Category Archives: Travel

Garden, Our Land and Home, permaculture, Travel

Ready.

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Beltane                                                              Early Growth Moon

Got my soil test results back from International Ag. Labs.  I plan to follow their recommendations and have sent an order into their local supplier.  Our goal here continues to be the same:  sustainable gardens producing high quality food using no pesticides and only biologically justifiable soil amendments.  This is a different approach from either permaculture or organic growing.  On the one hand it emphasizes soil optimization, reaching that goal through amendments whether organic or non-organic that support that end.  The end is a soil that produces high quality food in a manner sustainable over the long run.  Makes a lot of sense to me and I’m eager to get my order and start using it.

Last night at the Woodfire Grill Mark Odegard talked about a mushroom hunter friend who said that as long at the lilacs bloom, the morels can be found.  Our lilacs are still in bloom, so I wandered back in our woods.  First thing I saw when I entered the path was a giant morel.  I scooped it up, went looking for others.  Couldn’t find any.

I didn’t do a thorough search though due to my recent switch to a lower carb diet.  In the process I’ve lost about 15 pounds and my jeans, conformed to a higher carb me, now slip around my waist with no belt.  Which I had left upstairs.  So, with Gertie and Kona racing around, I wandered a bit, looking at the ground, grabbing my pants, looking some more.  When it started to rain, I gave up and came back inside, promising myself that I’d get that belt and look more methodically when it was dry.

p.s. More on this later, but I heard a news report about Singapore yesterday relating to urban agriculture.  In this case it’s vertical, four-story ag with, they kept emphasizing, no soil.  I know this is possible because I have a hydroponic setup myself, but it flashed through me what a tragedy it would be for the human race if we lose that primal bond with mother earth.

Don’t get me wrong.  I think this is a great idea.  It uses the energy of a 60 watt bulb, they recycle all the water and grow fresh vegetables with a very short garden to consumer trip.  My concern is that its prevalence might make us forget the planet which gave us birth and which receives us after death.

Faith and Spirituality, GeekWorld, Travel

About Time

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Beltane                                                                              Early Growth Moon

I have stood on the shore of time itself, looking out on the broad sea that laps upon its sand, the vast space ocean, touching all, then circling back, once more to the beach where time rests, gay umbrellas stuck here and there, the men and women in bathing suits, swim suits, bikinis, nothing at all.  No children, just the adults of this one tribe, homo sapiens, from this one lonely outpost, away there in a long arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, nothing special as things universal and cosmic go, just conglobulated star dust.

They watch, as I do, the darkness and the many lights, those stars, those other suns, in other galaxies and those we can see only a tiny, tiny fraction of the whole though we strain these eyes of ours, a gift from the home planet and its billions of years of effort to create one who could see it back.

We watch, the ape that walks and talks, thinks, sees, laughs and cries.  The arms and the legs and the mind and the heart of this universe, allowed here on the beach so we can act out our purpose, seeing the rest, looking for all this, back at all this, born of star dust and doomed or fated or blessed to return.

I have stood on the shore of time itself.  And so have you.

Commentary on the news, Dogs, Travel

Mars. We Are There.

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Beltane                                                             Early Growth Moon

Got outside yesterday during the sunny hours and put a pollen patty on for the bees, laid down some weed preventer and left Kona outside.  She stuck around the house, though, wondering when she could get back in, but not, I imagine, very unhappy with being left on her own.

Kate and I watched a Disney special on the Opportunity and Spirit rovers sent to Mars in 2004.  This film was made in 2006, so I went to the NASA websites to check up on them.  Spirit stopped phoning home in 2010 and NASA stopped revival efforts in 2011.  Even so, that means Spirit went exploring for 6 years, 5 years and 9 months past its mission plan.  Even more remarkable, Opportunity continues to motor along,

In fact, just yesterday it relayed data:

Mars Rover Opportunity Examines Clay Clues in Rock

Rock Target ‘Esperance’ Altered by Wet History (False Color)

The pale rock in the upper center of this image, about the size of a human forearm, includes a target called “Esperance,” which was inspected by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s senior Mars rover, Opportunity, is driving to a new study area after a dramatic finish to 20 months on “Cape York” with examination of a rock intensely altered by water.

The fractured rock, called “Esperance,” provides evidence about a wet ancient environment possibly favorable for life. The mission’s principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., said, “Esperance was so important, we committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it, even though we knew the clock was ticking.”

Opportunity on May 16th also broke the existing NASA record for distance traveled on either the moon or Mars by going over 22.2 statute miles, longer than Apollo 17’s Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt drove their Lunar Roving Vehicle.

(curiosity rover parachute flapping view from Mars Reconnaissance)

Curiosity, the most recent Mars rover, landed in 2012, and on May 9th proceeded to a second round of drilling at a site where “(In February) Curiosity took the first rock sample ever collected on Mars…called “John Klein.” The rover found evidence of an ancient environment favorable for microbial life.”

Also in orbit and currently at work is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005, arriving Mars, 2006.

 

Dogs, Garden, Travel

Grounded. At last.

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Spring                                                                       Planting Moon

Yes!  Planted under the planting moon even if I couldn’t get the bloodroot up for the bloodroot moon.

We have Wally and Big Daddy onions in, 100 sets each.  Three rows of beets:  Bull’s Blood, Early Blood and Golden.  Pickling cucumbers and Dwarf Gray Sugar Snap Peas.  Of course there was bed prep, too.

With Kate and I wandering around holding this limb and that a bit tenderly I kept getting the image of a dinner bell, fried chicken and mashed potatoes, perhaps someone playing a little Stephen Foster on the grand piano.

Of all the gardening chores, planting is the most magical to me.  That tiny seed.  A beet, a cucumber, a pea.  Those small plants, a fat onion, or a thick leek.  Couldn’t plant the leeks today because the ground is still frozen at about 3 inches down.  How about that?  April 27th.

Had to cancel the Chicago trip due to Kona’s vet bills.  Keeping dogs is a choice and keeping 4 is the same choice 4 times over in terms of food and care.  Choices I have made and make cheerfully.

Family, Travel

She Went Over the Rivers and Through the Plains

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Spring                                                                                       Planting Moon

We set our first new low temperature since 2004.  Probably another one today, too.

Kate’s been in Denver since a week ago Thursday.  Long enough time for Grandma to settle in and be part of the day-to-day.  Last week she went to Ruth’s school and ate lunch with her.  A big deal for Ruth, an even bigger deal for Grandma.

(one of the lamer attractions on the road to Denver)

She’s had 8 inches of snow.  Then quarter inch thick ice on her rental car.  Later, she picked up a bolt in the tire of her rental and had to rely on the kindness of strangers.  Has not dulled her enthusiasm although that flat tire coincided with some crankiness on the grandkids to make a not so very good, if not exactly horrible day.

For those of you who wonder, we travel independently largely because of the dogs.  It’s very expensive for both of us to travel and board the dogs.  We have a mutual travel fund, but it’s modest.

Though I would not describe us as living on a fixed income, we have much less flexibility than we did.  This is a reality for most retired folks.  (I can hear Kate.  Sell that book.)

(the trail to Denver crosses all of Nebraska)

Revision is the first order of business each day except Fridays, so I’m on it, sweetheart.  Fridays (or Thursdays) I retain for art related matters.  Ovid is in the afternoon.

Family, Travel

Oh, Grandma.

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Spring                                                                 New (Planting) Moon

Guess what follows Kate’s path of travel to Denver exactly?  In the top image you can see US 35 which heads south into Iowa.  That’s Kate’s trajectory.  After Minnesota, into Iowa and Nebraska, perhaps not so bad.  But getting there today?  Could be very difficult.

 

 

Dogs, Family, GeekWorld, Third Phase, Travel

I Knew Her Right Away

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Spring                                                                              Bloodroot Moon

Home again, home again.  The dogs greeted me with unusual joy and vigor.  Vega spun round and Gertie jumped up, biting at me to come play.  Tumultuous.  And wonderful.

Kate came into the Loon Cafe and picked me up from the Hiawatha light rail.  She had on blinking ear-rings.  The server at the cafe, before I arrived, had asked her, “Is that how your friend will recognize you?”  It was.  I knew her right away.

She led us through the maze of parking spaces to the truck, not easy in the mammoth commuter ramps that collect cars from the western burbs.

The trip home had no remarkable moments, a good thing for travel.  I did use, for the first time, a bar code boarding pass on my cell phone.  Felt very with it.  You all have probably done it for years, but it was amazing to me.

It’s nice to use the full size key-board and not the 92%, slick metal keys of the netbook.  Having said that, the netbook has been the best single computer purchase I’ve ever made.  It goes everywhere with me when I travel.  It’s compact, picks up wi-fi with ease and has a 92% keyboard, which is why I bought it.  It’s allowed me to post on this blog from as far away as Cape Horn, south of Tierra del Fuego.

 

Aging, Art and Culture, Great Work, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Travel

And Now, Reverse Field and Head Home

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Spring                                                          Bloodroot Moon

Everything’s rolled up and in the bag, ready to check out, then board the metro for Reagan International.

This was a trip where I had to confront some unpleasant truths about traveling.  For me.  My physical stamina, which I rate as pretty good, is still less than it was.  And that matters for my planning.

Also, not new, but apparent during this trip, too, was the easy slide into OMG, what am I doing?  This is a neurotic pattern that I recognize, having largely learned to slip its bonds, but in a foreign place, separated from my regular routine, wife, friends, dogs it can and does easily return.

On the up side I have learned that my new interaction with art will include embedding art history within the larger history of ideas, letting these two large disciplines bump into each other, suggest questions and directions for each other.  One place I know these streams will converge is in Reimagining Faith.

There is, too, a renewed interest in early American history, especially the Revolutionary war period and its immediate aftermath.  Not sure how strong this is, though it did occur to me that it might be a good journey to take with our Western raised grandkids.

(Hotel fire stairs.  1910 vintage)

There is, as well, a definite sense of my own regional identity, an Upper Midwesterner, and the way that identity differs from and could inform the culture of national policy.  This is an odd phenomena since I feel very much a man of the North, of the continent more than the country; yet I feel more and more like a citizen of the planet, also more than the country.  Whether this is a personal experience or a more broadly shared one interests me.

Specifically I wonder if the internet intensifies globalization of perspective while reinforcing local identity.  I wonder if think global, act local and the whole locavore movement might feed this pattern, too, making the local the touchstone not for national identity, but for Terran identity.

 

Feelings, Minnesota, Our Land and Home, Politics, Travel, US History

Another Country

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Spring                                                               Bloodroot Moon

A few pictures from my trip to Mt. Vernon.

Before the pictures though.  Here in Washington and at Mt. Vernon the early history of our nation has a presence on the street, among the documents, in the traditions, and by shaping the forms of architecture from government buildings to residential homes: the brick homes, the limestone greco-roman revival government buildings and monuments and the cobblestone street in Alexandria, Virginia.  The constitution and the declaration of independence lie entombed in the Archives not far from where I write this.

Each place you go some element of our history peeks around the corner, waves. Says, “Psst, want to see some history, kid?”  I remember the same sense when I was on the Capitol, the sleeper train that runs between Chicago and Washington.  Once we got into central Pennsylvania the architecture changed.  We passed places I knew mostly from history books.

Here’s the thing.  I’m a Midwestern guy born, raised and never left.  A heartlander.  This does not feel like my country here on the east coast.  When I think of Minnesota from here, it feels far away, up north and filled with pine trees and lakes.  Which, of course, as most of you know who read this, it is.  Pine trees and lakes are in a large part of the state and they do define our identity as Minnesotans.

This feels like the old world, Europe to our heartland new world.  A place so built up and fought over and crusted up with money and power that it has a different tone entirely from the one at home.

Sure, we’re all subject to the same government and fly the same flag, speak the same language and send our kids off to the same military.  True.  But the east coast, like the south, the West and the Left Coast are different enough to be different countries in Europe or Southeast Asia or Africa.  You know this, I’m sure, but I’m experiencing it right now and it unsettles me in some way.

Here are the pictures.

Aging, Health, Travel

Ancor Impari

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Spring                                                                       Bloodroot Moon

Ah.  Just back from Mt. Vernon.  Learned some things about traveling now.  Now, that is, in the third phase when I’m no longer as resilient as I used to be.

1.  Use a cab or public transportation to a location, then walk back.  Or, the reverse.  Don’t walk both ways, especially on concrete.  (An example this trip would have been the Lincoln Monument.  I could have walked back and seen the Whitehouse and the Willard on the way home.)

2.  If tired, stop.  Rest.  If hungry, eat.  (I have a tendency to want to keep going when I’m moving, wait until meal time if I’ve worked up a hunger.)

3.  When wool gathering about enough this or enough that get out and do something.  Don’t forget 1 & 2.

4. Take at least one vacation a year where the whole point is to relax.  I know this may seem obvious to many of you, perhaps most of you, but I typically have a goal, an intent.  This time, for instance, it was immersion in the pre-Raphaelites and learning about how to work with art post-MIA.  Did it.  But.  I kept needing to turn the hamster wheel one more time.  Stop that!

5.  Vacations are more fun with Kate along. (I knew this one already, but it never hurts to write things down.)