Category Archives: Family

Family Time

August 21, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa Superior Wolf Moon

Gabe and Ruth were up here yesterday, bringing their peculiar brand of energy and enthusiasms. Gabe tried to go fishing for dogs again with a stick tied to twine. He found the pruners, wanting to cut a stick for a reason I couldn’t understand, but it was important to him. After laying the pruners down, and watching Rigel walk around him, this hemophiliac said, “Rigel’s really clever. She knows how to walk past sharp things.”

Ruth came up to the loft and ate a sandwich she made, “Two cheeses, four meats and dijonnaise!” When grandma asked her if she wanted to help make peach pickles, Ruth said, “Well, I know how to make pickles, but I don’t know how to peel peaches.” So she helped. She is a sponge, soaking up Kate’s sewing skills and cooking skills. Reading books from my library and ones she gets on her own. Learning printmaking techniques from her dad as she prepares her portfolio for DSA, Denver School of the Arts. 10.

Apres le grandkids Jon and Kate and I went into Dazzle Jazz in downtown Denver to hear Roberta Gambarini. She’s very skilled. This was the next to last event in Kate’s birthday month. She has a present coming on Monday from Jon.

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

Hail and Lightning

August 20, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa Superior Wolf Moon

37 this morning and small piles of hail still scattered around look like snow. Two solar panels have a blanket of hail still on them from yesterday afternoon. We had a gully washer with lightning that seemed right over our heads. Gertie and Rigel stayed close, real close. The rain was welcome.

A transmission line went down in the storm and our generator chugged to life, powering us for a couple of hours while IREA worked to get the power back on. Though it took me over a year, I’m glad we persevered and got the generator hooked up and working. No lights is one thing, no water is quite another.

Brother Mark has finished a year’s worth of teaching with one longish break. He has two weeks of training in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, then he’s off until November. As he put it, he’s heading “to the further East” for some r&r.

The grandkids are here today, but just for the day. Afterward, Jon, Kate and I are going into Dazzle Jazz to listen to Roberta Gambarini. We go in around 5:30 or 6:00 since seating is first come, first served for all 7:00 p.m. shows. They have an interesting menu so we eat before the performance. The jazz scene here is vibrant, lots of opportunity to see local and national performers.

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

A Ploy of the Devil?

August 19, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

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.

Kate 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.

My 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.

Family, Holidays

Kate. Happy Birthday.

August 17, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa Superior Wolf Moon

Life has odd turns, none for me odder than renewing my season subscription at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in 1988 and finding my soul mate. As some of you know, we met there, dated for a couple of years, then got married in 1990.

We’ve traveled the world together, starting with Europe in March of 1990 as we followed spring north from Rome, all the way to Inverness, the capital of the Highlands in northern Scotland.

We’ve had three homes together, each one unique in its own way, but common in our commitment to make them places for family and for creativity.

Kate has been a nurse, a nurse anesthetist, a pediatrician and now a seamstress and quilter. She’s bright, obviously, completing the NYT crossword every morning, for example.

In our retirement we share a passion for dogs, gardening and bees, for jazz as well as classical music. Kate cans, dries and freezes food. She’s a gourmet cook. Her grasp of numbers is impressive.

When Jon got married and had kids, part of our life turned toward the west, toward the mountains, toward Denver. That pull, grandkidtropic, eventually convinced us to leave over 40 years in Minnesota and move out here to Shadow Mountain. Now she’s grandma, enjoying the lives of Ruth and Gabe, teaching them what she knows, loving them.

Kate, the love of my life, the wife I needed but took some time to find, is 72 tomorrow. And living every day. Every day. Even the ones with staggering inertia.

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

Acts of Creation

August 17, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa Superior Wolf Moon

Just 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.

Family

Staggering Inertia

August 16, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa Superior Wolf Moon

Yesterday Kate told me, “I have staggering inertia.” A deft turn of phrase. The grandkids make our house lively, upend our daily routines and give us multiple opportunities to love them in the moment. They also tire out these two third-phasers-set phasers to stunned.

So, on the Monday after we both have staggering inertia. One of the nice aspects of retirement is the ability to take a day, or two, to recover from strenuous intergenerational activity.

Let’s hear it for staggering inertia. A very good thing in my opinion.

Family, Holidays

Ellis Day

August 16, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa Superior Wolf Moon

This is the birthday of Richard Ellis, the first of our Ellis clan to arrive in the U.S. He came as an indentured servant in 1707, arriving in Massachusetts instead of Virginia. He was supposed to become the heir to a relative there. However, ship captains in the time had few scruples and made money as they could, in this case a form of temporary slavery.

Richard worked out his indenture and went on to found the still existing town of Ashfield, Mass. He also became a captain in the Revolutionary Army. His descendants have spread out across the U.S. now, and into Singapore and Saudi Arabia, too. I’m declaring this a family holiday in his honor.

Family, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

Joy. Fun. Fart Jokes.

August 15, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa Superior Wolf Moon

The grandkids have come and gone. Jon gets to see them for a weekend overnight every other weekend and all day Saturday on the other. He also gets a Wednesday dinner every week. These arrangements are temporary and will be changed when the divorce is final, sometime in October, probably.

It was a joyous time with the kiddos this weekend. Lots of laughter, fun, conversations, play. Ruth painted her elephant, Gabe watched two movies up in the loft, part of the time exercising on the elliptical and told fart jokes. (He’s 8.) The dogs love it when the kids are here. More play time. Lots of smiling canine faces.

Kate made BLT’s on Saturday night, spaghetti and meatballs last night. She also made two batches of rice crispy treats. Family stuff with the usual mild chaos, dogs and kids scampering here and there.

Now, though, we have a quiet house again and we like that, too. Our lives here are not solely about family, we each have our own work and we both need solitude. In large quantities.

The path of the divorce, in the often obtuse way of the world, has deepened our relationship with Jon and with Ruth and Gabe. That same path has begun to diverge from the dismal trek we experienced through June, July and much of August. It feels lighter. Jon’s back at work. Some of his legal matters are resolved. Investigative work that has to be done before September 16th, the initial pass at a divorce settlement, has hinted strongly at an outcome much more to his liking than Jen has proposed.

Life for the Denver Olsons, sans Jen, will not be the same, but I’m increasingly convinced that it will be better, for them and for us.

Family, Jefferson County, Mountains

Lake Evergreen

August 14, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa Superior Wolf Moon

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.

Art and Culture, Family, Writing

Art

August 13, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa Superior Wolf Moon

Ruth’s paint your own elephant arrived on Wednesday. In this new world Ruth and I sat talking about the parade of elephants in Singapore several years ago. She looked at the peace and love elephant my sister Mary bought for me.

She clearly wanted one, so I looked them up on the internet. No longer sold in Singapore at the Botanical Garden gift shop, I found them at the company that makes them for elephants parades held around the world, a place in Denmark. A couple of clicks later the folks in Denmark had my order for a blank elephant, one Ruth could decorate in her own way. An elephant from Singapore, seen on Shadow Mountain, inspired a ten year old, so her grandpop ordered one from Denmark. And it got here 5 days later. She’ll be working on it today, I imagine. Amazing.

Superior Wolf has begun to emerge from the many notes, stops and starts I’ve had on this novel. I began writing it in 1999. Now the whole feels available to me for the first time in 17 years. No idea why. Just enjoying the ride.

That work plus the to do list that sits by my computer has gotten the cotton out of my life and replaced it with energy. The Latin will return one of these days, too, I’m sure of it.

Most of the issue seems to be with rhythm. I need unobstructed morning time to work and I’ve been giving that away for the last several months. The work I do requires everday labor, requires attentiveness and the accretion of small tasks into a larger whole. In my psyche peace is most important and peace comes in part from having large blocks of time without additional pressure.

Art continues to nag at me, but I’ve still not figured out how to include it in my life as well as I did when I was a docent at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Perhaps Jon and Ruth, both active artists, will help in some way.