Category Archives: Family

Family, Health, Our Land and Home

Now

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Summer                                                                          Park County Fair Moon

Hard to believe how much the Republicans want Hillary to win. In any other combination of opponents she would be up against the ropes with her gloves covering her face. In this case however Trump and crew bang their head repeatedly on the ring posts, leaving themselves bloodied and confused. The convention so far: rogue delegates try to unseat Trump’s nomination, plagiarism, former candidate refuses to endorse. Wonder what they have for us today?

Mark in Saudi ArabiaBrother Mark is doing well in Saudi Arabia. He’s in his second year of teaching at Jubail, his students members of the Saudi Arabian navy.

Kate leaves today for Jackson Hole where her sister, BJ, will be moved tomorrow. A fan of BJ’s, a former anesthesiologist at the Jackson Hole hospital, has found a very well respected orthopedic surgeon for her. He only does shoulders. They may operate tomorrow after her move. Kate will be there tonight.

Jon had his sawzall at work cutting through the old bathtub in their downstairs bathroom when I visited yesterday. He’s made a lot of progress, but the working conditions, hot and humid, are brutal. The divorce continues with the level of conflict continuing to amaze both him and me.

Staining still underway. The shed has had two coats as have portions of the garage. The monsoon rains here have impeded progress somewhat.

 

Family, Health, Music

The Fall

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Summer                                                      Park County Fair Moon

Rebekah Johnson
Rebekah Johnson

Kate’s sister BJ is a classical violinist who bows with her right arm. She has, for many years, played the Teton Music Festival in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Schecky, her significant other, a cellist, called Kate yesterday to say that BJ had suffered a bad fall trying to climb down from the deck of their new home in Driggs, Idaho. They live in the Beacon Hotel on Broadway in NYC and spend a lot of time apart due to their career, so Schecky being in NY while she’s in Idaho and Wyoming is not unusual.

Apparently the door to the deck slammed behind her and locked. When she couldn’t get back inside, she decided to climb down. She fell, experiencing a bilateral fracture of her pelvis, a dislocated shoulder and a humerus broken at the ball that inserts into the shoulder. On her right arm.

So this summer of interesting times for the Buckman-Ellis/Olson family has gotten more interesting. Kate’s driving up on Thursday to Driggs and will stay a while, maybe a week or so. I’ll remind behind with the dogs, the Timberline painters and Jon. Family is forever.

 

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.

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Family, Humanities, Literature, Our Land and Home

Indolence in Horse Country

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Summer                                                               Park County Fair Moon

An indolent day yesterday. Kate, Jon and the grandkids left for Fairplay, about an hour west of here in South Park, headed to the Park County Fair. Neither Jon nor us has a vehicle that comfortably seats 5, so somebody had to stay behind. Me.

Did a little binge watching, read the Sport of Kings. This book, Sport of Kings, is a major American novel. It catches American aristocracy (that strange self-inflected club), slavery, westward expansion, effectively compares the breeding of blue-blood humans and blue-blood horses-thoroughbreds, the respective dynamics of working class, upper class and poor black families, all seen through the prism of Kentucky bluegrass horse culture. It’s one I may read twice.

Jon’s into Denver today to work on his and Jen’s house, getting it ready for sale in the red-hot Denver market. I’m following in just a bit to pick up some portion of his stuff: tools, clothes, walnut boards for the loft, machines for ski-making. This whole process has been icky so far, but I’m entertaining a hope (maybe, really, a fantasy) that this week marks a modest turning point in the acrimony.

Ladders rattle over the roof of the garage as the final masking is underway. The staining will commence on the whole very soon, perhaps today. The preparation for a good painting/staining job is painstaking, time-consuming.

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.

 

 

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Friends, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Fraught

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Summer                                                        Park County Fair Moon

rudbeckia ReynoldsFeeling the pressure of the divorce. So many tensors pulling this way and that. Jon and his understandable anxiety about his immediate and near term future. Kate’s tough position as mother, mother-in-law and grandma. Court hearings with deep consequences. The fate of Ruth and Gabe as their mother and father fight over them. The friable nature of our extended family as it goes through a wrenching alteration, one with permanent implications. Trying to stay centered and available. All difficult.

This is life at its most fraught, perhaps the only analogue being serious illness or an unexpected financial crisis. All of us become frayed, our best persons fighting to remain present, but often submerged in our collective anxiety. A good time for Mussar, the Jewish spiritual practice Kate and I have taken up through Congregation Beth Evergreen.

If there were a red flag warning for families, we’d have one on our flagpole right now.

Yet. The immersion in each others lives at increased intensity also has positive implications. We get to know each other better, perhaps most possible when the day-to-day gets set aside and we become more vulnerable, more accessible. If we listen to our inner life, we have a chance, too, to learn more about ourselves.

A friend going through a difficult period refers to it as graduate school for self-awareness, for learning what truly matters. Yes.

Family, Humanities, Our Land and Home, Politics

Law

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Summer                                                                 Park County Fair Moon

enver Court House Lobby
Denver Courthouse Lobby

All day yesterday two young men from Timberline Custom Painting power washed our two decks, the shed and the garage. They now look clean and bare, ready for the clear stain. The low humidity up here dries wood out, can crack and split it, so wood siding demands care just like a painted surface.

We got the bid back for the bathroom. Ouch. Need to get other bids, other ideas because the one we talked about with Bear Creek Design is more than it makes sense to spend. Part of the process.

The divorce and legal matters continue to roil up family life. Lawyers and courts and judges, decrees and orders. External power, again the state’s coercive authority, enters intimate areas, areas usually outside the pale of government interference. The capacity of the law to circumscribe behavior is chilling, inexorable when it comes down on you or ones you love. Yet, necessary. Common life, especially in a democracy, occurs among individuals with widely varying goals, ethical assumptions and moral positions. Conflict is inevitable and at times the conflict demands mediation, even arrest and imprisonment.

The law, made in assemblies of elected officials, too often reflects the biases and values of a majority, giving bare attention or actual suppression to those less well represented. Think sodomy laws, restrictive abortion regulations, voting measures like reading tests and i.d.’s, Native American reservations. The law is about power and like all things related to power subject to corruption.

 

Colorado, Family, Sport

Take Me Out

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Summer                                                                            Moon of the Summer Solstice

ballgame3Young Tyler, who helped me move slash, plays shortstop for the Conifer High School baseball team. He had to sell Rockies’ tickets as a fund-raiser, so I bought two tickets and took Jon to see the Rockies play the Arizona Diamondbacks.

It felt very American to park, climb out of the underground lot to follow Dads and sons with baseball mitts, intense fans with jerseys of their favorite players, young couples holding hands and pass on-street vendors with cheap coolers filled with bottled water.

The brick facade of Coors Field has a retro feel. Oddly, this twenty-one year old baseball field is the third oldest in the National League.

ballgame4

Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack. A contemporary fillip added to the experience is the presence of metal scanners, uniformed security personnel and small plastic holders for phone and keys. Jihad and the great American past time.

The promenade behind the lower level seats is spacious, dotted with kiosks and vendors:  extreme hotdogs, Denver cheesesteak, Nathan’s kosher hot dogs, Diamond Drygoods, the Smokehouse, Gyros. A man walks past with a mutton-chop beard and a pale purple Rockies’ jersey open over a white t-shirt, its tails almost below his khaki shorts. The smell of funnel cake, roast Elk brats, popcorn blend with the view toward the green, green grass of home…and second and third.

ballgame

Jon came by train, the new rail line to DIA runs near his house and goes in the other direction to the Union Depot near Coors Field. A foot-long hot dog and a Denver cheesesteak later the game was underway.

Baseball is a bit slow for my taste, but the total experience, the people watching and the traditional bits like grounds preparation, the first pitch, people streaming in and out, up and down, the sun setting is worth it once in awhile.

ballgame with Jon

 

 

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

Chevra Kadisha

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Summer                                                          Moon of the Summer Solstice

Mother's DayKate’s meeting with Rabbi Jamie of Congregation Beth Evergreen today. A joining up meeting. This is an ancientrail she began to walk a long time ago, converting at Temple Israel under Rabbi Max Shapiro. She felt at home within the Jewish tradition. The power of feeling at home, that this place is my place, these people are my people, may be the most significant feeling we ever have. Why? Because it locates us, puts us in context, gives us a base.

Last night we attended a learning session for the chevra kadisha, a burial society that guards a person’s body from the minute they die to the point of burial. They also wash the corpse, may wrap it in a traditional shroud. They do all this anonymously.

We watched the movie, Taking Chance, about the process and journey of caring for the body of pfc. James Phelps from his death in Iraq to his burial in Wyoming. Though focused on military ritual, it apparently conveyed much of the Jewish attitude toward honoring the dead and caring for the corpse in a respectful and dignified way.

Jewish tradition and the Jewish faith cannot be separated. This is a thousands year old culture that has survived many dislocations, much persecution and yet retained its link to the very distant past. Rabbi Jamie said the origin of the guarding of the body was quite literal, coming from a time when wild animals might approach a corpse as scavengers. Obviously a long time ago. But the respect and care that began in this practical way has been transmuted in the alchemy of time into a spiritual practice.

This is not my way; but it is a way, one with depth. I look forward to learning more about this ancient faith and walking with Kate along her path.

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

Mussar

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Beltane                                                                      Moon of the Summer Solstice

The Evergreen Rodeo closed the streets of this mountain town this morning, but Kate and I managed to slip in just after it was over. We went to Beth Evergreen, a Reconstructionist Jewish congregation located just off Highway 74 on the way out of town toward I-70.

Kate’s serious about joining and I’m serious about supporting her. It’s about time I began meeting some new friends here. I’ll not go to membership with her, I’m past joining. At least I think I am. But I’ll attend, help out.

There was an interesting piece of today’s two hours that showcased what Beth Evergreen has to offer. Mussar. Here’s a short piece:

“By this time I had already come to see myself as a soul. That’s one of the first things any student of Mussar needs to understand and acknowledge, deeply and clearly. Each of us is a soul. Mostly we have been told that we “have” a soul, but that’s not the same thing. To have a soul would indicate that we are primarily an ego or a personality that in some way “possesses” a soul.

The first step on the path of Mussar is to unlearn that linguistic misconception and to realize that our essence is the soul and that all aspects of ego and personality flow from that essence. At its core, the soul is pure, but habits, tendencies and imbalances often obscure some of that inner light.”

It looks interesting and requires no theological perspective. There will be more on all of this as we move forward.