cultural cancellation by the United States Government. It would include at least information about slavery congruent with the information in the New York Time’s 1619 project. It would include factual information about the Yellow Peril era and the subsequent incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. It would include factual information about US colonialism in the Philippines. It would include information about the Holocaust, Nazi’s, and other genocides that have occurred, e.g.the Armenian, the Rwandan, and the Cambodian.
This is far from trivial. The history that we learn in school becomes the bedrock against which we measure the veracity of competing claims in political campaigns, in discussions with friends, in making business decisions.
The trust given to you is not only to the truth, although it should first be that, but it is also a trust given to you by those not educated, by those not born, by all of us who need informed fellow citizens to make our democracy work. Don’t put the shackles on young minds. Set them free with the truth. Please.
Lights on. Lights off. Generator on. Power back. Generator off. Repeat. 8 or 9 times in the morning, another 3 or 4 in the afternoon and evening. Wind, high winds. 40-50 mph gusts here all day and into the dark. 100 mph in Boulder County where grass fires used the oomph to burn over 600 houses. Coulda been here. The nightmare scenario. Cold weather, high winds, wildfire. A nightmare, but not impossible. At all.
Boulder County is 35 miles or so north of Conifer, a larger part in the Foothills to the west, but a significant chunk to the east where the Great Plains meet the Mountains. That area, and its continuation into the northern Denver metro, burned. Grassy Fields, flat. Winds coming down the Flatirons.
Sorta screwed up with my health insurance. I had an appointment with Kristie on Monday. January 3. Occurred to me only Tuesday to check if there was a referral. No referral, I pay. None. A phone call to Arapaho Internal Medicine said I was an inactive patient. Would not make referral.
Tom told me yesterday he worried about me living alone and isolated. I could fall, break a leg, whatever. He was right. I’d considered it, but put it away for a future date. Last week I slipped on the stairs up to the loft. Ice. Gave me, as Kate used to say, “An adrenal squeeze.”
Jon and Gabe are coming up around 3 or 4 to spend New Year’s Eve. Ruth, the 15 year old, is going to a party that Jon referred to as chaperoned. Hormones. Need supervision.
Deviation from the norm. Got up and drove to Evergreen after feeding the Dogs. Didn’t come up to write Ancientrails which is my every morning habit. Why? Wanted to get a Pullman loaf of the Bread Lounge’s Sourdough. They sell out fast. Took my new book, Four Lost Cities. Sourdough French toast, applewood smoked bacon, black coffee. While learning about the reasons civilizations have abandoned their urban centers. Gonna be an interesting read.
On the drive back from Evergreen I turned off the radio. My usual habit, but I started listening to NPR again. Realized I’d slipped into always on. Not what I want. I noticed the light, small Aspen torches lighting my drive with golden Fire. Rocky outcroppings with brave Lodgepoles clinging to their crevices. Maxwell Creek pummeling the rocks. That mystery trail that seems to disappear into a Canyon.
Later, after a steep climb, up yet another Mountain, 285 snakes past Pine. It has a short shopping mall with coffee and gift stores at the intersection with Pine Valley road. Down the Pine Valley road winds the North Fork of the South Platte River, opening out into wide swaths of Pasture, boiling over Rocks. Tom and I drove Pine Valley road to Manitou Springs and the Pikes Peak Railroad.
Happy Camper has a narrow, bumpy, dirt road that winds up a Hillside. At the top is a metal industrial building where Happy Camper grows Maryjane and creates their own branded products. The retail shop is on the right as you drive in.
It’s been what qualifies as a busy week for me. Glad the weekend is here. It always amuses me that I feel different on the weekends, looser, less driven. I mean, I’ve been retired from a regular work week since 1992. But the weekend, even though I often worked on Sundays, still feels freeing. Yay. Friday’s over! Reminds me I want to experiment with keeping the Sabbath.
Until today I have not asked a question of the cards I turn over in the morning. It is usual to ask a question, but the daily “oracle” card can also be read in light of the general trends in your life.
The ancient Cave Bear is now long extinct. I saw a Cave Bear skeleton, it might have at the Science Museum in St. Paul. They stood fifteen feet with their upper limbs extended. Big. Strong. Master and Mistress of their domain. An apex Predator.
Wednesday gratefuls: Orgovyx. Biologic Pharmacies. Money. CBE. The New Year. Rigel, sweet girl. Kep, happy boy. Dan Herman. Rich Levine. Alan Rubin. Marilyn Saltzman. Jamie Arnold. Judy Sherman. The Ancient Ones on peregrinatio. Safeway pickup. Cool breeze last night.
Barring more illness on Jon’s part or another wreck on Ruth and Gabe’s, we’ll finally distribute some of Kate’s ashes at Upper Maxwell Falls this Saturday. When Jon, Ruth, and Gabe can make it. Ruth told me she wanted some of my chicken pot pie so I’m making some on Friday. It’s been a while. Usually makes four to five full pie tins. Freeze well, too. I’ll give her two and keep two here. A good incentive to actually cook.
Realizing I’ve been such a flat-earth humanist for so many years. Death=extinction. No god. Life is absurd. Don’t give me any of that metaphysical stuff. Changing.
I’m beginning to open myself to the idea. What does it mean? What could it mean? I can feel the consolation it brings and consolation is pretty important. I know that right now. What about my embrace of the Great Wheel? Was I a Druid in a past life? Or, at least a believer in the auld religion?
I miss him. That guy that could embrace the irrational, the possibility of an Other World. And not cringe. Not shrink away. He was a bad boy of the Enlightenment. Oddly, the place I’ve retained most of him is in my Taoist thought. Wu wei? Yes. Sometimes. Follow the chi? Yes. Always. Experience the contradictions of consciousness and dreaming? Oh, yes. Follow the I-Ching? Yes.
“Keywords: Clarity. Clean break.” DTB
This card speaks directly to my inner world. The Celts, Jung, my two favorite places on Earth. Appropriate that it should signify a break through. There are dark clouds there, too, and a Bird, maybe a Heron? The Heron is the on the card for the King of Vessels in the Wildwood Tarot.
