Category Archives: GeekWorld

Aging, Family, GeekWorld, Health, Politics

Leviathan

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Summer                             Waxing Grandchildren Moon

I decided to take a month off from Latin tutorials.  Not from Latin, just the every week preparation of a new chapter.  I need to cement my learnings about verb conjugations, pronouns and certain uses of the ablatives and genitive.  Also, I need a break from expectations.

Kate’s up seeing her Physiatrist, a regular check up on pain meds.  She considers Beewin her medical home since her health issues focus on spine deterioration and arthritis, both of which have pain management and physical fitness as key treatment components.

Over the last two weeks I’ve had an ear infection and pink eye.  Good thing this 63 old kid has an in-house pediatrician.  I got expert care for these afflictions of the rug rat set.  Makes me feel young again, but not in a good way.

Have you caught any of the Washington Post’s report on the US counter-terrorist establishment?  It’s a fascinating example of how a genuine problem can breed responses that I’m sure make sense to each person who created each entity.  The whole, probably largely invisible in the–I know it’s way overused, but I’m gonna use it anyway–silos of various bureaucracies, is a Hobbesian Leviathan.  Hard to know whether to be amused, frightened, outraged or complacent.

Aging, Family, GeekWorld, Great Wheel, Great Work, Politics, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Whew

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Summer                                      Waxing Grandchildren Moon

OK.  This will be last of this.  But.  Kate reminded me of her surgery on June 30th.  Which preceded preparation for and the arrival and stay of Jon, Jen, Ruth and Gabe followed then, as I said yesterday, by our too inclusive preparations for the Woollys. No wonder I wore out yesterday.  Let my prop it up and keep going inner coach have the day off.  Better rested and more clear-eyed today.  Ready for ancient Rome.

These two paragraphs came my way in the last two days.  Their conjunction speaks for itself.

“Speaking of heat, NOAA reports that June was the hottest  month in recorded history, worldwide. That is the fourth
month in a row of record warmth for planet Earth. June also marked the 304th consecutive month “with a global temperature above the 20th century average.” The last month with below-normal temperature worldwide? February, 1985. 2010
temperatures from January to June were the warmest ever recorded for both land and ocean temperatures, worldwide. Stay tuned.”
Check out Paul’s blog startribune.com/pauldouglas

(I imagine it’s photoshopped, but still…)

Mark Odegard found this quote in a book he’s reading about walking with caribou:

Henry Beston in the beginning of book.

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of wild animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creatures through the glass of knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken a form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, greatly err, For the animal shall not be measured by man, In a world older and more complex than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethrern, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

Garden, GeekWorld, Woolly Mammoths

A Snap. No, Really.

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Summer                                             Waxing Grandchildren Moon

Started the morning with my favorite kind of work, mechanical.  Question:  how to get the mower deck off the lawn tractor.  It is, I recall the salesman saying 14 years ago, “A snap.”  Well, he should have been here.  Nuts and bolts, screws and hammers don’t respond well to my ministrations.  If it can be done the easy way–a snap–and the hard way–my way–guess which I end up pursuing?  Yep.  Same deal with the bagger.  So easy.  Hmmm.  The best that can be said is that, in the end, I figured out that the easy way was also the only way to get them off, but it took a good while to realize that.  Plus some words I wouldn’t use in a polite blog.

After that, hooking up the new wagon to our 15 year old Simplicity was a snap.  No, really.  One cotter pin, insert bolt through wagon tongue and tractor hitch and away we went to the 5 cubic yards of shredded mulch.  A few pitchfork moves later I was back in the front yard delivering shredded bark to Kate who toiled away in the vineyards (literally) of our long untended front flower patches.

Much better than the wheel barrow method I’ve used all these years.  I took the weeds back to the woods and put them in their very own pile.  Nice.

After the nap I’ve spent time recovering wooden steps and slabs from eroded sand, sweeping, piling, that sort of thing.  It’s hot, but not too bad outside.

All this in service of the upcoming Woolly Mammoth meeting.  We have visitors out here twice a year and this year they came within two weeks of each other.  Great planning on our (my) part.  Well, I shouldn’t say in service of the meeting.  This work really prompts us to do things we’ve neglected over this year and they’ll stay done for a while.  One of the many positive functions of friends.

More meeting related work later on, too.  Groceries.  Start cooking. (helping Kate) Cleaning furniture.  Those sorts.

Family, GeekWorld, Politics

Night Time, Summer in the Exurbs

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Summer                            Waning Strawberry Moon

Night.  A couple of nights ago I went down the driveway to the mailbox.  As I came back up, I looked up as I often do and saw an object scooting from SSE to NNW.  At first I thought it was a plane.  Without my glasses distance observing for me turns into a game of analyzing tantalizing bits of information rather than direct scrutiny.  As it came overhead though, I could see what I thought were lights were blurs owed to my faulty peepers.  No, it was a satellite.  It was bright and moving fast.

At heavens-above.com I tried to look it up, but the tables for satellite passes only look forward, not backward.  I don’t know what it was, but I know it was man-made.  Whether it was a communications satellite of the International Space Station, it’s still something up there because humans put it there.  An amazing and still almost science fiction notion to this boy of the 1950’s.  I remember Sputnik.  Well.

Kate’s a day away from her surgery.  The vicodin she has to take now makes her dull, “stupid” as she puts it.  She doesn’t like that feeling and looks forward to the time post-op when she can return to her NSAID.

Obama.  As a political leftist, I find things wrong with Obama’s record.  He supported off-shore drilling, he’s ramped up the war in Afghanistan and he’s accepted weakened regulatory legislation and weakened health-care legislation.   The Gulf oil disaster and McChrystal give an air of chaos to his administration, though neither one is his fault.  Here’s my prediction.  A year from now Obama will look very good in all the areas in which he looks very bad right now.  Her’s pulling troops out of Iraq as promised.  The economy will improve.  The public will get clear about the Obama administration’s role in the Gulf oil disaster to his credit and his firing of McChrystal will be seen as what it is, a necessary assertion of civilian authority.

He’s working as a politician, not an ideologue, a necessary ambit if he  wishes to govern, which he does.  Bush was a right wing ideologue and no matter how charming or gritty he appeared it was clear his decision making was in thrall to the neo-con view of the world.  Ideology puts blinkers on the best of us and Obama seems to govern without ideology, though he’s clearly a left-liberal.  Kudo’s to him.

Dogs, Garden, GeekWorld, Memories

Reaching Back in Time

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Beltane                      Waxing Hungry Ghost Moon

We’re only a week away from the summer solstice, but you could not tell it from our current weather.  We’ve had a cool, rainy streak that has made work outside appealing.  It’s also given the weeds considerable encouragement.

The internet allows a look-up phenom that you’ve no doubt experienced at least once.  An e-mail shows up from someone in the way back long ago.  A posting of Facebook.  A comment on  your blog.  I’ve had a few.  Got one Friday from a high school girlfriend, a relationship that meant something to me.  It was nice to hear from her since we stopped seeing each other my senior year and went our separate ways.  E-mail is a great medium for this kind of oh my it’s been so long reacquaintance.  Neutral. Not time sensitive.

Vega has a new gorilla that she carries with her in the house where ever she goes.  It makes a noise and whenever she triggers it, she scoots off for a safe area, not quite sure.  Rigel has no interest in toys, she enjoys the thrill of the hunt, the joy of escape.  Which she did yesterday.  Again.  She got out through a hole under the fence I wouldn’t have thought big enough for her.  I’ve hardened the lower edge of the fence line over the years, but this spot had rotted out.  I found her collar hooked on a log where she’d crawled under the chain-link.  She does not go over the fence anymore.  Electricity.

Kate’s on a countdown for a new hip.  June 30th.  She commented on a discogram yesterday (this involves a probing needle that injects dye between the discs to get a contrast image), “I’m a Norwegian, a stoic and a woman and still I had copious tears.”  She can bear it, but she pays a price.  She also observed, by the way, that I will never, ever have a discogram.  She’s right on that one.

Not a bee day today.  Wednesday looks like the day for the hive inspection.

Aging, Art and Culture, Bees, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden, GeekWorld, Great Wheel, Minnesota, Our Land and Home, permaculture, Politics, Writing

The Sublime Gift

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Beltane                                       Waning Planting Moon

” Life can’t bring you the sublime gift it has for you until you interrupt your pursuit of a mediocre gift.”

Woolly brother Tom Crane sent this to me.  It took me back to my recent post about Siah Armajani and his personal commitment to staying within his skill set.  When I worked for the church in the now long ago past, I had a boss, Bob Lucas, a good man, who had several sayings he used a lot.  One of them was also similar in spirit, “Don’t major in the minors.”

Stop focusing on the small things you might be able to do well to the exclusion of being challenged by the prajaparmita400serious, important matters.  Stop your pursuit of a mediocre gift.   The tendency to judge our worth by the accumulation of things–a he who dies with the best toys wins mentality–presses us to pursue money or status, power, with all of our gifts.  You may be lucky enough, as Kate is, to use your gifts in a pursuit that also makes decent money; on the other hand if  your work life and your heart life don’t match up, you risk spending your valuable work time and energy in pursuit of a mediocre gift, hiding the sublime one from view.

This is not an affair without risk.  Twenty years ago I shifted from the ministry which had grown cramped and hypocritical for me to what I thought was my sublime gift, writing.  At least from the perspective of public recognition I have to say it has not manifested itself as my sublime gift.  Instead, it allowed me to push away from the confinement of Christian thought and faith.  A gift in itself for me.  The move away from the ministry also opened a space for what I hunch may be my sublime gift, an intense engagement with the world of plants and animals.

This is the world of the yellow and black garden spider my mother and I watched out our kitchen window over 50+ years ago.  It is the world of flowers and vegetables, soil and trees, dogs and bees, the great wheel and the great work.  It is a world bounded not by political borders but connected through the movement of weather, the migration of the birds and the Monarch butterflies.  It is a world that appears here, on our property, as a particular instance of a global network, the interwoven, interlaced, interdependent web of life and its everyday contact with the its necessary partner, the inanimate.

So, you see, the real message is stop pursuit of the mediocre gift.  After that, the sublime gift life has to offer may then begin to pursue you.

Garden, GeekWorld, Weather +Climate

Fly Dragon Fly

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Beltane                                    Waxing Planting Moon

Under the cover of a cloudy sky and a gentle rain I planted tomatoes, peppers and alyssum, spread moss as a mulch and cut the scapes off the garlic.  It’s hard to believe but the garlic will be ready to harvest the middle to late part of next month.

I always turn my computers off during a thunderstorm.  Better safe than sorry.  When I came down at 2:30 to crank them up again after the loud thunder bangers we had crashing through around noon, the clouds had dissipated.  I looked up and saw a fleet of winged insects flying to and fro, everywhere, just outside the windows to my east and to my south.  I went out to see what they were.  Dragonflies.  They flew in various directions, scouring, I imagine, for recently hatched mosquitoes.

The dragon fly has a warm spot in my heart not only because they eat mosquitoes, though that’s enough, but their bi-wing construction and hovering flight also appeal to me.  They have just a tinge of magic and the exotic.

As I planted the tomato and pepper transplants in the suntrap, I happened on a small dark toad.  He had been happily ensconced under the bale of sphagnum moss that I moved when I begin to spread it.  He looked around, hopped a bit and stopped.  I told him I didn’t mean to uncover his hiding place and that I was happy he had chosen our garden in which to live.  He acted like he didn’t hear me.

Aging, Art and Culture, GeekWorld, Weather +Climate

Hostel Elders

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Beltane                                  Waxing Planting Moon

Two tours today with an elderhost group from Portland, Oregon.  The first involves the Asian collection, the second highlights of European art.   I enjoy Asian tours since I have spent a lot of time with the collection, Asian history and literature.  I also enjoy the freedom of selecting objects for a highlights tour, which can include objects that seem interesting at that time.

My brand new router acted up yesterday and I lost my internet connection.  Minny, an Indian young woman working at 8:30 pm her time, walked me through how to resolve the issue.  Took the usual hour or so after calling Comcast, eliminating the modem or their servers as the problem.  They connected me to Netgear.  It was, as far as tech service goes, a quite reasonable process.

Looks like we’re about to have hot, muggy weather.  That’s the good part about living in Minnesota, without leaving home we can visit several different climates over the course of the year.  This week we will imitate the muggy south.

Bees, Garden, GeekWorld, Great Work, Health, permaculture

Heirlooms. Better Eating, Better Seeds

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Beltane                                    Waxing Planting Moon

Got some plants in the mail.  I didn’t start anything from seed this last winter after starting way too many the season before.  Maybe this winter I’ll hit a happy medium.  These are heirloom plants, so I can save the seeds and plant them next year.  Would somebody remind me to do that when fall comes around?

The flower garden has gotten the short end of the stick this spring and it shows.  Weeds and grass in places where there should be neither.  While Kate’s away, I plan to get some work done on the flowers since the vegetable garden will be planted, irrigation problems are largely resolved and I signed out of the Museum for the two Fridays she’s gone.

We do have a lot of things growing.  The leeks have jumped up as have the sugar snap peas, beets, onions, fennel, mustard greens, garlic, parsnip, strawberries, apples, pears, cherries, currants, quince and blueberries.  The radicchio, thyme, dill, rosemary,  flat parsley and lavender are also off to a good start.  The potatoes are, as they say, in the trenches and we await their emergence.  The whole fruit group is still relatively new to us since the orchard is in its third growing season, but only beginning to actually bear fruit.  A lot of critters have evolved that love fruit:  insects, fungi, birds.  Just how much predation we can expect is still unknown.

I got an e-mail back from Gary Reuter at the U about the comb I photographed.  “The bees,” he said, “are making extra comb.  Take it off.”

The red car went in for its 260,000 mile check up today.  It’s in fine shapes with the exception of a little bit baling wire and bubble gum necessary for the next 100,000 miles.   Toyota dealerships are not intrinsically happy places right now, but they’ve always done well by us and I appreciate them.