Imbolc Valentine Moon
I’m just gonna say this. May be a little whiny, but it’s on my mind. Hey, universe! Would you get your foot off our necks? Or, at least let up long enough for us to catch our breath. Geez. OK. There.
Kate’s collapsed lung resolved with concentrated oxygen therapy. Thankfully. The picc line went in yesterday and she’s getting her first infusion of nutrition through it as I write this. She’s very happy that, as she said, “Something’s happening.” She’s dealt with the weight loss, the fatigue, Sjogren’s, food aversion for so long. As one just coming out of a still debilitating illness, I can only imagine what it would be to feel the way I feel now everyday. With no change maker on the horizon. This picc line may be the beginning of a turn around. I sure hope so.
Meanwhile I’m weak, still. Feel like the diseases of the past two weeks plus have left the field of battle, but the wreckage is still under repair. I’m 10 pounds behind now, limited stamina, and less energy. I’ll improve over the next few days, I’m sure. I look forward to getting back to things.
Lot of learnings, most not consolidated yet. They will be over the coming weeks.
Here’s something uplifting, at least I think so. Black Mountain white.
Snowing here. About an inch already. Then comes the cold. But not like the cold my friends in Minnesota are going to feel. For example, Tue -7 for a high, -27 for a low. Wed -15 for a high, -30 for a low. Also, winds in the 10 to 19 mph range. Wind chill will be brutal. Enduring the last of any January will qualify you for Minnesota macho. Plan a trip there now to claim it for yourself.
The bulgogi was good. So was the dumpling soup. The porkbelly last night? Not so much. Got a little rushed since I fried the smelt at the same time. Shouldn’t have done both. The smelt, which I realize now were considerably smaller than the Lake Superior smelt, fried up fine, but I bunched them together too much. And, fried things don’t work so well as left overs. In the trash after my meal. SeoAh sent me her sauce for the porkbelly, which I used. It couldn’t rescue a too fatty, not enough taste dish. Not sure I’ll try that one again. Didn’t seem worth learning how to do well. Tonight straight up American fare. Macaroni and cheese? Hamburgers? Steak and potatoes? Something more in my wheelhouse.
Shhh. Don’t tell anybody or you might jinx it, but I think Kate’s starting to gain weight. She’s at 84, past the 82 pound barrier that seemed so intractable. yay. shhh.
Went out to DIA late last night and picked up SeoAh’s husband. Got back here about 11:00 pm, well past my sell by date in terms of sleep. The dogs didn’t get fed until 7:30 am. Gabe’s here, too. Jon brought him up last night. Jon and Ruth will go skiing today at A-Basin, then pick Gabe up on their way home. It’s been a very family oriented Christmas and New Years and January. Friends, too.
Quick geopolitical quiz. Where is Tajikistan? No googling, no globe, no world map. Where is it? If you know, you get the sister city of Boulder appellation, Friend of Dushanbe. Friend of what? Oh, you didn’t know that Dushanbe is the capital of Tajikistan? No, we’re not revoking your nametag. Not only are we not revoking your nametag, we’re inviting you over to tea at a traditional Tajikistan Tea House donated to Boulder by the citizens of Dushanbe. And, it’s a stunner.
Though we didn’t sit on one of them, there were also raised platforms with cushions and short tables. Looked like fun to me.
Gonna look at material for the religious school class on the 16th. Alan will be back from Argentina. Our lesson theme is yirah, awe. Getting fifteen inches of snow over 36 hours creates yirah. We do not impact the weather, at least not directly. Yes, climate change is effecting the sorts of weather we get, but we don’t get to choose the diverse effects of our self-genocide. Fifteen inches of snow is like a volcanic eruption or a tsunami or a tornado, sudden, unpredictable except just before the fact, a natural act that changes the immediate environment dramatically. Though not as devastating as those violent manifestations, a great snow storm does show the power of the natural world, something to which we have to adapt rather than something we can manage.
Yirah and kadosh, holy or sacred, go together. Rudolf Otto defines sacred as an experience of awe, yirah, and the mysterium tremendum et fascinans: 
Something experienced in ordinary life but also wholly other. I’ve been following a sailing race, the Golden Globe, in which several skippers competed against each other in solo jaunts around the world. Ask any sailor, solo or not, who’s navigated the roaring forties about yirah and mysterium. They’re manifesting every day, every hour in places most of us will never go; but, a few do. Wholly other, but also part of the same puzzling universe which coughed us up into life.
Our first major snowstorm of the season is upon us. We’ve gotten 4 or 5 inches already and it’s only been snowing since midnight. May get 8-10 inches. Black Mountain has disappeared behind a gray-blue curtain, the lodgepoles look like flocked Christmas trees, and our solar panels have a 4 inch white blanket between themselves and the sun. No appointments today, no meetings. We can take this storm in as it comes, not see it as a barrier. We’ll get plowed today, I’m sure, so no worries there either. Let it snow.
There are two other effects that are critical to life both here in the Colorado Rockies and in the southwestern U.S. A good snow season reduces the threat of wildfire in the spring and summer until the monsoons come. That effects Kate and me and our neighbors directly. It feels much better going into summer having had plenty of moisture for the trees and the soil. A good snow season also recharges our aquifers, makes sure we’ll have water throughout the next year. This is an immediate, right here result of good snow.
“Total population in the Colorado River Basin (CRB) increased from 4.56 to 9.44 million people from 1985 to 2010. Most of those people were in the lower CRB, with 86 percent of the total in 1985, and 90 percent of the total in 2010.”** The snowpack numbers, created by our annual snowfall, are critical not only here, because the Front Range and the Denver Metro rely on the Colorado River, but throughout the seven state CRB. These figures, almost invisible to the population of the humid east, are never far from the minds of government officials at the state, county, and municipal level here in the arid west, or the population as a whole.
Finally, here is the problem that bedevils all those effected by The Law of the River, a web of compacts, federal laws, court decisions and decrees, contracts, and regulatory guidelines.* As this graph clearly shows irrigation is the largest claim on the CRB’s water by an order of magnitude. Add to that the allocation for livestock and aquaculture and 82% of the allocation goes to agriculture of one kind or another. We need food, those who grow our food need water. With public uses only 17% of the pie even the most draconian water policies in cities and areas like the Front Range will not move the needle much in total water use. Add to this the problem of the gap, droughts, and rapidly increasing populations, five of the fastest growing states in the nation are part of the CRB, then you can begin to imagine the tense negotiations required to maintain the status quo, let alone plan sensibly for the future.
