Category Archives: Family

Rising

Fall                                                                                       New (Falling Leaves) Moon

The prototype of the evil doer, the mother of all James Bond’s enemies and role model for purist tyrants of all stripes, Adolf Hitler, still shines with a dark light, casting a pall of sickness over the future. Of course, even Hitler represents a distillation of a much deeper human problem, that of denigration based on secondary characteristics: racism, anti-semitism, misogyny, nativism.

In Hitler’s case a centuries old virus, a plague in the soil of Europe, a virulent stream of racism, anti-semitism, found its perfect host. Hitler glorified the notion of racial purity over against its worst violation, blood pollution, and found reason to kill Jews, gays, Gypsies and the mentally disabled.

This is not news. Except it is if you’re Jewish and living in Europe. Or, Jewish and living anywhere in the world, even here in the United States. Here’s a paragraph from a NYT article published today:

“From the immigrant enclaves of the Parisian suburbs to the drizzly bureaucratic city of Brussels to the industrial heartland of Germany, Europe’s old demon returned this summer. “Death to the Jews!” shouted protesters at pro-Palestinian rallies in Belgium and France. “Gas the Jews!” yelled marchers at a similar protest in Germany.”

Though not Jewish myself I count many Jews as my friends. My wife, my daughter-in-law and both grandchildren are Jewish. So, I ask all my fellow goyim to say, along with the Jews, “Never again.”

Nocturne

Fall Equinox                                                                   New (Falling Leaves) Moon

For those of us who love the night, this is a fulcrum holiday. We enter the long period that starts with the final harvests and does not end completely until the vernal equinox. From today, till then, the night will gain dominance, peaking at the winter solstice, but not relinquishing its grip until the sun hits 0 declination in the east next March.

It’s not that I do not love the light, I do. It is rather that I prefer the dark, the quiet, the solitary. I’m also entranced, quite literally, by what I call Holiseason, that period beginning at Samhain and running through Epiphany. As we move into the dark, we also move into our fears, our paleolithic uneasiness with the reliability of the heavens.

These fears have driven humanity across time and across the globe to create brave holidays that feature the light. Yes, you could say that the emphasis on them really underscores our fears, rather than challenges them, but I choose to go with the perspective that they hit the fear directly. No, night, you cannot have us, not for all the day, never, and surely not for all the year. In the words of Battlestar Galatica, so say we all.

From late October to early January a parade of festivals bring us lights and gifts and warmth and family celebrations. What a delight. Good music, too. And theater.

It all starts tonight.

Fire and Raspberries

Lughnasa                                                                          College Moon

Finished the fire pit repair this morning, spreading mulch over the landscape cloth. The IMAG0751landscape cloth covered the sand that filled the hole. The cobblestones from an old Minneapolis street in front of a former Kenwood mansion are clear of soil. We can now summon fire.

Picked raspberries, too. The golden berries have begun to ripen and they are abundant. Fewer red berries, but they are large and fat, juicy. Most of the garden is in now, a few tomatoes, all the egg plants, some peppers, the third planting of beets and carrots and the leeks are all that remain. When the leeks come in, I’ll my chicken and leek pies which we’ll freeze for over the fallow months dining.

Vega has returned to her tail wagging, bouncy self just as the vet feared when he wrote guarded on the prognosis. We have to keep her from running. She’s supposed to go out on a leash, but we never leash our dogs except for trips to the vet and the kennel. Otherwise they have free roaming rights to our woods. This means  that keeping a dog quiet whose surgical wounds need to heal can be difficult. So far, though, the wound has begun to close.

Kate’s down with a stomach bug I had last week. Used to be she shared all the illnesses she contacted at work with me, now I’ve done it to her.

911

Lughnasa                                                              College Moon

911 call. Police. Then fire emergency. Then a fire truck. Finally, the last one to show up. The ambulance. Not often anymore Kate gets to showcase her sang froid during a crisis, but she did it today as the handyman working on the front porch suddenly threw up and became light headed.

Kate brought him something for his stomach and noticed a gray cast to his skin, sweat, too. Running down the diagnostic tree she settled on arrhythmia as most likely. She took his blood pressure with my blood pressure monitor and got very low numbers. That decided her on the 911 call.

He said he wanted to go home. Kate told the emts, hospital. He was taken to the E.R. Later his wife, Pam, called to say he had just gone into surgery for a ruptured appendix. Much better than the other possibilities.

 

 

Midwest Lughnasa Festival

Lughnasa                                                                      College Moon

We’re off to the fair today. The last hurrah as residents of Minnesota. I’ve gone many times over the years, probably a bit more than half of the years I’ve lived here, say 25. As I’ve gotten older, stamina has become a modest issue, but a bigger one is sameness. Even with the amazing number of new food products and the changing line-up in the 4-H buildings and the animal barns there is a regularity, a predictability. On-a-stick! Blue ribbon! Necessary kitchen gadget!

Of course, that very predictability is one of the fair’s charms, too. It will always have that slightly wacky, down-home feel. The Midway will have lights; machinery hill will have tractors and the GOP/DFL booths will have politicians racing their engines for an upcoming election. And, there will be cheese curds.

For a guy trying to figure out how to connect Americans with the land, with what I think of as a kami-faith for this land is our land, the state fair is a huge ritual moment. Too often an opportunity lost to take our head out of the work-a-day cubicle world and go outside, to look down, to see the amazing, miraculous things happening in the soil and among the plants. And cows. pigs. llamas. rabbits. horses. In that sense it’s the ur-moment in the year for effecting change.

 

 

 

Nocturne

Lughnasa                                                            New (College) Moon

Rain so hard it sounded like hail has scoured the air, washing the dust out and dropping the temperature. The tornado watch expires in half an hour though we’ll have more thunderstorms later tonight. Weather is local; climate is global. Climate change in this case has given us days with more moisture in the air, driving up the chance of stronger storms and more concentrated rain fall.

(Curry The Line Storm)

Robert Jay Lifton, a grand old man of American letters, known for his psychological and psychiatric work on war and nuclear weapons, has written an interesting article in the NYT, The Climate Swerve. He’s careful, doesn’t overstate the evidence, but he makes a point similar to one I made here a month or so ago. Something’s happening to public opinion about climate change. Something pressing the public toward concern, possibly creating the political climate necessary for making difficult choices. Read the article for his thoughts about “stranded assets.” It’s a concept you will hear about more often in the future.

Had lunch with Jon today at the Craftsman on Lake Street. He was in town, briefly, for the wedding of a long time friend, flew in yesterday and out today. Dressed in a new blue striped dress shirt, dress slacks, neat beard and his curly hair, he hardly looks 45, almost 46. More like mid-30’s.

The bond of this family has begun to gel, why now I’m not sure, though it must have 500Jon Gabe Mesomething to do with Ruth and Gabe getting older. There’s a realization about our own aging, our fragility that comes as kids advance in years, but in this case it’s a sweet realization, a realization that the future, as the song says, is not ours to see. But that that’s ok since we know well some who will inhabit it, shape it, lead it.

The future they inhabit will have its own set of agonies and joys. When Ruth and Gabe confront a world altered by climate change, by the polarization of political parties in our time, by the struggles to drag some of the Middle East back to a seventh century golden age(that was never golden), by the rise of China and India and Brazil and Indonesia, they will be in that world as we are in ours: a bit confused, somewhat hopeful, mostly living their lives from day-to-day just as we do.

 

 

The Saturday Slows

Lughnasa                                                                         New (College) Moon

Kate and Annie were off to a quilt retreat yesterday afternoon and evening and all day today.  Held in downtown Anoka in a large room over a bank on Main Street, this quilt retreat gathers a large number of quilters with their machines and projects; they share technique and support each others work.

(The Quilting Frolic 1813 John Lewis Krimmel)

That left the dogs and me at home. This morning, with the temperature at 66 and the dewpoint at 65, I picked red raspberries in a fog. A few tomatoes were ready to come in and another large batch of onions and garlic.

Watched an interesting William Dafoe mystery, Anamorph. An independent film, it had no upbeat parts and a grim ending. Intelligent and well-made it became repetitive near the end, then picked up as the climax neared. 3 stars out of 5.

 

Border Towns

Lughnasa                                                Lughnasa Moon

My brother Mark is the most widely traveled of the three Ellis siblings. So when he makes a statement like this one, “I like border towns and the mixed energy of two nations that swirl around them.” it makes me realize I’ve not got a lot of experience with border towns. Detroit and Windsor. That’s about it.

(bill for an event in the State Farm Arena, Hidalgo, Texas)

Mark’s in Hidalgo, Texas right now as a medical tourist, getting dental work done in Reynosa, Mexico, just across the border. He walks to the border from his motel, pays one U.S. dollar to cross on a pedestrian bridge and bang he’s transnational traveler.

His comment about border towns makes me want to visit a few, just to see what he means. I know he has experience of border towns between Thailand and Cambodia, gained because every three months or so he had to do a visa run while living in Bangkok. Others, I don’t know.

The anthropologist in me says, aha, diffusion. And yes, it would be strongest where two cultures meet, but where they are supported by different political and cultural norms, that is, across national borders. U.S. culture could effect Reynosa and Mexican culture effect Hidalgo, safe within their own cultural envelopes.

(Pinatas in Reynosa, Mexico)

Walk In Free

Lughnasa                                                            Lughnasa Moon

Letting go. Retiring. Easing up. Yes, the pedal has lifted up from the metal and the car has begun to slow down. And that’s a good thing. Letting go of the expectations, admitting they were not met and saying damn the consequences has lifted a large weight off the shoulder of my psyche. Retiring it. Shrugged off and glad to have it gone.

Does this mean I’ll stop writing? No. Does it mean I’ll stop writing novels? No. It does mean that I no longer have my self’s forward progress attached to the results. And, you might say, about damned time. Maybe so.

Why is all this bubbling up right now? The move. As the stuff of my work gets winnowed, I can see the bones of my ambition more clearly. The skeletal support of my dreams are familial, horticultural, intellectual, classical and creative. The flesh and bones will be grandchildren, sons and daughters-in-law, wife, friends, plants, ideas, translations and more novels.

Failure does not mean stop. Vanish. Extinguished. It does not mean failed. No, it means redirection, recollecting, revisiting. This move has given me the freedom to shrug my shoulders, let the load fall to the way side. I want to walk into Colorado free to live a life given to that place, those people, that time. Now I can.

Going west has always had an element of reinvention, claiming another facet of life. May it be so.

A Serging We Will Go

Lughnasa                                                              Lughnasa Moon

Love is a funny thing. Made me enter my first bid on E-Bay for a machine I didn’t understand. Still don’t. And I won! Strange how much fun it can be to get somebody to take your money.

What was it? A serger. In this case a Bernina 1300 MDC with overlock stitches. I did enough research to know that having an overlock stitch was good. And that the price was more than reasonable.

The body of the serger came last Friday and its accessories came today. All to the receiving dock formerly known as “front porch.”  The arrival of the accessories occasioned a birthday week outing to the St. Cloud Sewing Center where the serger goes to the sergery for a spruce up and professional review.  Looked fine to me, but what do I know from serging?

On the way up to St. Cloud we ate at Russell’s in Big Lake, dining for the first time on dill pickle soup. It was very good. The entertainment was a young man trying to learn how to waterski slalom style and a gaggle of Canadian geese who paddled away from the shore in a straight line, maybe 10 birds altogether. From what I saw the geese knew what they were doing. The waterskier not so much.

The day was a northern summer ordinary miracle. On these days when the dewpoint is low, the clouds high and puffy, the sky blue and temperatures in the mid-seventies, each day feels as if it could go on forever, an Elysian field created just for those of us crazy enough to live Minnesota.