Category Archives: Jefferson County

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Jefferson County, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

A Ploy of the Devil?

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Lugnasa                                                                            Superior Wolf Moon

A taste of fall here. 42 degrees right now and cool weather tomorrow, too. A soaking rain yesterday.

Step-son Jon took Kate and me out to Carra Viejta, a Mexican spot just off 285 at Windy Point. Kate’s birthday. Good food and good company. Jon’s in much better spirits these days as the divorce moves closer to resolution.

20160714_143955Kate and I drove over to Congregation Beth Evergreen yesterday for another session of mussar, led by Rabbi Jamie Arnold. Over the last three weeks we’ve been discussing possible texts to use as the basis for study over the next year. One more this next Thursday. The three texts so far are: The Palm Tree of Deborah, the Way of the Tzaddikim and the Way of the Just. These are completely unfamiliar to me, which makes them interesting.

I get surprised occasionally. Jamie said yesterday, “We’ll have to see what our ancestors saw in these texts.” Not my ancestors. It’s interesting to be in but not of the conversation, I like it. Also, when the conversation turns toward G-d, I stop internally. I have to engage in a reconfiguration of the idea. What does G-d mean to the author here? Does the idea bring anything unique to the conversation or does it serve as a placeholder for something like: This is really important; or, take this seriously, dude; or, this is the best we could do in figuring out why should we believe this; or, this idea links us to all those in our 5,000 + year history who have believed this.

Emblem_of_the_Papacy_SE_svgMy impatience with religions of revelation has not waned. Revelation, word and practices with the imprimatur of divinity, has created so much bloodshed, so much cocksure wrongheadedness, so much diminution of the other that it seems like the opposite of what it claims to be. If there were a devil, it would be a clever ploy to create texts reputedly authored by God and spiked with so much absolutism that adherents to the texts would consider themselves an exclusively correct clan.

Outside dogmatic adherence to the idea of revelation most religious traditions have also devoted a lot of thought and practice to the question of the good life. How might we live? What are behaviors that respect all of G-d’s universe? How can we navigate the often muddy waters of our inner life? This is mussar. And kabbalah. And lectio divina. And the Way of the Pilgrim. And meditation. And the four noble truths. And the Tao Te Ching. These approaches to life as we live it here and now are among the great gifts of the world religions. They distill the wisdom of generations of sophisticated and nuanced thinkers, practitioners. It feels good to be learning another one.

 

Aging, Art and Culture, Family, Friends, Jefferson County, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

Acts of Creation

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Lugnasa                                                       Superior Wolf Moon

20160808_151614_001Just to let you know that the Superior Wolf Moon daily reminder has been working. I’m over 17,000 words into this new novel. It feels like some of the best work I’ve done. Of course, I always think that at the beginning of a project.

Kate’s birthday is tomorrow. 72. She works as hard now as she did when I first met her though she may not be able to sustain the work as long as she could. Neither can I. She’s remarkable and I’ll have a birthday post for her later today.

On Friday, buddy Mark Odegard has his “Bridges of the Mississippi” opening. He’s been working for the last year or so on this wonderful print series. It’s a contemporary, jazzy look at these important connectors. We think of crossing the Mississippi every day as a non-event, usually. And that’s because of these bridges that he has memorialized. They’re the often ignored civil engineering projects that make the Twin Cities possible. He’s made a unique contribution to our seeing them, an artist’s true task, sharpening and nuancing our perceptions of the world around us.

On a similar note, Jon Olson, step-son and art teacher, has developed a unique print making style that utilizes found, crushed metal objects. He picks them up from the sides of highways and streets, brings them here or to his art classroom in Aurora, inks them up and runs them through a press. In this way he’s printing directly from the object, like Mark, sharpening and nuancing our perceptions of the world around us.

Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Cars Should Kill U

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Lugnasa                                                                    Superior Wolf Moon

Cars Should Kill U
Cars Should Kill U

There was a bicycle race on Black Mountain Drive Saturday. Race organizers had spray painted encouraging words on the road: Shut up, Legs! You can do it. Not much further now. That sort of thing. This was all in white spray paint.

Another group or individual came out with blue spray paint and added these messages, two of four. I took the photographs this morning on the way home from Evergreen. Obviously, they’re disturbing. But more to the current point, they immediately reminded me of the spirit of Trump rallies where minorities, women, the disabled, immigrants are summarily belittled and mocked. Sometimes, violence ensues.

The cruel and awful thing about the Trump national campaign for the presidency is this; it gives the color of political legitimacy to sentiments like these, encouraging them to go beyond disdain and into violent territory. I don’t know the politics of the blue spray painter(s), but I do know that the sanctioning of hateful rhetoric and physical confrontations makes such attitudes much more dangerous.

die faggots
die faggots shut up
Family, Jefferson County, Mountains

Lake Evergreen

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Lugnasa                                                                                Superior Wolf Moon

lake evergreen2

Jon, Gabe, Ruth on Lake Evergreen. By Minnesota standards Lake Evergreen would barely qualify as a decent city lake, but it’s one of the few closeby. Lots of folks come out for various ways to be on the water.

lake evergreenlake evergreen7

Evergreen Nature Center
Evergreen Nature Center
Aging, Family, Jefferson County, Our Land and Home, Third Phase

Shadow Mountain Journal August 5th

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Lugnasa                                                                Superior Wolf Moon

fire ban cropped

County officials lifted the fire ban, a level II, which bans all fires in Jefferson County, at midnight last night. We’ve had a few cool, wet days in a row. As August continues, the fire danger tends to decrease, though doesn’t fade until sometime in September.

Jon’s back in his art room, getting ready for his students. The grandkids come up today for the day. The divorce continues to rake its nails across all our lives. How to be gracious is a challenge. But, a good one.

Kate and I went over to Bear Creek Designs in Evergreen yesterday. We made an appointment for Monday to pick out materials for the bathroom remodel. “Oh, aging in place renovation?” Molly asked, “Getting out ahead of it, eh?” Yes, the work over the next few years will take into account the fact that after February we’ll both be in our 70’s. Just part of the third phase.

 

 

Commentary on the news, Jefferson County, Mountains, Politics, US History

American Authoritarianism

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Lugnasa                                                                       Superior Wolf Moon

Black Mountain in the cloudsThis morning Black Mountain has a shroud of gray white fog slumping down its eastern slope. Rain water puddles on the driveway and the overall feel is early fall. As we prefer it here on Shadow Mountain.

Could this election get weirder? I’d have said no, but the Donald keeps surprising me, all of us. As his polls slump like the fog on Black Mountain, certain Republicans have begun raising money for Hillary, admitting openly that they will vote for her, too. This group includes members of congress and a former primary candidate for President, Meg Whitman. That’s very strange.

But, wait! There’s more. Now the Dump Trump folks have begin wondering in interviews if he can be forced to drop out. Or, perhaps he’ll just choose to drop out, some hope. So, members of his own party are campaigning against him while others are trying for an unprecedented, geez I think I’ll just quit you. This all very new stuff in American politics, like seeing a rare bird and getting to add it to your life list.

He will not drop out. His self-image is of a fighter and a winner. Fighters don’t quit and winners don’t lose. From a political hobbyists point of view this is a most excellent campaign. Not the same old boring cereal we get every morning for breakfast.

Over the next decade plus the significance of this race will become clear. The most interesting analysis I’ve found so far links Trump to the rise of voters seeking an authoritarian leader. Read this Vox.com article: The Rise of American Authoritarianism. Research into the phenomenon of authoritarian leaders has its origins in the puzzling question of how Germany pivoted to Nazism in such a short period of time. There are now several well-regarded academic works that focus on answering that question. Some of them look at American culture, probing for similarities to post-Weimar Germany.

In this understanding, with which I agree, Trump is not the cause, but the effect. Another good article on the political roots of this new American authoritarianism comes from NYT columnist, Charles Blow: Trump Reflects White Male Fragility.

Aging, Family, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Sinking Behind Black Mountain

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Summer                                                                      Park County Fair Moon

The sun is on its way down, sinking behind Black Mountain. I don’t often write in the evenings anymore because I’m usually downstairs in the house. Tonight I came up after a sweatshirt. It gets cool reliably around 7 pm or so.

It also gets quieter here in the evening. The motorcyclists have made it to wherever they were headed. The cars loaded with camping gear have found a spot for the night. The Denver tourists headed to Upper Maxwell Falls trailhead have returned to the city. No bicyclists. No one walking their dog. A few people are still arriving home from work, probably having driven from downtown Denver.

This has been a hard week. Jon’s most recent encounter with the courts got at least part of the divorce mess sorted out. Kate drove home from Jackson Hole. The last of the painting project is almost wrapped up. Kate and I went to the grocery store today, a task that proves physically difficult with our mutual arthritic thises and thatses. The days have been warmer than I prefer, though definitely more tolerable than Denver proper.

A possible arc upward does seem hidden in the detritus. Jon has more predictability now in his life. The long work of staining and painting has all but ended which means no more extra cars and people around during the day. BJ’s injury is healing, headed toward what her surgeon believes will be a good recovery. He says she should be playing again in a couple of months.

Lugnasa lies just ahead, two days. That means the peak heat of the summer has begun to wane. The nights will get cooler, the days shorter. Welcome changes.  Summer is my least favorite season and was so even during our intensive gardening days in Andover. I don’t like the heat, even the more modest heat that we get here. The vegetables and fruits and bees needed it, we welcomed its results, but not its presence.  I’ll be glad to move into August, even more so September.

 

 

Family, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

A Collective Sigh

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Summer                                                                    Park County Fair Moon

staing begun

Staining the wood is an involved process. First, there’s power washing, cleaning and laying bare the wood, followed by extensive masking. These tasks took a week. The application of the stain is, itself, labor intensive. Though it can be applied with a power spray, it has to be back brushed to force the stain into the wood. Since the process requires two coats, that means each inch of the garage, shed and two decks will get stained and brushed twice. Longer lasting siding and much increased aesthetics will result. Nathan, Chris, Dean and Matthew have been working steadily.

fire-danger-high

While they were finishing up yesterday, we had a thunderstorm. As in Minnesota, a thunderstorm breaks the heat, but here it comes with a collective sigh. The rain has a salvific effect, much like the rain in movies after a long drought or the coming of the monsoons in India.

We’ve had several red flag warnings over the last week plus and the forest service signs, common along roads here in the mountains, have all had Smokey’s finger pointed at High. Jefferson County, our county, instituted a level 2 fire ban. No fires at all. The rains give us some respite from the risk of wildfire and that’s most welcome.

Jon is in Denver for the next five days working on finishing a deck railing, remodeling a bathroom and moving his stuff out of the house. Jen and the grandkids are in Orlando for a hemophilia conference. Today is a phone conference between Jon and Jen’s lawyers trying to hammer out some differences without the principles involved. May it be fruitful.

Cinema and Television, Family, Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants, Shadow Mountain

Weekend Stuff

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Summer                                                                      Park County Fair Moon

columbine Black Mtn DrWent to a delightful children’s movie, BFG, with the grandkids. A Spielberg film, it uses CGI as seamlessly as anything I’ve seen. This is a big-hearted movie with childish wonder spilling out all over the place. A Roald Dahl book. The story of an orphan who inadvertently sees a giant deploying dreams. He kidnaps her because she’s seen him. They develop a relationship, one threatened by other giants. Sweet and sad.

Ruth and Gabe were here overnight. Ruth and Jon worked on printmaking in the garage. He’s developing a body of work focused on found objects, metal objects crushed by traffic. He inks them up, then uses a press to transfer the ink to paper. Gabe and I talk because he likes to come up here in the loft and play.

penstemon
penstemon

The staining of the garage is underway. It will look good and last longer when this whole project finishes. The shed and decks, too.

Wandering the back yard now, looking at flowers that grow here with no help. I’m going to gather seeds, then reseed with them in the fall. We have two varieties of penstemon, wild flax, columbine, sulfur flower, indian paintbrush, daisies, shrub roses and a few I haven’t identified. Work with what already likes this soil and this microclimate. Encourage them.

Later in the fall we’ll plant lilacs and more shrub roses in the far back, perhaps some aspen. I want to plant some aspen out front, too.

 

 

Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History

Mutual Homicide

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Summer                                                                         Park County Fair Moon

Up here on Mt. Ararat, aka Shadow Mountain, our small ark has come to rest. Or at least so it seems at times. The rising waters of hate, fear, violence, guns, neglect lap, muddy and turgid, not far below. We keep sending the dove of peace out from the ship. It quickly returns, finding nowhere to rest in a world rent by pain. Doves can read the headlines.

Under the headlines a friend faces death from lung cancer. Jon and Jen fight. The wildfire season is underway on the Front Range, a Russian roulette moment until the rains return. The Trumpet blasts ignorance and xenophobia.

Yet. The lodgepoles blanketed us with their yellow pollen. I watched bees, native and honey, crawl in and out of pale blue Penstemon. Stacked and neatly trimmed lenticular clouds form over Black Mountain, Mt. Evans. Cub Creek and Bear Creek and Deer Creek carry water stored higher in the mountains by late winter snows, feeding trout and willows along the way to the Gulf of Mexico. The mule deer and elk come to our yard for grass and other small plants, show up on Black Mountain Drive as we drive home from dinner. A great horned owl flies above the pines, hunting for prey.

All this human turmoil happens as the Great Wheel turns, as it turned long before humans emerged from the evolutionary struggle and as it will turn long after our mean spirit has scrubbed us from the planet. We may live on beyond this wonder, this earth, but our fate here seems one of mutual homicide. Could we only take the lesson of the Great Wheel and learn to live with our kind as part of rather than against each other and the natural world.