Category Archives: Memories

Aging, Cancer, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Hermitage, Memories, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

Alchemical work

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Samain and the Radiation Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Joanne. Diane. The Alembic. Jung. Freud. Rogers. May. Frankl. Maslow. Satir. Fromm. Adler. Horney. Erikson. Paul Goodman. Adorno. Marcuse. Benjamin. Habermas. Unamuno. The hermeneutics of suspicion. Ricoeur. Guides from my student days. The theology of liberation. Cornel West. Shadow Work. Ivan Illich.

Sparks of joy and awe: A day of rest

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Hakarat Hakov   Gratitude.    “Who is rich? Those who rejoice in their portion.” Perkei Avot 4:1

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Shadow, shadow work, the work done but unrecognized, unpaid, unappreciated housework, child rearing, transporting yourself to work, self checkout, pumping your own gas, making your own travel arrangements, assembling products that come in pieces, maintaining a yard and a vehicle noticed and named by radical thinker, Ivan Illich, in his book, Shadow Work. How much shadow work do you do?

Alembics. “…historically used by alchemists and for producing medicines, perfumes, and alcohol, the word can also be used metaphorically to mean something that refines or transmutes.” Gemini

I’ve begun to think of my life in terms of alembics. When was I thrown into a life situation, either by my own choice or by outside circumstance that resisted logic, yet compelled me to respond in unexpected, unusual, new ways?

A major early almebic? The death of my mother. No way to reason my way through that. A moment of dark transformation, carried without thought into the dark recesses of my heart, clashing with a changed world, and not well. In spite of being in a family, I sat in this alembic alone, feeling the fires of fear, doubt, grief lick up and around my stunned self.

This transmutation produced no gold. No, it produced a broken soul, one ready for abandonment, for sudden shifts from light to dark, from innocence to intoxication. Yes, the second alembic, which contained the first, grew from days at Phi Kappa Psi and Wabash where I learned to smoke and to drink.

An alembic that would not shatter until March of 1976 when I began treatment at a Hazelden outpatient clinic in Minneapolis. Getting sober allowed me to gather in pieces of the dark time and begin to transform them into psychic gold. To understand that the grief, the agony, the isolation (self-imposed) had forced me to mine my inner resources in ways and at a time most people went to prom and figured out what to do with their lives.

Other alembics. The Peaceable Kingdom. Seminary. Adopting Joseph. Vietnam era protests. Studying philosophy and anthropology. Marrying Kate. Andover with its gardens, dogs, bees. Writing. Shadow Mountain. Kate’s illness and death. Cancer. CBE. Converting to Judaism. Old age with a terminal illness, the fourth phase.

I like the use of alembic to describe these times because it recognizes that the pressures and fractures and falls and emergence shape us in ways unpredictable, unknown, yet in which we have no choice but to participate as best we can.

Are you in an alembic right now? Or, have you emerged from one recently? Or, long ago. How did it transform you? How is it transforming you?

Memories, Minnesota, Plants

Wood Heats You Five Ways

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Joanne. Ginny and Janice. Annie and Luna. Annie and Shadow wrasslin’ outside. Derek cutting down dead Lodgepoles. Ginny and Janice’s expansion project. Janice as the general contractor. Her Apple Crisp. Garlicky Shrimp sheet pan meal. Torah study with Luke. Chayei Sarah. American History.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Good Friends

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Hakarat Hakov   Gratitude.    “Who is rich? Those who rejoice in their portion.” Perkei Avot 4:1

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Derek fells my dead Lodgepoles with his electric chainsaw, bucking them, then moving lengths of the downed Tree on his shoulder or on a dolly to the side of the house he rents; where he cuts them into lengths suitable for splitting, carries them inside, and uses the wood to heat the house, smoke often wafting in through my bedroom window.

Wood heats you five times. When you cut it. When you buck it. When you carry it. When you split it. When you use it in your stove.

Carries me back to the Peaceable Kingdom outside Nevis, Minnesota. 80 acres of less than sterling Soil, a house, a couple of outbuildings. A woodstove for cooking and airtight for heating. And a woodlot.

My old International Harvester pick-up and I would bounce down the lane to the Woodlot with my Jonsered chain saw in the back, a can of fuel and a smaller one of chain oil rattling as we bounced up and down the swells and potholes.

In the Woodlot I would either fell a Tree, often a Burr Oak or a Maple, which would have to season, or a Birch that could be used green. Most days I would buck Trees that I’d felled the previous season, toss the logs in the bed of the truck and bounce back to the farmyard where I’d find my splitting maul, place the logs on the stump of an old Oak, and split until I had enough wood for the stove and the air tight. I was so much younger then, I’m older than that now.

A quarter of a log fit in the air tight so I’d load it full with three or four, close the door, and watch the embers of the previous Fire start a new one. If I had seasoned Oak or Maple, a loaded air-tight would burn six to eight hours after I choked down the air flow. This meant I could usually get a full night’s sleep and not wake up to a cold house.

The woodstove was a different thing altogether. It had to be fired up each time you used it. You got temperature variation by increasing or decreasing air flow, moving a pot around on the stove top or putting, say bread, in a warming compartment.

The smell of percolating Coffee often combined with the scent of burning Oak or Maple, maybe Bacon cooking in a cast iron skillet, a couple of eggs. I enjoyed those days and have no idea what I would do in that situation in this 78 year old body. That Charlie? A different guy in so many ways.

Memories, US History

My Inner Kid Chose to Speak.

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan. The Hummingbird, Josh and Sarah’s new restaurant. The gathering darkness of late Fall. The journey of all men with prostate cancer. Dr. Carter and the medical physicist, developing a plan. The MRI. The PET scan. Tom, his journey. Walking each other home. Bishop Berkley. Leibniz. Hume. All who wonder.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Science Fiction

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Chesed.  Loving Kindness.        “Kindness is the language the deaf can hear and the blind see.”  Mark Twain

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: The Stars above, the Samain Moon, constellations created in the mind, Galaxies, local clusters, the Cosmic vastness, a void filled with the stuff of dreams and wishes, stuff of very stuff, no less part of the one than your big toe or mine. And, no more.

 

When Dad became the editor of the Times-Tribune, Alexandria’s daily newspaper (in a town of 5,000. Can you imagine?), Bob Feemster, who bought the paper and hired Dad, believed he needed a television to keep up with national news, especially elections.

That meant our family was among the first in Alexandria to have a staticky, rabbit-eared box of vacuum tubes and a black and white cathode ray tube that somehow captured something out of the sky, turning it into pictures, moving and talking pictures. Wow.

And so. Saturday morning television. The children’s time with cartoons like Woody the Woodpecker, Donald Duck, Yosemite Sam, and Tom and Jerry. Also, dramas. Roy Rogers, Captain Midnight, Sky King. Captain Renfrew of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and his dog, Lightening, Tarzan, and the Cisco Kid.

That all seems quaint today with streaming services that have pushed broadcast TV into near extinction. No Saturday morning kid’s time because cartoons can be found all day and night, every day of the week. As well, of course, so many dramas, comedies, movies. Just head over to the Disney Channel. Or, if the fare there smacks too much of patronizing adulthood, go to Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu.

I know it’s naive to say that my 1950’s childhood was innocent. Those TV shows I listed above were often explicitly racist and certainly sexist, reinforcing the worst of what kids learned in the home and from their friends. Me Tarzan, you Jane. Hey, Cisco. Hey Pancho.

Yet it was simpler, at least in the amount of information we had regular access to. No internet or smartphones or Google, their equivalent in my hometown was the Carnegie Library. Even that had a children’s collection and an adult collection.

Most kids did not have a mother who had been to Europe and Africa though many fathers had fought in France, Italy, Germany, some in northern Africa. So there were those connections, in all their horrifying reality, to somewhere far away.

Then, too, the Cold War. Sputnik. Nuclear weapons and mushroom clouds. No, hardly innocent.

And here I sit, on Shadow Mountain, over seventy years later from the time Bob Feemster brought that little black box into our home. Those days seem so far away, both in time and in the content of daily life. Yet. They shaped much of what I believed was true, much of which I’ve had to unlearn.

We all carry those young kids with us. For life. Mine chose to speak to me this morning.

 

Friends, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

Topophilia

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Mabon and the Samain Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Rich and Kim. Her delightful vegetarian soup and Rich’s delivery. Dodgers win game two. Shadow and her snuggles. Artemis laughing at the cold nights. Hip and back pain. Red Tie Guy in Korea. My son, his Korean life. Murdoch, sleeping. Cherry Tomato sheet pan recipes. Ruby’s Snow shoes, tomorrow. Joanne.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Kim’s soup

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Hochmah.  Wisdom.   “Who is wise? The one who learns from every person.”  Perkei Avot: 4:1  Making medical decisions this week.

Tarot: Paused

One brief shining: Rich sat down yesterday after delivering Kim’s soup and we had a philosophical conversation about the difference between discoveries like Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity and creativity that results in patents since Rich will teach, for the first time at Mines, a class he and another professor are developing on intellectual property. Fun.

 

Rich: A dear friend who volunteered to be my medical emergency contact and my Colorado medical power of attorney since Joseph’s in Korea. Also a very bright guy who’s taught at the Colorado School of Mines for many years. First constitutional law, then an honor’s class, and now will co-develop the new class on intellectual property.

To give you a sense of Rich’s approach, the first place he took students who will be in this class? A company run by two CSU-Boulder engineers, a couple, who develop open source software (her) and open source hardware (her). He’s also reading a lot of Karl Marx.

Also, a bee keeper. Glad to have him as a friend.

 

Oddity: So I’ve told Rich, Tara, and Ruth about my as yet unscheduled MRI. All three want to take me, be there with me. Geez. I admit I don’t know how to handle this generosity. But. I do appreciate it.

 

Artemis: Didn’t get around to harvesting Kale, Spinach, Beets, planting Garlic. Too focused on finding a new fan, one that won’t wake Shadow and me up at night with sudden illumination. Found a fan with no light. Should work.

Maybe today.

 

Place: The Ancient Brothers topic for this morning.

I always referred to Andover, Minnesota as a place with no there there. From Hwy. 10, up Round Lake Boulevard to 153rd Ave. it was an unbroken chain of franchise restaurants, local businesses in malls, a Walmart, and a grocery store. Once I got home though, to 3122 153rd Avenue, there was a there there.

Partly horticultural artifice with Prairie Grass, Flower beds, Vegetable gardens, an Orchard, and a Fire-pit. Partly a Woods filled with Ash, Elm, Cottonwood, Iron Wood, Oak, thick vines and ground covers.

We created a place with a sense of place. The Prairie Grass harkened back to the original Oak Savannah. The Woods were a remnant of a larger Forest. Our various gardens flourished in the Great Anoka Sand Plain, a geological feature of the Glacial River Warren which drained the formerly vast Lake Winnipeg.

When the time came to move to Colorado, there was no question about where to go. The Mountains were calling. This Winter Solstice will mark my eleventh year on Shadow Mountain, a favorite place.

 

 

Friends, Memories, Mountains

Living In a Small Town

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Joanne and Joe. Derek. Vince. Shadow. Israel. Gaza. Palestinians. Arabs. Mark in Hafar. My Lodgepole, a living Tree. Cut down. A leaner after heavy Winds. Tara and Jamie. RMCC. Dr. Bupathi. Maddie. Social Worker and RN. Palliative care. My PET scan.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shabbat

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Ometz Lev.   Bravery of the heart.  Seeing my medical oncologist, Dr. Bupathi, on Monday.

One brief shining: Jackie and Rhonda, dispensing love in, as Rhonda’s shirt said, Small Acts (that) Change the World; a lot like Cheers where everybody knows my name and by simply knowing my name makes my day brighter, more.

 

Living in a small town (Mellencamp): Yes, Alexandria. 5,000 people in my time there: 1949-1965. Walk everywhere. To Cox’s Grocery Store. To the Methodist Church. To Thurston Elementary School. Bailey’s Drug Store. The Carnegie Library. The Town Theater or the Alex. Walking meant running into people you knew well and people you knew only slightly. Always.

Alexandria shaped my idea of how life was supposed to go. Not in an urban environment where most of the time you had no idea who you saw in the grocery store, who sat down next to you in a restaurant, but rather as part of a thick web of people who knew each other at least well enough to nod with recognition.

This meant kids were safe to wander the streets because everyone knew who you belonged to. This also meant getting into trouble would always get back to your parents. Always.

I most remember the shoe leather and glue smells of Guilkey’s Shoe Repair. The cool humid ramp that led down to the children’s room of the Alexandria Carnegie Library. And, the Silver Llama, my favorite book which resided there. Those reading competitions in the summer.

Or, having a fizzy soda at the soda fountain in Bailey’s Drug Store. Buying Cinnamon extract there in liquid form, then putting toothpicks in it to savor later. Benefield’s Market, right next to Kildow’s Paint Store where, during lunch break at junior high, we’d all go to buy penny candy.

That high diving board in the pool at Beulah Park. I never did summon the courage to go off it though I did pass my swimming test so I could go in the deep end of the pool.

For some reason, lost in the history of Madison County, the Madison County 4-H fair was held in Beulah Park each August, not in Anderson, the county seat. I loved the buttermilk from the Alexandria Dairy Booth. A small Dixie cup. Salt and Pepper.  Mmmm. Looked forward to that.

Now I live in two small Mountain towns, Conifer and Evergreen. When I see Jackie and Rhonda, I feel right back in a small town. They know me, knew Kate. I know them. I know about Jackie’s son who recently divorced that (very wrong according to Jackie) woman and now lives back up the hill in little Shawnee. I saw Rhonda’s new purse. We all laughed at Tom’s joke about the Guinness Book of World Records. Living in a small town.

 

Health, Korea, Memories, Travel

The Ancientrail of Pain

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Dr. Do Vu. Injections of lidocaine. Relief on the left side. Pretty good. Susan. Who drove me. Her kindness. Today, the right side. The Night. Shadow. CBE and its Mitzvah Committee.  Lone Tree. Fairplay. Troublesome Gulch. Pine. Conifer. Evergreen. South Park. Kenosha Pass. Guanella Pass. The Shaggy Sheep. North Fork of the South Platte.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Jews

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Malchut.  Wonder.

  • “Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge”.  Abraham Joshua Heschel

Tarot: paused

One brief shining: When the first of the six needles went in, a numbing one, I said, “Fuck me!” as I lay face down, head supported by a leather pillow with a hole in it, much like a massage table, but this was no massage and I could tell that right away, not a fan of pain-who is-yet this was pain in service of pain reduction, an irony no one needed to point out.

 

Slowly, slowly: The Joseon Palace, Gyeongbokgung, Seoul. Two years ago last month. A tourist day in Seoul, driven by Daniel and Diane. Daniel interpreted for me at my son and Seoah’s wedding in 2016.

Earlier in the day we had visited the fish market with Diane’s dad, a professor of communications at a university in Busan. They asked me, at a particular stall, to point to a Fish. I did. Oh, my. The stall owner gaffed the big Snapper and we took pictures as it flopped around. I did not feel wonderful.

After seeing a few more of the stalls, we took an elevator to the top floor of the market, went into a restaurant, where we had sashimi and fish head soup. Yep. That Snapper I condemned.

We dropped Diane’s Dad off at the train station for the high speed train that runs from Seoul in the far north to Busan in the far south of South Korea and followed my interest in seeing historical sights. The first one we visited, Gyeongbokgung. 

A huge place. I loved it. Yet somewhere along the way my back no longer wanted to hold me up. I started sitting outside spots where my son and Seoah, Daniel and Diane, went inside. Finally, the pain got bad enough that I asked to leave, to return to Songtan.

That began a two year long journey. Massage and various machines in a Korean orthopedist’s office. Meds dispensed in small cellophane made units. Back home 29 total sessions of p.t. Celebrex until it bothered my kidneys. Acupuncture which only yielded a nice nap for ten sessions. Tramadol and acetaminophen, which help some, but not nearly enough.

Yesterday, the first of four appointments hopefully leading to substantial relief. Nerve ablation. Burning off the fatty sheath around the offending nerves. Plus a butrans patch which may knockdown any residual pain. May it be so.

I so want to return to Korea, maybe even visit Mary and Guru in Melbourne. Go on another cruise. You know, get outta the house a bit. Fingers crossed.

 

Art and Culture, Colorado, Humanities, Literature, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Music, Myth and Story, Shadow Mountain

Art Years. Mountain Years.

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Luke at 34. Bella Colibri. Rabbi Jamie’s Rosh Hashanah sermons. Shadow, the morning kisser. Artemis’ Cucumbers. Pizza and Burger plants in my son’s garden. Seoah’s half marathon. Mary’s political neighborhood. Mark and West Texas. From afar in Hafar. Ruth and Gabe, students. The Never Ending Story. Fourth Wing. Iron Flame.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Harvest

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Malchut. Wonder.    “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”  Socrates.

Tarot: Five of Pentacles. (Druid Craft)

  • Focus on internal resources: For a querent, this version is a powerful reminder that sometimes the help we need is within us, but our focus on the problem prevents us from seeing the solution. It is a prompt to shift perspective, recognize internal resources, and understand that our perceived limitations may be an internal block rather than an external lack. 
Festival Theater, Stratford

One brief shining: Trumpets blaring we would file into our seats at the three-quarter round thrust stage of the Guthrie Theater when it stood attached to the wonderful Walker Art Center, find our seats, and wait as the Gospel of Colonus, or the Bacchae, or the Christmas Carol came to life, poor players strutting and fretting upon the stage until they were heard no more. Applause!

 

Minnesota: Though now a Coloradan, a Rocky Mountain guy, a Jew, a widower, I once was a Minnesotan and happily so. Especially when it came to the arts. Those trumpets I mentioned? Oddly, when my family vacationed in Stratford, Ontario I had encountered them years before. Why? Because Michael Langham, the director of the Guthrie when I first attended on a student discount, had been the director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival during those long ago family vacations.

The Walker allowed all of us tucked into the rarely visited Upper Midwest of the Heartland access to the latest and the greatest of modern and contemporary art. What a gift. The MIA, an encyclopedic museum, covered art from ancient Chinese ceramics and bronzes through impressionists and abstract expressionists and had its own contemporary art exhibitions.

I spent twelve happy years guiding tour groups through the Asian galleries discussing the Jade Mountain(s), the Japanese Tea Ceremony, Song dynasty ceramics, and Korea’s amazing celadon glazed pottery. Yes I also led tours that included Goya and Rembrandt and Kandinsky, Chuck Close and Egon Schiele, but my heart remained always in the Asian collection.

It was a distinct privilege to immerse myself in the thousands of years of art in the MIA’s collection, to have my understandings of the modern world upended at the Walker, to have the Western world’s best playwright’s effort brought to life while I attended the Guthrie.

Too, there was and will always be for me: The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Decades of attendance acquainted me with Mozart, Teleman, Bach, Ives, Copeland, Fauré. And, ta dah! Kate.

Today my chamber music is the golden swathes of Aspen Leaves on Black Mountain. My Guthrie is the rain swollen Maxwell Creek while the Arapaho National Forest recapitulates the MIA and the Walker. So be it.

Far Right, Memories, Politics, US History

For a Trump Sick Soul

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Lughnasa and the Cheshbon Nefesh Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Shadow, her downward dog.  Diane in Indiana. Seeing Judy, Marilyn and Irv’s friend. My son. His work. Seoah. Murdoch. Dog treats. Liberals. Under siege. The Ford Foundation. George Soros. Hungary. Italy. France. Germany. The Netherlands. Great Britain. Denmark. Norway. Sweden. Finland. Spain. Austria.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friends

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Derech Eretz. The way of the Land.

Tarot: Seven of Pentacles, (Druid Craft)

One brief shining: Body creaky, aching at the joints, meds of little help, so very tired of this, not being able to bend over, finish tasks; yet, I watched a movie yesterday afternoon: Deaf President Now-Apple TV-and the power, the real and always power of folks shunted aside was so beautiful, so moving, I cried remembering my days of awe at the confidence and bravery of ordinary people.

 

Days of Yesteryear: Denim jacket on, hair beginning to get long, my ever present Pall Mall in my hand, jeans and workboots, green book bag slung over my shoulder. The microphone. Hell, no, we won’t go. Fists in the air. Electricity on campus. Hundreds, then thousands. Against the war. Against in loco parentis. For student power. As those Gallaudet students found when confronted with the choice of yet another hearing president.

Those were the days my friend. I thought they’d never end. But, they did. With the ominous prescience of National Guard Troops firing live bullets into an anti-war protest. With the Moral Majority and the immoral president, Richard Nixon. The rise of Movement Conservatives. A gradual gathering of grievance and indifference to derech heretz, the basic decency expected of all people.

As the conservatives gradually slowly, thanks Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, the New Apostolic Reformation, National Conservatism, became a tide, a tsunami of hate and bitter feeling. As this once powerful nation began to insist on pulling back from the world, declaring National narcissism as our raison d’etrê. As a nation began to split itself apart, dragging the poor, the immigrant, the disabled, the unhealthy, persons of color and LGBTQ+ persuasions across a sharp bed of nails- oligarchic indifference.

That world. Then. Gone. A distant memory of hope and justice. Subducted under a tectonic plate of fear and repressed anger with guns and Gadsen flags flying.

So often. Can we last four years of this? Among Jews. Is it time to go? But, where? Sadness and confusion among those I love. Glad in that strange way Mary and Mark, my son and Seoah live faraway. It is a sad time to be an American.

 

Friends: Breakfast with Marilyn and Irv. Their friend from Massachusetts. The joy. The here and now healing of laughter. Shared exasperation. Shared dreams and acknowledged fears. Over a Salmon blt, two drag it through the garden omelets, and a flatbread with cheese and pepperoni.  At Primo’s in Kings Valley.

When I left, I felt buoyed up by conversation. By seeing and being seen. By hearing and being heard. The balm of Gilead for a Trump sick soul.

Family, Far Right, Jefferson County, Memories, Mussar, Politics, US History, White Supremacy

A Culture Dying of Lead Poisoning

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Lughnasa and the Cheshbon Nefesh Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Teshuva. Accounting of the soul. Shadow on my pillow. Sleeping. 9/11. My son’s decision on account of it. Seoah. Murdoch. Jangs. Singapore. Time with Mary there and in Hawai’i. The anguish of our Middle East actions. Of Israel’s. The Evergreen Shooting. Columbine. Guns. Gun control. Our poor benighted nation. Charlie Kirk.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara’s hot tub garden bed

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Ometz Lev. Strength of the heart. A middah I wish for all parents and school children in Evergreen this day.

Tarot: Ten of Cups, (Druid Craft)

  • Domestic Harmony: Suggests a stable, secure, and happy home environment. This card often points to a desire for or achievement of an idyllic country life.
  • Gratitude and Blessings: A call to recognize and appreciate the blessings you have. The cups are a reminder of the rewards that come from love and connection. 

One brief shining: This Shadow Mountain home with its three levels, the guest level and the home office, the main level with Arts and Crafts furniture and lights, the fireplace, the breakfast nook built by Jon, a remodeled kitchen, a pantry, an exercise room, the downstairs level with its oriental rugs, comfy chairs, television, bedroom, and laundry room, Shadow’s food and toys, the fenced in backyard filled with Lodgepoles, Grasses, Groundcovers, Wild Flowers, and now Artemis, a place of memories with Kate, with Vega, Rigel, Gertie, Kepler, with guests over the years, its solar panels, its four car garage and library above, a front with no lawn, more Lodgepoles and Aspens, Kate’s Iris bed and her Lilacs in back has been my refuge, my hermitage, my home of eleven years come this Winter Solstice. Yes to the Ten of Cups.

Oh, my: Gabe and Ruth both sent texts. Gabe: “So today Charlie (Kirk) got shot and killed. And evergreen highschool got shot up. Today is strange.”  Ruth: “One of the things I don’t get is how you can be so set on defending a fetus and its life yet guns are more of a right than life is for students.”

Rabbi Jamie opened our sanctuary to any in town who might need it. Ironically he presented a program last night on teshuva. “While often translated as repentance, its deeper meaning is about taking action to return to one’s true, divine self…” Gemini The Jewish month of Elul, in which we are right now, encourages a time of reflection-of cheshbon nefesh, an accounting of the soul-with the aim of teshuva before Rosh Hashanah.

How can we as a nation, as a culture, return to, as one sage put it, the landscape of our soul? Not just the shooter(s) in the 47 school shootings to date this year (Ruth’s numbers), no, but our  culture dying from lead poisoning.

Where is the landscape in which I grew up? Flawed in many, many ways to be sure, but at least one in which gun owners hunted, did not demand their “second amendment rights” and the only duck and cover was to shield ourselves (ha) from a nuclear explosion.

Holidays, Humanities, Memories, Retirement

A Curse on All our Houses

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Lughnasa and the Cheshbon Nefesh Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Shadow of the morning darkness. Nerve ablations scheduled. Artemis. Mythic Quest. Apple TV. Tenderloin, sweet Corn, sliced Peppers. Lunch. All labor. Robots. A.I. The cloud. Desktop and laptop and handheld computers. Nividia. AMD. Intel. Spending on AI data centers. The environmental cost of AI. Life. Death. Mystery.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tzelem elohim. All made of the same stuff.

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Ometz Lev. Strength of the heart. The inner courage to move forward. Courage.

Tarot:  #4, The Lord (Druid Craft Deck)

  • Stability and structure: Creating a solid, secure foundation for a project, family, or business. This card suggests a time to build and organize.

One brief shining: The inner world, a place of dreams and memories, emotions and intuition, Progoff’s inner cathedral, Jung’s shadow and the collective unconscious, the nefesh and the ruach and the neshama, where the outer world of materiality has no foothold, blends and develops our experience with our gifts, creating an I am.

 

Labor day: A bit late, but hey, I’m retired.

From my 50’s Indiana childhood I imprinted a steadfast rule. School starts the day after Labor Day and ends the day before Memorial Day. Anything else violates my understanding of a proper childhood. Colorado schools, for example, start in mid-August and end in mid to late May. Beep! Wrong. No kid should have to go back to school before the State Fair is done. I’m just sayin’.

Labor day returns our focus, however briefly, to labor unions, the working class, blue collar folks. The citizens of Alexandria, Indiana. My home town. Workers who made batteries and alternators at Delco Remy. Workers who made headlights and taillights for Guide Lamp. Who worked one of the three shifts: days, evening, nights. Yes, in that time General Motors required enough batteries and headlights to require factories that ran twenty-four hours a day.

No longer. What is the future of this kind of labor? Bleak. Even with red tie guy’s tariffs. The return of manufacturing to US soil? Unlikely in any substantial way. Global trade will not go away and the benefit (?) of cheaper labor will always land somewhere around the globe.

Then, of course. A.I. What will it do to the labor force? It may extend the leveled sites of Delco and Guide to paralegals,  lawyers, doctor’s offices, newsrooms, and classrooms. So called knowledge workers. No one really knows.

But, disruption for workers of all sorts has been the norm in the not free for all of capitalist economies. Whatever AI and robotics can do will shuffle the deck of work, of that I have no doubt. But how much? Hard to predict.

Work, if you recall your Bereshit, Genesis, is a curse laid on Adam and Eve for eating of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A curse. We pretend it’s ennobling because we need to. We have to justify our need to leave a warm bed, a lover or spouse, the kids and the dog to, what, win bread? Move up, gain status? Do something worthwhile? Yes. A curse on all our houses.