Fall Harvest Moon
Snow this morning. Coming down in fat flakes, wet, the small deck outside the backdoor slick. I let the dogs out briefly before their breakfast and they slipped a little. They have to relearn to drive on snow and ice just like us humans. We took an abrupt right turn last week away from a fading summer and toward late fall. This was Black Mountain on Wednesday of last week.
Fall Harvest Moon
This year I attended the first Rosh Hashanah service and both Yom Kippur services. More of the Hebrew has become familiar, at least the transliterations. More of the melodies and songs, too. There are still times when I feel awkward, out of place. At certain points, in certain prayers, for example, the congregation turns to face the east, takes a slight dip at the knee and bows. Not sure exactly what’s going on there. Not all men wear kippahs, a smattering of women do. Same with prayer shawls. Not wearing either one does not make me uncomfortable as it first did, but I’m still aware of it.
Especially at the High Holiday services there were many I did not know, since some Jews attend the High Holidays in a fashion like the Christmas and Easter alumi in Christian churches. 70% of Jews in the U.S. do not attend synagogues, but many come for certain liturgical high points, including Pesach and Purim.
Even so, there are now more people whom I know and in turn know me or Kate. That makes going to the synagogue a place to be seen, seen in the same way the Woolly Mammoths saw each other. We’re still new to most of the relationships, a year plus for the people we’ve come to know best like Marilyn and Irv, Tara, Rabbi Jamie, Leah, Elizabeth, Sally, Fran, Lisa, Anshel, Rich, Allan, Ron, Jamie and Steve, but they’re developing. I’ve learned to be patient with the evolution of friendships and close acquaintances, letting them grow in a natural way.
In the mussar vaad practice group, MVP, Marilyn asked me to present on kavod, or the midot (character or soul trait) of honor, dignity and respect. This is even more intimidating than presenting to the Thursday mussar group because this group includes Tara, Marilyn, Rabbi Jamie and Ron, a former script writer in Hollywood, very bright, but, at the same time, more fun because it’s a challenge. I’ve found an important component of staying vigorous emotionally, intellectually and physically at 70 is taking on challenges, much like a decision some years ago to test my self-perception as a bad language learner with Latin.
Showing up to the MVP, the Thursday mussar group, taking kabbalah and Hebrew, going to some services, attending holiday events, and working on the adult education committee are all moments when relationships can grow and I really enjoy working with these folks. Beth Evergreen was a great find for us.
Fall Harvest Moon
Gabe came in yesterday afternoon (He’s with us due to no school on Friday.) and said, “Grandpop, there’s birds in the sewing room.” Huh? Kate’s sewing room, the old garage remodeled by the last owner, opens to the outside and due to the bug free environment here–at least relative to Minnesota–we often keep the door open so the dogs can go in and out. Easier on all of us.
Sure enough, there were two small sparrow sized birds in the sewing room, fluttering and searching for places where they could see light, unfortunately mostly through windows. I opened windows, left the door open and began to talk to them gently, encouraging them to find their way outside. Gabe, unbeknownst to me at the time, had named them Jerry and Billy.
Jerry and Billy somehow found the window above Kate’s sewing machine a possible escape portal. Nope. Closed. Billy fluttered up by the top of the moveable bottom half of the window; Jerry chose the window sill, trying to push through the unexpected and unseen barrier with no luck.
Then. Rigel, who had come in the open door, looked over, saw the poor fluttering bird, ran over there and grabbed Jerry in her mouth.
Gabe, “Oh, no.”
Jerry seemed lifeless after Rigel took him in her mouth, not gently at all, and bit down. She took Jerry outside, finished him, then ate him, most of him. Gabe later buried the one wing and mostly empty body cavity in the front yard. He said, “I had fun burying Jerry.”
Hobbes said, “Life is mean, nasty, brutish and short.” I’m sure Jerry would agree.
Lughnasa (last day) Harvest (new) Moon
Rosh Hashanah service last night. Lots of Days of Awe alumni showing up at the synagogue. These are long services during the High Holydays, this one running almost two hours. There are, however, a lot of songs, readings, standing and sitting, so the time passes quickly.
The mahzor (prayer book for high holidays), has several interesting components. It includes, for example, poetry by Mary Oliver, Rainer Marie Rilke, and Y. Yeuvenshko. The Mary Oliver poem ends with a favorite Woolly Mammoth quote from her work: What will you do with your one wild and precious life? Which is apropos of the High Holydays since this is a time in the Jewish calendar for repentance, teshuvah (returning), closing off the last year and coming clean and free into the new one.
The mahzor also explains the High Holydays as a principle event for Jews as a community of memory. This really struck me last night, especially when Rabbi Jamie quoted from the Shema, “Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”
“That’s us,” he said, sweeping his hand around the room. Of course, it’s not me, but I took the point. Israel, those Jews in the sanctuary at Beth Evergreen and in Rosh Hashanah services around the world last night, and those Jews not in the services, too, is a community which celebrates its most important memories every Sabbath with a parsha reading, a segment of the Torah.
I feel privileged, and grateful, for the chance to live out my religious life at Beth Evergreen, within, but not of, this community of memory. Rabbi Jamie also said last night that the Jewish calendar focuses on helping each Jew become a better human. I get it and I’m following it, too. I am, after all, a human. What better way to start a new year than to focus on repentance for missing the mark of your best self in the last one? Then, figuring out, through mussar, for example, how to work a little harder on finding your best self in the upcoming one.
This is reconstructionist Judaism, an explicitly non-supernatural religion that nonetheless adheres to the traditions and customs of Jewish civilization, including Torah study, sabbath observance, comforting mourners, repairing the world and doing acts of loving kindness.
Over the last week or so I’ve begun wondering if my reimagining faith project is really a reconstructing faith project? No, I don’t mean to use Judaism as a base, not at all, but it did occur to me that the methodology suggested by the idea of reconstruction might be stronger for my purposes than reimagining. Still thinking.
Lughnasa Eclipse Moon
OK. Cataracts. The good news. Stable and not too bad. Bad news. The same. Sigh.
Had a nightmare last night. Not often I have those. This one involved a gradual decompensation from ordinary life to forgetfulness to a social worker coming to help me as a vagrant, finding me in a dilapidated house with some others, also disoriented. Frightening. Might have been instigated by a pun game I played last night at Beth Evergreen. I wasn’t very quick, sometimes had nothing. I felt a bit embarrassed, slightly intimidated. It had been a long day, I was tired and the games went on past my bedtime, so it wasn’t the best circumstances for me. Still.
This morning I’m off to Stevinson Toyota to see if I can get the air conditioning revved up again. Ironic because it was 40 degrees when I got up this morning. Down the hill is hot, record breaking hot over the last week with DIA hitting 96 two days ago, and we’re going in more often with Jon’s move to Aurora still underway. So. Fix the air con.
Electrical problem fixed. A wonky main circuit breaker. Fortunately Brian of Altitude Electric was nearby and had time in the early afternoon.
Kate had problems with hypoxia yesterday. The wildfires further west have filled our skies with particulates and ozone, making air quality tough on those with respiratory issues. Once she hooked up with her O2 concentrator, she improved quickly.
So. Life’s sine curves oscillate through our days. Yesterday had more trough than peak.
Lughnasa Eclipse Moon
Labor day. The Rubicon of summer for Americans. Once in the past, much like August in Europe, the vacation month, the world turns serious. Schools begin. (though here in Colorado they’ve already begun. which still seems wrong to me.) The pace of the harvest picks up as wheat and corn and soybeans mature. The Federal budget year ends in September, so bluster and shimmying rocks out from D.C. across the land.
As I wrote earlier, I get a distinct boost as fall asserts itself. It’s 46 here this morning and the gas stove in the loft kicked on. My mind, like a trained puppy, sits up and begs to be fed, wants to do tricks like write, do Latin, read. I love this transition, partly because it means the heat of summer is fading, but mostly because parts of me that I cherish come fully alive.
Eduardo and Holly invited us and our immediate neighbors: Jude, Roberta and Jim, Alexis and Troy over yesterday for a Labor Day cookout. Eduardo is an excellent cook, offering black beans, seasoned rice and carne asada from his grill. We brought deviled eggs, Jim and Roberto a spicy shrimp salad, Alexis and Troy homemade hummus. Eduardo and Holly’s house has multiple levels in the back and we ate on the lowest level, a cool breeze gradually replacing the heat of the day.
While writing this, I got an intercom call from Kate. Power’s out, can you fix it? Well… I can go out to the main, check the circuit breakers. I did. There were several breakers thrown, maybe seven altogether. So, I returned them to their on positions and voila! Nothing changed. ? So went back out and did the same thing all over again, essentially rebooting. Hey, it works on computers and modems. Nope. Doesn’t make sense to me, and I don’t like electrical things that don’t make sense.
Sigh. It means I have to start the difficult process of trying to get an electrician out here. I’ve contacted Altitude Electric, hoping that the modest relationship we built during the oh, so drawn out generator installation process will encourage them to come. The mountain way means certain trades are just not reliable up here.
In other news I go to the ophthalmologist today. Hoping, in the strange way of medical care in our time, that my cataracts have worsened to the point that Medicare will pay for their replacement. Improving my vision through cataract removal is, of course, desirable, but mostly I want to see if they can permanently improve my reading correction. I read a lot, in lots of different places and cheaters don’t work since I have an astigmatism. That means I often have to rely on arms out, head back mode.
Out for now, from Shadow Mountain.
Lughnasa Eclipse Moon
That was the idea I was reaching for in the post below about the West. Wildfire. Precious Water. Mountains and high plains. Blue sky and fancy clouds. Of course versions of these are everywhere, yes, but here they’re in your face, unavoidable and unmissable companions of daily, even hourly life. Not the wildfire, you say? Live in tornado alley? On a hurricane prone coast? In an earthquake zone? You’re always aware.
Earth, air, fire and water. Not a 70s disco band, but the notes of a changing composition of seasonal change. Right now we’re in the transitional movement between the allegro of the growing season to the andante of harvest, the celebration of senescence. Human activity does become more frenetic during the harvest, a sort of false allegro, but only because the plant world knows winter is coming. You can hear those bass notes as seeds form and disperse, plant stalks brown and wither, green fields become tan or golden.
Up here in the mountains the occasional aspen has begun to turn. The grasses in the mountain meadows have lost their intense green. The angle of the sun has already lessened, casting deeper shadows. Orion is visible in the dark, clear night sky. Moose, elk and deer bucks have begun to drop the velvet on their antlers, preparing for the quickening of the rut. The bears become more brazen as their need for calories, more calories, before hibernation makes them feel an urgency.
Somewhere around us in the Arapaho National Forest, up in the Mt. Evans Wilderness Area, over in Staunton State Park, the fox and the marmot and the fisher and the pika, the Abert squirrel and the red squirrel can feel their coats beginning to thicken. The mountain lions know the seasonal changes in their prey and change their hunting patterns.
The orchestra of life plays this symphony all year as it responds to the conductors spring, summer, fall and winter, each with their own favorite tempo. The elemental nature of the West makes the composition here often raw, sometimes going as far as dissonance during the chinooks, or a dry summer month, during a blizzard, yet it is usually majestic with soaring blue notes and the babbling background music of mountain streams and bugling elk.
Just sit back and enjoy the show.
Lughnasa Eclipse Moon
Vast, blue sky with puffy white clouds. Jagged mountains and flat plains, forests and wildlife. Wildfire. Snow, rivers, a few lakes. Air, earth, fire and water. The West is so elemental. It’s no wonder that it has enlivened the imagination of those who visit it or read about it, yet is so difficult a place to live. Here the natural world apart from the built world (also natural in its way) dominates. The cities like Denver and Salt Lake City, Cheyenne and Boise, Vegas, Tucson, Phoenix are islands, admittedly big islands, but islands nonetheless, of concentrated human habitat. They disappear around the bend of a mountain pass, or are obscured by arid land with few towns.
It is obvious that we humans are here on sufferance, ravaged by fire, made thirsty by drought in an already arid land, moving slowly even in our cars and trucks across mountain reaches, unable to grow enough to eat. It is, I think, this stark contrast between the wealth and power of human civilization humbled by the land and the sky that makes the west mythic, much like northern Minnesota and Michigan.
The west has begun to seep into my bones, become my home. I live here and have begun to feel it, the place. Still learning, though.
Lughnasa Eclipse Moon
Trying to seat a new work habit. Write ancientrails, then my 750 words for Jennie’s Dead and after breakfast, do my 30 minutes on reimagining. Still cutting and filing posts. Workout. Lunch. Nap. Then, Latin and reading. After the writing, and before breakfast, catch up on the news. Worked yesterday. Ha. Takes awhile to get the body and mind to expect what I want at certain times of the day.
Kate went in to Jon’s new house on Tuesday after I got my hair and beard cut. New look! She took bedding for the kids. But going down the hill right now is fraught because our air conditioner has decided that above 85 degrees is just too hot for it to work. It blows, but it doesn’t cool. Denver, in the late afternoon, has been hitting the mid-90s. Kate’s not a warm weather gal. Not in any way. She got overheated and it’s taking her a bit to recover. And, yes, the ac goes to the shop on Tuesday.
I went over to Rich Levine’s house last night for pizza and a salad. He’s the lawyer who did our estate work and a member of Beth Evergreen. He has also put lot of work into the new Beth Evergreen preschool project. The old preschool was about to shut down, taking with it not only the service provided to the kids, but a revenue stream for the synagogue. Rich and a few others, including Hal Stein, the new board president and Rabbi Jamie, who was a preschool teacher, led the effort to keep the preschool going under Beth Evergreen’s aegis.
The evening was cool and his beautiful house, which sits above Evergreen on the aptly named Alpine Drive has a mountain lawn; that is, one filled with boulders and native rock. After supper we walked up from his house, first on a short boardwalk, then on a trail over exposed rock, the mountain side, really, to a large open deck with an enclosed room where he does his academic work. Rich teaches constitutional law at the Colorado School of Mines.
The preschool’s Bee Alive theme this year correlates to Rich’s bee keeping project, which he began a year ago. We looked at his hives, he wanted my advice. His bee hives hang from a steel cable attached to a roof beam for the deck and about 50 feet away, a large ponderosa pine. This is a novel set up, mimicking, but with beehives, the way many people suspend bird feeders. Bears create the need. They love bird food and honey. A pulley system allows him to raise and lower the hives. Having their homes hanging in the air is just fine for bees.
I’m now, I think, an unofficial consultant and fellow worker in the preschool Bee Alive program. A lot of bee related work ahead. I have to do some research about mountain beekeeping.
Lughnasa Kate’s Moon
On Samain of 2014 I came up here to Shadow Mountain for the closing on our home. In the backyard of our new home three mule deer bucks greeted me. They were curious about me and I about them. We stood with each other for some time. The mountains had sent three spirits to welcome me.
They returned yesterday.
