Category Archives: Anoka County

Anoka County, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science

they cannot and will not define my life

May 20, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Closing Moon

The closing process with dribs here and there. At the UPS store in Aspen Park, Lauren, in a turquoise UPS shirt, opened her book of notarial acts (not kidding) and recorded her work on our closing documents. I signed them in her presence. Creedence Clearwater played on the muzak. When I said, I like your music. She nodded, I’m 67. 68 here.

The closer wants a document we sent by USPS two weeks ago, a document we couldn’t fill out online. Why’s that? Anyhow I took a photo of it with my phone and e-mailed that to her this morning. Another hard copy goes in the mail today.

A lien waiver for work we had done to follow up the inspection report. None of this amounts to much, but after three months on the market and six with double mortgages everything related has an edge. Though. Glad to do it. Want this done.

Got an appointment for an echocardiogram next Tuesday. They’ll fit me with a Holter monitor, too. I’ll wear it for a month. This is the follow up to those episodes of shortness of breath and palpitations. Could be stress related, I suppose. Trouble is, I don’t feel stressed. Slept fine last night for example.

Then, in other news, I get my biopsy results tomorrow. You might image a scene from Mel Brook’s High Anxiety, but instead I’m calm. Yesterday, as I said, I was weary of all the threats to my life and with this weariness I felt a bit down, but that has lifted.

Exercise helps. So does having framed all this in the week after my physical. That frame puts all of it, the house closing, the prostate biopsy, the heart follow-up in life as it is, not as I wish it would be. The closing takes time and exacts small cuts, none fatal. The prostate and the heart, though each could be fatal, do not change my life. I can still read, laugh, love, plan, hope. They may define my death, though I hope not, but they cannot and will not define my life. However much of it is left.

Anoka County, Colorado, Family, Great Work, Mountains, Third Phase

Make Choices. Live Them.

March 14, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Black Mountain Moon

Selling the house in Andover. We’ve put our best effort into this sale and so far? No offers. Lots of lookers, but no buyers. It’s been four months since we closed on Black Mountain Drive which means for those four months and now a fifth, March, we’ve been paying two mortgage payments. Warren and Sheryl did it for several years and we can sustain it, but we don’t want to.

The longer it lingers, since it has a certain amount of our assets tied up, the leaner and tighter our budget becomes. Not unexpected, but not pleasant either.

There was risk in buying here before we sold the Minnesota house, but it was one we took with our eyes open. I’m glad we made the choice. This house fits us so well. Kate did a great job in finding it. Moving first simplified, by a lot, the whole process of exiting 153rd Ave. NW. And, we got to start our new life here in Colorado.

An interstate move is expensive under any circumstances, especially when you have 20 years of belongings to move. Though we reduced by about a third, we still had a lot to move. The final tally, of course, is not in yet, but even when we add it all up, it will have been worth it.

Why? This was the time to move in terms of our health. We’re still healthy enough to establish a new life. And, moving to Colorado allowed us to accomplish two goals with one move. The first, being closer to the grandkids, was both about seeing them more often and their ages, Ruth, 8, and Gabe, 6. As with our health, this was the time to move to be part of their lives while they still tune into grandparents.

The second goal we accomplished was to move into a place of great natural beauty with space for our four dogs and our mutual creative work. Living in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains means we have a home where the eco-systems vary by altitude and the altitude varies a lot. It also means spectacular vistas, interesting weather and wildlife.

So, we chose and now we live with the choice. Happily.

Anoka County, Garden, Our Land and Home

The Last Planting

September 20, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa College Moon

The garden has been less a priority the last month since packing became dominant. It’s suffered some, the grass in between the beds has gone to seed, the collard greens have been picked apart by beetles and the chard has slowed down its growth. The raspberries though have become to ripen in large numbers and we’re freezing them as they’re picked, bags of frozen raspberries now available for breakfast.

After the next frost, if it’s a killing frost, I’ll harvest the leeks and beets and carrots. A bounty still available there. The carrots and leeks will go into my chicken/leek pies, also to freeze. The beets we’ll roast and can, pickle or make into a soup. Kate’s been perfecting a beet soup we had at the American Swedish Institute’s new restaurant. The last time she made it, it was wonderful.

As I’ve written here over the summer, there has been a subtle change in my relationship with the garden. The soil test went into International Ag Labs last week and I’ll do the broadcast fertilizer as recommended this fall. It’s just that after I plant the garlic next month, it will be the last planting I’ll do here. When we cut the raspberry canes, it will be the last time for that task. We’re still stewards, of course, but our stewardship is coming to an end.

Anoka County, Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Literature, The Move, Third Phase

A Confrontation About Time

August 25, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa New (College) Moon

This week on the calendar I have on Monday through Saturday: pack, Latin. Thursday will be our state fair day. Other than that packing, Latin and work in the garden will occupy us.

Today and until I’m done I will be packing the study in which I work every day. That means the sorting will get harder, green tape boxes outnumbering red tape ones. Probably by a lot. It also means the confrontation between time remaining (in my life) and the projects (intellectual and creative) that keep me excited will come center stage. I’ll try to sort out the ones I feel I can fruitfully engage over the next 20 years from the ones I can’t.

That means I’m considering active intellectual and creative work at least into my late 80’s. That feels like a stretch, maybe, but one I believe my health and potential longevity justifies.

Let me give you an idea of what I have in mind. Complete the translation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Write at least four more novels. Write essays or a book on Reimagining My Faith. Write and read much more poetry. Write essays or a book on matters related to the Enlightenment, liberal thought, modernism. Write essays or a book on matters related to the Great Work. Include in this work considered attention to Asian literature, art and thought, especially Chinese and Indian. Continue regular art historical research and write essays about aesthetics and particular art/artists.

Why? Because I can. I’ve no evidence so far that my thinking is strikingly original or unusually deep, but my intellectual maturation has taken a longer time than I imagined it would. So the best may yet be ahead. Or so it feels to me. Under any circumstances such work will keep me alert and focused.

As for right now. Where are those empty boxes?

Anoka County, Art and Culture, Family

The Saturday Slows

August 23, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa New (College) Moon

Kate and Annie were off to a quilt retreat yesterday afternoon and evening and all day today. Held in downtown Anoka in a large room over a bank on Main Street, this quilt retreat gathers a large number of quilters with their machines and projects; they share technique and support each others work.

(The Quilting Frolic 1813 John Lewis Krimmel)

That left the dogs and me at home. This morning, with the temperature at 66 and the dewpoint at 65, I picked red raspberries in a fog. A few tomatoes were ready to come in and another large batch of onions and garlic.

Watched an interesting William Dafoe mystery, Anamorph. An independent film, it had no upbeat parts and a grim ending. Intelligent and well-made it became repetitive near the end, then picked up as the climax neared. 3 stars out of 5.

Anoka County, Garden, Great Wheel, Myth and Story

The Season of Harvest

August 21, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa Lughnasa Moon

Lughnasa celebrates the beginning of the harvest. Already underway by August 1st, at least here, and continuing through early to mid-October the harvest is concerto after concerto, first the beet and carrot concerto, then the onion, then the garlic. Soon the green beans and the sugar snap peas chime in and the collard greens play their deep green notes and the chard lights up the hall with its rainbow of colors. The opposite of chamber music garden music counts on ancient melodies like the sound of the rain, the wind and thunder of storms, the subtle bass notes of fertile soil.

(alma-tademas-harvest-festival)

We have already passed the allegro first movement and now enter the adagio, the time when various crops come slowly to maturity in late summer and early fall. Around Mabon, the autumnal equinox, the grain crops and corn and beans will begin to peak, the sound of combines and corn pickers, the brilliant blue notes of the September sky, grain falling into golden piles on the wagons, yellow corn piling up. And finally, as October sees the first frosts and the last of the crops come in, the final movement, begun in a frenzy of gathering will trail off, cold and bleak, senescence browning the once vibrant greens.

At the end, summer’s end, is Samain. It marks the end of the growing season and thins the veil between the worlds. As the vegetable world dies again and the fallow season begins, Samain is a time between rich, fruitful life and the darkness and chill of death. It’s an appropriate time for the barrier between the living world and the world of those who have died in it to become permeable, for the dead to come to the living and the living to the dead.

We are now in the harvest season punctuated by Lughnasa, Mabon and Samain, beginning, middle and end. Dance to its music. The music of life renewed and come bountiful.

Anoka County, Memories

Nowthen

Gallery August 16, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa Lughnasa Moon

Well. While at Osaka, our local sushi joint, Kate noticed a TV featuring nude bowlers. No, I don’t know why, but Kate went on to point the relation between sushi, raw fish, and nude bowlers, human flesh in the raw. There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than can be counted for in your philosophy.

Before this nude experience, we attended, for the second year, the Nowthen Threshing Show. Here are a few photographs:

Steam engine power take off running a rip saw and a planer at a temporary sawmill.

An old filling station. Compare to the Edward Hopper below.

The theme this year was the world of steam.

We watched the engineers bring this five piston diesel engine to life. It has a huge armature just out of the picture to the left.

This was a surprise, but an artful one. Kate and her much admired red glasses.

Anoka County, Dogs, Health, Our Land and Home

Flash

August 10, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa Lughnasa Moon

Fast. That’s how life can change. I wired a large fallen branch to the bottom of the fence along our southern property line. The last three points of escape were along the northern fence line so Rigel has begun a systematic (well, sort of) testing of the containment.

While going downhill along the path next to the fence line, the stretch you can see here, my foot struck a small stump and I fell forward. As gravity reached up to grab me, my body took over, putting my right arm out to cushion the fall. But as I fell, I remembered, in a flash, the sort of things that happen to older folks when they fall. This was not the kind of fall I took as a child or even a younger man. No, it had a brief, but strong undercurrent of dread attached.

That said, the effects of the fall were unremarkable. My right shoulder ached, a bit of soreness in the right lower back, but no broken bones. No head injuries. The wire snips and the coil of wire, now mostly gone since I had just used it on the fourth fence strengthening of this latest episode, flew out of my hands and I had to find them.

When I went through the business with my left shoulder a year or so ago, the orthopedist remarked on how strong my bones were. Guess so.

(I took this photograph to illustrate the size of the grapevine, but it shows the coil nearing its end. This is before the latest patch.)

This is not a cautionary tale. It is, rather, a reminder that change can come at us fast and hard. It is also a reminder that resilience may be one of our most underrated virtues. I’m seeing that word a lot these days in situations psychological and climatological. It’s a good one. It is not how hard you fall, but how you bounce that counts.

Anoka County, Dogs, Our Land and Home

It’s a whistle pig or a land-beaver!

August 7, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa Lughnasa Moon

Hot times outside this afternoon.

What does Rigel see?

It appears she (and the other three) have treed a woodchuck. Yes, it is, as Wikipedia says a groundhog, a land-beaver, or a whistle pig. They’re a member of the Marmot family.

The dogs seem to think that if they bark loud enough and long enough the land-beaver will drop out of the tree into their mouths. Doubtful.

Anoka County, GeekWorld, Our Land and Home

Itchy Palm? Too much odonatology?

July 23, 2014 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Most Heat Moon

The dragonfly came up in conversation yesterday because I saw one outside the window at Running Aces and remarked I’d read they hadn’t changed in 300,000,000 years. A remarkable fact to me and one I confirmed in some quick internet research this morning.

Tom then added that they were unique in their ability to vector their prey, that is, calculate the prey’s path and their own so they would intersect. All other apex predators chase their prey. Very interesting. (see video below)

A little more poking around found a few more interesting facts about the dragonfly, but I put the most remarkable one (to me) last.

1. The study of dragonflies, and sometimes damselflies, is called Odonatology. Dragonflies are referred to as Odonates.

2. About 5000 species of dragonflies and damselflies are known

3. Top speed for a dragonfly is between 30 and 60 km/h (19 to 38 m.p.h.)

4. A dragonfly needs warmth to fly and you will notice they will often land when
the sun goes behind a cloud.

5. Because of their compound eyes, dragonflies can see in many directions at once

6. Fact: They Calculate Velocity For A Perfect Kill

The dynamics of capturing an object in mid-air are staggeringly complex, so much so that it’s usually something that’s only done by animals with complex nervous systems, like seagulls, or humans. To intercept something moving with its own velocity, you have to be able to predict where it will be in the future. When researchers began studying dragonflies in 1999, they found that rather than “track” their prey—follow it through the air until they caught up with it—they would actually intercept it. In other words, dragonflies ensure a kill by flying to where their prey is going to be.

That indicates that dragonflies calculate three things during a hunt: the distance of their prey, the direction it’s moving, and the speed it’s flying. In the space of milliseconds, the dragonfly calculates its angle of approach and, like a horror movie monster, it’s already waiting while the hapless fly stumbles right into its clutches.

7. Most of a dragonfly’s life is spent in the naiad form beneath the water’s surface…They breathe through gills in their rectum, and can rapidly propel themselves by suddenly expelling water through the anus.^[6