Category Archives: Aging

Aging, Bees, Dogs, Garden

Gotta Hive Those Bees

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Spring                                               Waxing Flower Moon

Kate’s off for Denver, excited as a small girl at Christmas.  Seeing her grandkids makes this lady levitate.  Even her dinged up right hip seems a bit better this morning, partly from anticipation and partly from the steroid injection she had on jen-kate-ruth-gabe300Tuesday.   (Pic:  Leadville, Co Halloween 2009)

It will be a busy time for me while she’s away.  I have two tours later this morning.  Then it’s over to Mother Garden to pick up a few things I need for this year’s garden:  bush bean seeds, leek transplants, coriander, dill, cosmos, marigolds.

Back at home I’ll have to have a long nap to make up for getting up this morning at 5:45.  After that I have to buy more sugar and a spray bottle for the new bees, put foundations on the frames for their hive box and level up a spot for their hive.  Later, after 4:30 pm, I’ll drive out to Stillwater and pick them up, bring them home and hive them.

Hiving a new package involves spreading the 2 pound package of worker bees over the floor of the hive box, then gently releasing the queen, replacing the four frames withdrawn, carefully (to avoid killing the queen which is bad) and putting a bit of pollen patty and a feeder on top.  That’s where the sugar comes in.  The spray bottle is for the trip home and the time lapse between then and when I get them in the hive.  It helps them stay nourished and calm.

On Saturday I have to figure out why Rigel and Vega dug a large plastic pipe out of the ground, what, if any, function it serves, repair it, cover it over, this time with a board or something that will resist further digging and hope they don’t go all round the yard  digging up irrigation pipes.  I think they dig when they hear the sound of the water running through the pipes.  Oh, boy! Oh, boy!  Something’s there.  Something’s there.  Gotta get it.  Right now.

With that work done I have to get back to amending the soil in the raised beds and planting seed.  If I have time, I’ll get in some weeding, too.

Aging, Family, Friends, Health, Memories

The Moratorium Years

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Spring                                   Waxing Flower Moon

As the moon makes its circuit from its crescent form in the west to its fullness in the east, it passes over the skylight in our living room, at about half full.  It was there tonight, shining and visible to me as I sat in my chair.

To get my sunglasses back I had to park in University parking, then wend my way through skyways and the labyrinth that is the University of Minnesota’s medical complex.  In several buildings there is the school of dentistry, the medical school, a hospital, a heart hospital and a children’s hospital plus numerous organizations that have some relationship to the world of medicine.

There were kids with backpacks leaning against stoplights, chatting in small groups, a girl sitting cross-legged on a high wall reading a novel, signs:  Are you bipolar?  Pediatric Grand Rounds.  University Brain Tumor Center.  What a time, those university years.  Hormones on high, ambition oozing, a heady mix of freedom and new ideas all combine to create the combustible reality that is and has been college for several decades, perhaps even centuries.

A grand time and one I wouldn’t revisit.  Getting older has much to commend it and among its sweeter pleasures is a certain calmness, a centeredness impossible, at least for me, to obtain when I was in college.

Kate came back from work tonight with sad news.  Her colleague Dick Mestrich, who has been battling multiple myeloma for 2 years plus, has begun to die.  He’s Kate’s age and had just begun retirement when he got sick.

Aging, Bees, Family, Politics

Cyber Demons At Play

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Spring                                         Waxing Flower Moon

Parts of my website have disappeared over the last couple of weeks or so.  All of the liberal faith parent page got eaten by cyber demons, some I may have called myself.  The handy moon widget I had right next to the latest blog entry also went missing.  I have been unable to restore either one though I have not made a concerted effort.

Sunny but cool today.  Closer to normal.  Tomorrow is Gabe’s second birthday and Grandma flies out on Friday to celebrate.  Grandma levitates literally and figuratively when she has a chance to see the grandkids.

She had a hip injection yesterday and though the full benefit of it has not yet appeared, she got enough relief to convince her and the doctor who manages her pain that a hip procedure would help a lot.  That’s good news.  She’s also exploring a more rare procedure in which the bursa over her left hip would be removed.  No consensus on that one yet.

I’m about to leave for the city to have a meeting with Margaret Levin and Justin Fay, evaluating this year’s legislative work and getting ready for next year.  Gotta pick up my sunglasses at the UofM (I left’em at Brenda’s class last Tuesday.), buy some mochi for the grandkids and pick up some leeks.  Legcom call tonight.  Busy beaver for a few days here.

My hand has deflated and has returned mostly to normal.  Not quite, but almost.  That’s good because I get a package of bees this Saturday and I may have to start this whole process over again.

Aging, Health

Mens sana in corpore sano

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Spring                                     Waxing Flower Moon

VO2.  I’m not even sure I know what it means though I do recall that bicycle racers have an abnormally good rate.  Still, on Monday next, I’ll know for sure that I’m not a bicycle racer.  But, I may know a bit more about my exercise physiology and what kind of things will work best for me.

Mens sana in corpore sano, a healthy mind in a healthy body. This is a Roman interpretation of the Greek ideal, one I’ve believed in since coming in contact with it many years ago.  I have, from time to time, managed a healthy body, then a healthy mind, but getting the two together has proved formidable, especially so as I get older.

So, I went over to the institute for Exercise Medicine and had them put me through my paces with a VO2 mask and heart leads.  They also had me do a stretch test, a jumping high test, measured my blood pressure and, oops, took my body fat.  The body fat was in the margin on all parts of my body except my tummy, which managed a wide divergence from a healthy norm.  This did not surprise me.

I peddled for 15 minutes on a bike with a blue mask (this guy is not me.)  At the end they then had me go two more minutes.  It was not too tough a test, but I don’t find out my results until next week.

What I want is a better handle on my workouts, a handle related to this actual body that I have rather than the statistical average I’ve worked with in calculating my workouts up to this point.  I also need a push to get going again on resistance and flexibility work.  I’m hoping this will do it.

An interesting experience.  Worth it.

Aging

Home Is Where The Boxes Are

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Spring                                          Waxing Flower Moon

At the recycling place I pushed in flattened box after flattened box, a layered batch of cardboard going back to late November, another step in the home as retailer, receiving goods directly from middle-folk like Levenger, Amazon and Williams-Sonoma.  Another instance of disintermediation these flattened boxes could serve as both metaphor and symbol of an age shifting old patterns of store fronts and even big box stores to the home, ironically moving back to the days of the Sears Catalog and Montgomery Wards catalog stores.

In many ways the home is now the hub that a business district used to be.  We pick up our mail and some of us our newspapers and magazines off a computer screen.  We watch movies mailed to us by Netflix or streamed directly into our TV’s by wireless routers.  We shop on the internet and have things delivered to our home instead of driving to a store, picking them out and doing self-delivery.  An increasing percentage of us now move from bed to office without the interference of a commute.  In some instances, like vegetable and flower growing, another percentage of the population has started growing their own.  Others keep bees, raise chickens, some have goats.

The times have changed and they have changed in dramatic ways, but like the fabled frog in the pot of boiling water, the changes have proceeded at such a deliberate pace that we scarcely notice all of them.

The cell phone, too, has replaced the landline at home, the old familiar location centered phone call having gone the way of crank phones.

Those of us who are aging will benefit a great deal from most if not all of these changes.  We can look forward, I think, to certain tele-conferenced medical services, perhaps rugs that know when we fall.

Home has become more like a subsistence farm without the subsistence level life style.  Again, at least for some.

Aging, Art and Culture, Cooking, Friends

S.A.D.S.

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Spring                                        Waxing Flower Moon

Shopped at the Wedge.  Boy, have co-ops changed.  They’re no longer like buying screws and nuts at a hardware store where you have to know the price and quantity.  Barcodes, scanners, conveyor belts.  The selection includes meats and many items found in other grocery stores as well as drop-dead gorgeous produce, a large line of tofu and tempeh, shelf fulls of various rice products like mochi, sea weed and other sea plants in many different forms.  Impressive.   I picked up tempeh, mochi, sweet rice wine, nori, coconut oil and sunflower oil among other things.

Made me feel like an aging hippy.  I realized there were a lot of folks in there who spent the sixties just like I did, smoking dope and fightin’ the man.

Tour this morning had great kids and a game teacher.  We wandered around, stymied now and then by sudden art disappearance syndrome, SADS.  SADS happens when curators and registrars start getting creative with the collection.  In theory we walk our routes before the tours but I’ve become lax on that score and may have to start again, especially if SADS continues to interfere with my tours.

Saw Wendy this morning, too.  I gave her hug and told her she looked great. And she did.  It was good to see her.  Breast cancer is scary.

Aging, Dogs, Family, Garden

Buried

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Spring                                      Awakening Moon

Business meeting mornings always kick up stuff to do.  Sometimes it’s an odd collection.  This morning is a good example.  I saw an article about VO2 testing and decided to make an appointment. I go on April 20th at 2pm.  We agreed to at least register for cremation services so I printed out two forms.  In tandem with that I decided to look at columbariums in the interest of having a place for descendants to visit.  Yikes!  They’re expensive.  Real expensive.  In the 5,000 to 11,000 range.  Much more than a grave.  Then there was the person who might be able to help us think through our medicare options.  Out until April 19th.  Kate wanted me to look up information about the Segway so I did that.  I needed to see if the guy from whom I ordered bees cashed our check.  He did.  That means I’ll get some bees on April 24th.  Ordering the insect shapes bundt pan from Solutions, Inc. and getting a frittata recipe from Williams-Sonoma.  That sort of stuff.

We also discussed Kate’s possible hip replacement, as in when to do it if the minimally invasive guy says it would work for her.  We had a moment of silence for the money we thought had and now know we don’t, then moved on past it.

After the nap I worked out in the garden, repairing damage created by Rigel and Vega last fall.  I found residual anger, sadness, frustration not far below the surface as I tried to recreate the beautiful work Ecological Gardens had done just a month or so before all the digging.  It’s not hard work physically, but I’m finding it hard emotionally.  I love the dogs and I love the garden.  When the two conflict, it leaves me in a very unpleasant place.  We did put up the fence that should preclude any further damage.

At the moment I have Wheelock open on my desk, blank file cards ready and a yellow pad for the translation work that will follow.  Last week I found a notebook to contain my translation of Ovid and notes I make as I go along.  It’s ready, too.  Valete!

Aging, Humanities, Memories, Writing

Scribo, ergo sum.

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Spring                                           Awakening Moon

An outside day today.  Planting onions, garden planning and repair.  I’m itchy to get back to learning more Latin and translating the Metamorphoses, but the rhythm of nature waits for no one.

Writing is always an exercise in self-disclosure, no matter what kind of writing you do.  The subjects you pick, the ones you don’t, the style you use, the one you avoid, the words you choose, the ones you don’t know all reveal inner workings most folks prefer to keep to themselves.  Even with my modest public writing–this blog, sermons, the Sierra Club Blog last year for example, I’ve gotten the occasional emotional jolt that comes when the inside becomes the outside.

If you click on the comments about John Lampl, you’ll see an example of what I mean.  This comment came right out of left field, a comment about a post I’d written a year and a half ago about events in my life that happened, let’s see now, 36 years ago.  36 years.  What’s amazing about that is the rocket ride back to feelings of the past, that particular past, I went on when I read the post.

To gauge the difficulties of those years is like comparing a Caterpillar 73f to a Tonka Truck.  Today is a Tonka Truck life in terms of angst.  Those days I bled angst from every pore.  I married a wonderful young woman, Judy Merritt, at the height of the sixties, 1969.  We got married on an Indian mound in Anderson, Indiana, received two pounds of marijuana as a wedding present and recessed to I’m So Glad by the Cream.  Butterflies landed on my shoulder.  Really.  Five years later my alcoholism had grown worse–ironically during my time in seminary–and I pushed Judy away.  No wonder Johnnie was there to catch her.

There is, too, an inescapable amount of self-absorption in writing.  I’ve kept journals for years, I have three bookshelves lined with them.  The last five years I’ve kept much of my journal-type writing on line in this blog and its Frontpage predecessor.

This post made me wonder why I do this.  Not from an, oh my god why did I ever do this perspective, but from a Why do I do this point of view.   The easiest and probably the truest explanation is that it is just what I do.  I write.  I write about politics, about fantasy worlds I create, about my life, about thinking through the liberal faith tradition, about art.  My dad wrote.  I write.

Scribo, ergo sum.

Aging, Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities

En-Theos

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Spring                                      Awakening Moon

If you know me, you know I have enthusiasms.  Two or three years in astronomy.  Two years of close study of Jungian thought.    9 years of touring and two and a half years of education in art history.  A full years home study course in horticulture.  We’re now in our third year of converting our property to a permaculture environment for vegetables, fruits and nuts.  The most recent instance, though one of long standing in my thoughts, is Latin.

As I finished my first four lines of the Metamorphoses the other day, it struck me that art history and Latin suit me pretty well, better than politics and the church.  I said this out loud to Kate and she said, “Well, philosophy and anthropology were more masculine.”  I guess that’s true and I guess the same certainly goes for politics although that’s changed a lot since the 60’s.  The ministry is a more mushy profession gender wise, especially for liberal protestants, but since I always did politics and consulting, probably not so for me.

The thing is, I don’t think art history and Latin were options that were even visible to me.  It wasn’t, in other words, that I rejected them in favor of philosophy and anthropology.  Nothing much more to say about this than that I have them in my life now and I’m not about to let go.

I have wondered about political action, long my baseline activity, the self-authenticating act.  Has its time passed for me?  I’m not sure about that. Will take more thought.

Aging, Travel

Life Is a Cabaret

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Spring                                                         Awakening Moon

When we drove over to our financial consultant this morning, I looked up and saw a crescent Awakening moon tucked in behind three wispy rows of cirrus clouds.  The moon, faint and slightly out of place, added a moment of mystery.

It was an omen.  Ever had a really pleasant surprise?  I had one, Kate and I had one this morning.  We sat down with Ruth, our consultant, and began going over this and that as we always do.  She got caught up on matters personal and physical like Kate’s back surgery and asked questions about Kate’s impending retirement at the first of next year.  That was why we were there, to make sure about our resources after Kate leaves full time medicine.

We tossed ideas around and looked at a 2011 budget Kate and I did last week.  It was,  in my view, tight but manageable.   Ruth made a comment about the amount of money we had coming in from social security and pensions and then how much more we needed from money in Kate’s retirement account.  Wait?  What was that?

We add the money from the retirement account to the social security and the pension?  My mind went blank for a minute as parts of me processed what this meant.  It meant I’d viewed our post-retirement budget from a very restricted perspective.  I had, for reasons I no longer understand, folded the our social security and pension payments into the total from the retirement account rather than adding them all together.  This means our available cash after Kate retires just went up by about 50%!  50% is a big number.  That means our budget goes from being adequate to pretty damned good.

A pleasant surprise, indeed.

Afterward, we ate lunch at Spoonriver, Brenda Langston’s place by the Guthrie.  I saw Brenda there and complimented her on her class and the restaurant.  It was a great, healthy and damned expensive lunch.  But, what the hell?  We can afford it.