Category Archives: Asia

Asia, Garden, Health, Humanities

Better…And Not

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Beltane                                   Waning Planting Moon

I’m still deep in the The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, following the exploits of Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei among many, many others.  Still not a third of the way done with it.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, I’ll do more weeding. Weeding and pruning.  Those are the main tasks at this point in the gardening year.  That and finding some weedless straw for mulch.  It’s hard to find.

A week and a half past my colds onset I feel pretty good, back to normal with the exception of  remaining sludge.  I feel like an engine in need of an oil change.  I even went back to the ramped up work outs  today and had no repeat of the dizziness and nausea I experience a couple of weeks ago, the last time I did this workout at the new pace.

Feeling a bit of a let down, not sure why.  Maybe it’s just the push, push of garden, Latin, dogs, food or, more likely, it’s just a cycling through of a bit of melancholy.  Whatever it is sleep will help.

Asia, Faith and Spirituality, World History

Night Casts Round A Cloak of Quiet

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Spring                                                  Awakening Moon

Night has fallen, the temperature, too and quiet dominates.  It is, as I have written here before, a meditative time, a free time, a time when the world is little with us and the mind can roam free over its own landscapes. The spinning of the planet then creates a certain amount of time in every 24, almost everywhere (with the polar exceptions), when we can all become hermits.  Yes, it’s harder in, say Manhattan or downtown Las Vegas, but even in these places where the bright lights and nocturnal activity pulse away, even there, the night is still a time of refuge for the soul, at least if we choose to take it.

I’ve begun watching another John Woo film, Red Cliff, which recounts the fall of the Han Dynasty in the early 3rd century A.C.E.  Red Cliff is a battle site, so recognized that it might be named Gettysburg or Bunker Hill or Pearl Harbor were it an American battle of equal renown.  Gradually Chinese film makers have begun to explore the long, long history of Chinese civilization and create films at least representative of key times in that history.

The Han Dynasty covers the same time period, roughly, as Rome immediately after Caesar, the time of the Emperors.  I find it interesting to keep these cross cultural time lines in mind, to know that as the battle of Red Cliff rages in China, the Emperor Diocletian has decided to sever the Roman Empire into its Eastern and Western halves.

Art and Culture, Asia

Awakening in the Dark

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Spring                                              Waxing Awakening Moon

Rolled down the car window–oops, anachronism.  Pushed the button which slid the window down–and the scent of moist earth rolled into the truck.  Peat moss mixed with new plant and freshly unfrozen water carried along by a light spring breeze.  Tonight the awakening moon continues to swell, move toward full, growing in synchronicity with the planet 250,000 miles away; its dance partner in this long running marathon.  We squeeze her, she pulls our waters and squeezes us.  A dancer and her consort.

The world for now, our part of the world, moves in darkness and I find the quiet soothing.  The night calms this exurban area down to peaceful.  Silence does not need to be sought; it comes to us as the hour moves past 9:00 pm or so.  If only for these dark hours, we have a hermetic isolation, nothing visible out the windows except stars and the moon.

The longer I study art history, mix with the objects at the MIA, the more I tend to see much of the world through the lens of art.  It’s not a matter of finding art that fits a moment or an idea; rather, it’s as if paintings or sculpture or movies or prints or masks rise up from the unconscious, suggest themselves as a way, a path into an experience.  Here on the website I often choose, usually choose, literal relationships but in day to day life the moments are more ephemeral, less one to one.

Let me see if I can think of an example.  A train whistle late at night may call to mind Honthorst’s “Denial of St. Peter.”  Perhaps it’s the association of a night scene and a sound transformed by being heard at night.  I don’t know.

This is hard, it doesn’t really happen exactly like that, it’s more suggestive, subliminal.  Evanescent. Like the dying tone of the train as it moves further away into the darkness.

Aging, Art and Culture, Asia, Commentary on the news, Health, Politics, US History

President Shoots the Moon

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Spring                                                 Waxing Awakening Moon

Moon viewing.  We don’t do it much here, except as a casual thing, a walk outside, look up, oh a nice moon tonight or shine on harvest moon for me and my gal then on to the drive in or what’s on your play list dude? In Japan they take the moon viewing a step further, ok, a whole nighttime stroll longer.  They build moon viewing platforms, have parties, and produce some wonderful art that features the moon.  Tonight the waxing awakening moon hung just above the trees in the west, behind a scrim of clouds, a faint glow surrounding the upturned crescent.  It is a moon to remember.

This crescent awakening moon will now memorialize for me the day the Democratic party got some balls.  Obama wanted to pass health care reform.  I saw a representative, I don’t know his name, with silver hair, looked about my age, get up and say, “Before we were born, reform of the health care system was begun, just waiting for this day.”

This is not a victory for Democrats, however, it is a victory for the American people, a victory for those who have lived their lives in fear of a cough, a broken leg, a child’s fever.  In this country, which can bail out billionaires and support subsidies to bank robbers, that is, banks that rob, to have 32 million people with no health insurance has been a crime of long standing, a crime that has produced serial deaths over and over with no fear of prosecution.

It is my hope that Republicans will understand that many of the folks who swallow the tea party line are the very people who will wake up some time soon with health insurance, health insurance they have never had. If you don’t believe me, just look at the Gallup map below and consider it with an overlay of the Bush and McCain presidential votes.

Obama has won a victory here, a hard fought victory and he should get his props.  He should also get more credit for calming the Great Recession and ushering in a period of up ticking economic news.  I imagine we will see more such substantive wins for him as his presidency continues.

Hurray for the red, white and blue!

Now a moment on partisan politics and post-partisan politics, the so-called third way.  Yes, our politics have become so polarized that it is difficult to recall the times when it wasn’t.  Yes, there is acrimony and ill will and yes, it does make governance more difficult than it needs to be.  Here’s the thing, though.  In the end it is politics.  This clumsy, broken, dysfunctional process is the way we have chosen, and keep choosing, to mediate our substantive differences.  I read a very compelling argument for changing the system of representation in the Senate where 10% of the states have 90% of the population, but have only a tenth of the votes.  The author of the argument went on to say that fixing this dysfunction was not possible and that we needed to work with the system we have.

It’s not ideal, but there is no system for managing the affairs of human societies that is and ours is better than most.  This vote proves it.

Art and Culture, Asia, Sport, World History

Latin and Asia

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Imbolc                                   Waxing Wild Moon

Kate and I reviewed our work on chapter 5 in Wheelock this morning.  Then 2,000 words on the novel after the nap.  Workout.  Sierra Club legcom conference call.

I’ve been reading my fourth Qiu Xiaolong mystery, The Red Mandarin Dress.  These are Chief Inspector Chen novels, set in today’s Shanghai.  They are interesting mysteries, but even more, they are a window into the struggle between the Maoist era and the contemporary one, a period when revolution ruled the land transformed into one in which to get rich is glorious.  These are not easy transitions and they have happened in the blink of an eye in the long history of China.

Asian art and asian culture, especially Chinese history, philosophy and literature have, for a long time, had my attention.  In my volunteer work at the MIA I have been allowed to indulge my interest in Chinese, Japanese and South Asian art.  This has led to more and more time with asian history, especially Chinese and Chinese poetry.  A casual tinkerer in these vast domains, I have only skimmed the top of a way of life radically different from our own, Western culture, yet, even with its differentness, still more like us than not, the human experience inflected, not the human experience transformed.

As I’ve watched the Winter Olympics, it doesn’t take a scholar to notice that its largely a northern hemisphere event.  Yes, there are the odd Australians, New Zealanders, but for the the most part it’s North America, Europe and the Asian countries.  Just another way in which we are more like than unlike.

Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Weather +Climate

Don’t like the weather? Tough.

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Imbolc                               New Moon (Wild)

We have more snow.  Not a lot, maybe a couple of inches.  It makes the whiteness fresh.

Some folks have begun to complain that this winter has gone on too long and that this snow insults us.  The weather is.  It neither goes on too long, nor stops too soon.  Our food may run out before the winter ends, but that’s our dilemma, not the weather’s.  Our patience may wear out with weather too cold or too snowy or too icy, but the weather comes and it goes, our attitude toward it is what needs to change, not the weather.  The weather may wreck our garden, ruin our crops, or give us bounty.  Again, the weather causes rain, heat, drought, cool days and hot nights, what use we can make of them or what harm they may create for our horticulture or agriculture reflects our needs, not those of the planet’s air and water circulation systems.

Better for us to adapt ourselves to the changes, to find in our lives the place for adjustment.  As Taoism teaches, we need to align ourselves with the movements of heaven.  This is even true of our political work.  We need to act politically in a way that utilizes the forces and realities of the moment rather than railing against their injustice or patting ourselves on the back for their justice.  This too is aligning ourselves with the movements of heaven.

Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, permaculture

Ordinary Time

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Winter                              Full Cold Moon

In just two days those of us who follow the Celtic calendar will celebrate the coming of Imbolc.  I’ll write more about it on Monday, but I wanted to note here the difference in timber and resonance between post-Epiphany January and the holiseason just ended.  We move now into the ordinary days, days when the sense of expectation and sacred presence relies more on our private rituals, our own holydays.

In my own case, for example, Valentine’s Day lends this time period a certain magic as its pre-birthday spirit invades the present.  Also, for me and my fellow Woolly Mammoths, this next week marks our annual retreat, so we get ready for it, this time again at Blue Cloud Monastery in South Dakota.  It is, too, for those with any presence in the Chinese world, just a couple of weeks before the beginning of the spring festival, or, as we know it here, Chinese New Years.  This year it begins on my birthday.

Imbolc, too, has sacred resonance and its six week period marks the beginning of the growing season here as seeds for certain long growing season vegetables like leeks must get started.

Art and Culture, Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Politics

Art and Nature, the Nature of Art

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Winter                                          Waning Moon of Long Nights

In to the Sierra Club for a meeting about legislative work.  The scope of the Sierra Club’s work is impressive, including legislative work at each session of the Minnesota Legislature and scrutiny of the government’s stewardship of our natural resources in between them.  There is litigation work, the primary one right now being the Stillwater Bridge.  There is also the regular work of educating members, the working of the Issue Committees and regular outings.  Perhaps most important of all is the attention of thousands of members to both the particulars of environmental work in all parts of the state and to the developing field of issues, e.g. climate change, renewable energy, efficient public transportation, green planning, work with labor unions for Green Jobs, even climate mitigation strategies to help position Minnesota well when climate change happens.

After that I went over to the MIA to check on my mail box, nothing in it.  Good.  After I went in there I began to wander through the museum, as I used to do in the days before Collection in Focus, before Docent training, just wandering.  My first stop was the wonderful collection of Chinese paintings that have been up for a while.  Taking them in and meditating on Taoism as I looked, I began to muse about a work that might have the theme art and nature, the nature of art.  Some interesting ideas there.  My favorite collection remains the Japanese, and within it the works on paper:  ukyio-e especially.

It felt good to be in the museum without a task at hand, or a purpose, other than spending time with the objects.  I could do more of that.

Asia, Our Land and Home

Excluded Queen, Clean Fins

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Summer                       Waning Summer Moon

The smoker worked.  Mostly.  The bees have had 2 to 2.5 months of breeding, brooding and comb building.  There are a lot more bees than there were in April when Mark showed me how to load a box a’ bees into the first hive box.  Weekly I’ve checked each frame, when there are three hive boxes on as there is now, that means checking 28 frames each time.

The bee’s propolis had welded together many frames this time, so prying them apart proved more difficult than it had the first weeks.  With smoke to discourage angry bees each frame came out with minimal interference.  After checking a few frames in each hive box, I put the top box on the bottom, left the middle one in its place and put the bottom one of top.  If I understand it correctly, this encourages the bees to continue producing brood, making the colony more healthy for the winter while also expanding their honey base in the honey supers where the queen cannot go.

In this way the colonies survival over the winter gains a higher probability while still allowing the bee-keeper to harvest some of the honey flow.

Today, after the hives, I cracked the case of the outside air conditioning unit, took it off and sprayed off the literal blanket of cottonwood fibers that had collected around the fins which guide air past the cooling coils.  I could have done this three weeks ago, but I forgot about it.  It’s not fun for me since it involves lot of little screws, a cantankerous body of sheet metal that must line up with the holes just right and more bending than my deconditioned joints can stand.  A good prod to get back to the resistance and flexibility work as well as the aerobics.

I tend to emphasize the aerobics since the heart and circulatory system and the respiratory system tend to cause death if not tended with care.  That’s only half of the battle though, the other half is having enough strength and flexibility to live the life time saved by regular aerobic exercise.

The cantankerous sheet metal awaits.  I’ve written this while letting it dry off.  This all falls under the British category of estate management.  Where are all the servants again?  Oh, that’s right.  They are me.

Art and Culture, Asia

The Tea Ceremony on Tour

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Beltane                 Full Flower Moon

Two tours this morning.  The first, a Visual Thinking Strategies, for third graders from Maxfield school in St. Paul went well.  The kids attention petered out after about 45 minutes and we went on search of things they found interesting like guns (flintlock rifles) and a painting of a small dead boy wearing a dress.

The second, a public tour, had the Museum given title, Steeped in Tradition:  a tour of Chinese and Japanese art.  I thought, well, why not talk about the origins of the Japanese tea ceremony.  We began in India with Vishnu and the Ghandara Buddha, stopped by the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara in China and smaller statue of the Buddha, then went into the Taoist gallery.  After the Taoist gallery we visited the Song dynasty ceramics for a Chan Buddhist inspired tea cup, then onto Japan for our fine statue of Amitabha Buddha, the Buddha of the Pure Land.

We first hit the tea ceremony proper with the shoin audience hall, used by Shoguns as well Buddhist abbotts for ceremonial occasions including the first, elaborate, large and showy tea ceremonies.  After that we went to the tea wares gallery to look at tea cups and discuss the notion of wabi-sabi.  The tour ended at the tea-house and brief walk through of the purpose of the tea ceremony.  There was only one woman on the tour but she had an interest in Asian art and knew something of China and Thailand.

Back home.  Nap.  Now, workout.