Category Archives: Dogs

Aging, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Cancer in the morning, the numinous in the afternoon

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Spring                                                                                 Planting Moon

Got up with the sun this morning, needing to pick up Kona between 7:00 and 7:30 am in Blaine.  Having the sun out and being up early both put my mood into high in spite of the significant cash outlay for Kona’s needed care.

Imagine my surprise when I looked at the weather report.  6-8 inches of new snow.  Tonight!  Then, maybe 70 by the weekend.  OMG!

Had Kona over at the vets by 9:40 am where I got the good news that her heart murmur has disappeared and the bad news that her tumor was cancerous.  Kate was in the room from Denver, Colorado via Verizon wireless and my Droid phone.  We discussed the options with Roger and decided to go ahead, as I wrote below, to have it removed.

Back home.  Nap.  A long nap since my back, unconvinced by the meds and the rests I’d taken, continued to ouch.  A lot.  Couldn’t take the best meds because I had to drive out to Stillwater, then into St. Paul and home after that.

Stillwater was the bee pickup.  My two pound package of Italian hygienics are now buzzing on top of the dryer in the basement.  I sprayed them with sugar water, will do so again before bed, once more in the morning, then again just before I hive them around 6 pm tomorrow.  That way they have full tummies when hived and are less likely to go adventuring. Which would serve no good purpose right now anyhow.  I had planned to hive them tonight, but the snow.  Comes down hard and wet right now.

St. Paul was to see John Desteian, my longtime Jungian analyst, I started to see him in 1986 or ’87 and saw him for a long time after my divorce from Raeone.  I’ve seen him off and on over the years, last in 2006.

I want to see what I’m trying to tell myself through my dreams of loss and being lost.  As I imagined, we headed in the general direction of faith, though not retrieving a lost faith so much as redefining faith, Reimagining Faith, in light of the pagan, existentialist, flat-earth metaphysics of my current world view.

As always, John asked the good questions.  Pointed me, this time, toward an essay by Heidegger called “The Last God” and understanding the essence of the numinous.  I’ll have a month to ponder that since my next appointment is on May 23rd.  He’s been a useful, valued guide and Jung my chief spiritual adviser.  Sounds like that run will continue.

Back home to an oxycodone, spraying the bees with the sugar water, crating the dogs and relaxing.  Quite the day.  Cancer in the morning, the numinous in the afternoon.  A lesson there.

Oh.  Had a vicarious feeling of pride when I learned John now runs an international training institute for Jungian analysts based in Zurich, the Mecca and Jerusalem of Jungian thought.  Here’s the link.

 

 

 

Aging, Dogs, Health, Third Phase

Help!

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Spring                                                                             Planting Moon

Kona will have her tumor removed tomorrow.  Roger Barr, our vet, says it is cancerous, which surprised me because she’s been so sturdy and active in spite of the tumor.  A chest x-ray though showed no metastases, a good thing.  We’ve opted to remove though the emergency vet bill and the removal costs will debulk our capital reserves.  Which means we’ll have to find a way to build them back up again.

After our appointment with Dr. Barr, I tried to lift Kona up into the Rav4.  Usually, no problem.  I can lift her 40 pounds. However.  Last week I wrenched my back cleaning out the bee hives in readiness for the new package, which I will pick up today.  As I struggled with what would have been an easy task, a woman came along and asked me if I needed help, “Yes.  I do.”

Between us we got Kona up on the blanket in the back.

“Her and me, we’re doing it together.” I said, nodding toward Kona, “Thanks.”

“Bless you,” she said.

I recount this conversation because it reminded me of a third phase thought.  A thought important for an all men’s group like the Woollies.  We must learn how to recognize when we need help, how to ask for it and how to graciously receive it.  It’s not easy for me to ask for help and I imagine many of us are the same.  As we age, infirmity and illness will increase the probability, the likelihood that we will need the help of others.  Fellow Woollies.  Family.  Other friends.  Medical professionals and home health care assistants.

Dogs

Kona

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Spring                                                                                    Planting Moon

Had to take Kona to the emergency vet.  She had a high temp, the result of an infection on a large mass on her right shoulder.  Emergency vets, like emergency rooms for people, are not cheap.  She was pretty lethargic when I drove over there.  She’s staying over night and I have to pick her up before 7:30 am.  That’s when they close.

Then I’ll have to take to her Barr’s, our regular vet.  Hopefully I can do that on Tuesday, rather than on Monday, but we’ll see.

Dogs, Family, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Becoming a doctor instead of a professional sewer

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Spring                                                                          Planting Moon

Granddaughter Ruth, turned 7 last week, asked Grandma, “Why did you become a doctor instead of a professional sewer?”  Grandma has been teaching Ruth to sew.  “Because I’m good at being a doctor, too.”  Lots of great information in that exchange.

Vega just came in from the outside carrying one of the green toy balls.  She brought it all the way inside, deposited it beside the water bucket and continued onto the living room to lie down on the rug.  It’s a dog’s life.

We’ve been talking, here and there, about the third phase at our Woolly meetings.  Maximize life now.  While we have it.  Say yes to life.  Do what only I can do.  A few approaches, still being tried out.  We had two new third phasers join the group in the last couple of months.  There’s one outlier at 64 and another at 60.

 

 

Dogs

Master Communicator

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Spring                                                                         Planting Moon

Within 30 pages of finishing Missing, the read through.  Lots of ideas bouncing around, not sure where I want to head quite yet, but some changes seem obvious, others not so much so.

Kate in Colorado means lots more dog management, just as she has to do when I’m gone.  Since I work downstairs and the dogs are upstairs, this means every hour plus I go upstairs to see what’s going on, see if anyone needs to go outside.

Because Rigel, Ms. feral hound, has a tendency to start the bloody, expensive scrapes with Gertie, our German short-hair, she and Gertie have to be on opposite sides of the cast iron gate that separates the living room from the kitchen.  Since Kona, our older whippet, does not like the cold, she needs to be on the tiled floor of the kitchen unless she’s just been outside or I’m upstairs.  Come to think of it Vega is the only one who can be with any other dog in any location.

Vega has an astonishing range of communication.  Most people train their dogs, Vega trains us.  She is not a dominant dog in most ways, just very attuned to her own needs, the needs of the pack and certain critical, to her, times of day.

(Vega and Kona)

We have an evening ritual, now over 13 years long, of giving a piece of sliced turkey to each dog before they go to bed for the evening.  It started because we had to give Kona vasotec each morning and evening as a preventative measure for congestive heart failure.  When you give meds every day, twice a day, turkey makes the whole process simpler.  But.  You can’t give just one dog turkey. Dogs have a highly developed sense of fairness so everybody gets one.

We crate each of these dogs in these evening, a practice not common for us over most of our years, but one that became necessary for various reasons.  The dogs don’t mind it all.  In fact, Vega has a built in timer that alerts her to what we call turkey time.  When it’s time, she comes to me and goes, “ooff.” Opens and closes her mouth.  Repeats.  Then she lowers her head and lifts it, meaning, get up.  If that doesn’t work, she retreats a step or two and sits, two legs low to the ground and her front legs fully extended and looks at me.  Another ooff or two might be added for better effect.

When she wants to go outside, she stands by the sliding glass doors and thunks her tail against the glass.  Or, if she wants me to get more water in the bucket in the kitchen, she’ll stand near the crate and thunk her tail against the crate.  We’ve had dogs that would do various modes of communication but they always overdid them, sort of like shouting at deaf people, I think.

Not Vega.  She’s very nuanced and polite in her communication.  She is a rare dog, one of perhaps two that achieved this level of in synchness with us, at least as far communication with us goes.

Art and Culture, Dogs, Family

Road Trip Grandma

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Spring                                                                     Planting Moon

MNDOT says the roads between here and Iowa are in good condition.  Much better than this morning.  Gertie and Rigel watched, worried as we packed Kate’s rental Nissan.  She got off after lunch out and a nap.

No Quilt Museum this phase of the trip, she’ll drive into Iowa tonight as far as she can, then another day and another day and probably another day.  She may arrive earlier than she planned, but better before the birthday party than after.  Much better.

On the home front I’m headed over to Arbor Lakes in Maple Grove tonight to see a cinema version of a Manet exhibition. I have no idea whether this will be any good. Here’s the details from the e-mail:

Exhibition: Great Art on Screen – series begins this Thursday, April 11

Exhibition is a new series capturing the world’s greatest art exhibitions and screening at a cinema near you.

First in the series, Manet: Portraying Life takes viewers on a 90-minute virtual private tour of the career-encompassing collection of the works of Edouard Manet, currently on exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts with screenings from April 11. Two additional Exhibition events will follow including Munch with screenings from June 27 — a “once-in-a-lifetime” exhibition of the greatest number of Edvard Munch’s works ever, co-hosted by the National Museum and the Munch Museum in Oslo — and Vermeer with screenings from October 10 from the National Gallery, London where audiences will be given a unique perspective on the masterpieces of Johannes Vermeer. Go beyond the gallery to see exclusive behind-the-scenes footage on how an exhibition is created for public view. Hosted by art historian Tim Marlow, featuring special guests.

Dogs, Family, GeekWorld, Third Phase, Travel

I Knew Her Right Away

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Spring                                                                              Bloodroot Moon

Home again, home again.  The dogs greeted me with unusual joy and vigor.  Vega spun round and Gertie jumped up, biting at me to come play.  Tumultuous.  And wonderful.

Kate came into the Loon Cafe and picked me up from the Hiawatha light rail.  She had on blinking ear-rings.  The server at the cafe, before I arrived, had asked her, “Is that how your friend will recognize you?”  It was.  I knew her right away.

She led us through the maze of parking spaces to the truck, not easy in the mammoth commuter ramps that collect cars from the western burbs.

The trip home had no remarkable moments, a good thing for travel.  I did use, for the first time, a bar code boarding pass on my cell phone.  Felt very with it.  You all have probably done it for years, but it was amazing to me.

It’s nice to use the full size key-board and not the 92%, slick metal keys of the netbook.  Having said that, the netbook has been the best single computer purchase I’ve ever made.  It goes everywhere with me when I travel.  It’s compact, picks up wi-fi with ease and has a 92% keyboard, which is why I bought it.  It’s allowed me to post on this blog from as far away as Cape Horn, south of Tierra del Fuego.

 

Cinema and Television, Dogs, News of the Strange, Politics, Travel, US History, World History

All in a Morning’s Jaunt

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Spring                                                      Bloodroot Moon

Today is the much nicer day of the next three.  Tomorrow the high will be 46 and windy, Monday 41 with ice and snow. Today it is 53 and sunny. I chose walking over museums today.

Before leaving I ate my first and last breakfast at the hotel.  Their main breakfast is a buffet, served for the  many students staying here.  The coffee was weak and served in tired blue plastic mugs.  Jack Reacher would have scored the coffee very low.  A group of 18 students from Germany didn’t seem to mind the coffee though.

Outside the wind was mild, though the temperature in the morning was in the high 30’s.  I saw people in shirt sleeves but I stuck with my hat, Chilean fjord special muffler and my Ecuadorian coat.  There were a number of people out enjoying the sunshine when I passed the Willard Hotel.

(apparently my Android takes self-portraits.  This one showed up in my pics today.)

Those of you who watched House of Cards would recognize the Willard from the scene where Clean Water held its fund-raiser on the steps, then crossed the streets with trays of food for the striking teachers.  Up close it looks like money and power compressed into architecture.

About a block from the Willard and right next to the Whitehouse–how did I not remember this?–is the department of the Treasury.  Keep the nation’s finances right close by the Oval Office, I guess.

Michelle’s garden is on the south lawn and visible from the fence where we all gathered, gobsmacked by the presence of this icon of politics and American might.  The Whitehouse has been the home of all U.S. presidents except for George Washington though Truman vacated for four years while it got a top to bottom rebuilding.

Onward to the Mall, entering the green west of the still not open Washington Monument.  It’s having repairs and rejiggering of its foundations due to a 2011 5.8 earthquake whose epicenter was in Virginia.

Walking along the reflecting pool on my way to the Lincoln Monument I saw a very large Irish Wolfhound, gray and stately, walking its people, unfortunately too far away to meet.

At the monument there were a lot of people though not the crush I’ve  experienced at other times.  This is a moving place as I’m sure you already know.  It is, as it says right over Lincoln’s head, a temple.  Immersed as I am right now in Greek and Roman mythology it’s easy to see the architect and sculptor’s reach back to those ancient worlds for adequate ceremonial features.  He was and is a giant in our history and this haunting building makes that place clear.

A brief thought passed through my head that this was a monument for the ages, then Ozymandias came in its wake and I realized I was a citizen of Rome at Rome’s peak.  London at the height of the British Empire.  Xi’an during the T’ang empire.  Edo during the Tokugawa era.  And the glory of those cities now lies in the past, a memory, not a present fact.  So it will be with Lincoln and Washington, D.C. itself.

After the Lincoln Monument I went by the additions to the Vietnam Memorial, two statuary groups, one three men, the other three women, and wandered on to come upon what must be the most jingoistic of all our monuments and one built under the reign of George II, George W. Bush.  Nothing against the vets of WWII, among them were both my parents and an uncle, but this monument reeks of American exceptionalism and the projection of US power.  With George W.’s name on it it will forever be linked, as I’m sure he intended, with his misguided efforts in Iraq.

This is an example of the unintended consequences of the use of power.  No one can or should compare the US WWII effort, the last ‘good’ war’, with the ill-advised and deceitfully sold war against the Iraqi people.  This monument will itself stand as stone and metal irony on just this point.

In case, though, all these monumental treatments of liberty and freedom seem ill-advised, I found this on the back of a truck parked on the corner of Constitution and 15th, just two blocks from the Whitehouse.  There is always someone who would take freedoms away.

By the time I trudged my way back–I figure 4 to 5 miles round trip–this guy had exhausted himself.  A lunch at the Elephant and Castle then a long nap.  Woke up refreshed and ready to go back to the PRB show tomorrow.

Dogs, Holidays

Erin Go Bar

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Imbolc                                                              Bloodroot Moon

St. Patrick’s day at Pappy’s Bar.  We went, stopping by for a brunch at Pappy’s, to get dogfood.  In Pappy’s the bartender had shamrock suspenders, a leprechaun hat with shamrocks and sunglasses, on top of the hat, clear with green lights blinking within the frame.  A waitress, a superannuated sort, had a tiny yellow hat with a green flower and a green t-shirt tuxedo, pressed out far enough in front to provide a handy cushion if she should tip over.

At the end of the bar sat two young women, mid-twenties, sunglasses, eating eggs and sausage while tossing back Bloody Marys.  Next to us sat a younger couple, maybe early fifties, thin and fit looking.  She had on a Honolulu Harley-Davidson tee-shirt and a sad look, not sad today, necessarily, but a look that said life didn’t hold much sparkle for her.  He smiled, took a napkin and cleaned up the water after the bartender had wiped down the bar.  “It was wet,” he said.

Kate ordered the senior special and I got cornbeef hash and eggs in honor of the traditional St. Patrick’s day meal.

We took the last seats in the bar and there was quite a line waiting to eat in the restaurant portion.  This was at noon on Sunday.  A few folks had green tinted liquor drinks in highball glasses, but I saw no green beer.

The sign read March 17, 1992.  We check I.D.  I was 45 in 1992.

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Memories, Poetry, Weather +Climate

Yet.

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Imbolc                                                                   Bloodroot Moon

Snow came in the night.  Maybe 2 inches.  Freshened up the landscape, pushed back the melting time.  Last year today it was 73, ruining my vision of the north, turning it into a slushy Indiana/Ohio/Illinois.  Climate change stealing my home.  It disoriented me, made me feel like a stranger in a strange, yet strangely familiar, land.  Now.  30 degrees.  8 inches of snow.  Home again.

A book on my shelf, important to me:  Becoming Native to This Place.  The idea so powerful.  One so necessary for this nature starved moment, as the pace of the city as refuge lopes toward its own four minute mile.  Cities are energy, buzz, imagination criss-crossing, humans indulging, amplifying, renewing humanness but.  But.

All good.  Yes.  Yet.

That stream you used to walk along.  The meadow where the deer stood.  You remember.  The night the snow came down and you put on your snowshoes and you walked out the backdoor into the woods and walked quietly among the trees, listening to the great horned owl and the wind.  The great dog bounding behind you in the snow, standing on your snowshoes, making you fall over and laugh.  Remember that?

There was, too, that New Year’s Day.  Early morning with the temperature in the 20s below zero and another dog, the feral one, black and sleek, slung low to the ground, went with you on the frozen lake, investigating the ice-fishing shacks, all alone, everyone still in bed from the party the night before but you two walked, just you two and the cold.

Before I go, I also have to mention those potatoes.  The first year.  Reaching underneath the earth, scrabbling around with gloved fingers.  Finding a lump.  There.  Another.  And another.  And another.  The taste.  Straight from the soil.  With leeks and garlic.  Tomatoes, too, and beets.  Red fingers.  The collard greens.  Biscuits spread with honey from the hive.