Category Archives: Holidays

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Holidays, Weather +Climate

Not Wild. Not Yet.

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Imbolc                                    New Moon (Wild)

With the weather calm, blue skies and no wind, welcoming the Wild Moon seems a bit off point.  As February ends, though, and we head into March the character of the Wild Moon will show up.  Soon, the push and pull between winter’s resistance and spring’s temperate insistence will create storms as we oscillate back and forth until the sun’s rising angle makes spring inevitable.  The next  six weeks are a real meteorological festival when our latitudes entertain a host of weather’s finest celebrities:  sudden snow fall, driving rain, howling winds, sleet, ice and bursts of warmth.  Get ready to be entertained.  It will be, well, wild.

This morning the grocery store was full of shoppers with some aspect of Valentine’s day on their mind.  They bought candy, two for one ribeyes and items for their honey’s favorite meal.  As I checked out the clerk, a young woman with orange/red hair asked me if I had special plans for Valentines.  Yes, I told her, it’s my birthday and my wife and I will go out to eat.  What about you? I asked.  Oh, she said, I work until 2:00, then hanging out with friends I guess.  It’s a day for people that love each other to show that.  She  sounded a bit sad.

When I got back there were boxes inside from the mail, one from Singapore and two from Bonaire, Georgia.  One came yesterday from Denver.  Fun.

I’m dickering with Groveland UU to become a field instructor for an intern they want to hire.  It’s an old problem for me.  They don’t have much money, but the time commitment involves travel as well as an hour plus with the intern, once a week for nine months.  A lot of time for me.  Yet, mentoring is, I believe, an important part of our role as we get older, so I want to do it.

Holidays, Letters, Weather +Climate

Monkish

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Imbolc                                 Waning Cold Moon

Boy.  3 this morning.  The cold moon has almost winked out and it’s still cold here.

We have at least 2 feet of snow in our orchard.  The goose berry and currant plants have only a foot of cane showing.  In the way snow has stayed on the ground, this has reminded me of an old fashioned Minnesota winter.

It’s great learning weather.  Nothing like sitting next to the green metal gas stove in the study, Wheelock on the book stand,  the snow covered boulder wall outside.  Just like a monk in a scriptorium.

Aging, Cinema and Television, Family, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays

A Quiet New Year

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Winter                            Full Moon of Long Nights

We have gained back a few minutes since the Winter Solstice, so the New Year will arrive, as it does every year, with a bit more daylight than the grimmer days of mid-winter.

The neighbors have begun to shoot off fireworks.  They are a restrained lot for the most part, but when they perceive an excuse for celebration:  holiday, birthday, new year, they always bring out the fireworks.

(Methuselah Grove
The Methuselah Grove with the world’s oldest living things. The oldest living tree at 4,723 years, Methuselah, is not identified for its own protection.)

Kate and I have clinked glasses of champagne (her) and Fre (me), wished each other a happy new year and not shot off a single firecracker.  We did watch Jules and Julia, a middling movie in my judgment, though it had some interesting observations about cooking.  We also watched a great Nature program on the rise of the dog.  Apparently a Swedish geneticist has pinpointed eastern Asia as the origin of all dogs.

Kate’s neck has begun to bother her again this week and her left hip is now  worse than it was before the operation.  The back, though, has improved markedly.   A day at a time.

Well, a happy new year to you, whoever you are.  Back at you next year.

Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Great Wheel, Holidays

Monks and Prisoners

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An interesting Christmas note to my brother Mammoths from a monk at Blue Cloud Abbey in South Dakota

winter-solstice-1

MERRY CHRISTMAS JIM AND ALL WOOLLY MAMMOUTHS (sic),

Thanks for those elegant photographs, Jim. As much as I hate winter, I have to admit a work of art when I see one.

Recently I went to a meeting at the prison in Appleton, Minnesota. The facility is closing the first of February. At present there are only 230 inmates in a building that can  accommodate 1500. I suggested to the inmates that maybe they could finish out their sentences at Blue Cloud Abbey because we have plenty of room and so few vocations.

One of the guys asked his fellow inmates, “Would you like living with a bunch of old monks?” One of them answered, “It might be better than  living with a bunch of old convicts.” Some people think the prison will reopen soon because crime is increasing. Monks are decreasing but convicts are increasing.

The cat just came into my office. This fall someone dropped off a cat and fled. Brother Chris has assumed the care of the winter-sol-2cat.  It lives in the garage but when doors are left open, Da Cat (that’s its name) strolls down the ramp and into the house.

A Blessed Christmas to you and yours (and stay out of the blizzard)!

Benet

(note:  these pics are by Woolly artist Jim Johnson who does not know whether he is a falcon, a storm or a great song.)

Art and Culture, Family, Holidays, Politics, Writing

Ordinary Time

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Samhain                                      Waxing Wolf Moon

Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin to attend February Tea Party Convention.  That should be fun.  Seeing these two damsels of the right dancing to the tune of the real wierdos would be entertaining for anyone interested in politics.  I’d watch a 2-minute video just to see them on stage together.  They could discuss hair and glasses and kissing GW.

Mary left this morning on the 7:38 Northstar headed for the airport.  The strange action of the international date line has her leaving on Monday and arriving home on Wednesday, coming here she left on Tuesday around 6 a.m. and got here Tuesday at 11:00 a.m., something like that.  Both ways the flight involves 21-24 hours.  And I find daylight savings time confusing.  Under any circumstances the air temperature will double when she gets home, perhaps a bit more.

Ordinary time has slipped back into the house for the moment with family gone and the leftovers much reduced.  I worked on MIA business a bit this morning and will spend some time today getting the Sierra Club legislative committee focused for a December meeting.

After that I can continue my declutter campaign.  It goes pretty well.  My study has remained clear and I’ve removed several things from it, some in anticipation of the arrival of my Anthro computer desk.  On it will go the Gateway I bought in the summer.  I plan to use it only for art history research and creative writing.

Family, Holidays

Mary and Joseph (but, no Jesus)

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Samhain                        Waxing Wolf Moon                 Thanksgiving

Joseph and Mary are here.  Mary came in to the train station in Anoka.  It was a very East Coast scene with folks waiting for others in the parking lot, a mist shrouding the street lights.  Joseph’s flight experienced a delay at Milwaukee and didn’t get in until 9:35 p.m.

Let the cooking begin.

Aging, Family, Health, Holidays

Changes

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Fall                           Waxing Dark Moon

The leaves have finally changed color in our yard.  It happened almost over night.  Many went dry before they turned, but more have become red, gold, yellow.  The colors of fall are as much a part of our landscape as the snowdrops and daffodils are of spring.   Fall’s color gives us one last Times Square moment from the vegetal world before the emphasis moves to the monochromatic grace and elegance of winter.

Sounds like Dr. Mary Ellis may visit over Thanksgiving.  The Singapore government nixed an earlier visit due to the H1N1 virus.  Mary’s had a lot going on over the last four years.   Working and finishing a dissertation has never been easy; it consumed extra time and holidays.  This would be the first Thanksgiving I can recall in a long time that she would be here.  It’s always good to have family around during holiseason.

Kate comes home today.  Her primary exercise for the next bit of time will be walking.  Yes, she’s up and about.  No 100 yard dashes in the near term, but moving is good, real good.  She cannot twist, so no Chubby Checker’s music on the CD player.  She also has to bend at the waist, no flexing of the back.  She will need percocet for a few weeks.

Fortunately hand work is how Kate spends time while listening to lectures at continuing medical education so she has projects to keep her busy.

As soon as she’s able (maybe right now), she can also start using the treadmill.  5 minutes at first, then more as she heals.

Dogs, Great Wheel, Holidays

Waiting for Rigel to Come Home

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Lughnasa                       Waning Harvest Moon

Vega returned home.  Kona let all the dogs inside (her major outdoor trick) and Vega walked into our bedroom where I had laid down for a bit.  When I got up to see if Rigel had come home with her, she apparently got up on the bed because I found many burrs and stickers deposited on my side of the bed.

Rigel is still out there, somewhere.

Until she comes home or we decide to try and find her an alternate way, I won’t take Vega out to discover their escape hatch.  I want Rigel to use it to come home.  There’s probably a subtle psychological truth in that, but I’ll leave it to you to discern.

On another note, this is a holiday, a holiday of ending.  Labor Day, aside from its apparent purpose, has acquired a status, at least here in the northern US, as the end of summer.  This comes not only from the meteorological changes, September 1st is the end of meteorological summer, but also the return of kids to school.  Here in Minnesota people go up to their lake cabins to shut them up for the winter and the whole atmosphere becomes one of back to work, time to get serious again.

As a holiday, it has a certain numinosity, a feeling of difference, of quiet, of peaceful.  Today I have a sense of lassitude, a languor.  That’s partly from the intense work of the last week in researching and writing Roots of Liberalism and partly my body’s response to holidayness, perhaps you could call it its holiness, a time set apart, different from all other days.

Waiting for Rigel.

Garden, Great Work, Holidays, permaculture, Politics

As American As …

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Summer                                   Waxing Summer Moon

As american as stock-car racing, country music, Walden Pond and the Beach Boys, another long hot summer is well under way.  The neighbors love fireworks and each fourth of July they show off the good stuff they’ve picked up.  Some of it is impressive for local effects.  Flowering showers with a boom at the end.  Fiery pinwheels with whistles.  Percussive blasts.

Rigel and Vega did not get as upset tonight as they did last night.  Reassurance and familiarity are a powerful antidote.

The harvest continues and picks up speed.  Tonight I made a dish with chard and beet greens, topped with baked beets in Balsamic vinegar.  There was, too, roasted turnips covered in olive oil, pepper and Kosher salt.  Potato crusted wild Cod finished the meal.

The Seed Saver’s Exchange calendar that hangs on our kitchen wall has this quote under July’s photograph of heirloom tomatoes, onions and bell peppers:  “When the harvest begins to flow is the gardener’s joy.”  It’s true.

Digging up turnips and beets, cleaning and cooking them feels so good when they’ve come direct from the garden.  Though there are political reasons for having one, ecological reasons  and aesthetic reasons, the real payoff from a garden is fresh food, grown in a manner you know and in a place with which you are familiar, even intimate.

There are certain activities that just seem congruent with life.  Among them are picking, cleaning and cooking your own vegetables.  When I dig up the turnips and the beets, I remember the day their seeds went into the ground, one at a time.  Their first shoots.  Their growth over time.  All part of my life and theirs.

Another tradition of the fourth at our house is a meal with dishes cooked from our own sources.  Hope yours went well, too.

Family, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays

Beltane Has Begun

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Beltane                Waxing Flower Moon

As is the case with all Celtic holidays Beltane began at sundown.  Over the years that I have kept the Celtic calendar, now 14 years at least, Beltane signals a real shift from the getting going of spring to the active growth of summer.  Some years that’s more obvious than others and this year the change has been slower than the recent past, yet the emergence of the daffodils, tulips, garlic and the blooming of our magnolia all point toward summer.

Kate’s back from work with new rules for influenza A(H1N1) novel.  They had a sick hallway at the Coon Rapids clinic tonight and they were, again, swamped by persons concerned about the flu.  She said a case has been reported at HCMC.  Tomorrow, however, her attention moves from pandemic to garage sale, the sort of odd shifts we all make between our work and domestic lives.