Category Archives: Feelings

Beyond the Boundaries, Cooking, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Jefferson County, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The West

Honoring the Sources of Our Food

October 14, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Fall Hunter Moon

Divorce matters seem finally to be breaking Jon’s way. Can’t say more than that right now, but I’m glad.

Took a long ride with Kate out to Elizabeth, Colorado to the Elizabeth Meat Locker. We purchased a quarter side of beef from the Carmichael Cattle Company and they have a contract with the Elizabeth Meat Locker for butchering. We’d not been out this way, south and east of the Denver Metro, so it was an interesting drive. Passing through Parker we both commented on the area’s similarity to Chanhassen, Chaska, Jordan in Minnesota. Then the hilly country began to look like 169 headed to Mankato. Of course, to maintain these similarities we had to keep our eyes from the west where the Front Range rose.

5f184a8f0397565367e3ecd7aa12b9b3 Elizabeth itself is a small rural community that could have been anywhere, usa. It has a small historic downtown; that is, older retail buildings repurposed into boutiques and a fiber art store and antique shops. Mainstreet is Co. Highway 86 and there is the obligatory Walmart anchored, downtown killer of a strip mall on the edge of town.

We ate at the Catalina Diner, a restaurant that would have felt at home in southern Indiana. It had automobile, 1950’s automobiles, posters, high-backed white booths, two lunch counters. Comfort food.

This whole journey was an unusually difficult one, emotional in a way I’ve found strange for over a year. Let me explain. Each time we headed down Shadow Mountain Drive for Aspen Park or Denver, we passed two small fields carved out of a narrow mountain meadow that sits under Conifer Mountain. It has two ponds, a few stands of trees, but is mostly grass.

Over the course of the year Carmichael Cattle has fed three angus and one hereford there. As we drove past, I would look for these cattle, tails twitching, heads down. Or, huddled together in the shade in a hot summer sun. Each time I was glad to see them. Glad these animals were there as we drove by. Part of my enjoyment of them was a tie to my rural roots in the Midwest. I miss the ever present signs of agriculture: fields of corn, fields of soybeans, tractors, combines, dairy and beef cattle. These cattle gave me a link back to the roadsides of my former life.

But. I also enjoyed them as individuals, seeing them interact with each other, wander off in search of a good spot to graze, standing next to each other. Each time I went past them I knew it could be that later in the fall I would be eating one of them. This made me sad and a bit forlorn, knowing that my heart was in conflict with my head.

My head says ethnobotany. Our culture chooses our diet for us, decides which foods are tasty, which gross, which taboo. Our bodies are neither obligate carnivore nor obligate vegetarian. We are designed by evolution as omnivores, able, thankfully, to eat what the world places in front of us, be it plant or animal. This is a great advantage for us as a species and has allowed us to thrive in many diverse climates. There is nothing wrong, then, about eating meat, either from a biological or cultural perspective. Meat is simply one source of food.

But. I enjoyed seeing them as individuals. I knew they were individuals. I could tell by they way moved through the field. One seemed to gravitate toward the shade. Another seemed more social, following its colleagues closely. They were, in fact, separate from each other, unique, not cattle sui generis, but this cow, that bull. They were not, in other words, meat in the abstract, but meat on the hoof, meat as the muscle of living creatures, muscle that functioned within these animals I enjoyed.

To purchase their meat was to kill them as surely as if I took a rifle out and shot them. Back in 1974 I moved onto the Peaceable Kingdom, a farm Judy and I bought in Hubbard County, Minnesota, the county home to the headwaters of the Mississippi. We had goats and decided we wanted to barbecue some goat meat. Johnny Lampo, the man who rented our fields and farmed them, gave me his rifle and I killed one of our our goats. I’ve not been the same since. I can’t even euthanize our dogs.

Though raised in the agricultural Midwest, though I attended 4-H fairs in my youth and state fairs in Indiana and Minnesota, though I knew well the connection between actual animals and the wrapped packages of hamburger, the sirloin steak, the lamb chop, the pork tenderloin, I had still been insulated from knowing that this cow, this bull was the source of my pot roast.

It was this awakened sensitivity, perhaps a sentimental one, ok, definitely a sentimental one, a sensitivity awakened in brief moments passing cattle in a mountain meadow that put my heart into conflict with my head. Even in my heart I don’t feel eating meat is wrong, but I do feel that knowing the animal from which my meat comes changes things. A lot.

So this evening when Kate cooks the ribeye steaks thawing right now in our sink, I plan to add a small ritual to the lighting of the shabbos candles and the sharing of challah. We will remember the animal that died so that we may eat, so that our bodies might be strong. We will thank this particular individual for the role he or she plays in our daily life. We will acknowledge the cycle of life, the interlocking web of life and our mutual parts in it.

This is, I think, one of the missing parts of our 21st century life, honoring the plants and animals that have to die to keep us alive. Without the heart connection we are rapers and pillagers of our environment, no better than Big Ag and its ruthless exploitation of the chain of life for profit.

Family, Feelings, Our Land and Home, Writing

Blunted

August 11, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa Superior Wolf Moon

A soft cotton buffer lies between me and the world right now. My edge, drive is blunted. Why? Don’t know. Might be attention to the emotional demands of the divorce. Could be too many projects in a row. Could be that THC I use at night. Could be I’m still not rejiggered from the move and prostate cancer. Could be that my circle of friends is in Minnesota and I’ve not made new friends here. Just not sure. It has been cool here the last week or so, so it might be that occasional fall melancholy sneaking in early, stimulated by the chill. Frustrating and I’m not sure what to do about it.

Life works best for me when I’m pressing into it, leaning in as Sheryl Sandberg said. Right now I’m leaning away or to the side or up against a wall. Not pushing forward, nor looking backward, sort of caught in stasis.

On the other hand I’m still exercising and the knee feels good. I’ve hit my mark on words per day on Superior Wolf. Kate and I are in a very good place, working together to help our little Colorado family as it careens through the dissolution of Jon and Jen’s marriage. The dogs are healthy.

The garage is much better organized. The garage, shed and decks have solid weather protection and the new green doors look great. The kitchen is officially finished with all the cabinets painted and Kate’s splash of green above the cabinets. Kate’s bathroom is set for a remodel that will make it safer and more beautiful. Jon’s very near finishing the loft. The walnut is planed and ready for staining. The art cart top is smooth and mostly dry.

Our finances are sound. We’re producing our own electricity and have our generator for emergencies.

Of course, there is Trump. Encouraging Second Amendment people to stop Hillary’s court picks. I. Mean. OMG!

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Friends, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Fraught

July 14, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

Feeling the pressure of the divorce. So many tensors pulling this way and that. Jon and his understandable anxiety about his immediate and near term future. Kate’s tough position as mother, mother-in-law and grandma. Court hearings with deep consequences. The fate of Ruth and Gabe as their mother and father fight over them. The friable nature of our extended family as it goes through a wrenching alteration, one with permanent implications. Trying to stay centered and available. All difficult.

This is life at its most fraught, perhaps the only analogue being serious illness or an unexpected financial crisis. All of us become frayed, our best persons fighting to remain present, but often submerged in our collective anxiety. A good time for Mussar, the Jewish spiritual practice Kate and I have taken up through Congregation Beth Evergreen.

If there were a red flag warning for families, we’d have one on our flagpole right now.

Yet. The immersion in each others lives at increased intensity also has positive implications. We get to know each other better, perhaps most possible when the day-to-day gets set aside and we become more vulnerable, more accessible. If we listen to our inner life, we have a chance, too, to learn more about ourselves.

A friend going through a difficult period refers to it as graduate school for self-awareness, for learning what truly matters. Yes.

Aging, Family, Feelings, Health, Memories, Science

I heart heart

May 12, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

The things life splices together. Yesterday Kate had an appointment with her cardiologist. I went with her. She showed me the report of her echocardiogram, we discussed the cardiologist’s finding. All very clinical. Yes, the heart is a muscle and one which can be graded and observed at many levels. It has ejection fractions. leaflets, diffusions and profusions, valves and chambers. The fine tuning of the heart’s care is a substantial branch of medicine.

The heart is also, and perhaps more importantly, a metaphor. For love. For feeling. For courage and persistence. For essence. For intimacy. The metaphor can, too, be graded and observed at many levels. Heartless bastard. In my heart. I heart NYC, you, my dog, my honor school student, my rifle, my concealed carry handgun. That gets right to the heart of things. My heart is heavy. You have heart. My heart belongs to you.

Why might the metaphor be more important than the muscle? Because love lives on past the stilling of the muscle. Kate and I spliced together the cardiologist appointment with a visit to DazzleJazz, hearing the Keith Oxman quartet and Dr. Diva, a singing professor from Nebraska. We sat next to each other, she rested her head on my shoulder. We whispered and touched. My heart belongs to her. And that muscle so closely examined a few hours before? No match for her true heart, the one that belongs to me.

BTW: usual aging heart stuff for Kate. Blood pressure meds now. Attention to diet, keep up with the tai chi. Some upper body resistance work. We can push back against the dying of the light, but it goes out anyhow. Something, sometime. Yet love remains.

Aging, Beyond the Boundaries, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Memories, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Mystic Chords

May 6, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane New (Running Creeks) Moon

The mood here. Still subdued, still gathering the reality of Vega’s death around us. When Mom died, now 52 years ago, the ongoingness of life surprised me. Cars still rattled down Canal Street. Lights went off and on in houses. School was open, teachers teaching and kids squirming at their desks. The sun rose and set. Dogs barked. We needed sleep and ate breakfast.

This no longer amazes me. The feelings of absence, of missing, of longing do not disappear however, though they can get submerged in the running creek of life. I still miss my mom, not in that acute, gut twisting way of 52 years ago, but longing for her, for her presence remains.

Abraham Lincoln called these threads of feeling and remembrance, their resonance, the mystic chords of memory. Yes. Part of their function, a paradox, lies in the quickening of our daily life, jimmying us out of the cracks and ruts we fall into. We realize a life time has bounds.

As the writers of the Hebrew scriptures often said, this background music is a blessing and a curse. It can become a cacophony, a dirge we cannot shut off. A mental tinnitus. Yet, it is the dead, as much as the living, often more, who shape us, create us-sometimes to our exasperation, other times to our joy.

With Vega the only source of pain is her sudden absence. The rest, the memory of her, the mystic chords she sets off, are joyful and loving. And those will persist.

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Friends, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Why grief?

April 29, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Wedding Moon

As you might expect, I’ve been thinking about death, about grief in the wake of Vega’s sudden death. In particular I’ve been wondering how I can have a grasp on my own death, no fear, but be so distressed at Vega’s.

Then, it occurred to me. In movie thrillers the torturers often open their usually neated packet of tools: knives, pliers, dental picks, pieces of bamboo with a flourish. Or, as in the Marathon Man, the dentist goes to work on you without anesthetic. In many cases the torturee summons up inhuman courage or an anti-heroic defiance.

When the usual infliction of pain or disorientation fails, or when the torturer is portrayed as unusually sadistic, friends or colleagues or family members of the torturee are led into the room. Then the torturer goes to work on them. Seems effective in the movies I’ve seen.

Grief, at least in part, is because the universe is such a torturer. Not with malice, of course, but certainly with a sort of intention. Life has an endpoint and entropy sees that it arrives. So, it’s possible to have the notion of your own death sorted out while responding with agony to the grim torture of having your friends removed from the room .

Dogs, Feelings, Memories, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate, Writing

Foggy

April 28, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Wedding Moon

Clouds at 8,800 feet. Or, as some say, fog. Cold and clammy outside this am.

I’ve gotten back to work on Jennie’s Dead and Superior Wolf, not a lot of new content yet, but it will come.

Spent some time yesterday, too, in the what now seems eternal rearranging of the loft. Finding an optimal way to encourage my work with the tools I have: books, files, images, maps and brochures, workout equipment, lamps, chairs, is the goal. Still waiting on a couple of pieces from Jon, walnut shelves and a top for my art cart.

While I worked on rearranging the loft, I put on Pandora, the music streaming service. I have a Pandora station devoted to The Band, a sixties rock group who collaborated with Bob Dylan. As it played their music and music of similar contemporaries, an overwhelming sadness hit me.

It began with a memory of Vega, feeling her presence in my life, feeling her absence. But, it morphed into a more general sadness, possibly a melancholy nostalgia for the times the Band evokes, those days of the 60’s. It tapped, too, into old neurotic loops. What have I done with my life? Has it mattered? Does mattering matter? You know, those inner paths which have a Mobius strip nature, going nowhere in particular yet taking a very long time to get there, only to find out you’ve gotten back where you started.

As these moods do these days, these third phase days, they passed. Grieving Vega, grieving a time gone by, grieving unreasonable expectations. All part of life, not to be inhabited forever, but acknowledged. A hat tipped to them as they go by.

A less melancholy day today, I hope.

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, GeekWorld, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science

Anxiety

March 12, 2016 Charles 2 Comments

Imbolc Maiden Moon

Palmer Hayden, a painter of the Harlem Renaissance, did a series of 12 paintings about the John Henry legend. John Henry matched his muscle and steel-driving skill against a steam engine. When watching Alphago, the DeepMind computer program, play Go champion and legend himself, Lee Sedol, Michael Redmond, a Western go master at the 9-dan (highest level) said he really wanted to play the computer.

Here’s a quote from the only man who claimed to have seen the John Henry contest: “When the agent for the steam drill company brought the drill here,” said Mr. Miller, “John Henry wanted to drive against it. He took a lot of pride in his work and he hated to see a machine take the work of men like him.” wiki, op cit

This is Lee Sedol and his daughter at Match 3. He lost, for the third game in a row, losing the match of 5 games to Alphago. Quite a different scene from Hayden’s imaging of John Henry’s loss, but still a human loss to a machine.

It occurs to me that both images evince a fundamental difference between humans and machines, love and concern for another. In Lee’s case, he and the Alphago team member are smiling, shaking hands. He has his arm around his daughter, another key distinction between humans and machines, biological procreation. Parenting, the long task of raising a human child until they can take off on their own, is also a complex relational challenge, one well outside the current and possibly future capacity of artificial intelligence.

As John Henry lies dead, a heart attack brought on by the stress of the competition, others surround him. Their expressions vary from disbelief to sadness. One man has a ladle of water to offer, indicating that Henry must have just died. Too, the endurance of the legend and the song about John Henry show how deeply rooted are the questions. Is a human determined, defined by his or her capacity to defeat a machine? Ever?

Lee Sedol said, at the end of Match 3, “Lee Sedol lost. Not humankind.”

There is a fundamental anxiety about humanness revealed here. It is the question that Ray Kurzweil believes he has answered in his book, The Singularity Is Near. In Kurzweil’s mind, all of these human versus machine moments are stair steps toward the ultimate confrontation between humans and an artificial intelligence that is superior to us. The John Henry legend foreshadows what will happen. Like the steam drill a superior consciousness will simply eliminate the competition, not out of pique or malevolence, but because that is what happens when superior beings interact with inferior ones.

I don’t believe it. I believe the crowd around John Henry, the shaking hands at Match 3 with Alphago and the presence of Sedol’s daughter shows the true distance machines will have to travel to become superior to humans. And, when the contest is over love and compassion, the human characteristics on display in these two instances, then the machine will not want to eliminate us, but to embrace us.

Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Friends, Our Land and Home

Again, Gratitude

July 26, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Recovery Moon

It no longer feels like I’m walking into a stiff headwind, head down and seeing only my feet. Now the sky is sunny, a gentle breeze blows at my back. Again, gratitude to all who held my hand during the last three months. I needed that.

Wow. And to Jon, who put together four more bookshelf units, connected three to the others already installed. I’ve got some shelving to do. We also ordered the last three units, one with shelves and doors for tea and coffee making. On Monday Jon and I will go to Paxton Lumber and pick out some exotic wood for the top to my work table and to use for making the short bookshelves tops wider.

After the final bookshelves are put together and connected, Jon will assemble the wire shelving. That will eliminate the pony wall of bankers boxes currently separating my workout space from the rest of the loft. When that’s done, the only major tasks left will be utilizing the art crates as functional island dividers, buying a small refrigerator and reconfiguring the workout space with the pull-up bar over the rubber mats.

Feelings, Health, Our Land and Home

Tomorrow Wall Down

July 25, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Recovery Moon

The tomorrow wall has come down. As Kate observed yesterday, “I could tell you were feeling more positive. You wanted to move things around, get a new rug, hang art. Talk about color.” Yes. More color. More art. Get back to home making, not things medical.

We have a new boiler. I’m continent less than a week after the catheter came out and about two and three-quarters months ahead of expectations. We ordered a 9×12 braided rug for the reading area in front of the fireplace. I have a new plumber, recommended by Ken, the Boiler Medic. Things have begun to happen.

Jon’s coming out today to do more bookshelf and handyman work. Jon’s skills make a big difference for both Kate and me. We’re lucky to have him.

Yesterday morning I moved empty bookshelves that we’re no longer going to use, four of them. I horsed the horizontal file cabinet more toward the center of the loft. That leaves a new expanse of wall where more tall birch veneer bookshelves can go.

Functional islands is the organizing scheme. Books and other storage against the wall, including a cabinet and shelf space for the tea-making, tea, and tea-ware, a slot for a small refrigerator and my exercise TV.

At the south end of the loft, positioned with a view of Black Mountain, is the reading area which includes a large rug and a Swedish recliner. Next, moving north, and away from the reading area, almost to the middle of the room away from the west wall, is the computer, desk and dictionary stand which holds my O.L.D., Oxford Latin Dictionary. I imagine the horizontal file cabinet will be part of this island, too.

In the same location, but out from the east wall and extending to the middle of the room will be a large table with three cabinets beneath it. It will be on wheels. The drafting table goes in this area, too. Here I can spread out books when doing research or work on other projects. I hope to get into some art making using this space. Collage work for right now.

Out from the north wall, on the same (eastern) side as the large table, is the treadmill, rubber mats, weights and weight bench. On the eastern wall in front of the treadmill is the TV I use as an incentive to exercise. There will be, too, a pull-up bar mounted to the ceiling.

On the same (western) side as the computer/desk island, will be wire shelving for my many bankers boxes filled with novel manuscripts, research, files related to other projects like art, religion, politics.

We plan to use the large wooden crates built to move our two large Jeremiah Miller paintings (brother-in-law) as dividers among the islands, cutting the larger crate in half to create three dividers. Jon has an idea for using piano hinges that will allow the crates to be used as art storage. They will have feet so they can stand on their own.

Once the bookshelves are all assembled, the wire shelving up, the large table finished and the tea-making/refrigerator area is in place I can get down to the serious work of giving my library its final shape. That’s a task, an important and fun task, that cannot be done with electronic books, at least not yet.

I’m hoping that all this work, if not the organizing of books and files and bankers boxes, will be done by Labor Day with the whole loft area ready for fall and winter.

This loft is a love letter from Kate since she chose this house because of the loft area for me and the enclosed two-car garage area for her. Finishing up both of our spaces—we have to re-assemble Kate’s long arm quilter and she needs to get a better organizing scheme—and the kitchen, the living room and the garage, lies ahead, but not too far ahead. Feels good.