Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Purified, my documents for the temple in order, I’m ready to go lay myself on the table of sacrifice.
Though I’m not nervous, it is sobering to realize that this is one of those moments when the outcome could be life altering. To continue my now over extended metaphor, each time we draw near the holy of holies we risk the wrath of the gods.
Of course, this is supposed to have the opposite result, timely knowledge. I’m in favor of that.
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
The transition from growing season to fallow season creates a sudden release from one 
domain of chores. No more spraying, harvesting, weeding, checking the health of the plants. No more colony inspections.
Many baby boomers, the paper says, have migrated to downtown apartments citing outdoor work and home maintenance as primary motivation. While that once might have made sense to me, now I wonder. The outdoor work, as long as I’m able, keeps me active, close to the rhythms of the natural world. It gives more than it takes. Cut off from it in an apartment doesn’t sound appealing. If you don’t like it, if it takes more than it gives, then, yes.
I know that feeling. Home maintenance would take far more than it gives if I felt 
responsible for doing it myself. So I can understand wanting to move away from that. In an apartment the building takes over the plumbing, the furnace, the windows, the doors. Even there, however, being responsible for seeing that the maintenance gets done, though it does feel burdensome, maintains our agency. And I like that.
More than any of these matters, though, is the single word home. This is home. Though we could, I don’t want to create another one. At least not now.
Samhain New (Thanksgiving) Moon
Hit a mental wall yesterday. Could. Not. Do. One more MOOC or Latin related thing. Brain was not interested. In the AM we completed the last of the garden chores for the season and I went downstairs to work on Ovid. Nope. Then turned on ModPo and, for the first time since both MOOCs started I did not complete a week’s work on time. So this week I have to finish week 9 and do all of Week 10.
Doable because I no longer have Modern and Post Modern, but I don’t like to be behind. I’ll catch up today or tomorrow. At the same the new Latin learning style Greg recommended is, again, doable, but it takes more time. For now. The combination of the ending of Modern/Post Modern, the assessments due in ModPo, the home work Kate and I did to get ready for the Samhain bonfire and the bonfire itself, coupled with the changed Latin working style short circuited me. Or threw an internal G.F.I.
Then, there is, too, the G.D. time switch. I’m a naked, blanket, no prisoners opponent of messing with time. Leave it on standard time and damn the consequences.
As I write this, I realize I’m not much further along today. Need some more rest. On the other hand, feeling tired means I’ve been active and that’s how I want to be.
There is, though, one more flaw in this ointment. I started my low fiber diet yesterday, clear liquids starting at 11:45 pm tonight. Then that fun couple of hours with a Powerade Miralax punch. Those of you over 50 almost certainly know this routine.
As I read the rules for this procedure, it reminded me of ascetics who would undergo elaborate rites of purification before entering the temple to commune with their gods. In this case the god will appear in white armed with a long, skinny camera. He, not me, will be going deep inside myself, gaining self-knowledge for me and recording it with a camera. It’s better than meditation! Gastroenterologist be with me now and in the time of my procedure. So help me Galen.
Fall Samhain Moon
Each day has its lessons. Today the Latin was harder than yesterday or the day before and I had to spend time in the grammar book reminding myself about supines and gerundives. On top of that I still couldn’t wrestle a sentence out of the two verses that troubled me.
When I’d run my brain as far as I could down the old Latin way, it was a good time to go 
outside and split wood for the Samhain bonfire. Boy, it had been awhile since I split wood.
The splitting maul combines a dull axe and a sledge hammer. When you’re splitting wood you want to force the fibers apart, not cut them, as a sharpened felling or limbing ax will do. That results in ax blades sunk deep into the log.
Besides, as often happens, the splitting maul wedges itself in the wood, allowing for a secondary maneuver which involves lifting maul and with it the log into the air, then bringing both down on whatever solid surface you’re working with, in this case a chunk of the elm formerly in the vegetable garden. The more slender handle of a felling ax is not designed for the force generated by this action. The splitting maul, however, has a plastic handle that absorbs the blow and keeps right on working.
Here’s the completed work, which consists of two cedar trees blown over by a windstorm a
couple of years ago. They used to be beyond our deck, between us and the vegetable garden. I still miss them. Well, this is actually about half of it, but you get the point of what splitting accomplishes. It creates a surface that more easily catches fire; and, if it were an issue, which it isn’t, makes them easier to put in a fireplace or stove.
Anyhow, after lifting the maul and the occasional log in the air and slamming them back down on the elm, I was glad I do regular resistance work.
Fall Samhain Moon
T. S. Eliot Little Gidding V
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
The hurry of last week has receded and today is an outdoor day, raspberries and fertilizer. It’s chilly out there, but physical labor adds its own heat.
The end is in sight for both MOOCs, Modern/Post Modern with only two more weeks and ModPo with four. Like the course I took last year on Greek Myth both of these have been excellent. The interactive discussion forums and the video lectures in small, accessible chunks work well for the at home classroom. The reading in all three has been challenging, definitely college and post-grad level material. Did I mention that they’re free?
The Great Course’s cd and dvd classes, taught by professors of proven teaching ability, are excellent, too. The lectures in these courses are longer and in more depth, but I have not found the spur to do the reading as I have in the MOOC’s. That’s me, of course. And, there is no interaction at all. An advantage is that you can do them over any time frame and in multiple venues. The MOOCs require a computer screen. These are not free.
Though I am at heart an auto-didact and can develop my own reading plans, I appreciate these compressed experiences where an expert in a field alerts you to current issues and literature. They’re a quicker way in to a broad foundation in a discipline and for an overview of what might have additional interest.
Over the years I’ve pursued in particular the history of ideas, ancient history: Rome, Egypt, China, mythology, philosophy and literature. In literature I’ve tended to focus on the classics and on the classical tradition. These broad areas have fascinated me for a long time. I plan to challenge myself over the fallow time with calculus. Kate’s promised time as my tutor.
I suppose I could gamble or drink or run naked through the streets, but, hey. Each to his own? Right?
Fall New (Samhain) Moon
Rain washing away the drought, ushering in cooler, more fall like weather. Gray skies and a general chill in the air. Familiar to anyone from a temperate latitude. I like it.
Busy day today. Up early and out in the garden in the cool before dawn, working with my hands spreading fertilizer, raking it in to the top couple of inches of soil. Back inside to write my 2nd essay for ModPo, this on a William Carlos Williams poem, identifying its imagist qualities. After that, a nap.
Greg and I took my creaky Latin back onto the track. I pumped the handle hard, but the little car moved pretty slow. We set some goals per two week period, 60 verses per through next May. If I can go faster, I will.
Immediately after Latin over to Kyoto Sushi, an all you can eat Japanese restaurant in Maple Grove just off Weaver Lake Road. Bill and I had lunch and he passed some bio-till to me along with some reading material. As old guys sometimes do, we also discussed hearing aids.
Back home for a second nap. Back up and two lectures on Emerson, Self-Reliance and Experience. Emerson as a proto-Nietzsche and Baudelaire influence as well as a post-Kantian precursor to the modernist critiques of the early twentieth century. Whew. That confused me, too. Basically, he emphasizes active personal experience, moving forward into the future, letting the past be the past and your self be its Self.
Workout. OK. Time for TV.
Fall Harvest Moon
Another late lesson. Or, perhaps better, a lesson only incompletely grasped, now more fully understood.
Learning, difficult learning, excites me and keeps me motivated. But. The brain only has so much patience for stuffing new things in before it tires, eyes glaze over and a slight headache develops. At least for me.
(Peasants harvesting crops, by Flemish artist Pieter Brueghel)
Over this growing season I’ve discovered that taking a work outside break, a work with my hands or my back break, releases the tension and I can come back to my work refreshed. I have also found that I enjoy the work outside much more when I understand its value in the total rhythm of my day. So there’s a virtuous circle here. Work hard at the desk, then get up and accomplish something manual garden work or changing light bulbs or organizing the garage.
Fall Harvest Moon
Something’s happening here. What it is is not exactly clear. At the end of this gardening year I feel like I’ve finally gotten it. That is, I believe I now understand how to grow fruits and vegetables in quantity and of high food value. As Kate said, moving her hand in a low but upward swoop, “Sometimes the learning curve is long.” And it has been. Over 20+ years. Today though I feel good about my gardening skill.
On the writing front I’ve rounded up several agents to query when Missing comes back from its beta readers and has gone through the copy editing process. I’m deep in the research phase for Loki’s Children, focused right now on the text, Loki in Scandinavian Mythology. No matter how all this turns out in the matter of publication, I’ve let the inner and outer censors go. I don’t know how or why, but I freed them and they left. So now the process is all good. Research. Critique. Feedback. Submission. Writing. All good.
The MOOC’s have retaught me a valuable lesson. When I’m engaged in scholarship, I’m happy, in my element. I hit flow most often while learning. That means the work with Ovid, which begins again on October 4th, is another chunk of the same. Happiness is a warm book.
Last night I had a dream in which a person ridiculed me for not being spontaneous, being disciplined to a fault. It bothered me as I slowly rose to consciousness this morning. Am I so focused on a few things that I’m missing life? Has my willingness to change directions, chart a new path receded? Been suppressed by all this?
No. I don’t think so. But I’m open to other perspectives. To me my life is full, rich. There are friends and family whom I see or communicate with regularly. There is a creative life partnership with Kate here. The dogs alone provide many spontaneous moments because dogs live only in the now. In the past I have initiated change in the world through political action. Now the action is more at home and in the family. Seems just right for the third phase.
Lughnasa Honey Moon
I believe I found the egress. (see post below) Wired it up. I walked the whole perimeter, about half a mile, checking the bottom of the chain link fence for sign. These include scuffed earth, bent or snapped off twigs or plant stalks, areas where the earth has been scratched. Then, like the cowboys of old, I take out my wire cutters and my almost depleted roll of baling wire and anchor the fence to something solid. The good old empirical method will tell whether or not I was successful. Dogs in perennial beds. No. Dogs in back. Yes.
Also, forgot to mention here the good news about my shoulder. After six months of sleep disturbing and task disrupting pain, my physical therapy has eliminated almost all the pain. I would say I’m 95% back to normal. The p.t. was monotonous and frequent, but over time it pulled me back to good health. Worth it. Much better than meds.
In addition, as far as medical good news goes, as some of you know, I’ve mostly cut out carbs, lost 16 pounds and upped my consumption of fruits and vegetables. Just like your Mom was supposed to have told you, although I don’t remember those lessons from my Mom. My new doctor did an A1c test which measures average blood sugar over a three month period and mine was in the normal range. Barely, but it was there. I’m convinced that the change in eating pattern walked me back from prediabetes. I’ll stick with the new eating paradigm, healthier anyway.
One more piece of good news in the A1c’s trail. My cholesterol numbers stayed in excellent ranges in spite of the fact that I’ve increased my carnivorous activity. That’s all the good news that’s fit to print.
Lughnasa New (State Fair) Moon
Life seems to run from one irony to another, offering a wry twist often when you least expect it. This irony is not one of those. It’s been building for about 19 years, but it has begun to peak. The irony is this. The U.S. like the rest of the world, continues to urbanize with central cities beginning to outstrip ‘burbs. “In 2011, for the first time in nearly a hundred years, the rate of urban population growth outpaced suburban growth, reversing a trend that held steady for every decade since the invention of the automobile.”*
What’s the irony here? Now I find myself willing to defend the suburban or, in my case, exurban experience. Why is that ironic? Because I spent 24 years living in Minneapolis and St. Paul deeply involved in all manner of urban politics, working as an urban minister and eventually in charge of urban ministry for the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area. Though raised in a small town, I made the transition to solidly urban guy. It was my profession, the city.
Cities burst with energy, offer sophisticated amusements, diverse places to live, a variety of foods to eat and the sort of jostling with others that sparks creativity. They also make obvious the divisions in our society that a drive from the Northside of Minneapolis to Kenwood, directly south of it, epitomizes. Even that last creates a juicy political scene with lots of different actors. Fun.
And I love it. Note the present tense. I love it. I enjoy being in the city and I love the kind of people who make cities their home.
Even so. I now live in an exurb of the Twin Cities. Only a couple of miles north of our home there are cornfields. Surrounding our development is a huge truck farm with tractors and warehouses and rows and rows of carefully planted vegetables. This is where the metro proper ends. The MUSA line, the Metropolitan Urban Services Area, runs less than a mile south of our home. (see map)
Over the years Kate and I have made a life here that would not have been possible in the city. We have a woods, several garden beds for flowers and vegetables, an orchard and a fire pit. Our house has about 3800 square feet with the finished basement and we could never afford that much space in the city. This combination of a large, relatively inexpensive home and land enough to create our own footprint has given us a rich and full life.
We have the suburban dream, that is, country living close enough to the city to access 
museums, orchestras, restaurants and political activity. In my first days here I felt isolated and unhappy, far away from the things that had made me who I was. As time passed though, I began to find a new person emerging based on what we had here.
It is, in some important respects, a narrower life. Kate and I spend most of our time either outside or inside our home, but on our property. In this sense the community oriented life of the city does not have a domestic equivalent here, at least for us.
Here there is silence. Here we can focus on our creative activities: horticulture, writing, sewing/quilting. Here our life concentrates at our home. This is similar to the farm life of millions of Americans prior to WWII. Yes, it has its privations, but it also has unique benefits.
It remains to be seen how third phase life can be lived here, especially the waning years of that time. We may find the distances too great for us, the isolation dangerous. I hope not because I have learned to love this exurban spot as much I love the city.
*Time Magazine article, The End of the Suburbs