Category Archives: Memories

Beyond the Boundaries, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Torah

More things, Horatio

September 16, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa and the Harvest Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Visa. Stolen number. Gold on the Mountains. Coming. Crisp nights. Herme’s Journey. Candles. Cernunnos. Paul, splitting wood. Ode and Elizabeth. Tom on his bike. Bill and Marietta. Full Harvest Moon on the 18th. September in the Rockies. Elk Cows grazing along the roadside. The Rut. Green and its many shades.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Aspens in the Fall

Kavannah: AWE יִרְאָה Yira Awe, reverence, fear (פְּלִיאָה Plia: Wonder, amazement) (כּוֹבֶד רֹאשׁ Koved Rosh: Seriousness, solemnity, gravitas) [קַלוּת רֹאשׁ Kalut Rosh: Disregard, levity, flippancy; literally “light-headedness”]

One brief shining: Mabon, the fall harvest holiday, begins on the Fall Equinox, September 22nd this year, but the full harvest moon arrives sooner, both raising memories of nights driving on gravel roads past fields of Corn stubble, across Nebraska as the combines cut their wide swaths through gold fields of Wheat, Pumpkin patches filled with orange globes ready for front porches and pies, of Grain trucks lined up to unload at train side granaries, of Shine on Shine on Harvest Moon for me and my gal.

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a long time. Religion and its cultured despisers. Friedrich Schleiermacher. Why, I’m asking here, in a time of rapid secularization, do I keep choosing a religious lens through which to view the world? I don’t believe in God, not in any way that would resonate with folks in Alexandria First Methodist or probably anybody at United Theological Seminary. I’ve left two traditions behind, Christianity and Unitarian-Universalism, only to convert to Judaism at age 76. Paganism, finding the sacred in the ordinary, especially for me in the turning of the Great Wheel and the world of Wild Neighbors, Mountains, Streams, and Plants remains core for me as it has since about age 40.

Part of the answer lies in the middah of Yirah. Awe, reverence, wonder, amazement. Maybe the whole answer. Like a Plant, heliocentric, turns towards Great Sol, I’m Yirahcentric, turning my face, my lev toward Awe. Can’t help it. I see beauty in the eyes of a toddler searching for the next target as they dash around a playground. In the Dog hanging out the window of a car, letting the breeze bring scents. In the Moon as it changes. In the smile of a friend. In the songs of the Morning Service. In the shema. In studying ancient scriptures to learn what those in past found yirah worthy.

Awe grounds me, grabs me, says to me, hey, pay attention. Here. Right here. At the memory of Kate. Rigel snuffling my hands as I tried to tie my shoe laces. Perhaps you, perhaps most people, can experience awe without a religious frame for it. I want the constant reminder that the Jewish liturgical year, the cycle of the parshas, Jewish friends bring to me. Oh, my sacred community. It’s right here in Alan, Joanne, Ginny, Janice, Tara, Ariaan, Jamie, Rebecca, Sally. Sharing with me a sense that the world has more, far more, to offer than even the white coats and their laboratories, their microscopes and telescopes and centrifuges can grasp.

Which no way denigrates what science has made known. I’m in awe of the CERN collider, the deep underground searches for neutrinos, the close readings of the double helix. The images of the Hubble, the James Webb? Awesome. Wonderful. Amazing.

Yet I remain aware of how shallow an understanding even these majestic human endeavors bring us. Consider the red dots in a James Webb image. What are they? Galaxies. Is it amazing that the Webb can see these galaxies far away in distance and time? Oh, yes. But consider. They are Galaxies. Billions of Stars, Planets that we can experience only as tiny red dots. Or the neuroscientists searching for consciousness. Where is it?

Perhaps the easiest example of what I’m trying to say: love, justice, compassion. Feelings and abstract thoughts. Find those Sam Harris.

As Hamlet famously observed: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” Perhaps I gravitate toward religion because it openly acknowledges this. Religion is, in this sense, more humble than scientistic reverence. More humble than any certainty blathered on by politicians or even psychologists.

I bracket those who seek refuge in religion against a chaotic and uncertain world. I understand that impulse, the desire to know for sure. Yet it is a trap, a leghold trap, that keeps its prey away from the very thing they seek: freedom.

Two Jews, three opinions. Yes.

Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Holidays, Judaism, Korea, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Shabbat, Travel

Chuseok and Teshuvah. Double post. see below as well.

September 14, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa and the Harvest Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Torah. Jamie. Mussar. Ruth and Gabe. Lighting the candles. The shema. CBE. Mary and Guru. Mark in Bangkok. My son and Seoah in Okgwa for the Chuseok Festival.* Alan and his busy weekend. Good sleeping. Kristie. Second opinions. Cancer. Spinal stenosis. Sally. Aging. Its joys and its struggles. Scott and Yin. Men. Women. UC Boulder.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friendship

Kavannah: Teshuvah-“…the journey of teshuvah is not about “turning over a new leaf” or being “born again”; rather, it is simply finding our way back to the land of our soul…Every person possesses a core of inherent goodness whose integrity cannot be compromised. While outwardly, one’s actions may not always reflect this inner goodness…people always have the ability to shed their superficial facade and do teshuvah—returning to their truest, deepest selves.” chabad.org

One brief shining: Chuseok draws families together in North and South Korea, often back to the places of their birth or raising, like little Okgwa for Seoah, back for thanksgiving for family, for the harvest, for love between a brother and a sister, all over that land, a return to the place of your formation; we might say finding a way back to the land of your soul, which has an individual component, of course, but also and strongly a community, familial component, though, yes, the land of your soul and your homeland may be also be widely divergent.

The key move here, from a Jewish perspective, lies in the neshamah, that essence of you, that buddha nature, that stainless and unstainable core to which one can always return, no matter how hamartia-missing the mark-has confused your nefesh, the outward facing portion of you that changes, grows, shrinks, expands depending on which of the many wolves you feed.

The month of Elul, our current month in the Lunar Calendar for 5784, encourages all Jews to chasbon nefesh, accounting of the soul. Look back over the last year and see if you got lost in moments of despair over an illness. Like I did. See if you judged others harshly, rather than judging them on their merits. Like I did. See if you neglected opportunities to act with loving-kindness. Like I did. See if you failed to discern again the purpose of your life. Like I did. See if you failed again to act on that purpose. Like I did. Take steps to amend those personal lapses that you can. Like I have. Take steps to open your lev to your true path. As I have.

Teshuvah is not about guilt, however. It is about sweeping away the barriers in your life to being who you most truly are: a sacred becoming, a moment in the ever expanding tapestry of novelty that is the universe and everything. A unique and irreplaceable soul, a unique, never to be repeated, ishi-go ishi-e self awaits your joyous return.

No stains that lead to damnation. No sins even God could not forgive. Only you and the land of your soul. To which, at any time, you can, with exuberance and calm, return.

*”It’s the other time of the year in Korea besides Lunar New Year’s Day, aka Seollal (설날), when family members gather together. Usually, this means traveling to the home of the head of the family, often one’s grandparents.

According to legend, an ancient king of the kingdom, Silla, started a month-long weaving contest between two teams. The team who had woven the most cloth won, and they were treated by the losing team with food, drinks, and other gifts. Thus starting the tradition of Thanksgiving almost 2000 years ago.

Some scholars also tie Chuseok to Korea’s history, wherein agriculture was a big part of daily life. Koreans commonly offered rituals to ancestors to give thanks and celebrate the harvest moon.

Traditionally, the purpose of Chuseok was for family members to gather together during the full harvest moon. This usually appeared in the sky on the 15^thday of the 8^th month of the lunar calendar. Families wanted to celebrate and show gratitude to their ancestors for the fruitful harvest.

Chuseok is very much a traditional holiday where many of the customs from the old days still stand.”

Chuseok in Korea

Memories

Photogravure

September 9, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa and the Harvest Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers on the harvest of their lives. Covid and flu vaccines. Chicken wings and deli salad. 3 hour plus nap. Busy Monday: Workout. Geowater. Scott Simpson. Rebecca, Terry, and Joanne. Muddy Buck. Coal Mine Dragon Chinese. Dawn coming later, dusk earlier. Celebrex. Living in the slow lane. Herme. His journey.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My pantry

Kavannah: SERENITY Menucha

One brief shining: As I left the synagogue on Saturday, Veronica followed me out; it made me feel good to see you put your arm around Matt, I said, and, using her own metaphor, to see a hard heart soften, that means relationships in tough spots do have a chance, and touched my heart; remember to leave your name badge said the Jefferson County Sheriff’s deputy, shifting her bulky belt.

THE SUMMER

June

July

Breakfast at Lucille’s after meeting my radiation oncologist

August

Deer Children at the CBE preschool playground

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Memories

Repost from Sept. 4, 2022: Jon has died.

September 4, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

The Harvest Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Ruth. Gabe. Jon. Kate, always Kate. Death. Life. The passage of Time. The Great Wheel, turning. Lugnasa. Fall. Samain. Then the fallow time. The fourth phase. After childhood and education, after family and career, after early retirement and young old age. A time of life’s harvest gathered in for the final years. Knowing that, yes, spring will come for the young ones, summer, too. And we will rely on their memory to keep us here in the physical world.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Grief

Kavanah: COMPASSION רַחֲמִים Rachamim Compassion, empathy; related to רֶחֶם womb; cognitive function = personal feeling

One brief shining: A shock in the late evening, the call from Ruth I can still hear today-“Dad is dead.”-disbelief, sadness for the kids, a rush in my heart to get to them, the long forty-five minute drive through traffic and street lights, past stores and filling stations, others going about their life while one we knew would never again find his way in this material world.

The Repost:

Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon

Monday gratefuls: Jon. Ruth. Gabe. Meme. Death. Again. Arapahoe county medical investigator. Police. Family gathering. Again. Sarah. BJ. Joe. Seoah. Kep. Aurora. Jon’s house. Plan. Change plan. That gurney.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: the cycle of life and death

A phone call. About 6:45 pm. One ring on the cell phone. Off. Then the landline. Hard to understand. Someone in distress. Crying. Dad’s dead. It was Ruth. She had gone down in the basement of their house to ask him a question and found him. He was cold.

Yes, of course I’ll be there. Threw on my jeans. Grabbed my keys and my phone. Headed down the hill for the 45 minute plus drive in to Aurora.

Joe called. He had plans underway. Be here tomorrow or Wednesday with Seoah. I called Sarah. No luck. All the way down thinking. Jon. Ruth. Gabe. Meme, their cat. What happens now?

Jon. A tortured soul. Buffeted too much by life, never found that life preserver that could have kept him afloat. He would have been 54 this year. Not suicide. Except in a post-divorce slow motion lack of self-care way.

By the time I got there the EMTs had come and gone. Pronounced him dead. An Aurora police car sat near the house. Jen was there.

Ruthie ran up to my car as I drove by. I stopped. She leaned in and sobbed.

Once I parked both Gabe and Ruth ran to me and we formed a tight circle, hugging each other, a defense against this mystery, so ordinary, yet so harsh, so final. Crying. Crying.

Both of them surprised me by asking me how I got through the death of my mother. They knew I was young and that it was sudden. I was numb for a long time. In shock, I said.

Gabe went with me to get some water. Are you really leaving in February? I really wish you’d stay longer. Oh. Arrow found my heart. Focus on the now.

Back at the house on Florence Avenue a vigil of sorts set up. Waiting on the medical investigator for Araphahoe County and the coroner’s van. I had to take my Mountain appropriate sweatshirt off in deference to the 83 degrees of an Aurora late evening.

Jon’s house is in a working class neighborhood. Small brick homes placed close to each other. A mixed community of Latino and poorer whites. The light from the police cruiser painted the house across from Jon’s in a thin layer of bluish white. Hushed conversations.

Jen and I. Thought we might get along but her animosity and cruel treatment of both Jon and Kate was too close to the surface. We had different sectors and the kids came to each of us at different points.

The coroner’s van came. Ruth gave Jon’s quilt wrapped body a final hug and the gurney took him on his last exit from his house.

I left shortly after, driving back up the hill. Ruth and Gabe headed to their mom’s. Sarah and BJ are on their way. Joe and Seoah.

Many things unclear. How will I communicate with Ruth and Gabe now that they will be with their mom full time? What kind of service? Where? Ruth said Jon wanted to be cremated.

The coroner will have his body at least until Tuesday late afternoon. They have to determine cause of death, rule out suicide, other possibilities. Sarah, as his closest blood relative, has legal authority since Ruth is under 18.

Jon had no will. What happens to the house, the cars? All of the stuff in the house. The house itself.

Lots of details ahead. For which I have little energy. Feeling like Colorado has been about too much disease and death. Conflicted about Gabe’s comment. Wanting so much to start a new chapter far from here. Hearing him. And, Ruth.

Memories, Minnesota, Politics, US History

The Flyover

August 30, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

The Off to College Moon

Friday gratefuls: Dreams. Irene. Mnsaves. 529’s. Cash. Sue Bradshaw. Great Sol. My Lodgepole Companion. The sweetness of life. Alan and Joanne. Tom. Joy. Diane. Indiana. Morristown. Alexandria. Muncie. Ball State. Wabash. The liberal arts. Ruth and the UC-Boulder library. Coach Prime. Finding a jeweler for my Pearl. Whippets. Irish Wolfhounds. Sight hounds. Wolf-dogs.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The lessons of pain

Kavanah: HOLINESS קְדֻשָּׁה Kedusha Holiness, dedication, specialness (רוּחָנִי Ruchani: spiritual, cognitive function = intuitive/abstract) On this one I part company with tradition. I do not consider these antonyms poles of this midot. [גוּפָנִי Gufani: physical, earthly; literally “bodily/fleshly”; cognitive function = sensory/concrete] [חִלוֹנִי Chiloni, Common, worldly, secular] I specifically seek-and find-the holy, the sacred in the physical, the earthly, the body. In the ordinary and the common.

One brief shining: Long ago my journey veered away from any notion of transcendence, of anything spiritual that took me away from my body, from my deep interconnection, even interpenetration with the world as I experience it daily; the Celts taught me that yes there is an Otherworld, but that it does not distract from, rather it enhances the holiness of Animals, Plants, Water, Fire, Air, Mother Earth so that this world and that world meet, in my case often through the wonder of my own body or the gentle swaying of the branches of my Lodgepole Companion or the fawn, already losing her spots who dines in my backyard.

Since Tim Walz’s nomination for Vice President on Kamala Harris’s ticket, the Midwest is having a moment. Having lived in the Midwest from the age of one and a half through sixty-eight, I’d say I qualify as a Midwesterner. I now have both the experience of those sixty plus years and the kind of clarity that ten years and nine hundred miles distance provide, having lived in the Rocky Mountain West since late 2014.

Here are the states I consider Midwestern: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan-the Upper Midwest and Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio-the lower Midwest. The U.S. government includes Missouri, North and South Dakota, and Kansas, but they fall, in my thinking, in another category. Perhaps the Plains States. My criteria is neither demographic nor geographic, rather it is what I felt was the Midwest all the time I lived there.

Though raised and schooled through undergraduate work in Indiana, the Lower Midwest, I spent my adult life after college in the Upper Midwest, first Wisconsin, then Minnesota. The distinctions between Lower and Upper are real, yet so are the shared realities.

I find these stereotypical “finds” by those writing about the Midwest at least mildly insulting. Hotdish. So, casseroles. So what. Found in church basements and kitchen tables all across the U.S. Friendliness. Maybe more a surface congeniality rather than the surface grumpiness of New England? Both conceal a wariness about strangers I find usual rather than unusual. There’s a wholesomeness in the Midwest. Check out any Midwestern high school, bar scene, the back pages of a big city’s free newspaper. Look at this silly article and see other stereotypes like Midwesterner’s say jeet (?), have never worn a proper Halloween costume, and wedding photos are taken in fields. Come on, guys.

My Midwest has a distinct and often apposite combination of heavy industry and agriculture. Beans and corns vie with Detroit, Akron, Gary. Both have taken heavy hits over the last part of the last century and into this one. The Rust Belt. Corporate farming. My Midwest has Chicago as its big city though Cincinnati and Cleveland, Detroit, and the Twin Cities are also major urban areas. My Midwest does have an emphasis on county fairs and state fairs that does mark it out, primarily due to the strong agricultural sector in all these states. My Midwest may have been more religious once, but that has changed rapidly in past decades.

My Midwest shares with other regions systemic ills like racism, sexism, classism. Witness George Floyd, for example.

Not sure how much further I want to go with this today. Thought it would be more fun to write, but it kind of brought me down. Why? Don’t know.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Memories

Witness

August 8, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

The Off to College Moon

Thursday gratefuls: MVP. Ruth. Diane. Tom. The up over and the down under. Bangkok. Songtan. Melbourne. Orca Island. San Francisco. Robbitson. Shorewood. Minneapolis/St. Paul metro. Evergreen. Conifer. Genesee. Denver. Lakewood. Luke and Leo. Shadow Mountain. Black Mountain. Conifer Mountain. Rain, Rain. Come again. And again.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Harris/Walz

One brief shining: Sitting cross legged beneath the big painting by Jerry, the Blue Ridge Mountains landscape, Ruth explained how she and her roommates needed to solve a mistake, housing at UC Boulder had put two young women and one young man in the same room, but the conversation swiftly turned to classes: American history to 1865, Political Science 101 in the election year of all election years, studio arts, ways of knowing and finally whether to get a parking spot-no-and a possible library job-yes.

Kavanah: PEACE Shalom (shuh-LOME) שָׁלוֹם Peace, quietness, wholeness

(קוֹר רוּחַ Kor Ruach, core ROO-ach: Calm, composure, literally a “cool spirit”) [בֶּהָלָה Behala, beh-ha-LAH: Fear, alarm, panic]

Smoky Sky, cool Air, decent Rain yesterday. A feeling of Fall, premature, yes, but welcome, very welcome anyhow. Four seasons. The Great Wheel turning once again. Nights lengthening. My favorite half of the year not far away.

This August 8th life incorporates these changes, makes the late night from MVP feel integrated with this resurrection moment, this reincarnation of my neshamah. The milky gray of the Sky has combined with my Vaad of last night, reflected in the heavens. The MVP group was the last round of folks I brought into my most recent cancer news since Ruth and I discussed it yesterday.

The August 7th life filled my cup while accentuating my sorrow. Yes, sorrow. That dark sadness from the last few days (lives) remains. Its tendrils gathering, pooling. A sense of foreboding. And. Ruth came up. We worked on transferring the MinnesotaSaves college fund money to my name. Ruth filling out the forms with her neat handwriting, discussing with the MinnesotaSaves folks what we needed to do. When we finished with that, I took a nap while she filled out a job application for work/study at the UC Boulder main library.

When I got up, I made lox, cream cheese, and bagels with onions and capers. I know. A little on the nose, but, hey! We both enjoyed them

Her excitement about her classes triggered those oh so sweet memories of the first days of a new semester, a new quarter when a new field of study lay before me. Or, a deepening of a favorite area. And dealing with a roommate issue, so first days of college.

Having her here felt warm, loving. Though I did end up tired.

And that before I drove to Evergreen for MVP. Which went until 9:45 pm. Discussing responsibility and gratitude. Family. My vaad. Rich, Susan, Joanne, and Ron as witnesses. Not fixers. Not even empathizers, but listeners and seers. Though I have to face this alone internally, I am not alone. I’m in the company of those walking me home. As I walk them.

Colorado, Jefferson County, Memories, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

Mountain Time

July 21, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

The Mountain Summer Moon

Sunday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Sleep. That nightmare with the undefeatable monster who kills everyone, enjoys it, and disappears at times. The Rockies. Gabe. Walking. RTD. My son and Seoah. Murdoch the languid. Bagel table yesterday. All Dogs. Everywhere. This benighted nation. The finished line. Blue Sky. Gentle Black Mountain.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My Son

One brief shining: We got here, let Rigel, Vega, and Kep out of the SUV after Tom’s marathon driving session from Andover to Shadow Mountain, the three Dogs ran around in the yard, peed, drank some Water, then ran right back to the SUV, jumped inside, and settled down for the ride home.

Colorado has had many moments. The first one for me was that Samhain when I took possession of the house after closing. Walked out in the backyard. Three Mule Deer Bucks grazed quietly. I got closer to them than I would now, looked in their eyes. They looked back. By the time they turned and bounded away, I had the feeling that the Mountains had welcomed me, saying I belonged here.

Acclimating to the altitude. While unpacking. Left Kate and me huffing and puffing. That one day in May the next year when I learned I had prostate cancer. The consolation of Deer Creek Canyon that followed. Prostatectomy in July of the same year. First time meeting Seoah.

Finding CBE through the class on King David taught by Bonnie. Meeting Marilyn and Tara there.

Doing the Fire mitigation, felling Lodgepoles with blue plastic ribbon tied to their trunk. The Durango/Mesa Verde trip with Paul, Tom, Ode.

My son and Seoah getting married in Gwangu. Kate and mine’s last big trip together. Including Singapore and Mary’s kind gift of a stay in a hotel suite. The magic of Umar. Vega dying when we got home. Jon’s divorce. His decline starting.

Cancer returning. Radiation. Buying Ruby for the A.C. while I drove to Lone Tree. Kate’s slow decline starting.

Seoah coming in January to help out, having to stay until June. The pandemic. Gertie dying.

Kate’s many hospitalizations. Her joyful time at CBE, living her Jewish life. Her death.

Mourning and grief. Jon’s death.

Somewhere in this time the start of the Ancient Brothers.

Three years of visits to my son and Seoah in Hawai’i, then Korea after Kate died.

Rigel’s death and Kepler’s death.

The Elk Bull looked at me from within the Forest. In the rain. And the Mule Deer looking in my bedroom window late at night.

My conversion and time overall at CBE.

Trip to San Francisco.

Now three years plus after Kate’s death, prostate cancer becoming more serious.

Through all of this. The Rockies. Black Mountain. Shadow Mountain. Conifer Mountain. Bergen Mountain. Kate’s Creek and Valley. The Wild Neighbors. Black Bears. Elk. Mule Deer. Mountain Lions. Squirrels, Red and Abert’s. Marmosets. Chipmunks. Voles. Fox. Bobcat. Lynx. Rabbits. Rattle Snakes. Bull Snakes. Black Widow Spiders. Wolf Spiders. Maxwell Creek. Cub Creek. Upper Bear Creek. Bear Creek. Lake Evergreen. Evergreen, a Mountain town.

Family, Feelings, Memories

Fool’s journeys

July 10, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

The Mountain Summer Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Ruth and Gabe. 202 Thai. Maximalist decor. Going off to college with all its attendant worries and excitements. All first year students everywhere. Apical dominance. Phytochromes. New translation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth

One brief shining: She sat on the William Morris reupholstery fabric she had helped me pick out, alert and sensitive as we talked of her upcoming time in Boulder at the University of Colorado, my heart lifted up and up as she spoke of duvets, meal plans, registration, the three person dorm room in Willville, anxiety and excitement mixing in that stew of I want to be on my own but I’d prefer it be at home.

Ruth and Gabe have come up to the Mountains for three days. Cooler here. 102 in Denver on Friday. Ouch! 9 plus years they’ve come up to this house on Shadow Mountain. They both love it here. Lots of memories. Thanksgivings. Hanukahs. Birthdays. Overnights. Dogs. Grandma. Their Dad. Now time with me and the Mountain, the Mountains.

This time has a different feel for several reasons. The most obvious being Ruth’s impending matriculation at UofC Boulder. She will no longer be down the Hill in Denver on Galena after August 20th. She moves to a dorm room in Williams Village East. Here’s a promo look. Oh, the anticipation.

Williams houses first year students and returning engineering majors. Gee. How bout that Tom. Bill. Helen. Veronica. Ruth with all the budding builders of bridges, designers of safer propane tanks, forensic investigators of all sorts. Not to mention rocket scientists and managers of nuclear energy plants.

Ruth and I share a trauma. Both of us had to leave home, make that big transition without one of our parents. Their deaths still fresh in memory. Unresolved issues with the parent at home. The dead parent the one who supported us, loved our uniqueness.

I still remember the nightmares, the wobbly self-esteem, the feeling of working the trapeze without a net. I was not alone, Dad, Mary, and Mark came to see me. Reassure me. But my lived experience was of abandonment.

Too, though, I also remember the first philosophy class, J. Harry Cotton smoking his paper wrapped plug of tobacco in a curved pipe. My mind undergoing the peculiar dismantling that only a good philosophy professor can enable. I fell in love with philosophy, a discipline that has, more than any other, defined my approach to life and thought.

And Contemporary Civilization, or C.C. as it was widely known. A required course for all freshman. Yes, freshman remains correct. All male Wabash. In C.C. the broad sweep of history, well, to be fair, Western history, came alive. Though I would never be a history major, from that point on I took critical thinking and historical context as essential to good decision making, to life.

What I’m saying here is that life is always polyvalent. Yes, I was in deep psychic pain around Mom’s death, about arguments with Dad, about my now muddled future. Yes, I found the life of the mind, a love affair that continues to this day. It was the beginning of a Fool’s journey.

Memories, Minnesota, Politics, Science, US History, Weather +Climate

I’ve seen Fire and I’ve seen Rain

June 30, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Shabbat. Leo. Luke in Jacksonville. Ginny and Janice. The Blackbird. Kittredge. In case of flash flood climb to safety. Black Mountain Drive to Brook Forest Drive. Down the hill to Evergreen. Passing a green Arapaho National Forest. Full Streams thanks to recent Rain. Seeing individual Trees like the Ponderosa growing alone on the side of a Cliff.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rain

One brief shining: Leo sleeps on the rug next to the computer, dreaming of Luke and bones and tennis balls with squeakers in them while I hit first this key then that, glancing up to spend a bit of time with my Lodgepole Companion, looking past them to Black Mountain and beyond to the milky gray of a Cloud resting above it, wondering if that means yet more Rain.

We have had Rain. Seems like more than average though I can’t find data to support that. Hoping for a healthy Monsoon season which usually starts in July. Afternoon Rains. Whatever combination of precipitation types that keep our wildfire risk low.

The Cloudy weather we’ve had on occasion over the last couple of weeks reminded me of an early problem I had with Colorado. Too many Sunny days. I missed good ole Midwestern gloomy, overcast weather. Weather that meant I needed to stay inside. Read. Write. Cook. Sunny days meant I needed to be outside, enjoying the limited moments of great weather. Which meant. I constantly felt like I needed to go outside, not dither around inside. So much so that I longed for a stormy week loaded with Thunderheads and pelting rain.

Over that now. Except. When it’s Cloudy and Rainy. Then I revert to Midwest nostalgia, remembering Rainy days curled up in a chair reading. The world of the moment subsumed by the world of the text.

Just a moment: Yeah. He should step away. Too much confirmation of stereotypes and GOP talking points about his capacity. Yes, I believe he can still do the job. But I don’t see him or Democratic chances in November recovering from the debate debacle. We need to win this election. It matters and we all know it. If Biden can’t win, we need someone who can.

Friend Tom Crane found this. It had a profound affect on me as I watched it.

“About 12 seconds into this video, something unusual happens. The Earth begins to rise. Never seen by humans before, the rise of the Earth over the limb of the Moon occurred about 55.5 years ago and surprised and amazed the crew of Apollo 8. The crew immediately scrambled to take still images of the stunning vista caused by Apollo 8‘s orbit around the Moon. The featured video is a modern reconstruction of the event as it would have looked were it recorded with a modern movie camera…” Astronomy Picture of the Day

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Memories, US History

New Harmony. Fireflies.

June 22, 2024 Charles Leave a comment

Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: The Billy Joel/Paul Simon shabbat. Veronica. Tom. Paul. Joan. Irv. Kaddish. Yahrzeits. Numbers. Parsha Beha’alotcha. Lisa. The James Webb. The Hubble. Euclid. The context provided by the Cosmos. Storm Before the Calm. Election year 2024. The June 22, 2024 life. Mezuzahs. Orion. Betelgeuse. Rigel. Vega. Polaris. Arcturus.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Our magnificent, short, wonderful life

One brief shining: Each summer the ceiling fan in my bedroom makes sleep possible, yet it refused to turn on, so I called Altitude Electric who sent hipster bearded Karsten; no bueno, no bueno, he said to the work of the previous electrician who installed this fan, as he pulled its main body out of the ceiling and sparks flew, tripping the breaker.

Home. This and that. Ceiling fan that doesn’t work. Grass needed cutting for Fire mitigation. Marina calling to ask how my roof was doing. Mini-split filters need cleaning. You know.

On some long ago trip back to Indiana I made a brief stop in New Harmony. It sits north of Evansville in the far southern part of the state and far enough west to be on the Wabash River with Illinois on the opposite bank.

Whoa. What a place. Founded by Rappites, followers of a German Christian theosophist* and pietist, George Rapp, the Harmonist Society created three model communities, two in Pennsylvania and one in Indiana, now New Harmony. They held goods in common and were so successful in their business endeavors that Rapp sold Harmony, Indiana to Robert Owen, a Welsh industrialist. Rapp felt their secular success was compromising their religious mission.

Rapp moved the Harmonists back to Pennsylvania while Owen found a number of scientists, artists and educators who left Philadelphia on a riverboat, bound for New Harmony. It became known as the Boatload of Knowledge. Owen was a utopian who wanted to create a socialist society in his New Harmony experiment. The experiment failed, but not before the United States Geological Survey was founded.

In its latter day existence New Harmony has become a conference center, an open air museum with buildings from the Rapp and Owen eras preserved. It includes, too, a large labyrinth created by the Harmonists.

Phillip Johnson’s roofless church, a non-denominational walled compound, stands across the street from the Red Geranium Restaurant. Behind the Red Geranium lies Paul Tillich Park, the burial site of one of the twentieth centuries most prominent Christian theologians.

There is a short street that runs between the roofless church and Paul Tillich Park. One evening on a subsequent visit to New Harmony I left the Red Geranium at dusk after a tasty dinner. Strolling I went into Paul Tillich Park, read some of the inscribed boulders, left the Park and continued down the road. It didn’t go much further until it entered a grove of Maple and Oak and Beech Trees which arched over it.

Fireflies. Thousands of them. Lit the arched space over the road, giving it depth and wonder. My then immersion into Celtic lore meant I could only see this as an entrance to the Otherworld. Walking towards the grove, I imagined myself coming out in Faery where time passes differently and returning years later to a changed New Harmony.

Instead I chose to stop and enjoy this amazing sight.

*Christian theosophy, also known as Boehmian theosophy and theosophy, refers to a range of positions within Christianity that focus on the attainment of direct, unmediated knowledge of the nature of divinity and the origin and purpose of the universe. Wiki

**Philadelphia Academy of Sciences…President William Maclure, “father of American geology,” had gathered (members of the Academy) them all aboard the keelboat Philantropist [they used the French spelling]: scientists, artists, musicians, and educators, some bringing along their students, and all were eager to settle in Robert Owen’s New Harmony community on the Indiana frontier. JSTOR

***By Leepaxton at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9065488