Category Archives: Travel

Memories, Travel

The Moratorium Years Didn’t Work Out so Well for Me

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29  90%  26%  5mph NNE bara29.84  falls windchill25 Imbolc

                 Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

In spite of the fact that this is Minnesota, how soon we forget, I had REI all to myself this morning.  Monday morning shoppers scared back into their easy chairs by, gasp, SNOW.  OK, I did think about turning around and heading back, then “I am a Minnesotan and I am not afraid,” soared through my mind and on I drove.  Slippin’ and slidin’ to the mall.  Just like when I was a kid and we had to walk four blocks all the way downtown to buy a pair of shoes.

Anyhow, a helpful young lady, blond and cheerful, quite normal except for the hoop through the right nostril, which, I suppose, makes her normal in that world formerly inhabited by adults now over 60, guided me through the hiking/walking show selection process.  The first pair pretty much fit me, though they were a little snug.  Then, “Oh.  These are a women’s 8!”  Wouldn’t you know?  Still we did find an appropriately masculine pair of Keens, “They started out making water shoes so they know slick rock.”  One of the problems in hiking Hawai’i is water slicked rock;  I’ve learned this with bruised ankles more than once.

Nearer to  home at the Anoka Co-op I went searching for Minnesota cheese (Bongards, in this case) and Minnesota bread (oddly, Holy Land Pocket Bread, made in Minneapolis) for my presentation at the Woolly retreat.  Then, sliding my way back home.

All the while I listened to Tom Wolfe’s  I Am Charlotte Simmons.   Anyone who encountered college after academic stardom in a small-town high school, like me for instance, can identify all the over place with Charlotte Simmons, the little mountain girl from Sparta, North Carolina and a Presidential Scholarship.  Well, I never had a Presidential Scholarship, but there’s some connection, anyhow.  Wolfe has made a living out of closely observed novels of manners of our time, a sort of Dickensian project in hip, post-modern tongue in cheek prose.  This one may not be great literature, but it’s a great time-machine back to those magic years when everything seemed possible, if only you could figure anything out. 

Those moratorium years didn’t work out so well for me.  Instead of sticking to my guns or buckling down with heroic intention fortified by small town common sense and parental support, I got drunk, wasted, started smoking and wandered without purpose for so many years I don’t even know when I stopped.  Sigh.  Oh, I did fine academically, but not as well as I might have without the marijuana and hash–yes, I inhaled–the LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, beer, 151 rum, cognac and single-malt scotch.  I floated out of college and stayed afloat all through seminary and well into my first years in the ministry. 

Treatment.  Second divorce.  Flounder around.  Discover writing and Kate in the same year.  Now, in my final third of life, I’ve picked up steam and gotten the ole head and heart straightened out.  Thank Mother Earth.  Still, it is really better late than never.  I’m living proof.

GeekWorld, Memories, Travel

Bloggin with Palm Trees

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18  89%  28%  0mph NNE  bar 30.12 steady windchill17  Imbolc

              Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

Opened up my e-mail program today and had 29 messages.  A big morning for me is 5 or 6.  What the hell? 

Another lesson in the cyber world.  There are bots that crawl the web seeking out certain words or phrases, then link their source to another web page.  In some instances that’s google and can help others find your website if the title words you use resonate.  In most instances and certainly the most annoying instances the links go back to such intriguing locations as Addiction Levitra, Texas Facts Auto Insurance, Mexico Amoxil and HCL Dosing Tramadol.  Each one linked by some $%#@! algorithim to the words I had inadvertently used as the title for a post:  damn it!   A month or so ago I had a post that had the words body and flesh in it.  This was about the earth and her products.  You can imagine the links I got then.  Cyber world folks call these ping backs. 

I have had three ping backs out of hundreds that I kept, that is didn’t delete as spam.  One came in from a website for the Teaching Company from whom I buy the occasional lecture course, another from the NFL website and a recent one from Paul Douglas, the WCCO weather guy and his Climate Change website.  It’s a good thing wordpress has a straightforward, if not quick, way of eliminating ping backs.

In case you missed it–like you live in Singapore or Bangkok for instance–today is Super Bowl Sunday.  I tried to find out much beer we consume on Super Bowl Sunday but according to the Beer Institute (I know, but there really is one.) it’s not possible to track single day consumption.  A spokesman did say, “the Super Bowl is a good event in the ‘off season’ (cold months) to drive volume”

Each year I wonder why I watch football, yet, somehow, I’ve developed an interest and now have enough years watching to have a sense of historical perspective.  That makes it, for me, much more interesting. So, yes, I’ll be there in my seat, though sans beer, sans snacks and sans favorite, though I lean toward the Giants just because they’re the underdogs.

 Allison wondered if I plan to blog while in Hawai’i.  Yep.  Like football I’ve developed an interest in blogging, though this interest predates my football jones by quite a few years.  I have three bookshelves of journals of various types and sizes.  I imagine this habit came with mother’s milk, or should I say father’s ink and lead.  Dad wrote a weekly column for the Alexandria Times-Tribune, Smalltown USA, for many, many years. 

There is something about being able to read the breadcrumbs of your life, sprinkled out at various ages and stages.  In some instances it’s revelatory, in others it’s “Oh, my god.  What was I thinking?”  I suppose its a similar feeling artists get from paintings and sketches made over many years.  Or photo albums and all those home movies.

General, Travel

Braised Shortribs

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27  75%  24%  0mph SSW bar30.02 rises wihdchill27  Imbolc

               Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

Made braised shortribs in the slowcooker this  morning.  They should be done soon.  Not our usual fare these days, but we plan to eat a small meal from them and take the rest to the neighbors I spoke about yesterday.

Began sorting out packing chores for Dwellin in the Wood and Hawaii.  Kate will take clothes and a few other items for me; I will take the computer, DVD player, meds, books and files to read on the plane.  Not quite finished, but I’ve chosen my bag and have much of it done.

Tomorrow I’m going to head over to REI and by a pair walking shoes designed for back country trails.  Then, later in the day, along with 1 billion people or so, I plan to watch the superbowl.  I’ll work on my hour long presentation for the retreat during the timeouts and commercials.

Memories, Our Land and Home, Travel

Just Another Day in Paradise

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12  73%  19%  0mph EEN bar30.06 falls windchill 11  Winter

                 Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

“Paradise is here or nowhere: You must take your joy with you, or you will never find it.” – O.S. Marden

Salient advice as Kate and I prepare for Hawai’i.  “Just another day in paradise,” is often heard when there, from tourists and locals alike.  There’s another one, too, “Lucky we live Hawai’i.”  Marden echoes Emerson, who said he didn’t need to go to Italy to see beauty, because he found beauty wherever he was.  

“Wherever you go, there you are,” from the world of AA makes the same point.  We take our conclusions, biases, and perceptions with us wherever we go.

A trap into which I have fallen in the past and no doubt will fall into again measures home against the temporary pleasure found in any distant destination, from Ely and Duluth to Kauai and Angkor Wat.  Home will always come out second best, because by definition it does not have what Ely does, ready access to the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area.  It does not have the perfect, year round temperature of Hawai’i, nor does it have the ocean.  It does not have the howler monkeys and ancient temples of Angkor.  The Napali Coast fires the imagination in a way different from the drive up Round Lake Boulevard.

True.  All true.  Compare these far away places, however, to home from home.  Hawai’i does not have my friends.  Angkor does not have the Minneapolis Art Institute and my docent work.  Ely does not have easy access to theatres, orchestras and the Walker.  Kauai, though it is the garden isle, does not have the garden and grounds on which Kate and I have worked for over 14 years.  None of these places have our house, adapted to our creative work and the daily life we live.  Could these other places accrue amenities like these?  Friends, maybe, over years.  The peculiar blend of artistic life enjoyed here in the Twin Cities?  Probably not.  A house like ours?  Probably not.

Also true.  All true.  Still, we also have, for balance, the testimony of Mark and Elizabeth, who cast off their worldly belongings (ok, they stored some of them.) to travel the globe.  So far they’ve hit Buenos Aires, Peru, Shanghai and head out next week for Bangkok.  Their home is where they are, though they return here episodically to unite with family and friends.

I had a peripatetic 20’s and 30’s after 16 years in Alexandria, Indiana.  I lived in twelve different cities and rural areas until coming to the Twin Cities metro area.  Even after arriving in Minneapolis and St. Paul I lived in twelve different apartments and/or houses in both cities and two suburbs. 

The 14 years in Andover has come close to setting a record for personal stability.   The minuses are written in the script of every foreign or domestic destination that has called to me.  They are also painted in lost opportunities to experience other cultures and locales. 

The pluses though are profound.  Daily life has a routine that frees the mind for creative work.  I know the microclimates and the soil conditions of each inch of our 2.5 acres.  Our dogs and our children have lived their lives here, the dogs their whole lives, the children important parts.  Kate and I know each other as stewards of this land, this house and these memories.  Lucky we live Andover.

Memories, Travel

Blue Stretching Away and Away

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-2  52%  21%  7mph WNW bar29.58 steady  windchill-9

                Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

I have passed into that curious liminal state before a longer trip.  The threads that hold me here release, one at a time.  Newspaper.  Mail.  Obligations at the Art Institute.  Dogs.  Obligations I can fulfill that will arise soon after I get back.  Notifying the neighbors.  The police.  Tickets.  Reservations.  Car rental.  Those are done or have a schedule.  At some point the attachment to this weather, this season, this place and its changes over the next four weeks will slip their knots and come unmoored.  

There is not only release.  There is also memory and anticipation.  That first night in Hawai’i, spent, improbably, at the Hawai’i Prince Hotel in Honolulu due to a late arriving flight from the mainland.  The curious Japanese appointments in the room.  Looking out that first morning to Waikiki beach.  The blue stretching away and away while white rollers hit a sandy beach. The palm trees.  All so other to a transplanted northerner. 

Exercise at 5AM, taking advantage of the cool before day break, walking on the wet beach sand, packed and unyielding.  Salt spray, ozone and suntan lotion, coconut oil still redolent from yesterday’s sun worshippers at their ritual obesiance.  Passing hotel after hotel, lounges closed, beach chairs chained together, patio cafe chairs turned up on their tables.  Onto to the common sidewalk, sweating.  The sun rays striking the apex of the sky long before light, as if Lady Liberty lifted her crown just behind the ancient volcanoes of Maui.  

Hikes up Haleakala.  One night up there well before sunrise with crescent moon low in the sky, breaking clouds scudding over its face.  The cold.

Dinners at Mama’s Fish House.  Ti leaves with rice and banana.  Fish caught that day, the fisherman’s name on the menu.  The windsurfers in their colorful rigs tempting fate on the sharp rocks.

Two times, both on Kauai, where I’ll spend two weeks this trip.  On a trail in the Waimea Canyon State Park.  I followed a trail, noticed it thinned out and got narrow, but I felt I could handle it.  Then, the rock and sand giving way, my hand grappling with a root, below me a 900 foot drop to a rocky canyon floor.   It was not the trail.  I had missed it.

The other time, on the Kalalau trail that winds along the Napali Coast.  Steep, rugged.  Up and down with slick rocks.  I explored a bit, going back up one canyon all the way to the wall, where the waterfall dropped from the canyon rim–the same distance I would have fallen–and splashed into a pool of water.  On the way back, I’d been on the trail 5 or 6 hours, I sat down, exhausted, drinking.  “Are you o.k.?” a kind woman asked, “I thought you might be having a heart attack.” 

Papaya.  The sunrise and the sunset.  Gentle winds.  A temperature which fits the human body.  More, so many more.  

All these memories begin to wend their way across the ocean, over the mountains and plains to ensare me as I sit here in the middle of the North American Continent waiting for the plane.

GeekWorld, Memories, Our Land and Home, Travel

The Scent of Spring

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2  56%  22%  6mph W bar 29.54  steep rise windchill-5

                Last Quarter of the Winter Moon

Kate brought me a spray of yellow tulips two days ago.  They have opened now and have the scent of spring.

We’re seeking another dog, looking at Irish Wolfhound and  Scottish Deerhound rescues on the internet.  We won’t do anything until we get back from Hawai’i, but both of us have a sense of incompleteness in our family without a big dog.  I would like a mix with a breed a bit more long lived, since we still grieve the loss of each one of our eight Wolfhounds.  Grief underlines the bond developed with these dogs and, in a paradox, draws us back towards them in direct proportion to our sorrow. 

Getting ready.  I have the portable DVD player, which I’ve never used, plugged in and charging the battery.  I do have a fix it role, but it entails electronics, not internal combustion engines.  Those I manage through repair services, but often the electronic stuff I can fix myself.  Go figure.  A partial credential for Geekworld.

Sat down the other day and read a Taoism lesson.  As I read, I realized a strange feeling had crept over me.  It was contentment.  In fact, I feel it now.  I had, for many years, a knot, a frissón of unease lodged in the lower left of my gut.  Even when I felt otherwise comfortable, a gut check would reveal a free floating angst speaking to me, soma telling psyche all is not yet right.  Right now, it’s gone.

Art and Culture, General, Travel

Security as the Museum’s Id

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25  66%  20%  0mph  SSW bar29.90  windchill24  Winter

             Waning Gibbous Winter Moon

At the MIA I picked up my old security badge with the grinning face and a patch of remnant frontal hair which looked like a soft, brown green at the 1st hole.  This earned me admission to the basement, the haunt of the security guards.  I went in the basement to get my picture taken because the badges are, after all, a security concern, relegated to the basement, or id level of the museum.  This is the instinctive, protective part of the museum’s body; it strikes without forethought to protect art, then vitrines, cases and stands.  In a pinch they will protect people, too, but mostly it’s about the art.   Makes sense.  After all, the guy didn’t come in and sit on a patron; no, he chose the $500,000 Ming dynasty chair. (Now worth $750,000 after renovation)

Anyhow, I went down the stairs.  On the left was the guards lounge with the artistic funky furniture and guard art on the wall.  On the right was the photo shop.  On the wall next to its door was an old museum sign in bronze, perhaps 3 feet high and 18 inches wide.  It gave the hours and days of the museum.  So, the basement is also where old signage goes to live after its working life is over.

Once inside, more guard art on the walls, there were those little light reflecting umbrellas that photographers use, plus a tilted white board at desk level in front of the stool.  Pauline? had a Canon SLR digital on a tripod.  She took three shots:  I smiled broadly, quirkily, and deadpan. 

“I’ll leave it to you to choose the most winning one,” I said and left the basement.

 Back here at home I’ve also begun my attempt to learn Chinese characters on my own, with the aid of softwared I bought a while back.  Over the  years I’ve tried to learn Welsh, Spanish, German and Greek.  I have some Latin and some French.  Languages are not my long suit, but I keep sticking my head back in the stocks every few years.   Part of me is ashamed I’ve never learned another language.  No, make that all of me.  Very ethnocentric and gauche American.

GeekWorld, Travel, Woolly Mammoths

A Retreat, Then An Advance

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19  82%  21%  omph ENE bar29.90  windchill19  Winter

             Waning Gibbous Winter Moon

A DVR.  Hadn’t planned on getting one, but the hdmi connection with the TV demanded it over the HD converter box alone.  Surprise.  I like it.  Already I’ve taped two movies, Cronicas and Killer of Sheep.  When I’m watching a movie, I prefer to start at the beginning and the start times of movies often don’t conform to my schedule.  In the past I would check the replay schedules and try to find a time that worked or I’d skip it.  Now I can press the record button and the DVR records the movie and I can replay when I wish.  Kate’s also used it to tape a TPT series, Jewish Americans.  Guess you never know.

No more tours until March.  I have ten days before I go to Dwelling in the Woods, days I’ll use to finish the garden planning, edit my sermon for Groveland and produce a 1-page Transcendentalism for Brights, work on my new novel and a short story.  Also, I’ll do the various pre-trip preparations like stopping the newspaper, the mail, reserving a ride on the Airport Shuttle, packing. 

Also have to plan a one-hour presentation to the brothers, something I want to share with them, a passion or a part of my life right now.  Could be anything.  We switched to this format last year and we liked it.  The way we’d done it before involved a focus on a theme and a common thread in what we presented:  Fathers, Mothers, Death, Myth.  Last year we had a theme, Darkness, but the suggestion was to present the theme in a creative manner.  I chose a ritual of darkness which involved reading poetry excerpts (Dover Beach, The Night by Rilke, Stopping by the Woods on A Snowy Evening that sort) and, in a room lit only with candles, extinguishing a candle with each reading.   This year, don’t know yet.

Travel

Traveling by Electron

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32  60%  37%  4mph  windroseNNE  bar steady  dewpoint19  First Quarter of the Snow Moon      Holiseason

Traveling is not the same in the age of the internet.  It’s way better.  We’re going to Hawai’i in February.  I’ve handled all of our arrangements over the internet, including dinner reservations on February 14th at Mama’s Fish House on Maui.  My 61st birthday.

Mark Odegard, living in Shanghai, e-mailed me today and recommended a place to stay on Kauai, the Fish Shack, right on the ocean.  Just e-mailed them to see if it’s available for the time I’ll be on Kauai by myself.

Now travelers abroad are not cutoff from their support networks or from ways of gaining information about the cities and countries through which they travel.  Both are as close as the nearest internet cafe or wireless connection if you have your own laptop along.

Likewise, I’m in frequent contact with my sister in Singapore and my brother in Pnomh Penh.  By e-mail.  Also, any travel with an interest in my life can read this blog and find out a little bit about me and Minnesota.

Off to the magical mythical tour.  Another form of travel. 

Travel

Reservation Frustration

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51  41% 37%  1mph  windroseS  bar steep fall  dewpoint27  Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon   Ordinary Time

Like most of you, I imagine, I have served as my own travel agent for quite a long while.  Sometimes that’s a good thing, more flexibility, choice; sometimes it’s a bad thing, frustration and headaches.  Getting this Hawai’i trip together for Kate may fall in the latter category.  In her case it means dealing with two providers of Continuuing Medical Education and their pecularities regarding travel and accomodations, then dealing with the pecularities of Allina’s CME regs.   After all that, I have to match my travel to hers, though I’ll leave later and return later.  It will come together.

Along this line, I’ve become a fan of open table, the online reservation system.  Open table covers a lot of restaurants, all of them I’ve tried of late.  It allows you to check times and availability of reservations without being put on hold and spending a lot of time on the phone.

Finished the business type stuff for this AM, now I’m headed outside to remove wood from our metal fence for recycling and to dig a fire pit.  Catch you later.