Category Archives: Travel

Family, Travel

Those New Job Jitters

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Lughnasa                                                               Full Honey Extraction Moon

Mark has a new job in Ha’il, Saudi Arabia.  He will teach English as a foreign language, as he did so well at AUA in Bangkok for twelve years.  He worked hard over the last five months to recollect himself, to figure out next steps then find a job.  This last he’d focused on hard the last couple of weeks and it got results.

Kate and I are both happy for him.  He’s “wired” right now, still shifting his mentality from unemployed to suddenly employed and about to undertake a journey from Minnesota, which has begun to slide toward fall and Saudi Arabia, where seasons are much different.

His word and Mary’s, who’s worked with educational programing in Bahrain, for the culture there is austere, at least from a Western or Southeast Asian perspective.  By austere they mean at least the prohibition on alcohol, unveiled women, internet censorship and the overwhelming presence of Islam and not just any Islam, but an Islam markedly influence by the Wahabi sect, spawn of Islamic extremists like bin Laden.  Also no movies and sharia justice.

Mark has a German friend who attended a public execution, held on Friday right after prayers.  He found himself shoved to the front of the crowd to experience the scimitar facilitated beheading.

This will also mean a change for us, a move back into Kate’s retirement, leaning into that more as Mark’s saga here, at least for now, comes to an end.

Travel

Please Let Me In

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Lughnasa                                                              Waxing Honey Extraction Moon

Mark went to a hospitality industry job fair in St. Louis Park.  I took him, then went on out to Minnetonka Travel in Wayzata.  I picked these folks almost at random to help with the cruise, but I gotta say, they’re pretty damn good.

Today we set up the processing for our Brazilian visas.  The visa process has taken almost the same effort as booking the entire cruise.  When I first learned that each visa would cost $160, I had sticker shock.  This was what we would have to pay to get off the ship in Rio and then take a taxi directly to the airport.  $320 for passage from one form of transportation to another.  Of course, this is not the intent of the Brazilians.  They just want reciprocity for the way the US treats their citizens coming here.

Still, for us, whose 37 day cruise ends in Rio, it creates this very expensive transfer with no additional benefit.  So, we changed our minds and added two days in Rio after our cruise.  At least we’ll see a little bit of Brazil for our money.

Our travel agent has been to Rio and says it’s a beautiful, vibrant city, but also very dangerous.  I’m a bit dubious about how others see foreign cities since I’ve been many places considered dangerous and never had a problem, even so it’s foolish to ignore advice from someone who’s been on the ground there.  She recommends staying in the Ipanema Beach area, a redolent name for this of who grew up in the 60’s.  We’ll go to Sugarloaf and a Mardi Gras themed evening.  Which, Lori, the travel agent, said, “All the men will enjoy.”

The visa is the last difficult piece of business necessary to make this cruise happen.  The rest, checking out clothes, buying new luggage, deciding what books to take along (on the Kindle) do not require new skills.

Aging, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Travel

Senescence

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Lughnasa                                                    Waxing Honey Extraction Moon

Walked in the garden alone.  Yep, it’s an old time spiritual, much loved in the churches of my youth.  It also describes my morning turn among our vegetables and in our orchard.

The garlic has come out already.  The potatoes have a while yet to go.  The beans have gone from green bean material to soup beans, waiting now for the pods to dry on the vine.  A few onions remain, as for the tomatoes, there are a lot of possibilities, but as the weather cools, will they ripen?  In the orchard we’ve had more productivity than any year so far, a few cherries, lots of currants, many dropped plums, but a few now maturing on the tree.  The apples, in their plastic sandwich bags, have begun to swell on the honeycrisp tree, but on the other, a green apple, they’re not a lot bigger than when the bags went on in July.  Our blueberries came and disappeared into the mouths of birds.

The wild grape harvest looks like it will be a big one this year.  These vines are everywhere on our property, but the ones that produce the most fruit hang in dense layers over the northern fence that fronts our orchard.  Picking the wild grapes usually marks the end of the gardening year here at Artemis Hives and Gardens, at least the food gardening.

The fall flowers of course begin to bloom then, the asters, the mums, the monkshod, the clematis.  It’s also the time to plant bulbs, tulips and daffodils, lilies and croci. It is, too, the time that the garlic bulbs harvested in July, yield up cloves from the largest bulbs for planting.  I like planting the garlic in late August, early September.  Garlic is a counter culture crop, sown in the fall and harvested mid-summer.

Senescence has fascinated me for a long time.  Earlier in my life the process of degradation that rotted wood, turned leaves into humus and prepared more soil got my attention.  An early interest, I suppose, in the great chain of being (note the lower case here, less Scholastic, more Great Wheel).   Now I’ve noticed another key aspect of senescence; it is the time of harvest.  Yes, in the plant world, the dying of the plant’s above earth body follows or is in step with the giving of its fruit.  That is, aging produces

This is also the time when gardening begins to wane in interest for me.  My energies now turn to novels, research for tours at the MIA, preparing for the fall issue selection process at the Sierra Club and the upcoming legislative session.

Now, too, the cruise, which begins in October, looms closer and the loose ends for it need to be tidied.  The Brazilian visa.  New luggage.  Check the clothes.  Rent a tux. (yes.  I’m gonna do it.  3 formal nights a week on the cruise.  i’ll pretend it’s halloween every one of those nights.  i’ll be some seriously weird expatriate Muscovite on the run from Putin’s secret police.  something like that.)

Asia, GeekWorld, Travel, Writing

Ancientrails in Exile

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Ancientrails in exile (I crashed my own website.  Geez.  Wrote this while it was down.  Thanks againn to Bill S. who undid whatever I did.)

August 7th, 2011  5:05pm

Lughnasa                                                   Waxing Honey Extraction Moon

Got a passport photo for my Brazilian visa.  Looks like a booking photo.  You can’t smile during these sessions.  Why?  Facial recognition software struggles with recognizing faces anyhow and anything that distorts the face makes their task even harder.  A great article in Wired talks about this problem and argues that the solution (if we want one) lies in the work of the caricaturist, who emphasizes the unique aspects of a person’s face.  This is the way our brain recognizes faces, but is very difficult for algorithms to master.

Now.  If you’re a terrorist, please don’t smile for your passport photo because we may not be able to recognize you.  Gives you confidence, doesn’t it?

Last night I made an attempt to increase my computer literacy by upgrading my WordPress software on my own.  Note to self.  Don’t do that again.  The result has been a database connection error.  As near as I can tell, I’ve succeeded in taking down my own website.

Mark and I have been rereading the Go handbook.  It’s a bit confusing, at least to me, but we’re going to get to playing anyhow.  This is a sophisticated, yet simple seeming game.

On to Tai Chi tonight.  I feel like I’ve made real progress over the last week.  Slow.  But progress.

 

August 7, 2011 10:30 pm

Lughnasa                                                 Waning Honey Extraction Moon

We learned a new move tonight.  The instructor, Cheryl, said I had the basics of it after our first independent practice.  “Gotta be a first time.” I told her.

It felt good to get something other than correction.  It’s been a tough slog so far, but I’m gradually pulling myself into the physical world, uniting mind and body.  At some point I want to learn the Taoist thought behind it all.  But not quite yet.

Not having ancientrails to post in feels pretty weird to me.  I miss the familiarity of it.  Posting on the blog remains one of the more steady tasks I have in my life.  Fortunately, I don’t need the program to keep writing.

 

 

August 8  2011   1:55 pm

Ancientrails is still down though the error message has changed.  That must mean Bill Schmidt, good friend and cybermage, has made some progress.

China scolded the US for “gigantic military spending and bloated social programs.”  That roused a patriotic wait just a minute reaction.  On several levels.  The military spending is high, but it has been high for some time as the US, the current and still reigning world hegemon, has many enemies and self-interest spread over the globe.  No matter what those of us who prefer peace or other foreign governments like China might want, the military spending reflects our status as the only ever global hegemon.

Bloated social programs.  Only if you’re not poor, old, disabled, a veteran or a person who wants at least some security in old age.  Bloated is the wrong word, a Chinese mimicry of our own Tea Party.  How ironic is that?  The Chinese Communist Party lining up alongside the Michelle Bachmanns and Ron Pauls of American politics.

Do they need reform?  Oh, yes.  Will it happen anytime soon?  I hope so, even though the result might negatively affect Kate and me.

What the Chinese could have scolded us for, what would have bit harder than hackneyed bumper sticker critiques, would have been questions about our love of democracy.  Democracy as it exists in this country today no longer solves problems.  It creates them.  Why does the nation of Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jefferson and Hamilton find itself broken down into the politics of faction?  Military spending and misshapen social programs are the not cause, they are the symptom of a nation no longer able to make its own form of government work.

Now, there’s a critique.

 

Family, Health, Travel

Friday Journal

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Lughnasa                                                            Waxing Honey Extraction Moon

Got excited during the Graphic Design class and ordered Adobe Creative Suite 5.0.  It’s cheaper since it’s behind the latest iteration 5.5.  I’ll be able to do my own eBooks, website, manipulate photos.  It’s more software than I need, but I like to have the best tools when I’m ready to use them.

Mark has had a callback from Target Warehouse and a potential position in Saudi Arabia.  The Saudi Arabia position would be cosh, he says.  After living in Bangkok, Mark has a lot of English slang from British expats.  He’s excited.  This working at looking for a job seems to be working for him.

Took the last bits of the truck back to its now lifeless body.  We kept the old tail gate, hitch and bumper removed when we added the Tommy lift.

Kate and I spent lunch yesterday and the time after in a darkened Osaka, choosing shore excursions for our cruise.  I haven’t run the totals yet, but I imagine when we add in dog boarding and the two additional days in Rio we’ll have a heft sum in addition to the cost of the cruise.  All part of the deal.  We still need to get our extra passport photos and start the Brazil visa process.

Finally got back to the aerobics yesterday.  Slept better.  The clay intensive and family reunion threw me off schedule.  Getting back up one step at a time.  First, aerobics.  Then, resistance.  Meanwhile practicing Tai Chi.

Aging, Asia, Family, Health, Travel

Sunday, Sunday

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Mid-Summer                                                                            Full Honey Flow Moon

More fun with the alarm system.  Back and forth with ADT.  On the phone, pushing buttons.  Still the chirping.  Service call.

Business meeting.  Scheduling a Denver trip for sometime in September.  Looking at buying some more mulch for the vegetable garden.

Practice tai-chi.  Sand and varnish for coat number three six honey supers.  They need to go on tomorrow morning.  Mark put foundations in the frames today, so we’re ready to go.

Out to tai-chi.  I’m still the slow student in class, but I’m learning.  Slowly.  A challenge for this guy to connect body and mind, but a challenge worth keeping after.

GeekWorld, Travel, Weather +Climate, Writing

Ancientrails

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Mid-Summer                                                     Full Honey Flow Moon

Talking with Mark today it occurred to me, for the first time, that part of what was going on with him, maybe a lot of it, involved repatriation.  So, I looked it up on google.  Turns out repatriate adjustment has many facets, most of them difficult to integrate, often leading to feelings of isolation, alienation and just plain old bewilderment.  Especially when you return suddenly, as Mark did, from twenty + years abroad, the country of his birth has changed.  A lot.  In subtle and not so subtle ways.  I’m just beginning to understand this phenomenon, but as a brother and as a student of anthropology, it fascinates me and gives me considerable pause.

Last night, during a violent thunder storm, our power went out and, presumably, our generator kicked in.  But, as life goes, at 4:45 am, our alarm decided it had to begin chirping.  And chirping.  Not the wailing kind of all hell’s broken loose kinda noise, but a persistent annoying chirp.  After muffling it and going back to sleep, Kate got up and called the company.  We had to replace the back up battery in the unit’s central box.  This is a twelve-volt battery with sulfuric acid like your car battery.  Who knew?  Anyhow the new one now rests where the faded one was and all is well with the alarm system.

My History of Graphic Design course project, redesigning Ancientrails, has got me thinking about why I do this.  Do I do this for you, the reader, or for me?  I have kept diaries and journals since the early 70’s.  They vary in systematics and consistency although over the last 20 years I’ve kept regular journals on matters from spirituality to art history, reading the classics to daily experiences, thoughts.  Ancientrails extends and continues those, which were private, so in that sense this is a public journal, but a continuation of a private one.

It is not, however, like the private one, unread.  Readership varies from peaks of around 200 a day to a more average 50.  There were some 1100 visits this month.  A small number for most websites, infinitesimal really, but considerably more than the one who read my private journals.  Having readers changes the content.  I’ve made four of five gaffes that have gotten me into hot water with family, lost me a job and caused certain allies to wonder about my discretion.  Each one of those events creates a certain amount of self-censorship, as does the possibility that anybody might read any of this at any time.

Ancientrails is also a document on the world wide web.  That means html, tags, pictures, news, links.  These features create a more accessible journal, a deeper journal with ties to other webpages and direct access to information about a topic.  Not sure where all this goes quite yet.  Still thinking.  If you have any input, leave me a comment.  Thanks.

Bees, Myth and Story, Travel

Bee Diary: Hive Inspections

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Beltane                                                    Waxing Garlic Moon

Colony #1:  This is the colony in which my queen release went well.  She’s been busy.  The second hive box, on only a week, has all the brood frames with brood, some full, some partial, so I went ahead and added another hive box.  This is the colony I’m going to keep as a parent colony for next spring.  I’ve decided I want to manage the other two for maximum honey and then let them die out in the fall.

Colony #2:  The first of the one’s where the queen got to her job a week late because I didn’t handle the release well. (at least I didn’t kill her, which I did last year)  This colony seems to be putting a lot of honey in the two supers I added in place of a second hive box.  Not sure what that means, but it for sure means we’re not ready for another set of supers quite yet.

Colony #3:  The second late queened colony.  This colony has brood in the bottom of the two honey supers I added last week, and seems to be storing honey in the top one.  Again, I don’t know what this means, but this one is not ready for another two supers yet either.  I plan to check both of them mid-week, just in case they accelerate the brood production process.

Once again, these bees are placid, friendly, and diligent.  Great colleagues in our life here.  I feel lucky to have them.

Artemis, our patron goddess, has several images, as do most of the Greek pantheon, but this one always causes some consternation.  What’s with all those blobs on her chest?  Though a common explanation suggests they are breasts, symbolizing her role as a fertility goddess, some scholarship suggests they may instead be bull’s testicles or gourds, both also potent symbols of fertility in Asia.

I saw this statue in a museum near the ancient city of Ephesus.  From nearby it was also possible to see the one remaining pillar from her great temple, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  Now, it looks bereft, a lone monument in a not too well tended field.

On the same trip Kate and I went to Delos, the site of the Delian Leagues treasury during the glory days of Greece.  Artemis and her brother Apollo were born on this island. It’s a small, uninspiring rocky island, but it has a storied past that makes it more than repay a visit.

Dogs, Family, Travel

The Road

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Beltane                                                     Waxing Garlic Moon

The dog delivered, I’m moving more slowly today.  I’ve selected a route home, up I-29 to I-90, then to the Jeffer’s Petroglyphs.  I’ll plan to stay around there tonight, then finish up the drive home tomorrow.

Saw granddaughter Ruth’s new teeth.  Little white spikes emerging between her baby teeth in the front.  Ruth is not sure what to make of Grandpa.  I don’t mind.  I’m in the relationship for the long haul and I know we’ll connect.

Sollie looked at me from the car.  I opened the Subaru’s trunk latch and gave him a hug.  We became pals.  I am, however, not sorry to see him go.  I think the home dogs will calm down.  I hope.

Jon and Jen have their sleeves rolled up, busy with two young kids, renovation and a dog.  At least they have the summer.

Now, I’m going to hit the road and wander a bit, a joy I picked up from my dad, who loved a road trip now matter how small.

Humanities, Travel

Cruise Diary: April 29

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Spring                                                                                          Waning Bee Hiving Moon

October 16th.  That’s, let’s see, 5 and 1/2 months from now.  On that day, Kate and I will set out, from the port of New York, for Rio de Janerio by way of Colombia, the Panama Canal, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, the Falklands, Uruguay and Argentina.  We arrive at Rio on November 22nd, flying home from there.  My idea of preparation for a trip of this kind is to read, as I already have, a book about the Andes and one about Patagonia,  a book about Chilean glaciers and an environmental history of South America.  I have also read concise reports about each country we will visit, trying to get a feel for their contemporary politics.  There are, too, websites giving cruising tips, reviews of ships, information about ports of call and, of course, more information about countries and destinations.  There, is, as well, that fat Oxford History of South America, in which I will read essays about certain aspects of South America that seem interesting to me.  That’s all now.

Before the cruise, and probably as soon as I’ve finished The Monkey King’s Journey to The West (which will be a while, it’s one of the four Chinese classics, all characterized by being very long), I’ll start reading South American novelists.  On the cruise itself I have the Voyage of the Beagle and the Origin of the Species already downloaded to my kindle.  This preparation is one of the things I love about travel.  Kate says she doesn’t need to do it, because she’s got me.

My attention to a trip waxes and wanes over the time before departure, but it’s never entirely gone.  I suppose many of you must be similar, hoovering up information, not sure what’s of use, but allowing it all to seep in, coagulate into a whole somehow.