Beltane Sumi-e Moon
Working on a second Aickmanesque short story. School Spirit is done though it can use editing. Working now on Main Street, a story inspired by Kaye Cox who, along with three of his friends, was decapitated by a sheet of iron that fell off a truck while he and his buddies were behind it. High school. I’m finding that writing with Alexandria in mind is a rich mine, lots of feelings, lots of stories. My current plan is to write at least 12 short stories, all in Aickman’s style, all based in Alexandria. Enough for a book. Jennie’s Dead is not done, but it’s still sitting there, throbbing away. I’ll get back to it at some point. It will call to me.
Jon finished the bench! At least the until now missing top. Still needs a coat of light stain and a varnish. Looks great and is done in time for Kate’s hosting of the needleworkers. The fan that got moved has some tics, not yet a fully good installation. I think I can take it the rest of the way. He said hopefully.
Kate and I went out for the first time since her shoulder surgery, except for Beth Evergreen events. We went to the Center Stage venue in Evergreen to hear Katie Glassman, whom we first encountered at Jews Do Jews, and her significant other, Greg Schochet.
She’s from Colorado, Denver, but now lives in Boulder. She’s a queen of the fiddlin’ scene, extolling last night the fiddle contest culture which brings fiddlers together from all over the nation. She’s won many contests and reminded me of the Charlie Daniel’s Band song, The Devil Went Down To Georgia. She might be the best who’s ever been.
Since the night focused on Western swing, you might imagine the hats, vests, boots, and belts on many of the men. In this instance it was the roosters who dressed up, not the hens. It felt like the first truly Western event, outside of the National Western Stock Show of course, that we’ve attended.
Katie’s father was there, having retired that day from the Denver Public School system after 32 years of teaching. Gabe, who attends an elementary school in DPS, had his last school day yesterday for the year, too.
It was a sweet, fun, upbeat evening that left us smiling.
Probably won’t be going back to Chainsaw Bob’s. Went yesterday to get my chain sharpened. They have a new deal, smart, where you leave your old chain and they put an already sharpened one on your saw. Supposed to save time. And it would if the guy putting the chain back on wasn’t trying to sell another guy a saw.
Sexism is still raw and unvarnished in many places, like racism on public display in Charlottesville, Virginia. Murica.
In the winter there is the scrape and drag of Jefferson County snowplows and the intermittent pushing and engine revving of private snowplowers, the whine of snowblowers.
Here’s the real trick in Rovelli’s book though. The present is highly local. The present is a construct meaningful only within the part of the universe with which we are in direct relation. So my present here on Shadow Mountain is different than the one down the hill in Aspen Park or down the hill even further in Denver.
Picky? I don’t think so. The present is just that. Now. But I can discover no other present without encountering it after mine has already disappeared. This highly local nature of the present unhinges our assumption of time as a constant, the same everywhere. No, in fact it’s exactly not the same everywhere. You have to let that trickle in, at least I did.
Rabbi 
As soul we become aware of our direct links to other people, to the world we live in and we understand them as part of us and ourselves as part of them. Shapiro says that such dictums as love thy neighbor as thyself become axiomatic at the soul level. When we know the true face of the other, which we can do at soul level, then we have to treat them with loving kindness. This includes the earth.
He refers to himself as a perennialist. Here’s what that means:
Turns out I missed a key move on powering up the sound board.
I had to call Alan Rubin, a new Beth Evergreen friend, who is the A/V sage. He said he was sitting by his pool enjoying the weather. It was a blue sky, white cloud, warm but not hot, Colorado day. After some false starts, Alan isolated the problem, I poked a button and, right at 2, the sound. Whew.
However. All this meant I had not had time to arrange the tables for folks to take notes, so they sat in chairs looking up at the screen. I also had not given sufficient thought to the pedagogy of the afternoon. How would we interact? What questions might prompt discussion? The fact that everyone faced front rather than seeing each other across a table made getting a conversation started difficult. Though I don’t think the audience cared, I’d hoped for a more interactive event and I didn’t facilitate that.