Category Archives: Weather +Climate

Weather +Climate

A Return to Regular Programming

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Spring                                                                           Planting Moon

According to my weather station, we stand at 49 degrees.  And this time there seem to be no winter storms with plowable and shovelable snow wrecking their way through Nebraska on their way here.

Nope.  Now it’s tornadic super-cells, derechos and life altering hail.  Like I always say, I’m glad I don’t live on the coast or near an earthquake fault or volcano.  Those people must be nuts.

Kate’s home, taking a nap.  I took mine in the chair well before lunch.  We will now return to our normal programming.

Dogs, Health, Weather +Climate

Woozy

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Spring (so they say)                                                      Planting Moon

Kona’s at the vets getting her tumor removed.  Gertie’s down here in the study, lying down close to the desk.  Rigel has begun to worry about her mama, looking through the gate in the morning toward the bedroom.  Where could she be?

Kona will come home today, probably late in the afternoon.  She’s been to the vet three days in a row and is not a particularly happy dog at this time.

The meds I’ve been taking for this damned back make me a bit woozy, between that and the pain, my capacity to get things done has diminished quite a bit.  I’ll be glad when the back decides to calm down and I can resume exercising.  It’s also effecting my sleep.  Considerably off.

We did not get 8 inches of snow here.  More like 2 or 3.  Now the forecast has 76 for Sunday.  76.  Maybe some 80’s next week.  No spring this year.  Winter into summer.

Aging, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Cancer in the morning, the numinous in the afternoon

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Spring                                                                                 Planting Moon

Got up with the sun this morning, needing to pick up Kona between 7:00 and 7:30 am in Blaine.  Having the sun out and being up early both put my mood into high in spite of the significant cash outlay for Kona’s needed care.

Imagine my surprise when I looked at the weather report.  6-8 inches of new snow.  Tonight!  Then, maybe 70 by the weekend.  OMG!

Had Kona over at the vets by 9:40 am where I got the good news that her heart murmur has disappeared and the bad news that her tumor was cancerous.  Kate was in the room from Denver, Colorado via Verizon wireless and my Droid phone.  We discussed the options with Roger and decided to go ahead, as I wrote below, to have it removed.

Back home.  Nap.  A long nap since my back, unconvinced by the meds and the rests I’d taken, continued to ouch.  A lot.  Couldn’t take the best meds because I had to drive out to Stillwater, then into St. Paul and home after that.

Stillwater was the bee pickup.  My two pound package of Italian hygienics are now buzzing on top of the dryer in the basement.  I sprayed them with sugar water, will do so again before bed, once more in the morning, then again just before I hive them around 6 pm tomorrow.  That way they have full tummies when hived and are less likely to go adventuring. Which would serve no good purpose right now anyhow.  I had planned to hive them tonight, but the snow.  Comes down hard and wet right now.

St. Paul was to see John Desteian, my longtime Jungian analyst, I started to see him in 1986 or ’87 and saw him for a long time after my divorce from Raeone.  I’ve seen him off and on over the years, last in 2006.

I want to see what I’m trying to tell myself through my dreams of loss and being lost.  As I imagined, we headed in the general direction of faith, though not retrieving a lost faith so much as redefining faith, Reimagining Faith, in light of the pagan, existentialist, flat-earth metaphysics of my current world view.

As always, John asked the good questions.  Pointed me, this time, toward an essay by Heidegger called “The Last God” and understanding the essence of the numinous.  I’ll have a month to ponder that since my next appointment is on May 23rd.  He’s been a useful, valued guide and Jung my chief spiritual adviser.  Sounds like that run will continue.

Back home to an oxycodone, spraying the bees with the sugar water, crating the dogs and relaxing.  Quite the day.  Cancer in the morning, the numinous in the afternoon.  A lesson there.

Oh.  Had a vicarious feeling of pride when I learned John now runs an international training institute for Jungian analysts based in Zurich, the Mecca and Jerusalem of Jungian thought.  Here’s the link.

 

 

 

Friends, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses, Weather +Climate, Writing

Cartography and Snow

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Spring                                                                                       Planting Moon

Spent the morning redrawing a map of the Winter Realm and Summer Realm on Tailte.  Tomorrow I’ll work on detailed maps of both separately, the islands and the Dark Range.  This was a constant among the beta readers and I agreed.  Doing them now will help the rewrite.

This afternoon I hit a wall on the next four verses of Book I, the Metamorphoses.  My mind seized up and would go no further.  So, I went upstairs and took videos of the dogs play in the already 5-6 inches of new snow.  And, it’s still snowing.  Supposed to get heavier over night.

Worked out, aerobic only because my back still complains from my lifting the hive box with honey on Tuesday.  I could have done without this, but I caused it so what can you do?

Sheepshead canceled.  With the snow coming down heavy now and predicted to be heavier still we decided to put it off.  It was a wise decision, but I will miss the conversation and camaraderie.   Wanted to hear what the Jesuits thought about the new pope.

 

Bees, Weather +Climate

The Sun. The Sun.

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Spring                                                             Planting Moon

The Sun.  The Sun.  I can hear Tattoo calling from the end of Phaethon’s runway.  Yes, it’s another episode of Fantasy April in Minnesota.

Gonna have a little tea, then go clean out the bee hives, readying them for the new package arriving on Saturday.  My enthusiasm for beekeeping has waned over the last couple of years.  Little success in keeping colonies alive over the winter months combined with a stupid decision at the end of the season two year ago, a decision that I didn’t need my veil just this once.

Powerful aversive conditioning.  Nature’s way of saying stay away from bee hives. Unfortunately, it has made the pleasures of beekeeping balance against the severe results of bee defenses.  When the bees die over the winter, the pleasure decreases.

I finished my read through of Missing this morning.  Gonna check notes, review my plans and continue the revision process tomorrow.  I’ve got several clear ideas.  Thicker description.  More character development.  Stronger climax.  Expanded denouement.  Strip out certain narrative lines for use in book II and replace them with the expanded material above.  The critical piece is this last one because it will allow the story to achieve full coherence and set up the next novels.

Cinema and Television, Family, Latin, Letters, Poetry, Translating Metamorphoses, Weather +Climate

Rainy, Gray, Blah

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Spring                                                                      Planting Moon

Moved books and sorted files.  Finishing up that long study and file reorganization, clean out begun some weeks ago.  Went out for dog food and got a hamburger at Culver’s.  They make a good burger.

Read some more Robert Jordan, now in the second volume of the Wheel of Time.  Watched three Supernaturals and one Danish show, The Eagle.  A lazy Sunday.

Did get started on Book I of Metamorphoses.  Not far.  Verbs pulled out and conjugated.  I checked the Perseus (classics website) text with the most scholarly text available right now and there was one small difference in the first four verses.  Started a word list which will feed into the commentary.

Needed a psychic bump today and Kate provided it.  What would I do without her?  I know it’s a canard; but, with buddy William Schmidt losing his wife Regina last year, it’s no longer something that has happened to others.

This gray, cold weather has many Minnesotans in a bit of a grumpy place, all of us waiting for daffodils and sun.  As Garrison Keillor said today, “The snow will melt.”  You betcha.

Weather +Climate, Writing

Inspiration in Winter/Spring

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Spring                                                                         Planting Moon

Hmm.  Snow yesterday coated the driveway and the walk.  Then melted.  Last night, snow again, covering the driveway and the walk.  Again.  Still there at 11 am this morning.  Yowzer.

A Star-Tribune editorial cartoon yesterday compared April 2012 and April 2013 with sounds. April 2012 was chirp, chirp.  April 2013 was chip, chip.  Apt.  And funny.  Sort of.

I wrote confidently here about my new ability in Latin translation.  Well, I should have known that was actually the signpost to a new plateau.  A rough day yesterday with Greg.  A lot wrong.  Something of it was just hard, a corrupt line or two of manuscript, other parts it seems I had sleepwalked through.

(Wheel of Time map)

In spite of that set back I’m still going forward to Book I to begin a full translation and to take notes for a commentary.  I’ll just have to go slower and work harder.  The time exists as does the will.

This morning I finished the first book, The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan, in the Wheel of Time series, twelve books long and unfinished at Jordan’s death at age 58.  It’s an impressive achievement.  It’s reach is broad and his intention runs deep.  I’m not sure about the depth, but I am sure that the world he has imagined and the narrative threads he has uncovered within it are wonderful.

It will serve as an inspiration during the revision of Missing, number three, and for the rest of the novels in the Tailte mythos.

Weather +Climate, Writing

Hawking Books

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Spring                                                                       Bloodroot Moon

56 today.  At this rate we might see the bloodroot bloom under this moon.

Class today from Scott Edelstein on marketing and selling books.  Very good.  Lots of good information.  Publishing had gone and is undergoing major changes.  Made me feel hopeful, always a good thing.

Weather +Climate

Winter on the First Day of Spring

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Imbolc                                                         Bloodroot Moon

It has come to that brittle point in any winter, the time when it seems to stretch on and on and on.  Snow tonight, perhaps 2-4 inches.  Then drops to single digit lows for three days in a row.  The high for the first day of spring 18.  The low 4. Outsiders to the north cannot understand, but this makes us happy.  Last year on this date the temperature was 80.  80.

There was no yearning for the end of winter.  No, a fear that winter might be gone pervaded our region.  Had we become a northern latitude Indianapolis?  What did we do in our gardens in March?  Most Marches we still have snow on the ground like we do now.

Yes, as we age those slick sidewalks give us pause.  But what gives us more pause is the northward march of what we’ve always considered southern temperatures.  In March.  We’re used to hot.  We get up in the 100’s from time to time, more recently.  We put up with it the way southern folk endure a spell of 50 or 60 degree weather.  Unhappily.

Cabin fever, that claustrophobic I’ve been in the house way too long feeling, that hits us now?  That’s the brittle point I referred to in the first paragraph.  We all know it at one level or another.  Well this northerner, and I’m sure I’m not alone, would not trade cabin fever for fevered temperatures in March.  It just doesn’t feel right.

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Memories, Poetry, Weather +Climate

Yet.

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Imbolc                                                                   Bloodroot Moon

Snow came in the night.  Maybe 2 inches.  Freshened up the landscape, pushed back the melting time.  Last year today it was 73, ruining my vision of the north, turning it into a slushy Indiana/Ohio/Illinois.  Climate change stealing my home.  It disoriented me, made me feel like a stranger in a strange, yet strangely familiar, land.  Now.  30 degrees.  8 inches of snow.  Home again.

A book on my shelf, important to me:  Becoming Native to This Place.  The idea so powerful.  One so necessary for this nature starved moment, as the pace of the city as refuge lopes toward its own four minute mile.  Cities are energy, buzz, imagination criss-crossing, humans indulging, amplifying, renewing humanness but.  But.

All good.  Yes.  Yet.

That stream you used to walk along.  The meadow where the deer stood.  You remember.  The night the snow came down and you put on your snowshoes and you walked out the backdoor into the woods and walked quietly among the trees, listening to the great horned owl and the wind.  The great dog bounding behind you in the snow, standing on your snowshoes, making you fall over and laugh.  Remember that?

There was, too, that New Year’s Day.  Early morning with the temperature in the 20s below zero and another dog, the feral one, black and sleek, slung low to the ground, went with you on the frozen lake, investigating the ice-fishing shacks, all alone, everyone still in bed from the party the night before but you two walked, just you two and the cold.

Before I go, I also have to mention those potatoes.  The first year.  Reaching underneath the earth, scrabbling around with gloved fingers.  Finding a lump.  There.  Another.  And another.  And another.  The taste.  Straight from the soil.  With leeks and garlic.  Tomatoes, too, and beets.  Red fingers.  The collard greens.  Biscuits spread with honey from the hive.