Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon
Thursday gratefuls: That below zero crunch in the Snow. Minnesota. Abraham Lincoln. Rich. Judy. Marilyn. Tom. Irv. Fresh Snow beauty on Black Mountain. On the Lodgepoles. On the Hermitage. Master Class in Black History. Back to reading. Loading coffee cups in the new shelving. Figuring out how to use the Speed Brew Bunn. (for high altitude)
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Money
Tarot: The Hooded Man, #9 of the Major Arcana
Loaded coffee cups into the pantry cabinets, smaller than the old ones, but probably better this way. While feeding the dogs. I’m getting underway. More this morning.
Vince came to plow the driveway. He has a six wheel ATV. An odd-looking thing. But powerful. He did a great job, including eliminating the small ridge of snow in front of the front door that both Josh and Ted left. I think Vince is a find. He also does landscaping.
Connected with Ruth yesterday. She’s in the Denver Springs psych hospital. Voluntarily. She sounded good. Joking, asking me to give Rigel and Kep a hug for her. She wants, really wants, to get her psyche calmed down. I hope she’s able to do that. I love her so much and it makes me hurt to see her in trouble.
Decided I’ll schedule the Modern Bungalow delivery for my birthday. A way to celebrate with a major change in the front room. I don’t know what to call that room. Great room sounds pretentious. Living room doesn’t feel right. It has a breakfast nook and a fire place. The area around the fire place is a separate space. I don’t know. Any ideas out there?
Been watching a Master Class in Black History on Amazon Prime. It’s excellent. I got to know Cornel West a bit at the 1974 Liberation Theology Conference in Detroit. I also met Angela Davis when I worked on the West Bank. There were a few members of the communist party who lived on the West Bank and were active in neighborhood politics. I can’t remember the couples name right now, but they held a do for Angela and invited me. This would have been in the mid-1980’s. Very much worth watching.
BTW: I agree with everything I’ve heard so far on the program. Knew some, but also learned a lot.
Felt a sag in my excitement about the new kitchen as I start to reorganize it. Realized it was the midday blues. Gonna get back to exercising, starting today. Better energy when I work out. Was gonna go to On the Move Fitness, but wrote Deb a note and said, “I’ve got the Omicron jitters. Let’s schedule a zoom session.” Probably over cautious. But. I’m not now, nor have I been sick for the last two years. In less you count prostate cancer, of course.
The Erleada, which I’ve been taking for 6 days now, did drop my energy level at first but that seems to have waned. Also a few hot flashes. Not bad. Not good. Oddly, just as I typed Erleada, the phone rang. McKesson Biologic Pharmacy. They’re the folks that handle my Orgovyx script, too. Kind and competent. My favorite combination.
And, ta dah! $10 a month rather than $3,000 or $650.
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Wednesday gratefuls: David Sanders. Rebecca. Claire. Bonnie. Elisa. Snow. Coming down hard. Shingles vaccination. Safeway pickup. Rigel’s meds. Kep’s good appetite. Kabbalah Experience. Their classes. The kitchen. Mostly remodeled. The Mountain roads in the Snow.
It also allows for the sort of love I have with Kep and Rigel, with my ancient brothers, with Jon, Ruth, and Gabe. The sort of love that CBE has shown to me.
Next up tomorrow: getting started on kitchen reorganization. I plan to savor the opportunity to organize plates and silverware, herbs and spices, bread box and coffee maker. Getting them in places that will not recreate the clutter I had before the work began. When I see how long that will take, not long I imagine, I’ll call Modern Bungalow and schedule the furniture delivery.
The ADL’s comments on these revisions, which I have read and with which I agree, make me remember the adage that history is written by winners. While this may be true in the short term, the job of historians and educators is to balance the winner’s version with the facts of how others were affected by the winner’s victories.
Tuesday gratefuls: Winds. Swaying Lodgepoles. Cold and Snow coming. Polar Vortex slumping all the way down to Shadow Mountain. Bowe and his work today. Fatigue. Erleada. Mighty chemicals fighting prostate cancer on my behalf. The Assistance Fund. Cheese curds from Wisconsin Cheese Brothers. Night. Sleep. Electric blanket. Pillow. Kep and Rigel with me.
The North Node is the “cure” to the troubles of the South Node. If, like me, you have a South Node in Sagittarius, the North Node, directly across the face of the natal chart clock, is in Gemini. If I came into this life trailing wispy baggage of dogmatism, dark magic, rigid certainty, (all likely as dark sides of Sagittarius) then, the Gemini positives of listening and learning from others will help free me from that baggage. I’ll become a more well-rounded, healthy person.
Lights on. Lights off. Generator on. Power back. Generator off. Repeat. 8 or 9 times in the morning, another 3 or 4 in the afternoon and evening. Wind, high winds. 40-50 mph gusts here all day and into the dark. 100 mph in Boulder County where grass fires used the oomph to burn over 600 houses. Coulda been here. The nightmare scenario. Cold weather, high winds, wildfire. A nightmare, but not impossible. At all.
Boulder County is 35 miles or so north of Conifer, a larger part in the Foothills to the west, but a significant chunk to the east where the Great Plains meet the Mountains. That area, and its continuation into the northern Denver metro, burned. Grassy Fields, flat. Winds coming down the Flatirons.
Sorta screwed up with my health insurance. I had an appointment with Kristie on Monday. January 3. Occurred to me only Tuesday to check if there was a referral. No referral, I pay. None. A phone call to Arapaho Internal Medicine said I was an inactive patient. Would not make referral.
Tom told me yesterday he worried about me living alone and isolated. I could fall, break a leg, whatever. He was right. I’d considered it, but put it away for a future date. Last week I slipped on the stairs up to the loft. Ice. Gave me, as Kate used to say, “An adrenal squeeze.”
Jon and Gabe are coming up around 3 or 4 to spend New Year’s Eve. Ruth, the 15 year old, is going to a party that Jon referred to as chaperoned. Hormones. Need supervision.
Friday gratefuls: Cytopoint. VRCC. Chewy. Earth Venture. Veggie Dent. The Star show. Every night! The Winds of late Autumn in the Rockies. I am; therefore, I think. Thanks for that one, Tara. Tired Jamie. Jon. Winter tires back on Monday. Oil changed. Thanksgiving. Last holiday in the old kitchen. The mini-splits. Working. Lodgepoles bending. 25 mph Wind. Not breaking.
Climate change. Glasgow. Climate pessimism. Nihilism. 47% of Republicans don’t believe we should regulate greenhouse gases. Why? Oh, just the planet going through a regular cycle. Or, made up by the elites. Or, don’t give a damn. And they may win the 2022 elections. An election that could doom the planet and human life as we know it. Talk about high stakes.
Holiseason. A primer. I discovered holimonth 15 years ago. That was December with its abundance of holidays. Then I extended the idea to holiseason. (discovered later that this was a word anyhow. But, hey.) Holiseason by my reckoning runs from Samain on October 31st to the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th. [A Kate aside here. She left Sunday School for good when one of her teachers, 4th or 5th grade, kept pronouncing the holiday epi-fanny.]
Reflecting on my radical career. One thing in particular. A long time ago, either 1975 or 1980, I attended a conference. Liberation Theology in the Americas. There were two and I can’t recall which one I attended. Cornel West. Harvey Cox. Lettie Russel. My roommate was a priest from Guatemala. Lots of impassioned speeches. Marxist analysis. Great meal conversations. Bus tours by a Detroit Socialist party that had made some political progress.
At the end of the conference he performed a ritual typical of the Confederacy, planting a pine tree as a sign of peace. In the original rituals tomahawks and bows and arrows and knives would have been placed into the hole, covered in soil, the tree planted on top of them.
Kate and I attended a Physicians for Social Responsibility conference in Iowa City. On climate change. This was in the mid-1990’s. A national conference they had now well-known figures in the climate change movement presenting. Each day we would go back to our hotel and express wonder that this science was not public. And, it wasn’t then. At least not enough for anyone to notice.
Tuesday gratefuls: Amy, at Mile High Hearing. The Roger. Loss. Kate, always Kate. And, her quilting. Jon. Ruth. Gabe. Mark. Rigel, her insistent, loud barking at 3 am. Kep, who slept through it. Julie and AARP Advantage plan #1 with premiums. Electronic signing. Marina Harris’s Furball Cleaning.
Felt a little like I was on my way to the Principal’s office while driving into Mile High Hearing. It’s not often I face a relative stranger and have to acknowledge a failure. I could not keep Roger safe.
Got the art for my Hermit neon sign. I like it. Not cheap, but it will be a signature piece for the Shadow Mountain Hermitage. Gonna put it on the inside wall that can be seen through one of our front windows.
Climate change. The Whigged out GOP. The Gump Trump. The Pandamndemic. Democrats shooting themselves in the foot. I know. All still underway. As for me, I will remodel my kitchen, hang some neon art in my living room, utilize my mini-splits, pet my dogs.