Category Archives: Health

The Last Week

January 3, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waning Moon of the Winter Solstice

Kate’s last week of work began with a 7:30 am drive to the gastroenterologist. Good news from the colonoscopy. So, she enters her last week of work and the first year of her 400_honey-extraction_0239 retirement with good news on the intestinal tract. She also three crowns going in a couple of weeks from now, new glasses (several) and the new hip (August) and the l-4 l-5 fusion last March. She’s ready to hit the new year sewing and cooking and visiting the grandkids, all parts intact and functioning, more or less. A big shout out to Kate as she starts her last week of full time work.

Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Minnesota, Politics

Legislature 2011-2012

December 16, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

Conference this morning with legislative panelists who will have decision making authority in environmental matters. I got a clear sense of the lay of the land. There’s going to be a lot of efficiency, getting things done, streamlining, living in the real world and not dwelling on nit-picky words. There’s also to be a lot of looking for common ground, shared vision, commitment to decisions already made, what Minnesotan’s want, keen thoughts about supplanting and supplementing. (Legacy Amendment Money)

The session began with a frame, the budget over the next few years. Sobering doesn’t quite capture it. More like catastrophic, devastating, difficult, no easy answers. Environmental issues will seem, to some, as second thoughts at best, or, at worst, as possible pots of money to shore up the general fund.

How the legislature works this year and next depends on a group of newly dominant legislators who have not been running things for many years. A steep learning curve will come into play at the same time a major economic crisis slides into place. Not a recipe for a clean, clear-headed approach to the state’s needs, economic or environmental.

It will behoove all of us to avoid game-playing, name-calling and stereotyping. I know that’s a cliche, but in the heat of what will be a contentious and possibly, bitter, biennium, it’s pretty damn important.

Aging, Art and Culture, Commentary on the news, Health, US History, Weather +Climate

The Civil War

December 14, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

The NYT has started a series focusing on the civil war, looking back 150 years ago. Lincoln has just been elected and the country has an internal division not matched again until, perhaps, the 1960’s, the War’s one hundredth anniversary. The Civil War fascinates me and I’ve visited several battlefields, as I’ve said here before. I’ve been especially interested in the war’s execution, why did the North win and the South lose? What have been the subsequent ramifications? Did Lincoln’s execution, which put Andrew Johnson in the Presidency, set back the integration of African-Americans into American society by a century or more? What did we learn? I look forward to a several year focus on the war, raising these questions anew.

A quiet physical. Saw Tom Byfield there, apparently we share a doctor. Tom, Davis that is, collects pueblo pottery and has a couple on loan to the MIA. I didn’t recognize his description, but I’m gonna check’em out. This time, the first time in a long time, I had no particular concerns to raise. He found nothing new or remarkable. The labs will come in, of course, and we’ll see then, but for now, I’m feeling good.

When I drove in today, each exit off Highway 94, starting at Broadway, then 4th street and finally Hennepin/Lyndale had cars backed up onto the freeway. I took Hennepin/Lyndale thinking there must a traffic jam in the city because of the snow. Nope. A peculiar situation, one of those imponderables that happens here when we get lots of snow and very cold weather. People drive strange.

On the news sheet: 4 bodies in NYC, dumped along a Long Island freeway, might mean a serial killer. Motorcycle thief steals $1.5 in Bellagio chips, rides away. So, is it news stories ripped from the television cop dramas or the other way around?

Aging, Health, Weather +Climate

Snow

December 14, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

The Winter Solstice comes in a week. The longest night. I’ll be there, remembering the triple Goddess, Bridgit, burning a candle and honoring the deep inside of us all.

Yesterday I used the Himalaya’s as a metaphor for parking lot snow. According to the newspaper this morning I shot too low. We have all new mountain ranges going up in parking lots and city streets throughout the metro and they’ll be there a long, long time. This is not a good thing for city budgets. Snow plowing is expensive.

Looking at snow mountains and threading my way through snowy city streets I have to take this body to its test. Bye.

Aging, Health

Oh, boy.

December 13, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

Annual physical tomorrow morning. This ritual obeisance to the gods of health and long life are, of course, futile. No matter how closely we monitor our health, no matter how compliant with diet, exercise and medicines, no matter how meditative and calm we can keep ourselves, entropy will win the day. It just takes too much energy to keep us fastened together much longer than 90 years, give or take 10 years. My goal has been, for a long time, not to die from something I could have prevented. So far, so good.

All kidding aside, I’m happy to do these visits once a year since it’s a minimal investment in surveillance of and for my health. I do have some anxiety each time though. Any one of these visits could be the one. You know, the one where doctor calls back. Ooops. We need to do more tests. Uh-oh. And, I’m sorry I have to tell you this, there’s just no good way.

In my fantasy this visit never happens. I live a reasonably healthy life into my late 80’s, early 90’s, then death comes calling. That’s what I’m aiming for, being healthy till I’m dead.

My new doc, Tom Davis, is a careful guy, an i dotter and a t crosser. I like that in a doctor. He’s also calm, unflappable. I like that, too.

This is my next to last physical under the old regime of private health care carried by Kate and paid for jointly by her and Allina. Two years from now, I’ll be just another anchor on the ship of our economy, dipping into Medicare to pay these bills.

Here’s to a boring visit and uneventful news.

Cooking, Great Work, Health, permaculture, Politics, Weather +Climate

Working At It

December 1, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Waning Thanksgiving Moon

All day today at the Sierra Club finishing up the first round of interviews for the new policy position. A bit much for me in terms of people interaction, though very interesting in terms of the people I met.

Afterward, I had to eat dinner in the city because we ended at 4:3o, the gut of rush hour. I knew I needed a good hour and a half, so I chose the Red Stag, a full sit-down meal with dessert. The Red Stag serves local beef, lamb, vegetables and I imagine, fish, though I don’t know that for sure. The food is excellent. I had the grilled lamb on chopped leeks with carrots and kale. Following through on my decision to eat more vegetables and fruit, I have also chosen to eat only half of what I would have normally of the entree. That means I have a small box of lamb and leeks with one whole carrot of the six on the plate in the fridge.

This time I made it up the driveway with no problem thanks to the quarry derived granite grit I put on the slope yesterday. The night has turned colder, heading down perhaps below 10 degrees by tonight. 9 degrees Acuweather describes as extreme cold; 4 degrees, predicted for tomorrow night is extremely cold. These folks are not from here.

Cinema and Television, Family, Health, Retirement

Up Again

November 28, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Here I am, at it again. Don’t know why this damned tooth/jaw deal has interfered with my sleep this last two nights and not before, but there you are.

Got pretty serious there on the post below, so I’ll try to stay a bit lighter here in the dark.

Finished my Latin, english to Latin, yesterday, early, partly because I got up at 4 am or 5 or whatever. Went back to bed at 9, got up at 11:30. The whole day seemed off, sort of out of kilter. Now I’m up again, an insomniac spurred on by the loss of wisdom. Which, come to think of it, out to do it.

As Kate comes closer and closer to retirement, January 7th is her date, I can sense a change, a sort of gathering in, nesting beginning. I just ordered a few books on movies, for example, thinking we might use our Netflix account to watch movies together one night a week, a date but at home. We’ve also gotten Kate’s quilt operation set up in a sewing room, upstairs, her long arm quilter, downstairs where her sewing room used to be and her piecing table cum storage in the spot we once had a pool table.

We’ve spent a good bit of time, as I’m sure most do, on our retirement finances, a project not yet finished, with my pension numbers yet to come and Kate’s medicare part D, but we’ll finish before the end of December.

Given the adequate, but tight fit of our budget in the coming years, we’ll probably travel less, a thought that at one time would have jarred me, but that now I find manageable. Short trips to visit family, perhaps longer ones up north or down to Chicago, not quite so far away, so much money. We’ll save up for a trip or two to somewhere interesting: Churchill, Ontario, the Southwest, but cruises and foreign travel will be difficult.

In the growing season, of course, we have the bees, the orchard, the vegetable gardens and the flower gardens that we care for together. We’ll get into the city to the museums, theatre and music more than we have.

Mostly, though, we’ll enjoy each others company and live not a good deal differently from what we do right now.

Art and Culture, Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Writing

Night Talk

November 27, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Though the pain has subsided, it still keeps me awake without medication. So, I’m up at 6 am, a rarity for me these days. When Kate shifts off regular work, no longer comes home around 10 pm, then I’ll go back to an earlier bed time and 6 might not be so unusual.

I understand the attraction of the night. I feel it myself. The quiet, the dark has a friendly feel to it, a time when the home becomes a hermitage or a studio or a writing garret, far off from the demands of mundane life. Reading late has an appeal, the book, the words float up and occupy the whole, not reading anymore, but traveling along, carried on a river of narrative. Writing has the same free, anchors away momentum. The ship sails away from the dock, following the rhythm of an ocean current, one that runs just along the border between the conscious and unconscious realm, between the warmer, busier, lighter waters near the surface and the benthic deeps, unvisited, stygian, fecund, down there the ocean reaches its source, the collective unconscious, yet deeper and universally expansive, the holy well from which archetypes, genetic memory, forces creative enough to bring life itself into existence make their slow way.

Night talk. Or, rather, very early morning talk.

Aging, Great Work, Health, Politics, Weather +Climate

Bad to the Bone

November 23, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Full Thanksgiving Moon

Losing my wisdom impacted my jaw bone. Bad. It still hurts. Very distracting and annoying.

Sierra Club tonight working on a hiring committee and then the Legcom, still trying to suss out what the elections meant.

In a strange way I think the challenge of a Republican legislature and a Democratic governor will make us think again about the whole political process and how we can make things happen.

Very nasty weather headed our way for the day tomorrow, a day when many people travel by car. Glad I don’t have to go out and Kate only has to go to work and back.

Aging, Health, Retirement

Life

November 22, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

Another morning spent worrying our post-retirement budget, trying to make it fit our post-retirement income. We’ll be able to do it and we’ll be fine: enough to eat, space and place to do things we love, but, like most folks, we won’t have as much as we would like. Fancy trips don’t look too likely anymore. Instead we’ll be splurging on long term care insurance, medicare part d and automobile insurance. See a theme here?

In this recession or technically post recessionary time those are huge pluses. We’ll be able to contribute to the health of the planet, too, as well as sharing the arts with others, each in our own way. Life continues and that, by itself, is good.