Category Archives: Minnesota

Colorado, Friends, Minnesota, The Move

Restless

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Samain                                                                  Closing Moon

A rambling, aimless energy. A similar feeling to the one just before a major holiday, when preparations are mostly finished, but the time is not yet. Wandering, a bit difficult to focus, not sure what’s important, since most of the important things have either been done or cannot be done yet. We have a mortgage, a new home, a fence contractor at work, a moving company scheduled, workers ready to renew our old home after we vacate it. Yes, there are a few things left for us to pack, but they’ll be finished soon. But we don’t leave until mid-December. An odd place.

This is no longer the neither here nor there feeling, nor the liminal space of living in the move. This is a before the move feeling. We’ve pushed Sisyphus-like this boulder up, up, up the hill and now it’s about to take all that momentum and careen down the other side. But. Not. Quite. Yet.

Off to play sheepshead tonight, perhaps my last time unless I teach the game to Jon, Jen, Kate and Barb. A good distraction. And another farewell.

Just went online, put in Colorado sheepshead and found, to my surprise, a meetup with 10 members, formed Oct. 25, 2014 for players of sheepshead. I joined. Who knows? Might be fun.

Forgot to mention that I also got an invitation to be introduced to the Conifer Rotary. I’ll probably pass on that. Sierra Club or the local Democratic party are more likely affiliations for me.

 

Aging, Memories, Minnesota, Third Phase

Not Expected

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Samain                                                                  Closing Moon

10″ for sure. Maybe 12-14. A lot for a first snow. Ushering in a week of cold weather. Minnesota. Ah.

Yesterday when I visited the eye doc a couple a bit older than myself came in. They both had on black sports jackets, the same, with MSRA on the front. I didn’t think much about it until they went to the receptionist to check in and I saw MSRA on the back with the acronym spelled out: Minnesota Street Rod Association. Not what I expected.

Which brings up a regular occurrence. Trying to imagine what an older person was like during the 60’s. I know from looking at myself in the mirror that you can’t tell from a persons post medicare card appearance where they  stood in those days. Even the gray pony-tail crowd is as likely to be composed of veterans as ex-hippies and draft protesters.

Not many of us wear our enthusiasms so clearly as the hot-rodders gathered with me for our glaucoma check.

 

Colorado, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, The Move

Leaving the Leaves

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Samain                                                                             Closing Moon

Outside today, mulching with fallen leaves the beds on which I spread the broadcast yesterday. As I dispersed the leaves, enjoying their rich smell reminiscent of hay lofts and the old days of burning the leaves by the curb, it came to me that Colorado, especially at 8,800 feet has mostly conifers. No leaves. There are aspen, but they are the more scarce tree, the only deciduous one that I know in the front range at that altitude. Leaving behind working with fallen leaves in the autumn. Another mark of the move.

Both Kate and I remarked that though this place has been good to us and for us, it’s time to let someone with fresh vigor take it over. On Black Mountain Drive we’ll have two, maybe three raised beds, no yard, no perennial flower beds. I will have to blow snow again, but I’m ready for that. The amount of outdoor maintenance will be significantly less. There will be some added interior work since at least until we sell this house (Andover) we’ll be doing our own weekly housecleaning, but that’s well within our capabilities.

It’s true there will again be a fence and inside the fence dogs. That means inevitable fence work. We’re going to try a combination of 2×4’s nailed between posts at the bottom of the no-climb wire fence and invisible fence run at its middle. The fence itself will be five feet high. This might work. I’m cautious because I’ve experienced a jail break from every combination I’ve used. The prisoners have all day everyday to figure a way out.

It looks like we’re going to get our first major snow event here well before Conifer, which is unusual. Every one I talked to out there shook their head wondering where the snow was. I’m sure it will come. Probably around December 18th.

Colorado, Friends, Minnesota, The Move

Neither Here nor There

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Samain                                                                        Closing Moon

Finding myself in a strange psychic netherworld, neither wholly ready to act, nor wholly unwilling, between this state and that state. This mood will lift, perhaps by tomorrow, but right now. Neither this nor that. Doesn’t seem odd to me, one possible result from what feels now like a rush to the finish, yet the location of that rush to the finish being a place of stasis for over 20 years.

Living in the move has been our mantra for the last 8 months and we will, in just over a month, live the move. That’s a different interior location, the difference between preparation and action. While in the mode of preparation we have been able to live the comfortable old life and indulge in fantasy about Colorado. Now, though, the preparation is coming to an end and we will have to face the real world consequences of our decision.

One conversation I had with a friend over the last month lead us to wonder if there is no morality, just consequences. That is, ideas and actions are neither good nor bad, just consequential. Whatever the truth value of that idea, it does seem that maturation comes when we accept responsibility for our actions and their consequences.

In this case there are two large stroke consequences that have been obvious from the beginning; the notion of living in the move has been an exercise in accepting both of them. The first is a going away from, a leaving behind of friends, memories, familiar places, habits and routines. The second is a moving toward, a discovering of new places, new friends, creating new memories, habits and routines. No, it’s not as black and white as I state it here. The two consequences will bleed into each other, interact. Friends will visit Colorado; we will return to Minnesota for example.

But the consequences remain. Physical separation, especially 900 miles, changes the nature of all kinds of relationships: personal, geographical, botanical, navigational. The exact nature of the changes will not be known for several years, probably, and that’s a good thing. A gradual rather than a sudden unveiling seems easier on the psyche.

Colorado, Minnesota, The Move, The West

Deep in Memory

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Fall                                                                                                  Closing Moon

On the ladder taking down the angelic weather vane I noticed the poplar, ironwood, elm and oak still gave some color to our woods. Bare branches mostly, but a few lingering leaves held on. I’ve found myself wistful this fall, realizing that with this move to the arid west, and reinforcing that, a move to 8,800 feet, we’re going to an alpine eco-system from an oak savannah. All my life (with the exception of 1.5 years in Oklahoma at the very beginning) I’ve lived in the remnants of the big woods or near the boreal forest. You can say I’m a mammal adapted to the ways of deciduous forests and their near cousin the northern forests.

The blue skies of autumn with the cirrus clouds providing white slashes for expression seem wedded, to me, to the falling of birch leaves and maple leaves, oaks and elms, ironwood and black locust. The cooler winds that these skies accompany smell of humus, fresh water and carry just a hint of the polar ice caps. This is what fall is, deep into my memory, deep into the formation of my self.

Last week at Black Mountain Drive I stood on pine needles, duff and granite, saw a few small alpine plants, some moss and had seen on the drive up there a few ash leaves, golden, on the browning grasses. The blue skies there have the cirrus high above them, but the falling leaves are golden, ash being by far the dominate deciduous tree in the mountains and up at 8800 feet far behind the conifers.

Folks I know often name fall as their favorite season here. I know it’s mine. Wonder what it will be out West? Unknown for now.

 

Colorado, Memories, Minnesota, The Move

Losses

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Fall                                                                                   Falling Leaves Moon

The Wing Joint. It’s a symbol of the loss.

Let me explain. In 1975 I began a year long internship at Bethlehem-Steward Presbyterian Church at the corner of 26th St. and Pleasant Ave. The focus of this work was neighborhood ministry, finding out what the needs of the area were and responding to them in some concrete fashion. This was work I could do and did not involve me in the more philosophically ambiguous (for me) worship, educational and pastoral life of a local congregation.

Over the course of those years, which included a good deal of time at South Central Ministry, based out of the old Stewart Presbyterian building which sits three blocks south of Lake Street on Stevens Avenue right next to the freeway sound barriers, my work at South Central was even more politically and neighborhood focused than at Bethlehem-Stewart.

That was when I found the Wings Joint. It was run by a Chinese guy and sat on Nicollet, maybe 8 blocks south of Lake Street. These were the best wings I’d ever had. Crispy, always moist on the inside and just a bit of zing, which could be amped up with the hot sauce. At the end of my day (often after 10 pm) at South Central, I’d stop by the wings joint, pick up some wings, then buy a six-pack of beer and get started on both on my way home. This was one of those urban equivalents of a special bay on a lake or a place with rare plant species in a forest, a unique haven, a place with qualities you could find no where else.

Then, I moved away from South Central and away from every week visits to the Wing Joint, though I would still, on occasion, go back to it.

When we moved to Andover, it seemed that all those unique finds, gathered over many years of wandering the streets and inner city neighborhoods of Minneapolis and St. Paul, would disappear.

Imagine my surprise when I read in a newspaper article that the Wings Joint had moved to Blaine. Blaine! I knew where that was now. So, I hunted down the the Wings Joints new spot. It’s in a strip mall with little presence, concrete block buildings with a Subway, an Asian grocery store and a Nail joint. But it was the same place. The same wings.

So on occasion, as I did Friday after dropping Kate at the airport, I take off Highway 610 at University and drive north, well into what used to be the heart of Blaine, stopped at the Wings Joint and enjoyed their atmosphere, unchanged from the Lake Street days. At least in my memory.

When we move to the mountains, to a state far away, all these special places: urban havens, Scientific and Natural Areas, places along Lake Superior will be lost. Not disappeared, of course not, but there will be no equivalent surprise of finding that unique Denver spot all of a sudden taken up residence in Idaho Springs. I don’t have the memories.

Making those equivalent memories in Colorado is something I look forward to, that slow accumulation of local knowledge, but the utility of all that Minnesota knowledge will fade away, useful only for the very occasional trip back.

 

Memories, Minnesota, Woolly Mammoths

Memories

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Fall                                                                                     Falling Leaves Moon

Tom Crane, Bill Schmidt, Scott Simpson, Mark Odegard and Frank Broderick and I gathered at the Black Forest for the Woolly Mammoth first Monday restaurant meeting. We had gone to the Black Forest regularly for many years, then, partly at my urging, had moved onto other cuisines and other locales. Now, though, as my time here has become limited I find myself wanting to return to familiar places.

The Whittier Neighborhood was the site of my year-long internship while in seminary-part at Bethlehem-Stewart Presbyterian (only two blocks west of the Black Forest on 26th) and part at South Central Ministry just across Lake Street from Whittier in the Longfellow Neighborhood. In 1976 the Presbyterian church ordained me to the ministry of word and sacrament at Bethlehem-Stewart, an ordination I held until 1996 when, in Phoenix, Arizona at the Unitarian-Universalist General Assembly, I entered the U-U ministry.

So a lot of person history intersects at the corner of 26th and Nicollet, where the Black Forest is. Not far from there toward the north and east three blocks, too, is the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. A nexus for me in many ways.

Frank’s back from Ireland, looking much better and feeling no pain in his legs. Tom’s hand has mostly healed. Mark and Elizabeth have decided to spend three months  or so in southern France, staring mid-January. Scott admitted he had spent time in his youth a mail-man substitute. And worked as a Lamplighter while sleeping in People’s Park in Vancouver, B.C. Bill Schmidt’s becoming Spinozified and finding this Dutch Jew a very compatible thinker.

On the drive home, a drive I’ve made more or less regularly from Minneapolis or St. Paul to Andover for the last 20 years, I realized that though I spent 20 years in the city and consider myself an urban guy, I’ve really only spent 20 years in cities. The other 47 years have been in smaller to medium sized towns or the far burbs. Interesting how a place can impress itself into our sense of who we are.

Minnesota, Politics, Sierra Club

When did this happen?

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Fall                                                                                     Falling Leaves Moon

Cultural immersion today at Spyhouse Coffee at the intersection of Broadway and Central in Minneapolis. I suggested it for a meeting because it was a coffee house. Quiet, right? Farthest thing from. Every table and most of the nooks and crannies were filled with twenty and thirty somethings, laptops up, heads over keyboards or deep in conversation with someone, hands gripping smartphones. Loud rock played from the timbered rafters. The password code for today, jackiebrown, scrawled on a chalkboard by the register.

This was today, Friday, at 11:00 a.m. When Michelle came in, I was a bit sheepish, “I didn’t realize this place was so. Popular.” She laughed. “It’s fine.” And it was. We got down to work. And, guess what. Michelle had her laptop open and we gazed at its screen. Occasionally I would check some material on my cell phone.

Full disclosure. I didn’t bring my laptop only because I couldn’t remember the password. Which I could reset it said. But only if I was on the internet. Which was where? Behind my password. Which I couldn’t remember. Ouroboros.

Colorado, Commentary on the news, Minnesota, The Move, Travel, World History

Vive la difference!

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Lughnasa                                                                  College Moon

How different we are from Europe. Scotland has a population of 5.3 million, Ireland about 4.6 million, England 53 million. California alone has 38.3 million people. Texas 26.5. New York, 19.6 with New York City 8.3 million. Of course, we’re all tiny compared to the behemoths of India and China, but I’m interested right now in Scotland’s vote, underway right now, for its own independence as a nation.

It’s as if Minnesota were a dependency of Caltex and wanted to break away, put up its own borders and start issuing passports. My point here, heightened by our upcoming move to Colorado, is that we move between states often equivalent in size to many of the storied nations of Europe: Netherlands-16M, Greece 10.6M, Sweden 9.5M, Denmark-5.6M. Iceland-324,000.

Think of the history of Greece. Greece! The wine-dark sea. Homer. Zeus. the 300. Or, the Netherlands, home of Spinoza, holding back the sea, pot-friendly, deeply anti-semitic. Or, Denmark, Hans Christian Andersen, Copenhagen. Places redolent with backstory, filled with the architecture and the palmprints of genius.

Minnesota and Colorado sit next to each other on the population chart: Minnesota at 5.4M and Colorado at 5.2M. We could be moving from Denmark 5.6M to Norway 5M.

Imagine crossing borders, having to register as a resident alien or the equivalent, learn a different language, be aware of a different deep history. And in that imaginary case only moving 375 miles. While we will go 966 miles, almost 3 times as far to arrive in another “nation”, where the natives speak our language, share our currency and most of our habits and customs. We are a big country and our relative unity is a wonder. It might even be a miracle, albeit a very human one and no less miraculous for that. Too, we’ll have remained roughly within the center of the nation, with hundred of miles to go to an ocean from either place.

We’re so young to be so strong. And yet the world looks to us, perhaps less so now, but still…é

Memories, Minnesota, US History, Writing

A Man, A Monument

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Lughnasa                                                            College Moon

IMAG0657Third Monday of the month. It’s been the Woolly meeting night for years, over 25. Bill Schmidt suggested we visit a memorial related to war, a memorial in a neighborhood park in northeast Minneapolis, right on the Mississippi behind the old Grain Belt Brewery and its wonderful castles of yellow brick. The memorial is in an odd, very out of the way location, almost as if its hidden. And it is a monument to the effect one man can have on history.

That one man is Woolly Mark Odegard, a Vietnam War Veteran, who became part of this project and as part of it shaped its content in important ways. When the group gathered to consider it began, all the veterans wanted to honor the war and their service. This is after all the public script about how to notice veterans. We honor the historical event, the war, and their participation in the war. But Mark knew there was more beneath the public script.

When probed, the veterans admitted that war was ugly, painful and often confusing. Mark said the monument should show that side of war, too. He got this element added by interviewing veterans from various wars and putting their quotes on marble stelae along with historical facts about the war. Commenting on the Spanish-American War one man said, when the fighting against the Filipino’s began he realized the war “was about greed.” Unusual and telling language at a war memorial.

Each stelae is a slab of black granite with text acid etched into it and a face above it IMAG0661bronzed from living subjects, when possible veterans from the wars memorialized. Mark suggested that the monument start with the Dakota war in 1862 since that was the first war with Minnesotans serving. To particularize it further Mark suggested that the stelae have the number of Americans who died and the number of Minnesotans.

(Mark next to the Vietnam War stelae topped by his face in bronze.)

This monument will be in place for a long, long time and Mark’s effort to personalize war through the words of veterans will bring an element of realism to a too often romanticized human endeavor.