Category Archives: Weather +Climate

Family, Great Wheel, Great Work, Health, US History, Weather +Climate

Colorado Can Lead

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Ostara and the Ovid Moon of Metamorphoses

Wednesday gratefuls: Chipmunk wife. Snow. More. And, yet more. Vaccines. Diane and Mary. Formula 1. Netflix. Yin Yang Master. Biden at work. 45 in Florida, his natural habitat. The Woollies. Spring. The Great Wheel. Its turns. Celebrate.

Sparks of joy: Snow. Life itself.

 

The Snow coming down again. Like Minnesota rain, straight down in gentle punctuated lines. Sat watched it against the Lodgepoles yesterday afternoon. Their red Bark, their Branches beginning to droop, covered in Branch shaped dollops of white. The Japanese Ukiyo-e prints and some paintings often show Snow and Pine trees. This was the same. It was easy to imagine myself in the mountains of Akita Prefecture, Kep wandering around on genetic home territory.

Then. Spring snows. Not the harsh snows of December and January. Wet, yes, but coming as a confection rather than an invasion, even in the depths we’ve had over the last three weeks. It’s as if we’re being inundated by confectioner’s sugar, a big wire shaker somewhere overhead.

And, even better, as Kate just said: “I see Snow and I see no Fire.” May it be so. This helps. Better Spring moisture gives some protection during June, our month of greatest fire danger. Historically. In July the monsoons come and soak the afternoons. Though. Has not happened but once since we’ve been here.

Kate has swollen salivary glands. Chipmunk face. Or, mumps. But she’s not been anywhere to catch the mumps. She had mumps as a child, anyhow. Good thing we already have an appointment for her at 1:00 pm today. My annual physical follows. Good times at New West Physicians. Painful enough to require an Oxy. Unusual for Kate.

Boulder continues to be in the news. A Libertarian ethos reinforced by cowboy culture is in a scrum with the progressive politics of metropolitan Coloradans. Boulder is the epicenter of this Mountain state’s radical left, as Berkeley is to California. I don’t know if that has anything to do with the shooter’s motive, but even if not, it’s still a bloody metaphor for the tension.

I do think there are ways through this impasse. At least here. I’ll mention the primary one I see today. Coloradans are outdoor oriented. Even if you never get out to hike the trails, ski the runs, or camp in a Mountain Meadow, the Mountains loom in the background or foreground. The Skies turn blue and the Sun shines in that bright, cheerful Colorado way. We all care about the wildlife, the rugged valleys, most of which we will never see.

Rancher culture in particular loves the land, too. The way forward that I see presses this love of the outdoors, of the wild things that live here, into a compact for a Colorado future both wild and free. The drivers for this compact will include a need for better water policy, climate change, changes in the nature of agriculture, especially toward regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture has a foot hold in the Flint Hills of Kansas. What they do there can work here.

This idea and its friends excite me, make me want to get into the mix. Colorado can lead the nation I think just because of the conflict and tension. Use the power and energy it generates to forge a covenant between metro and rural.

Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities, Memories, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

They Say It’s His Birthday!

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Spring! and the Ovid Moon of Metamorphoses

Shoutout to birthday boy Publius Ovidius Naso, or Ovid as we know him in the English speaking west. He’d be two thousand and fifty-four today.

Saturday gratefuls: Safeway pickup. Kabob skewers. Kate’s fluid flowing. Psalms class finish. New class start April 9. Writing poetry. Colorado Mountain Sun. Ancient ones on Justice. Vaccines. April Fool’s Day: shot II for me.

Sparks of Joy: Unclogging Kate’s feeding tube and avoiding another ER adventure. Wu wei, the Way of my life.

March 1, meteorological spring. No romance in that one. March 20, today, 5:37 MST, the Vernal Equinox. Spring. Ostara. Bunnies and crosses and parting of seas, oh my! Lots of romance, lots of theological pulling and hauling. This religion defining moment: resurrection and another: the Exodus. I settle these days for the Sun and the Earth’s celestial equator. See this explainer if you need more. More or less equal hours of Sun and night.

Yes. We’ve moved from the transitional time of Imbolc to the birthing blooming buzzing time. Spring. No wonder the Anglo-Saxons, those Northern European ancestors of so many of us, chose a fertility goddess, Eostre, to celebrate. Estrogen. Ostara. Easter. Yes, the Catholics took her name, added it to the resurrection celebration, and, voila: Easter!

Jesus as Eostre. A dying and rising God like Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, or Jesus seem like good company for a fertility goddess. Any gardener can testify to the thrill of planting dusty brown clumps of vegetative matter in the Fall of the year and in the Spring of the next year, the rapture of a moistened bed pierced by green shoots, then Tulips, Crocus, Grape Hyacinth, Iris, Lilies in colorful flower.

Isn’t resurrection a matter of taking a dead thing, or what appears to be a dead thing, putting it away, and having it rise out at the right time? If you listened to the Southern Gospel Revival’s rendition of “Ain’t No Grave” )two posts below this one), you heard the line, “Ain’t no grave, can keep my body down.” Further on, “When that trumpet sounds, I’m a risin’ from the ground.” Could be sung by every Tulip bulb I ever planted.

This is the right time to celebrate those things you may have planted a while back, projects or dreams that have needed some time in the grave or the soil or the unconscious.

It’s also the right time to look at the bed you’ve tended, the one in which you planted them, your life. There might be weeds, or, as I prefer, plants out of place. Note that this means you may have good habits or plans or projects that have become plants out of place in your life. You may have to remove them so your new projects and dreams will flourish.

Ask Eostre for help. You might find her in your anima, perhaps buried in your shadow. She’ll burst out, give things a boost up, if you let her. I’m sitting right now on Shadow Mountain, imagine what lies beneath.

Coronavirus, Family, Health, Holidays, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel, Weather +Climate

A Good Day

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Imbolc and the waning Megillah Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Kate, feeling better with a new placement of her feeding tube. Our 31st anniversary. Vaccine shot #1! Vaccines. Polio. Snow. Big Snow. Living in the mountains.  Ruby, sure footed on the snow. Blizzaks.

Sparks of Joy: Vaccine shot #1! Vaccines. Kate. Seeing her yesterday.

Kate on our 2011 cruise around Latin America, Santa Marta, Colombia

What a day yesterday. A good day. Needed one. Went into see Kate. Can’t miss seeing your wife on your anniversary, right? She looked and sounded wonderful, better than she has for weeks. I took her an empty olive jar filled with wine. Looked like a urine sample since it was white wine. I figured the hospital would be less likely to reject a glass jar than a wine bottle.

31 years. Good ones. We’ve been places together, grown flowers and vegetables, raised many dogs, and have two wonderful sons.

Her self-advocacy convinced the interventional radiologists to snake her feeding tube lower, getting it all the way into the jejunum. We’d expected that placement during her surgery to create the feeding site.

This puts the tube further down, out of the small pouch of her stomach created during her bariatric surgery. Hopefully this will mean less or no leaking, allow a faster feeding pace, and better absorption of the nutrients and calories. Since malnutrition is a major, perhaps the primary, medical issue for her at this point, we may see some significant improvements. Yeah! Go, Kate.

Love is a verb. Love guides and wills you to act. And, love is the act itself. Life without love is a sterile desert, nothing blooms. Flower for those you love.

First vaccine dose. Pfizer. Left arm. No pain or swelling. I sat in a socially distanced chair afterward, a small plastic timer stuck to a doorjamb behind my head. 15 minutes. Carla, the nurse, watched the long hallway filled with just shot folks. My timer beeped and I could go on with the rest of my day. And, I was that much closer with being able to go on with the rest of my life.

Even with the chaos of the weekend and the last three days I felt jubilant. A positive, wonderful step toward dealing with the virus instead of passively trying to stay out of its way. After a year.

45 in the rearview. One of two jabs complete. Kate feeling better. The stimulus passed. A big snowstorm on its way. I could get giddy.

I started yesterday with a trip to Bailey, The Happy Camper. (THC, get it?) Bought my Cheebachews for a good nights sleep. Had to wait until around 10 am so 285 could clear the snow and ice collected over night. That’s the beauty of the Solar Snow Shovel. The continental divide snakes along the horizon just after Pine. Snow covered.

On the way home I stopped at Scooter’s Barbecue. Voted the top barbecue joint in all of Colorado two years in a row. And it’s in Conifer. Odd, but true.

The guy who runs it is a linebacker sized guy, Southern. Thick accent. “I have this catering job, a Mexican wedding in South Park this Saturday. I’ve told them we’ll not be here on Saturday, that they have to pick it up on Friday.” He shook his head, “These people.” I waited for a racial slur, “They just don’t understand March in Colorado.” Ah. Good.

We’ll keep yesterday as one of the good days.

 

 

Colorado, Family, Health, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

Post Interrupted

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Imbolc and the Megillah Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Kate. Her doggedness. Rigel’s, too. That stimulus bill. Biden at work. Spring and Winter playing with each other. Now it’s my turn! Spring this weekend. Winter next week. Writing poetry again. Going with life as it streams through 9358 Black Mountain Drive. Elk Creek Fire paramedics. Swedish E.R. Dylan.

Sparks of Joy: Vaccines. Ode’s prints. Ruth.

This post got interrupted yesterday:

Elk Creek Paramedics came to our house yesterday. Kate was in extreme distress, trouble breathing, pain, nose bleed that wouldn’t stop. They took her out of the house and down the hill to Swedish E.R.

She’s still in the hospital this morning (Sunday, March 7) though I expect she’ll be released today. No obvious reason for the incident in x-rays or blood work. Scary, but looks like it will resolve.  Kate’s Caring Bridge site

It started here.

Colorado on my mind. There’s a fascinating thread on Pinecam.com about whether it makes sense to live up here. Here’s the key section from the post that started it:

“My wife and I own property in an unnamed Foothills community served by a community well system. I’ve got reason to believe there are issues with water supply, long term, and so we may be looking at selling soon. We’ve also experienced difficulty finding property insurers willing to write policies in our area due to wildfire risk – it’s not impossible, just expensive.”

I finished reading it all, and the responses reflect concerns in the minds of most who live in the mountains, especially in the more developed areas like Conifer and Evergreen.

When I lived at sea level in the Midwest, I often wondered how people could live in flood plains. I mean, they’re flood plains, right? Well, I understand now. Many of us live where the land calls us. Kate and I do.

This is the WUI, wooee! Wildland/Urban Interface. Sociologically we’re an extension of the Denver Metro area, an exurb, much like Andover is in Minnesota. About the same distance out, too. Different geology though.

In Andover we lived on the Great Anoka Sand Plain, a shore line area of the ancient glacial river Warren. Lots of rain, a deciduous forest, oak savanna, and fields that grew whatever crops folks wanted. We grew perennial flowers, vegetables, fruits and nuts, kept bees.

In Conifer we live on a mountain top at 8,800 feet. This is the arid West. Drought often, as it is now. Folks grow what they can and some do well, but it’s tough with the more intense sun, elk and mule deer, rocky infertile soil. Unlike Andover, we live here on the sufferance of the wild fire cycle.

On our property water availability depends on precipitation and older water stored in cracks in the bedrock. Our well has been refractured, meaning the rock got opened up some by water under pressure or drilling.

Family, Friends, Health, Myth and Story, Politics, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Enough

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Imbolc and the waning Megillah Moon

Friday gratefuls: Kate. Rigel. Kepler. Fresh snow. Vaccines. Sleep. Books. This computer. Dexterity. Psalms. Rabbi Jamie. His buddy, Justin. 45 gone. 46 at work. Lisa Murkowski’s vote in the Senate energy and natural resources committee for Haaland.

Sparks of Joy: Bright Sun on white Snow. The letter A. The Mountains.

What a long, strange trip it’s been. The Dead’s second compilation album and the title for life over the last four plus years. How I love the stable, unexciting presidency of Joe Biden. He’s pushing a stimulus for a wounded nation. He has police reform and a voting rights bill moving through the House on their way to the Senate. And, he’s putting together an infrastructure bill. Go, Joe.

Taking 45’s chaos off the table, reducing the news to policy analysis, political odds, the normal functioning of our democracy has lifted that everyday burden. Even a golden calf simulacrum of 45 can be laughed at, an oh my god moment. Head shaking, yes, but the burn of such a statue aloed by electoral defeat.

I’ve never been proud to be a Democrat because my politics fall on the left side of its consensus. But I’m close to pride now. Working on the pandemic, unemployment, protecting the vote, changing the field for policing, building a national policy to refit our nation. Put a minimum wage, a wealth and a carbon tax. Put teeth behind our rejoining of the Paris Accord and I’m gonna fly a blue flag over the blue lights we already have.

Who is this Ron Johnson anyhow? Send him back to Wausau or Shiocton or Baraboo. This last Wisconsin town has a circus museum. He could be an exhibit there, with the other clowns. Or, maybe he could go to the cranberry bogs around Tomah. Get a wooden paddle and earn his living as a harvester. Anything but an obstructionist asshole asking for the whole bill to be read, 628 pages.

I’m 74. The days of youth long gone. I no longer expect a fair world, but I hope for a just one. I no longer expect a peaceful world, but I hope for a stable one. I no longer believe in a three-story universe, but I love this actual one, even more mysterious.

Give me my Tolkien, my Psalms, my Oxford English Dictionary. And, faeries. Give me my family, my ancient friends, this amazing life. Give me the Mountains and the Snow and the bright Sun and blue Sky. This is enough. Always has been.

Cinema and Television, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, US History, Weather +Climate

The Frozen Rose of Texas

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Imbolc and the Megillah Moon

Sunday gratefuls: All the Megillah’s. More snow. More cold. A good sleep. Cold chicken. Red Lobster biscuits. My Ecuador alpaca coat. My new LLBean insulated plaid shirt. My duckies. Love the cold, don’t love being cold.  Vaccines. Covid. 45 gone. 46 in. Judah and the Black Messiah.

Sparks of Joy: Fresh, white Snow. Rigel jumping up on the deck like a 5 year old. Life.

 

 

Those vaccines. Hard to come by up here in the mountains. Not yet. We’ll get them though. Sooner, I imagine. Haven’t gone the obsessive click now, click again, click now, click again route. We’ve survived Covid so far doing what we’re doing. Gonna keep at no visits, grocery pickups, only essential medical visits. Probably for a while after the vaccine, too.

Love that they’re out there. That we’re eligible. That others are getting them. That more will get them. Might be Happy Hanukah and Merry Christmas. Ho, Ho, Ho. or Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel. If that happens, I’ll still enjoy the darkness of the Winter Solstice, but I’ll be right there with the light worshipers, too. Can you imagine how festive a season that will be?

Meanwhile a hyper clean, car sized robot will roam Mars punching holes in its surface and storing soil in special containers for the second part of a three stage project. The second stage is a lander that picks up those containers and the third stage returns them to Earth for NASA and European Space Agency labs. 2025-2027. Far away from the virus infected planet it left last July. Smart Perseverance.

And, maybe, just maybe, our nation will have made progress on sorting out its painful contradictions. I watched Judas and the Black Messiah yesterday on HBO Max. Fred Hampton was 21 when J. Edgar conspired with the Chicago P.D. to eliminate him. 21. When I watched, I kept saying yes, Fred, yes. Power is people. Capitalists, no matter their color, exploit the people. A Rainbow Coalition. Yes, Fred. Then he died in his bed, never waking up, his pregnant Deborah arched over his body.

Of course, the move reminded me of the damning curse of racism, but it went further, much further. Fred brought together Puertoricans and poor whites. He saw the thread that wove together the oppressed and was able to speak to it, to help others see it. No wonder they killed him.

What if the Proud Boys and the Black Panthers saw common cause? They could. It’s corporate capitalism that keeps them both down. What if those of us on the far left joined, too. And Chicanos. And Asians. And Native Americans. There would need be no violence. That sort of self-awareness would win at the ballot box.

I know. Texas. How would you like a $16,000 bill for keeping the heat on? See the paragraph above.

Health, Politics, US History, Weather +Climate

A Cold South

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Imbolc and the Megillah Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Dr. Thompson. House cleaners. Vaccine. Covid. Carl Hiaasen. Screen writers for The Alienist. Oximeter. Blood pressure monitor. Prostate cancer. PSA’s so far. COPD.

Sparks of joy: Dr. Thompson. Snow coming. Poetry. Perseverance getting closer to Mars.

 

Cooked Steak Diane and saffron rice for a birthday supper. Easy Entrees. Steak was wonderful. Thick and the sauce a great complement. Plenty for more meals. The rice. Meh. But, if it was gonna be meh on one, the rice every time.

Saw Dr. Leigh Thompson today, replacing Dr. Gidday. I like Dr. Thompson. She’s humble and knowledgeable. A good combination in my opinion.

Cold in the south. When I saw the forecast map, I thought, They’re all gonna die. Not all, but a lot. And suffering.

Power grids down. I learned on NPR that Texas is an island, power grid wise. That means it won’t go down along with other nearby states, but it also means that they can’t import power from the grid outside their borders. A tough reality right now.

I like the idea of a 1/6 commission. The more we learn about the web of propaganda, organizing, and negligence that helped create this insurrection, the safer we will all be. Oh, and it might cement even further 45’s culpability. That would be ok.

What a time! We’re about to dump 1.9 trillion dollars into the economy. The weather is crazy. Covid has new variants up its sleeve. Kids are out of school. Millions are out of work. The next few years will define interesting times for the United States. Looking forward to being part of that.

 

 

Astrology, Our Land and Home, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History, Weather +Climate

Chilly

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Imbolc and the Megillah Moon

Monday gratefuls: 7 degrees this morning. Up 26 from yesterday. 75th trip underway, go Earth. Joseph’s happy birthday on Facebook. Vaccines. 45’s guilt. Those who know it. Those who don’t. Covid. Winter and all its trimmings.

 

Sparks of Joy: Kep and food. Rigel’s prance. 45 out, 46 in. Seeing dogs sticking their heads out of car windows. Young children being themselves.

Our house. Needs insulation. When wind blows through the mountains, it also blows through our house. Nice in the summer, not so much in the winter. The windows leak. Doorways, too. Also, the heating of the great room, kitchen, and sewing room is inadequate. If I were married to someone other than Norwegian Kate Olson, we’d have fixed all this years ago. As it is, we usually just put up with it until it gets a bit warmer. -19, however, challenges even Scandinavians. Maybe later this year?

However. We’re much better off than those poor bastards in the South. Respect to all of them for confronting ice and cold in a place ready for neither. Friend Bill Schmidt recounted his daughter Moira’s observation of a highway near their Austin, Texas home. Ice. A hill, a curve. Brake lights. Cars slippin’ and slidin’.

Talk to any Colorado native and they’ll tell you that all of our traffic problems are caused by Texans who move up here. Maybe 5%. The rest is people who just don’t know how to drive.

The lunar New Year has turned us into the year of the Ox. If this is your spot in the twelve year Chinese astrological cycle, you’re likely “Prudent, follow procedures step by step, take things slowly, unlikely to be influenced by others or environment, do things out of personal idea and ability, go ahead steadily and surely, always can achieve the set goals.” This according to Your Chinese astrology website.

As a February pig myself, I’m “…very talented, kind and full of vigor. …lucky to get help from the elders and assistance from benefactors. …could be very dignified and healthy during the life.” Same site. Well…

And, finally, a political thought for today. I agree with the Democrats decision to not call witnesses for Trump’s impeachment trial. The McCarthy call revelation was tasty, no doubt, but the better choice was to finish the trial with dispatch.

No chance for a second narrative to take hold. The House managers did a better than credible job at prosecuting their case and showed the nation Trump’s guilt. The vote would not have changed and having it a short time after their good work underscored the 43 boot lickers’ shame.

We’re a long way from done with all of this; but, now we can move onto the important work. Undoing as much of 45’s legacy as possible quickly and moving on matters too long neglected like climate change, racial and economic justice, immigration, radical police reform.

Dogs, Family, Minnesota, Politics, Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Rough Seas Ahead

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Imbolc and the Megillah Moon

Sunday gratefuls: -19. Here! Valentine’s Day. 74 round trips, ticket punched. Easy Entree’s. Gifts and good eating. Rigel, who woke me up with a birthday kiss this morning. Kate’s somewhat better day. Snow. We need it. 57 yes. The cowardly 43 lions. Better get to Oz and get some courage. Vaccines. Covid. Third Phase life, it’s sweetness and its bitters.

Sparks of Joy: The heart shaped tin from Easy Entree’s. Rigel’s kiss. George Will. No, really. The loft. Being alive.

 

 

Well digger’s belt buckle? Oh, something to warm up with here this morning. -19 when I got up. My weather station so that’s as local as it gets. The weather gods brought me a reminder of my 40+ years in Minnesota. Which hit -50 and lots of other -‘s. Would that it could last longer. We’re still cold lovers, Kate and me, though we have become fans of the solar snow shovel, too. Cold, then warm enough to melt what fell.

In Minnesota my birthday was almost always very cold. Here not as much. So, a nice present. Namaste, divine weather beings.

The Senate vote? Yes, sure. It’s embarrassing to our country, to our democracy, to our civility, to the rule of law, to human decency, but why do you ask? Oh. You thought as, one columnist said, they might not lick his boots? Perhaps you thought that sending an angry mob to fight like hell against their constitutional duty to recognize the votes of our nation would make them change? Now you know what politics are like when fear rules.

The only thing they had to fear, as FDR said, was fear itself. And, unlike our entire nation during WWII, they let it overcome them, those 43 cowardly lions. I agree with George Will, again, “Although not nearly as tragic as 9/11 in lives lost and radiating policy consequences, 1/6 should become, as its implications percolate into the national consciousness, even more unsettling.” Washington Post, 2/13/2021

The Senate vote, while not surprising, suggests something  sinister. That those divisions  on display on 1/6, and this is Will’s point, I believe, reduced 43 members of the “world’s most prominent deliberative body” to 90 pound weaklings. They fear sand being kicked in their face by the fascist-no-longer-thank-god-in-chief. Who will stand up, agree to be their Jack LaLanne?

Or, their Dorothy? Who might lead them to meet the Wizard? In this analogy Trump would be the man behind the green curtain, turning wheels, pushing levers while looking meek and ashamed when discovered. Yeah, you’re right, this analogy stays firmly in fantasy.

Another point of agreement with George Will from the same column: “An essential conservative insight about everything is that nothing necessarily endures. Care must be taken.” This is a lesson of the Trump years. And, I have learned it.

There is a fruitful, necessary tension between protest and the fabric of democracy. Without it protest would never, could never, succeed. Now though, thanks to the right-wing troops, the real sheeple, I know there is a line beyond which even protest must not go.

In former days I had a thirst for revolution, a dramatic and overall change in our body politic. Back then I refused to believe in human imperfection. If only we could get policies and the economy right. If only we could change the structure of political life. Now, though, I know.

This imperfect institution, our democracy, is exactly as Churchill said, the worst form of government, except for all others. It is fragile and wonderful. When it works, it allows us to fight and makeup. To consider change in our common lives and take action. Yet a man as coarse and stupid and venal as 45 can bring it close to extinction. As Will says, care must be taken.

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Still here. Still ok.

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Winter and the beautiful waning crescent of the Moon of the New Year

Ordinary time. Is there any such thing right now?

Saturday gratefuls: Kate. A good night’s sleep. For both of us. Much needed. Rigel keeping me warm. Kep the good boy. Impeachment. 25th Amendment. Resignation. January 20th. All. Subway last night. Beef stroganoff tonight. Easy Entrees, thanks Diane and Mary. Life. Its wonder even amidst its difficulties.

 

 

 

Whoa. Yesterday was tough. I slept from eight last night to seven this morning. All the way through. Thankfully. Feel rested and ready for today. Grateful, really grateful.

Kate’s still worn out though the oxygen situation has resolved. She’s already fatigued from whatever has been going on for the last three weeks, then to have an insult like the oxygen concentrators gave her was hard. She’s still asleep. I’m glad.

As long as I can stay rested, healthy, get my workouts in, see friends and family on zoom, I am ok. Though on occasion I get pushed right up against my limits. I imagine Covid is helping me since I don’t get out, am not around sick people. Or, when I am, I’m masked. Odd to consider, but I’m sure it helps.

Life continues, no matter. Until it doesn’t, of course. That is, even when an evil bastard like Trump is in office, we still have to eat. When a rampant virus rages, we still have to sleep. When a family member is ill, we still love each other, support each other. Life is a miracle and wasting it, well, please don’t.

Got an article about building a computer. Something I’ve always wanted to try. Might just do it. Also read about an experiment that proved quantum entanglement is not instantaneous. And one about the lost merry customs of Hogmanay. And about lyfe, the idea that life might be, probably is, existing in forms we carbon based life forms might not recognize, even if it’s in front of us. And another on why water is weird. And another on why the universe might be a fractal. (thanks, Tom)

No matter how proximate or distant disturbances in the force, science goes on, literary folks write books and articles, the past remains a source of inspiration, and the future a source of hope. No matter whether life has meaning or whether it is absurd (as I believe) the secondary effects of this strange evolutionary push into awareness persist. And, yet they persisted.

Lucretia hangs in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, ready for witnesses to her dignity, her sense of honor, and her tragic fate. Goya’s Dr. Arrieta, not far from her, documents gratitude for healing and the comfort of ancestors. Van Gogh’s Olive Trees teach us that perspective differs from person to person, yet each perspective can be beautiful while remaining unique. Beckman’s Blind Man’s Buff embraces the mythic elements of life, helps us see them in our own lives. Kandinsky. Oh, Kandinsky. His colors. His lines. His elegance.

Mt. Evans and its curved bowl continues to deflect weather toward us here on Shadow Mountain. The light of dawn hits Maine first, as it has for millennia. The polar vortex slumps toward Minnesota.

Roman Ephesus. The last standing pillar of the Temple of Diana. Delos. The Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The ruined temples of Angkor Wat. Chaco Canyon. Testimony to the ancientrail of human awe. Of an eagerness to memorialize wonder.

It is, in spite of it all, a wonderful world.