Category Archives: Weather +Climate

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Friends, Memories, Minnesota, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Travel, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Losing Daylight

July 17, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Monsoon Moon

The big Dodge Ram sits in our garage, so it won’t get hit with hail in case we have a thunderstorm. Nothing says I don’t give a damn like returning a pock marked car to the rental folks. Supposed to go back today.

Kate had a couple of days clear of nausea, then got hit hard yesterday. It’s difficult to describe how debilitating it is to experience this inner discomfort regularly. I can see it. I can sort of imagine it, but she’s dealing with it. No. Fun. At. All. I feel bad for her, with her.

Here in Conifer we’ve already lost 20 minutes of daylight since the summer solstice, 14:59 on June 21, 14:39 today. I go to bed at 9 pm and I can already tell the difference. It’s beginning to get dark now at 9. The darker it gets the happier I am and, as an added bonus, the darker it gets the cooler and wetter it gets, helping sleep and mitigating wildfire probabilities.

Feeling a little sad this morning. Kate and I had an argument last night. It happens, but I never feel good when it does and the feeling lingers. Reminds me that our moods are fickle, sometimes referented, sometimes not, but always changing. Not becoming attached to one mood or another, up or down, being equanimous (yes, it’s really a word. either that or it was made up in our Mussar group) helps level out our moods. Although, I do appreciate both a good up and a good down. Vitality does not lie in sameness.

Looking forward to seeing Minneapolis and friends the first week of August. Groveland Unitarian-Universalist celebrates becoming a Covenanting Community in the UUA on August 4th. They wanted me to come and I’m pleased they do. Like the days in Durango I’ll get a chance to catch up with folks with whom I’ve had long term relationships, seeing Woollies and I hope docent friends as well as the Groveland folks.

Plus, I’m staying at the Millennium Hotel which is on the edge of Loring Park. I lived in Loring Park up on Oak Grove, a wonderful third floor apartment that, thanks to its location on the hill, had a beautiful view of downtown. That was back in 1975/1976. Which is, wait for it, 43 years ago or so. 28. Whoa.

I’ll get to see the statue of famed 19th century fiddler, Ole Bull. When I was chair of Citizens for a Loring Park Community, we turned down the Daughters of the Sons of Norway who asked us to let them move it somewhere cleaner and safer. Than our neighborhood? Come on. I’ll also get to walk to the nearby Walker Art Museum and the somewhat further away Minneapolis Institute of Arts. When I head to the MIA, I’ll pass through Stevens Park, which was my first home in Minneapolis. I was a live-in weekend caretaker and janitor for Community Involvement Programs. The old Abbott Hospital was right across the street. Lots of Stevens Park stories.

Not to mention that wonderful road trip across the Nebraska plains. Which I actually enjoy when enough time lapses after I’ve done it.

Memories, Minnesota, Weather +Climate

Minnesota

July 14, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Monsoon Moon

Got to thinking about my posts about stuff that’s different here in Colorado. Watch for falling rocks and wildlife highway signs, for example. Reminded me of my first years in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

© Superbass / CC-BY-SA-3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons

I lived in Appleton, Wisconsin for a year before I moved to Minnesota and the first winter there was brutal. Lots of snow, really cold. Just what I had imagined and wanted. I had not anticipated that some folks would take their battery inside at night. Or, that others would have engine block heaters. I’d never experienced local option over bar licenses. Appleton was dry; the county wet. Deer hunting was a season when grudges could be settled. The Great Lakes were a nearby reality, not a distant notion from U.S. history books.

When I moved to New Brighton to go to seminary, it puzzled me, even after a year in Wisconsin that there were posts with electrical outlets at each parking space for the dorm. Oh, the block heater thing again. The epic cold. I still recall translating 20 below zero into centigrade for my Taiwanese roommate. His face? Priceless.

Minneapolis lakes Inside the city limits of Minneapolis/St. Paul there are several lakes. Full sized lakes, not ponds or reservoirs, but lakes. This means getting to learn the streets takes a while since many have to curve at some point to go around a body of water. Not to mention, speaking of water, that the Mississippi is the river that runs through them.

Then, most puzzling of all for this Indiana boy used to Indiana and Illinois politics, Minnesotans seemed to actually care about politics. Corruption and cynicism were not the two C’s of government in Minnesota, more like caring and compassion.

Like Wisconsin, Minnesota was part of that strange U.S. creature, the Upper Midwest: Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. All three of these states shared lots of border area with the Great Lakes and the greatest lake, Superior, washes up against all three of them and only those three in the U.S. Also in all three, as you drive north, you enter the northwoods, the arboreal forest that begins in Canada at the edge of the tundra.

This is still wild country, not rich enough in resources, except for the Iron Range of Minnesota, and far enough from the usual transportation routes to be pretty hard scrabble for folks who choose to live there. The exception are those communities that have ports on Lake Superior or Lake Michigan. That’s right, ports. These are lakes with a thriving shipping industry, huge lakers carrying coal, wheat and other goods from state to state and to Canada.

Aging, Mussar, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Life is a cabaret, old friend

July 13, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Summer New (Super) Moon

supermoon = closest new moon to Earth. See the tides go up. Bay of Fundy, watch out.

20180608_181820 Skype yesterday with RJ Devick of Bond and Devick, our financial planners. We meet with him once a year to go over our portfolio, look at upcoming needs, see if we need to make any adjustments to the draw from our IRA. This session in particular may have changed our lives a bit. We’ll see. Maybe some more money available for travel or work around the house. That would be nice, put a bit of a skip in both our steps yesterday.

Mussar was a profound conversation about the nature of equanimity, turning into a discussion of the nature of chaos and how we can keep ourselves calm in the face of disorder.

Last night I went to bed about a half an hour before my usual time and got up early, 5 am. Still a little asleep. It’s 49 up here on Shadow Mountain, delightful.

Colorado, Friends, Mountains, Original Relation, Plants, The West, Travel, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Will Wonders Never Cease?

June 30, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Woolly Mammoth Moon

Happy to report that the two friends with critical life moments had good news, one through medical surveillance and one through a lifetime of work brought into clear focus. May the congregation say, Amen. Or, blessed be.

Under the Woolly Mammoth Moon two natural wonders continue apace. The 416 fire, though now reporting 37% containment, has increased in size to 47,000 acres plus and further information on the inciweb site for it indicate weather conditions are favorable for the fire to continue to grow. In addition to its location only 13 miles north of Durango, where my buddies and I spent a weekend, it’s also very close to Mesa Verde and the Canyon of the Ancients. This fire began on June 1st and has lasted into the difficult fire conditions of midsummer.

Cliff Palace of Mesa Verde, Mark Odegard

Back on the Big Island, Kilauea continues to erupt.

June 27 fissure 8 cone supplies lava to the ocean overflows USGS. The cone is now nearly 180 feet high.

June 28 Night view of the lava channel toward fissure 8 under a nearly full moon. USGS

At the Kilauea caldera, Halemaʻumaʻu crater, home of the goddess Pele, continues to deepen and subside, the floor now 1,300 feet below what used to be the overlook area. The USGS reports that the popular parking lot next to the crater is no more, having fallen into Halemaʻumaʻu.

Family, Friends, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Fire Weather

June 28, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Woolly Mammoth Moon

It’s late June and we have a spate of hot, dry, sometimes windy weather ahead of us. In spite of the rains over the last week or so, the fire danger has remained high and this forecast has put us into a stage 2 fireban. The underlying rule in a stage 2 fireban is, if you have to put it out, it’s forbidden. If you can turn it off, it’s ok. Charcoal grill. No. Gas fired grill. O.K. Lot of grumbling yesterday on Nextdoor Shadow Mountain about this ban because it’s in place the week before the fourth.

Makes me remember the inevitable conflict with our otherwise well-liked neighbors, the Perlichs, who lived across the street from us Andover. They loved fireworks. The week of the fourth always got to our dogs. Dogs don’t like sudden, loud noises. Some, like our dear Tira of late memory and Rigel of current experience, really, really don’t like them. A stage two fireban for us is fine, thank you. (Though it does mean I have to carry a water bucket and a pointed shovel with me while I finish up the limbing and bucking.)

Two friends have significant events today and, though I can’t say what they are, I can say that it feels good to have had the time with them last week. It means I’m a little bit more there for them and I like that feeling. Here’s hoping for great results in both cases.

Heat makes me turgid, slows me down. Shortcuts the thinking process. By mid-afternoon the only comfortable place in our house is the downstairs. It does cool off quickly as evening approaches, but for a couple of hours both Kate and me experience debilitation. I know, a strong word, but accurate nonetheless. We’re cold weather creatures who suffer the horrors of sunny days in summer with some grumpiness. The elevation moderates summer heat, yes, but doesn’t eliminate it.

Read an article about folks who move to the mountains and those who move to beaches. Mountain folks tend more toward introversion, beach folk toward extroversion. (and, in the latter case, skin cancer) I suppose if the heat encouraged me to go and find other sun lovers and, if I liked that, then the beach would make sense. Doesn’t, though.

To some extent I feel as if life is on hold while heat dominates the day. See the earlier posts about why I celebrate the turn toward darkness at the summer solstice. It gives me hope.

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Judaism, Original Relation, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

The Emersonian Turn

June 26, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Woolly Mammoth Moon

winter solstice yalda-night-persian-calligraphy — winter solstice, Yalda night, Persian calligraphy

Well, it’s incremental. Down from 14:59 to 14:58 today but the needle has begun to move. By the end of the month daylight will have decreased to 14:56, but, by the end of July, to 14:16. August 13:05. September 11:49. December 21 9:21. That’s for Colorado, of course. Other locations will vary. A lot. But the trend is the same. And, on top of this mountain, welcome.

Started working on lesson plans, a first for me. My task involves the 6th graders of our religious school. Rabbi Jamie has a worksheet I’m using with four columns: Hebrew, Torah, Middah, and Mitzvah. Guess what? The first column is in Hebrew. That makes it a challenge for me. But, in this wonderful age of quick information access I can plug in the word to google’s task bar and get at least a clue quickly.

Glad I learned the quote, “Confusion is the sweat of the intellect.” After yesterday’s work on the lesson plans the metaphorical sweat came easily. It’s no easy feat stepping into another tradition, even one with which I have some familiarity. Yet, it is also rich, resonant.

Not a Jew, but a reconstructionist. That realization about my comfort level at Beth Evergreen has given me a broader insight. It’s a little strange, so bear with me, please.

I love definite, strong connections to the past, both Christianity and Judaism offer that to their adherents. So does travel. And reading. Among my favorite places to visit are ancient ruins like Ephesus, Angkor Wat, the Great Wall, sites of ancient Rome, Pompeii, Bath, Delphi, Delos, Cahokia, Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, even the castles of North Wales like Conway and Dinas Bran, encyclopedic art museums, and worlds created by writers like Ovid, Homer, Dante.

This could make me a conservative, a thinker and an actor with a preference for things as they were, a reluctance to change what works. But, oddly, it has had the opposite effect. I find in the ancient world a panoply of human possibility, ways of coping with this odd gift, life. How we think today, how we feel, has its roots in this vast web of life’s journey. We don’t have to experience everything as brand new, don’t have to figure everything out for ourselves. Others have loved, have doubted, have feared, have wondered, have hoped. So can we.

But, and I might call this the Emersonian turn, we cannot use the offerings of the past without remembering his introduction to Nature: “The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”

When we wittingly or unwittingly chain ourselves to the experience of others, especially those others from the distant past, we disrespect both them and ourselves. We disrespect them by claiming their authority as if something we had earned. We disrespect ourselves because we cheat ourselves of the present, of our own deep intuition, of our own revelations.

When we recognize though that those previous generations did behold God (bracket content) and nature face to face, that they did have an original relation to the universe, that they did create poetry and philosophy of their own insight, that they did create their religions by access to their own revelation, we learn an important, perhaps the important, lesson. We too live in this world with the same faculties, the same powers of observation and discernment that they had.

It was not those who had a religion of revelation to them that blinded us though. It was men, yes mostly men, of institutions, who tried to make the words of the past govern us. Those who declared scripture inerrant and infallible meant they knew what it meant, once and for all, and we had to obey. Well, I call bull shit on that. Those original beholders of God and nature opened themselves, in their present moments, to the awe and wonder all round about them. What a thing of beauty! Think how the mere record of their lives has effected us down to this day.

It is, though, the record of their lives. Only that. In our present, in this sacred moment, we have the same opportunity that they had, we have the same responsibility that they had. Think how the mere record of your life might effect others as distant from us in tomorrow as those are in yesterday.

Open up. Lighten up. Dance to the music of our time. Rip back the cloth from the temple gate in your life. Peak inside. Tell us what you see. We need to know.

Remember this. Always. “In the coming world they will not ask me—Why were you not Moses? They will ask me—Why were you not Zusya?” Rabbi Zusha of Hanipol

Family, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Politics, Science, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

A Family of Introverts

June 24, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Woolly Mammoth Moon

20170423_091304 (2) Took Gabe to see Avengers: The Infinity War. We both liked it a lot. At various times I have the aesthetics of a 10 year old, a 12 year old and a long time museum docent. Not sure why, but I’m enthralled by comic book storylines and computer graphics. Vermeer, too. Caravaggio. Tolstoy. Wolverine. Harry Potter. Wabi-sabi. Sci-fi in books and on television. Guess parts of me just never grew up.

Ruth said to me yesterday, “You’re random, too.” One of the better compliments I’ve received.

Black Mountain is putting on another show this morning. A fluffy cumulus cloud has wrapped itself over the peak with its ski run scars. I can tell from my weather station that it must be about 39 degrees up there since that’s the dewpoint where I am. It’s 45 here. The world of clouds is no longer thousands of feet above us, as it was in Minnesota almost all of the time. Here we live among the clouds.

Trump. So, George Will wrote a column in the Washington Post urging members of his former party, the GOP, to vote against it in the upcoming election. Somebody has to check the “Vesuvius of mendacities.” Great metaphor. Even better idea. Of course, he believes that a Democratic congress will be as pusillanimous as the current GOP one, but it will not buckle toward the president, but away from him. He’s not become a liberal, hardly, just a pragmatic conservative who finds Trump abhorrent from a different place on the political prism.

introverts-unite-226x300 Gabe and Ruth have been here since Thursday night while Jon worked on his house. Somehow we’ve finally sorted out a way of being together that seems ok for everybody. Hallelujah and hosanna. Kate has calmed, I’m not sure how, but she has. Wonderful to see. Gabe’s more attentive, more fluid in his speech, if not more fluent. Ruth cooks, sews, goes to the planetarium, talks about matters both important and funny. We interact, but on our terms, all of us. A family of introverts (though Ruth sees herself as an extreme extrovert) takes a while to find an equilibrium. Especially post-divorce.

Gonna cut down another tree today, oh boy.

Friends, Judaism, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The Move, Travel, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

This and that

June 20, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Woolly Mammoth Moon

Ode, Tom, Paul overlooking the Animas River in Durango

All the Woollies are back in their places with bright shiny faces. Mark and Tom in the Twin Cities, Paul in Robbintson, Maine.

Kate had her first board meeting last night. She dressed up in her serious adult clothes, put on a coat of many colors and went to Evergreen. I stayed home. Felt good after the long drive.

It’s 50 again this morning, cool, but clear. Yesterday the rain continued in the evening. A bit of nostalgia on the weather website, a tornado watch! Felt like the Midwest. Don’t recall having had one while we’ve lived here. Lots of red flag days, flash flood warnings, winter storm warnings, but no tornado watches. A few severe thunderstorm warnings, usually announcing the possibility of killer hail. Colorado has significant hail damage, among the highest in the nation. Climate in the montane region of the Rockies.

With the Durango trip over I’m finished with traveling until early August when I’ll head back to the Twin Cities for Groveland U.U.’s 25th anniversary celebration. Look forward to reconnecting with both Woolly friends and fellow docents from the MIA, seeing the MIA and the Walker, a jucy lucy at Matt’s.

We go into Denver less and less, our out of the house time spent either in the mountains themselves or in Evergreen, mostly at Beth Evergreen. Not an intentional thing, though the heat during the summers is a barrier for us, just that our life is now in the mountains and the city seems more and more foreign each time we go. Of course, we lived in Andover for twenty years, well outside Minneapolis, but we got into the Cities with greater frequency there. I had the MIA and the Sierra Club, the Woollies that drew me in; Kate had friends.

The stump grinder did a great job. Feels like we’re beginning to move in, a process attenuated by the medical and familial upsets that came bang, bang, bang after we moved. Jon’s bench is a good step in that direction, placing the fans, adding the light in the living room. Plenty more to do. We spent a lot of money early on installing the generator, a new boiler, solar panels, the new bathroom downstairs, sealing and staining the garage, new kitchen. Decor has waited. I’m close to having the garage organized again, may do some more work on that today.

Friends, Mountains, The West, Travel, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Home Again

June 18, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Woolly Mammoth Moon

Helmsman Back from the lands of the ancients. Back from the still growing 416 fire, now 30% contained. Back from an immersion in my old life so complete that I would occasionally say here, referring to the Twin Cities or Minnesota. The web of context and thick memories with Tom, Mark and Paul is old and deep.

We ate breakfast (thanks, Mark) in Durango at the Doubletree where we stayed. Packed up and left in the rain. It rained or sprinkled the whole time we were in Durango and that same pattern continued all the way back to Conifer. This meant my three amigos got to see the mountains with clouds hanging over them, the forests with mists boiling up in and through them, the grasses green, and small, temporary creeks flowing as the rain sought lower ground through rocky elevated terrain. It was a picturesque drive made mythic.

Paul's t-shirt New memories. Climbing the ladders out of Cliff Palace. Talking with Doug Crispin about Mesa Verde. Tom as the Great Helmsman. Mark with his notebook open, sketching as we drove. “Riding loosens me up, makes it better.” Paul’s Common Ground County Fair t-shirt. (see poster) Wandering through the Durango RR museum with its odd, large and varied collection: the blonde black bear, the bi-plane, the solar car, a private train car, memorabilia from the capture of Saddam Hussein and a thousand miniature soldiers, among other things. Visiting the Telluride Bud Company with Mark, his first visit to a legal pot shop.

The rain, a constant for the last couple of days, has to have helped our fire situation, too. A good thing.

Colorado, Friends, Mountains, Plants, The West, Third Phase, Travel, US History, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Cliff Palace

June 17, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Woolly Mammoth Moon

We drove yesterday where others walked long ago. The drive from the visitor center at Mesa Verde to the Cliff Palace where we went on an hour long tour took a long while, maybe 30 minutes up an incline. The land at Mesa Verde slopes up at an angle with fingers of land separated by eroded valleys. At the end of these wide fingers the land slopes down again, gently. As a result, according to an exhibit at the Spruce Tree dwelling museum, Mesa Verde is not a mesa at all, but a cuesta. Mesa’s have sharp cliffs while cuesta’s slope, as they do here, toward the lower ground.

20180616_113852 — Paul and Mark descending

The route down to Cliff Palace (I’ll post pictures when I get back home) was the same one the cliff dwellers used, narrow steps cut into sandstone, augmented a bit by the occasional iron railing. There was, too, a ten foot ladder on the way down and two ten foot ladders on the way out which also followed a cliff dweller path. It would have been a fun place to grow up as a kid, scrambling up and down over rock and ladders, a more or less level surface above the home site where games could be played.

As at many sites where rock was a primary building material, the skill level was high with walls that were plumb, right angles, and a mortar that both bound the rock together and allowed water to seep through without loosening.

Mark asked an interesting question about wall coverings. These rocky appearing structures would have had several coats of plaster on them and would have been painted. That means they would have looked much different than they do now.

A ranger at the visitor center compared Mesa Verde to Giza and other World Heritage sites. When Tom asked him what was good about working there, “We get visitors from all over the world.” Another Ranger I talked to, Doug Crispin, had an obvious reverence for this Park. He was a first generation immigrant and said, “This is an American story. I’m honored to be here to share it.” He and I mused over a thousand years from now, “Will anyone be coming to look at the ruins of Durango? Probably not. But Mesa Verde will still be here.”

Right outside my hotel room is a small balcony with two chairs, a small table and a view of the Animas River. Had I been in this room on April 7th of 2015 the Animas would have been a sickly, mustard yellow thanks to the toxic spill from the Gold King Mine upstream from here. It’s clear now, with people kayaking, long boarding, even fishing, but it took a long time. Here’s a hardly reassuring couple of paragraphs from the Durango Herald, April of this year:

“San Juan Basin Public Health said water samples taken throughout the Animas River indicate there’s no risk to human or environmental health from normal use of the waterway.

However, the health department suggests people who come in contact with the river to wash with soap, keep a close watch on children who are more susceptible to unintentionally swallowing river water and treat water before consumption.”

Meanwhile, the 416 fire, from the same newspaper, an hour ago: “The 416 Fire hasn’t exhaled its last column of smoke yet, but steady rainfall Saturday did help tame the 16-day-old wildfire and allow firefighters to increase containment lines around the 34,161-acre blaze.”

20180616_122340 I slept last night with the patio door open, screen closed. I could hear the Animas, the river of souls, running. When I woke up this morning, it was raining. My ear was eager for the sound, found it soothing, familiar in a humid East, Midwestern way.

Being with Tom, Paul, and Mark has reminded us all of the depth our long time relationships has nurtured. We move together through the day easily, listening to each other, making decisions, continuing lines of thought, sparking new ones. One of Paul’s hopes is that this trip might encourage us to use a meeting app like Zoom to get together even while far apart physically. I’d like that and hope we can make it work, too.

Kate says the stump grinder got a lot done in 2 hours. I’m excited to see it. An outdoor room. Later we’ll have him back to do the front, leaving widely spaced trees with no stumps.