Category Archives: Minnesota

Colorado, Dogs, Family, Friends, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West

The Doggie Drive

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Samain and the Full Moon of Growing Darkness

Shabbat gratefuls: Tom. Conversation with him. His kindness. The Truth. A CBD ointment for aching joints, pain. Worked on my trigger fingers. Happy Camper. Evoke 1923. Mt. Rosalie covered in Snow. 13,575′. Long tie guy and his in your face appointments.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friendship

Kavannah: Perserverance

One brief shining: Sitting at the table where I found my pearl, in what is no longer the long time Bistro now the Evoke 1923, Rebecca took our orders, delivered a tasty filet mignon tartare, a beet salad, and our entrees: duck for Tom and filet mignon for me while we struggled to hear, especially after the piano player started up, two old guys trying to parse the future of A.I. largely overwhelmed by the clink of silverware on porcelain, happy chatter from the table of six, the limits of hearing aids reached and exceeded.

 

It’s nearing 10 years since the long doggie drive of December 2014. Tom and I together with Rigel, Vega, and Kepler on I-90, then I-76, finally 285 to Shadow Mountain. 15 hours or so of conversation, attention to dogs and the eventual end of the Great Plains where they wash up against the hogbacks of a precursor Mountain Range to the Rockies. That was the first phase of the actual move, Kate arriving later with Gertie and that van we had packed in Andover.

On the Winter Solstice of that year our moving van came and promptly got stuck in a ditch. Eduardo and friends pulled it out. Snow fell and the temperatures hovered around zero. Not willing to try again the van driver took the whole load off Shadow Mountain to a more level spot, rented two u-haul trucks and shuttled the whole truckload from some spot on Hwy. 73. This lasted far into the night with dogs and movers crossing and intersecting.

From that day until the day she died Kate said she felt like she was on vacation living up here. Six and a half years of vacation. A good retirement for her. Glad she didn’t see the MAGmA overflow decency and justice. She would have been angry and disappointed.

Over the course of those years I’ve become Harari, a man of the mountains, now wedded to this place through location and intense experiences. Many, many memories. Some difficult, sure, but also many more intimate, fun, bound up with the wild nature of this place, with Judaism, Kate’s final gift to me.

Mountains. If I have my way-Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise-I’ll live out my final days here, too.

 

Just a moment: A life lived from, say mid-20th century to the first quarter or so of the 21st, has already passed, as few lives ever do, from one millennium to the next, the second to the third. We’ve also seen what may be the end of a political era begun under FDR. I’d call it whiplash, but the change has been more gradual than the crack of a whip. A new world is being born, but despite long tie guy’s next fast-food adventure on Pennsylvania Avenue, neither he nor his minions will define it.

This new world will emerge from the tension between the mindless governance of, as Kamala Harris rightly said, an unserious man, and cultures political, artistic, and economic which my generation assumed to be stable. Oh, my.

 

Fourth Phase, Garden, Memories, Minnesota, permaculture, Plants, Politics, Seed Keepers, Weather +Climate

It will be us. And, it will be so.

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Monday gratefuls: My sweet, kind Ancient Brothers. The Seed-Keepers. Veronica. Ruth. Gabe. Samain. The fallow time. Snow. Boulder. Snarfs. Shadow Mountain. Election 2024. Clarity. Warming. The Great Sol Snow Shovel. Tara. My Lodgepole companion. A Colorado Blue Sky.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Lunch with Ruth

Kavannah: contentment and joy

One brief shining: Strange to recalibrate a life at 76 yet I did just that a year ago this month, having my penis-my penis!-pricked (hah), disrobing and immersing myself in the mikveh, explaining my reasons for embracing a new way of life to a beth dein, house of judgement, and taking a new name, Israel, one who struggles with God.

 

Israel. Part of my nom sacré, Herme Harari Israel. My fourth phase name. In the direct toledot, generations, of Abraham and Sarah. My now forever ancestors. This name also signals my continuing pagan life as the hooded man of Shadow Mountain. Feel free to refer to me by any name you wish.

The Moon of Growing Darkness. A bit of explanation. You may think this refers to the election of long tie guy, but no. It refers to my joy as the days grow shorter and the nights increase, headed toward the Long Night, the Winter Solstice. Yule in the pagan way. My affection for the dark, for the night long proceeds long tie guy, proceeds cancer, proceeds Judaism.

No, I’m not an owl. I love the mornings when my strength and intellect and creativity peak. But as much I love the darkness. Might have begun during those fall days in Andover when I would dig out and replenish the soil in the flower beds that arced around our lower level brick patio.

As I worked, Folk Alley radio played in the background and a chill Minnesota fall day would make the task a deep joy. Lying not far from the tarp onto which I put the Soil would be brown bags full of Corms, Rhizomes, and Bulbs. With the Tulip Bulbs, I would place them in slightly raised rectangular wire baskets, place them at the right depth, then shovel Soil back over them with a bit of Organic matter mixed in. The Rhizomes,  new Irises that Kate had chosen, might go in next to the Tulips. On the next tier up of this three tiered bed I would sprinkle Daffodil Bulbs and plant them where they landed, going for a mass of yellow in the Spring.

The Crocus Corms would go into the bed next to the front porch and that would come a bit later. This was a twenty year ritual, one I looked forward to because I loved the thought that within the nurturing Soil, beneath the Snow, tucked in warm against the bitter Minnesota Winters were these small capsules, no less amazing, perhaps more amazing than a space capsule, of life, holding within them enough nutrients and ancient wisdom to throw up a stalk when the temperatures signaled safety, push out leaves that would begin to gather more food for the all important Flower, that seductive botanical invention that draws Pollinators, and would, in time, die back as Seeds formed. Even though most of these Flowers never propagated by seed.

How could a gardener not be in love with darkness? Seed-Keepers will work in the darkness of the coming red tie guy years. Tucked in warm against the bitter autocratic Winter, small communities ready to send up stalks when the political temperature is right. Then to send out Leaves and power a movement into Flowering. It will be us and it will be so.

Yes, we had Morels in our Woods
Great Wheel, Minnesota, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Sport

Memories

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Ruth and Gabe here. The darkness before dawn. Using the Lenovo. Family. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Mary. Mark. Diane. The Good Fight. Jon. Kate, always Kate. Electric blanket and a down comforter. Plus a cool night. Winter storms next week.

Sparks of joy and awe: Time with the grandkids

Kavannah: UNDERSTANDING   Bina     Understanding, differentiation, deep insight; from בּוּן to split, pierce/penetrate; also בֵּין between  Third Sefirah = Left brain (opposite Chochmah/Wisdom) (Tevunah,  Comprehension, analytical thought, reason & intellect)

One brief shining: After a good day at Boulder on Thursday, good day=not in pain or overly exhausted, began to rethink my life, yeah, I know, again, maybe getting out even more, or maybe moving around more, not exercise, but going places, doing something for fun, spontaneity and joy mixed in with seriousness and focus.

 

Right now, late October, when I turn off the light as I go to bed, I can look up at a tall Lodgepole in my backyard and placed as if by an angel is a star that crowns it. Twas the Night Before Christmas comes to mind. More though. I see how crowning a “Christmas” tree with a star probably came to be. Christmas is in quotes because the Evergreen Tree in mid-Winter is part of the Yule tradition, symbolizing eternal life.

I plan to have a Yule log this Winter. Still haven’t gotten down to Variety Firewood to look for sizable hardwood logs and pinõn, but I will. Maybe Sunday after lunch with Alan.

Hanukah, the Jewish festival of fire and light for the darkness, comes very late this year starting on Christmas day and ending on January 2nd, in the new year 2025.

Long ago and far away from the Rocky Mountains in the bustling small town of Alexandria, Indiana, I carried newspapers for the Alexandria Times-Tribune where my dad worked. I had two routes. The first one I thought of as the Monroe Street route. It started on Monroe Street a block or so west of the Nickleplate railroad tracks. It wound through neighborhoods near Thurston Elementary School, the new one where I attended 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades.

The second route, the Harrison route, had more customers, started north of Monroe Street and ran to the town limits out near the ruins of the Kelly Ax Factory.

On both of them I enjoyed the time alone, folding newspapers into small squares and deftly curling them onto my customers porches. All except the big edition on Thursdays that carried all the grocery store ads my dad had sold the previous week. That one we rolled up and put a rubber band around. They flew through the air pretty well, but not as accurately as the smaller squares.

Point of this? Saw a brief story about Freddie Freeman’s walkoff home-run in the bottom of the 10th against the Yankees in the World Series. I used some of my paper route money to buy a transistor radio I could clip on my belt while I carried papers. I often used it to listen to baseball games. I was a Dodger fan.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Love is more powerful than discomfort.

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Grandma. At Chief Hosa lodge

Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Monday gratefuls: Boulder. Ruth. Snarfs. The Flatirons. The greens as Great Sol sank below the horizon. Grandpopping. Podcasts. One on crime and disorder. Another on Walter Benjamin. Falling. Of the Aspen Leaves. The dry Willow Leaves blow away, many carried downstream by Maxwell Creek. Samain only 10 days away. Simchat Torah Wednesday.

Sparks of joy and awe: UC Boulder

Kavannah: Compassion  Rachamin

One brief shining: Ruth and I sat at a blue metal table on Pearl Street, Boulder’s main drag, our paper wrapped sandwiches spread out in front of us, mine a french dip sans jus, hers something with nothing animal, a few cars drove by since we were far from the Mall, Leaves finished with their seasons work lay scattered on the sidewalk as we spoke of painful childhoods, death, deception, and treachery.

 

Our initial impetus for moving to Colorado came after I attended an Ira Progoff retreat in Tucson. In a meditation on the next stepping stones of my life I realized Kate and I needed to be here in Colorado for the kids. Reinforced on the drive back when I showed up at Jon and Jen’s with no warning to Ruth. She saw me, turned and ran back in the house. That was April of 2014.

Kate agreed. We gave ourselves two years to make the move. Momentum took over though and by that October Kate had been in Colorado as our scout, finding a house. I knew I would dither and Kate was decisive. 9358 Black Mountain Drive. In the Mountains as we both wanted. Jen called it Mountain fever and was mad that we’d not moved closer. We however were not coming to be babysitters, but grandparents.

Andover and its gardens, its bees, its orchard, its woods had become too physically demanding for us. Kate had retired three years before. It was an inflection point for us. We still had four dogs: Kepler, Rigel, Gertie, and Vega. As the Winter Solstice neared Tom Crane and I got in our Rav4 with tranquilized Kepler, Rigel, and Vega. Drove straight through. Rather, Tom did. We talked the whole way only stopping when one mammal or another had to pee. Kate left a day or so later in a van I had packed full with items we didn’t trust to the movers. She had Gertie with her, feeding her Whoppers on the way out. Well. Parts of Whoppers. Which Kate reported Gertie approved.

In the Garden Andover

Leaving the Twin Cities after forty years, a bit longer for Kate, was tough. I had friends, especially the Woolly Mammoths, and I had immersed myself in the cultural life of the Twin Cities: The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra where Kate and I met. The Science museum which Joseph and I loved. The Children’s Theater, The Guthrie, the MIA, the Walker. Both of us had spent hours and yet more hours planting, weeding, living with dogs, caring for bees and extracting honey. Sitting by the firepit. Just being together in a place we shaped from our first days there.

Yet. The call of being with our grandkids as they grew up in what we knew were challenging circumstances with an angry mother and father felt compelling.

Kate and Ruth developed a strong, strong bond. Kate helped Ruth learn to cook, sew, be a Jew, and a young woman. I took Ruth on adventures to museums, the National Western Stockshow, hikes in the Mountains. Gabe, too. When Kate died, then Jon, Barb, Jen’s mother aka Tennessee Grandma, and I were left. Barb had to move to into an assisted living spot and sees the kid’s less.

I would have gone to Hawai’i in spite of all this had I not figured out that my son and Seoah’s return there was not certain as I’d initially thought. Glad it turned out that way. Ruth and I have become close, Gabe as well. I’m an important, stable, calm presence in both of their lives. They both love Shadow Mountain Home, being up here.

Now I drive to Boulder once or twice a month. Gabe comes up and stays for a couple of nights. Critical for them, I believe. And, me. When I think about them, about my son and Seoah, about Mark and Mary and Diane, then about cancer, I can see keeping up with treatments as long as they are life extending. Love is more powerful than discomfort.

Family, Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants

A Pagan Covenant

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Friday Gratefuls: The Sukkah. Harvest festivals. Celebrating the intimate link among humans, Great Sol, Mother Earth, and Seeds. Fall. The sweet, sad, soulful song of Aspens and their gold. Hygge. Coming soon to Shadow Mountain. Rabbi Jamie and his high holiday sermons. Ruth, who wants to eat together again. Sunday. Boulder. Kate, my love. Talking to her. Laurie and her Chi-town food truck. Tulsa King. On the Run. Phantom Toll Booth. The Iliad. Homer.

Sparks of joy and awe: The Harvest

Kavannah: Patience

One brief shining: The CBE sukkah has wood lattice on its three sides, mesh grass matting for a roof, and three children’s decorated tapestries, with a lulav always on the table, the four species: branches of myrtle, palm, willow bound together and the etrog, a large citrus fruit separate from them, the branches waved north, south, east, west, up and down, while saying a bracha, a blessing, the etrog picked up at the end a blessing and a ritual which has a theme of Jewish unity, sure, but more to the point represents the moment in time, the harvest, which Sukkot celebrates.

Seed Savers Exchange is one of the oldest and largest heirloom seed conservation organizations in the world.

Email: diane@seedsavers.org

Corn pickers and combines. Gathering in their mechanical dinosaur ways Corn, Wheat, other Grains. A rhythm with which I grew up. Farms all round my hometown of Alexandria, Indiana, around my mom’s hometown of Morristown and on the land between the two to the south, to Muncie on the east, to Elwood on the west, and Marion on the north. I learned early to always slow down on a gravel road if a hill blocked the view in your direction of travel. There might be a lumbering mechanized giant moving very slowly just over the crest of the hill.

Later the grain trucks would back up to silos when the market was right and carry the harvest to elevators and their huge silos which held many farmer’s crops for loading on grain cars for dispersal to the General Mills, Kellogs, Cargills of the world. So ordinary. Common. Mundane. Usual. Wasn’t until l moved to the Rockies that I found myself apart from the rituals of agriculture.

Oh, once in a while I’ll see a tractor harvesting hay off a Mountain Meadow, but that’s rare enough to be remarkable. There are Cattle in eastern and western Colorado, a few up here in the Mountains, but that’s ranching. It works to different rhythms and has slaughter as its grain truck to the elevator equivalent.

As long as Kate and I lived in Andover, we observed the fall agricultural rituals albeit on a much smaller scale. Tomatoes. Potatoes. Onions. Beets. Carrots. Beans. Raspberries, Ground Cherries, Honey Crisp and Macintosh Apples, Pears, Cherries, Honey. Whatever we planted. Flowers, cut Flowers, too.

Kate would can, dry, and we both would bottle honey. Then go out to the firepit and throw a few logs on, sit with the dogs milling around, and enjoy quiet time together. The harvest season. A feast. A moment when the covenant among Soil, Seeds, and human toil revealed its promise.

Memories, Minnesota

Sacred Waters

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Mabon (Fall) and the Sukkot Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Rosh Hashanah. Yom Kippur. Sukkot. Simchat Torah. The seasons of Judaism. The Great Wheel. Its presence in liturgical calendars of all sorts. The Gunflint Trail. Grand Marais. Lutsen. Lake Superior. Pukaskwa National Park. Wawa. The U.P. Sault Ste Marie. The Edmond Fitzgerald and the Gales of November. The North Woods. Ely. The International Wolf Center. Mark and Mary both in Malaysia. My son back in Korea with Seoah and Murdoch.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gift giving

Kavannah for Tishrei, week 1: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Two trips completely around Lake Superior by car, visiting the true North Shore in Canada, in particular the Canadian National Park Pukaskwa with 700 square miles of roadless Wilderness and Wawa, the quirky little town where I first had poutine, and the bar there over which I stayed for a night each trip.

 

This bridge dangles over a wild River which empties into Lake Superior not far from this point, a Rocky Gorge contains its Rapids on both sides. It’s hiking distance from the only parking and I’ve made this hike several times. Never encountered another person.

Were I a true outdoorsman I would have hiked in and camped somewhere in this Wilderness. Instead I’ve always chosen to hike for a couple of hours first on a wooden walkway that crosses a large Marsh, then on a trail through a dense Pine Forest that leads to the bridge.

At different points Lake Superior is not far from the trail and its Waves crash against the Shore, not really a Beach here, instead made of fist sized chunks of polished Granite and Basalt. Being on the Superior Shore surrounded by miles and miles of protected Wilderness always brought me a calm inner state that lasted a long time.

Lake Superior has a sacred presence known by all who encounter her though they may not name the feeling that way. Her vastness, far from any Ocean, emerges after climbing a steep hill going into Duluth, shows itself along the Bob Dylan Highway 61 which many of us have revisited, and goes in and out of visibility on Canadian, Michigan, and Wisconsin roads as well. That there are lakers, huge cargo ships that carry taconite, coal, wheat, and corn, helps you understand the connected size of these Great Lakes.

Northern Minnesota’s Arrowhead region, the only area in the continental 48 to have never lost its population of wolves, lies always near the Great Lake. Its Wildness and Lake Superior’s sing to each other, a song of longing and beauty, of Winter Snow and Ice, of Wild Neighbors: Moose, Wolves, Whitetail Deer, White Fish, Northern Pike, Muskie, Pine Martens, Sturgeon, Minx, Beaver, Lynx, and Black Bears.

Inside my heart Lake Superior lives in its cold, deep, northern way. A constant reminder that there are places, sacred places, all over Mother Earth. A few I’ve been able to visit often enough to come to know at a heart level. In these latter years of my life the Rocky Mountains have become my sacred Wild Friends, too. How could I want a heaven when I’ve known so many already and live in one now.

 

 

Cooking, Dogs, Dreams, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain

Oh, my

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Lugnasa and the Full Harvest Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: New credit card. Tom in Omaha. At the Air and Space museum. Good workout. Isaac coming today. Possible personal trainer. Ginny and Janice today. Cooling nights. Gold popping up here and there on Black Mountain. My son. His commitment. Palliative care. Sharpe. Salisbury Steak. A vegetable smoothie. Bad dreams.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Protein

Kavannah: Teshuvah   Returning to the land of my soul

One brief shining: Geez, ever have a night where the dreams stuck with you and you wish they hadn’t; last night I bought a used Porsche that had bald tires and rust, tried to preach in a synagogue bare foot which they said was ok, but couldn’t find my sermon, woke up agitated, out of sorts.

 

What dreams may come. Must have been feeling insecure last night. Perhaps because I got a Groveland UU e-wire announcing their dissolution. Kate and I were a part of Groveland from the beginning and I preached there off and on even after we moved to Andover, then the Rockies. I tried to help them grow. Didn’t have much luck. A feeling of failure. Though I never was their minister except for a brief period. Guess it is a feeling of failure. As I write this, I feel bad. Sad. Inadequate. Groveland was the place Kate and I landed after I left the Presbyterians.

Moods. As I’ve written. Need to return to the land of my soul. Which is here, today, this September 19th life of 2024. Shadow Mountain. Seeing friends. Living. How do I feel? Down. How do I feel? Grounded. How do I feel? Anxious. How do I feel? Sad. How do I feel? Inadequate. How do I feel? In my body. How do I feel? Grateful. How do I feel? Gathered in. How do I feel? Anxious. How do I feel? Surprised. How do I feel? Glad. How do I feel? Here. How do I feel? Sad/OK. How do I feel? Ashamed. How do I feel? Oh, yeah. How do I feel? In myself. How do I feel? Knowing. How do I feel? Back. Mostly

What I learned here was why I never served as a pastor. Not me. I’m a political activist, an organizer, but never a minister. Even though I tried on the role briefly. Twice. Kate told me it wasn’t me. She was right. I wanted to work. To mean something. Sure, that’s fine. But I couldn’t get to that being someone I wasn’t. I didn’t have the right skill set to help a congregation grow unless I was a consultant, not of the congregation. And I was not meant for a pastoral role.

I found work that mattered, that was me, in Andover. Gardener. Bee Keeper. Dog wrangler. Lumberjack. Cook. Husband. Writing. Learning. Oh, the joy I felt. We felt. How much time I wasted trying to fit into square holes when I was a plant shaped peg. A lover of dogs, plants, bees, writing, Kate.

Here in Colorado I have a new focus. The Mountains. Judaism. Friends and Family. Writing. Learning. All about love.

 

 

Memories, Minnesota, Politics, US History

The Flyover

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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.

 

 

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

I’ve seen Fire and I’ve seen Rain

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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

Memories, Minnesota, Politics, Travel

Arriving

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Sunday gratefuls: Steve, the Uber driver. The Chancellor. Powell Street. Cable cars. The Moon of Liberation standing over the Hyatt Regency. Amtrak. My back and its pains. A good night’s sleep. Diane. Her town. Mission and Fremont. Traveling. Vacating. Seeing the U.S. West, then the Pacific.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Uber

One brief shining: Left Roomette #21 behind pushing my bag, down the stairs, off the train, pushing bag again, show ticket to shuttle bus driver, board the bus, cross the bridge from Oakland to San Francisco with the Bay rippling underneath us, Alcatraz brooding off to my right, get out at Mission and Fremont, call an Uber, get in and ride to the Chancellor on Union Square.

 

No Wifi on train so my first trip posts will be above this one. Wrote them on Scribener and will import them when its update gets finished. Write now I’m in room 1304 of the Chancellor, a boutique hotel on Union Square. Writing now, too.

The back is an issue, but not a deal breaker for travel. Slower and with more management of pain. Sorta like home.

Steve, my Uber driver, was from Phoenix, now married to a S.F. gal. He drove a white Tesla and showed up within a minute of my booking. A critical move for my back. In times past I would have preferred to walk the 19 minutes to the hotel; now I know that level of effort would stress my hip and set me back.

My original flaneur idea, when the back flared for the first time in Korea, is the right one. Go slow and easy. Keep up the exercise. Do pain management.

That’s ok. The buzz of the new and the different still feeds my soul.

 

Yesterday as the train made its slow, delayed approach through poor suburbs, boulevards and underpasses filled with the makeshift homes of the unhomed, I got that sense of unease that always accompanies evidence of our failed political economics.

Then we came to Grizzly Island Wildlife Area. Egrets and Blue Heron. The Marsh. A Fox loping along for an evening meal. Wild Neighbors for San Francisco and its burbs. Calm returned to my soul. Not because there were no trailer parks, burned out cars, Target shopping carts, but because this felt like my place, a home away from home. Here I knew what to notice, how to exist.

In the so sad introduction to a major world metropolis my heart clogged up, the scenes of poverty’s devastation boiling my blood. Agitating me. Wanting to make me scream. So much so that I looked up M.I.C.A.H., the Metropolitan Interfaith Coalition for Affordable House. Yes, still there, almost 40 years now. And the Minnesota Council of Non-Profits. Fancy website. Couldn’t find Jobs Now though it may have morphed into something else. It was there the last time I wondered if what I’d done really mattered.

Yes, economic injustice and its tragedies are and will be with us. But so will those whose lives are spent trying to change them and if change can’t happen right now, ameliorate their effects.