Category Archives: Family

Aging, Commentary on the news, Family, Great Work, Politics, Science, Sierra Club

The Grandchildren Project

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Beltane                                                       Emergence Moon

A shift in public opinion concerning climate change seems to be accelerating. We may be near a tipping point where acceptance of climate change science corresponds to acceptance of evolution. Yes, there will always be outliers, just like the Texas and Kansas school boards exhibit every once in a while on evolution, but the mass of us will finally hear the very clear science behind many changes impacting us already.

Proof? Jon Huntsman, former governor of Utah and a possible GOP candidate for President in 2016, wrote this remarkable sentence in an op-ed piece for the NYT: “If Republicans can get to a place where science drives our thinking and actions, then we will be able to make progress.”  Paul Douglas, local and national meteorologist and a conservative, too, has long observed the conundrum behind conservatives who refuse to conserve.

It may be that the long game for climate politics is about to bear fruit. For those patiently (and not so patiently) working on climate change related issues the era of solution based debates rather than denial and obfuscation might be coming near. This will be an exciting but also frustrating time as those only recently convinced try to digest the difficult realities ahead of us.  Those of us who’ve wanted to see forward motion will be in danger of refusing to listen to solutions that don’t fit our already existing paradigms.

It will be important to recall that our solutions have largely been developed among those of us who already agree with each other. Gaining political consensus for policy will require including those who don’t share many of our assumptions. Here’s a clear one. Nuclear energy may well be an important component of a transition to a non-carbon based energy regime. We need critical mass for the generation of electricity while renewable sources begin to catch up and storage technologies improve. We simply may not have time to ignore capable non-emitting nuclear power plants.

I’m excited that this push for solutions may happen in my lifetime and that those of us with grandchildren might help create the change. Call it the grandchildren project.

Colorado, Family, Feelings, Third Phase

A Gentle Tsunami

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Beltane                                                                      Emergence

I’ve put myself into a shocked, off center state by our decision to move. Assimilating the idea and its consequences have left me lackadaisical about Latin, less interested in the garden, a schlump relative to writing except for this blog. This won’t last long. It’s a response to the gentle but powerful emotional tsunami washing up on my Minnesota shore, a flood that I realize will wash most of what has been my life here back out to sea. And, it’s premonitory, a reality in the distance, yet it has enough force to rock me.

I’m letting it, right now, take me out of the now and buffet me with imagined sequelae, some wonderful, some sad, some exhilarating, some anxiety producing.

Wonderful. Living near the grandkids, the Rockies, the West. More faces at holidays and birthdays. A new place to absorb, to see, to learn, to become part of.

Sad. Saying good-bye to the Woollies, this house and its gardens, the Walker, the MIA, the Guthrie, the memories of 40 years.

Exhilarating. Writing in a new natural environment, one that will give me years of stimulation as will the lived history of the region. Staghounds in our future, dogs of the West.  A new home and land.

Anxiety producing. You know. Packing, unpacking. Money. Adapting to a new place. Finding medical care, insurance.

All this swirls around, causing emotional collisions that spark off each other, create radiants of feeling. It’s the early days of a love affair, one that will go the distance. God, how great, how frightening, is that?

Colorado, Family, Feelings, Friends, Third Phase, Travel, Woolly Mammoths

The Circus Is Leaving Town

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Beltane                                                            Emergence Moon

A slow moving mountain. Or, a slow move to the mountains. Sitting here contemplating my study, its hundreds of books and file folders, computer equipment, desks, chairs. I feel overwhelmed at the thought of pruning, organizing, decluttering for selling the house and actually moving. That’s one reason we’re giving ourselves two years or so to move.

Two years might encompass the remaining lifespan of Vega and Rigel. We really don’t know since they’re hybrids, but we suspect 7-8 years and 2016 is 7 years plus. That’s a factor though not a determining one. Hell, who knows, it could encompass our lifespan, too, though I don’t imagine it will.

Talk about liminal space. Between now and then we are no longer fully here and definitely not fully there. I imagine a huge circus tent with many ropes and stakes and poles. Each stake must be pulled.  Each rope removed. The poles must be taken down and the canvas rolled up. The canvas is our life in Minnesota and its attendant material possessions.

The stakes are friends, the MIA and the Walker, the Sierra Club Northstar Chapter, the background relationships developed over years of work in the church and in politics and in neighborhoods. The ropes are the emotional ties that bind us to places, to our years lived here, to our sense of ourselves as Minnesotans. The poles are those key relationships like the Woolly Mammoths, Anne, the docents, the folks Kate and I have worked with in multiple capacities: our vet, our doctors, our financial consultants.

All this must, in some way, be stored and the canvas packed. All these things will change once we reach our new destination. Our life will no longer be a Minnesota based life, but a Colorado based one. The friends will remain, of course, as will all the institutions and professionals, the places and their attached memories, but we will have stretched the ease and physical distance with many beyond the breaking point. It will not, of course, be possible to know which ones will suffer the most until time has passed. But all will suffer some, most will suffer a lot.

Feeling overwhelmed, of course, comes from imagining that the tent and its supports must be packed and moved for a train leaving tomorrow. That’s not the case. We have time and will use it well. It’s just that, well, right now, it’s a lot.

 

Colorado, Family, Woolly Mammoths

The Herd Thins

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Beltane                                                              Emergence Moon

Jim Johnson began the Woolly diaspora by his cowboy pivot made on the plains of South Dakota. Paul Strickland returned for good to an often frequented spot in Maine. Mario Odegard is an episodic emigre’, spending months at a time in different places, usually warmer than Minnesota.

Now, probably around this time in 2016, Kate and I will join the Woolly dispersal with a move to Colorado. This was a difficult decision, one made over a period of several years and made at first with reluctance, but now with growing excitement and anticipation.

We both want to move while we’re still able to develop an independent life for ourselves in a new setting. We will begin hunting for a place within an hour or so of Denver, something with acreage enough for dogs, yet still in broadband realm.

I plan to attend Woolly retreats and to continue hosting a meeting at some point during the year, too. Getting back to Minnesota will be important to me because the Woolly’s are important. They have changed my life for the better and it is with deep regret that I will leave them behind for most of the year.

Still, life’s realities change as we age and the call of family is a strong call. To care for and perhaps be cared for, that’s a profound life commitment and one to which we’re responding.

Family, Feelings, Travel, Weather +Climate

Winter Storm Warning. 6-8 Inches of Snow. Oh, joy.

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Spring                                                                 Bee Hiving Moon

A cool morning in Wall, South Dakota. 37 and wet. Last day on the road for this trip. About 8 hours to Andover. Last posting for this trip. Just looked out the window. The Rav4 is covered in, of all things, snow! Winter just will not let go this year.

Traveling puts us in a liminal zone, neither at home or settled elsewhere. Liminality has long interested me. The liminal zone between ocean and land, lake and shore is often where the most abundant life thrives. The liminal zone between forest and meadow provides refuge for predator and prey alike. The ‘burbs are a liminal zone between rural and urban.

We’re most familiar of course with the liminal zones of dawn and twilight, but fall and spring are actually long liminal zones between the cold fallow time and the warmer growing season. Those strange interludes between sleeping and waking are, too, liminal.  The Celts believed the liminal times of day and night were the most potent for magical working.

Liminality puts us between familiar places, neither wet nor dry, city nor country, day nor night. In these spots we have the most opportunity to discern the new in the old, the possible in the routine. It’s not surprising then that Kate and I will approach the question of where we will live our third phase life from a different slant while on the road.

From this vantage, neither Minnesotaheim nor Mountainheim, we investigate the terrains of our heart, let the rational mind float, or stay tethered perhaps in Andover. The heart says family. It also says friends. It says have people close to us when vulnerable, which argues for both Minnesota and Colorado. It says memories; it says grandchildren. The heart pulls and pushes. We’ll mull our decision over the growing season, see how it flourishes or wanes, see what the heart says at home. Listen to friends and grandkids. And each other. Those dogs, too.

Family, Third Phase, Travel

Driving

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Spring                                                                 New (Emergent) Moon

Leaving for home in an hour or so, traveling north on Hwy. 25 into Wyoming, beyond Cheyenne to Wheatland. Hopefully we’ll be able to see staghounds at the Wavin’K Ranch there. Wyoming is the 10th largest state and the U.S. and the least populated. Least dense in the lower 48, only Alaska has fewer people per square mile. Then across South Dakota toward Minnesota.

Last night Jon and Jen and I went to Foga de Chao while grandma got her last kiddie fix of the trip. It sounded like a good idea, but by the end of the evening all three of us felt this was an experience to have once every few years. Even so, I like to have adult time with them on each visit. It gives us a chance to stay connected as individuals, not as parents and grandparents. That’s important to me and to them as well.

The lure and logic of Colorado came up again this trip. Ruth and Gabe are growing fast, 8 and 6 now. Jon and Jen have expressed their desire to have us live out here and have committed, with touching kindness, to see to our care as we age. Minnesota is home for now, but that may change. It’s a topic I want to discuss with my friends.

This is a very difficult quandary for me with 25 years of Woolliness in place and so many memories and ties in the Twin Cities. The homeplace, too. The question, however, only seems to get more persistent. A third phase event, no doubt.

Family, Travel

Gabe’s Birthday Party

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Spring                                                             Bee Hiving Moon

A year ago I promised Gabe I would be here for his birthday. Promise fulfilled at the Bladium, a repurposed airplane hangar from the former Stapleton Airport.  This large rectangle has been divided into a hockey rink, a soccer/roller hockey arena, a multiple purpose area and a cross-fit workout space.

The birthday party consisted of several six-year olds roaming at a fast pace through a large quasi-castle with an interior sort of basketball gym and a second obstacle course of pylons and tunnels. Both of these were inflated and encouraged jumping and diving and screaming. The screaming was like feral cats, the energy expended prodigious. It wore me out just watching.

Gabe, near the end, became attracted like a tycoon in his vault, toward the various sacks and boxes wrapped in gift paper. He would shake the boxes, rearrange them, smile and guess. What’s in that one, I asked. Legos, he said. When the party finished, Gabe commandeered a wagon, loaded his loot in it and initially insisted on supervising Grandma as she rolled the wagon out to the car.

At home, opening the presents, it turned out that many of them were, in fact, Legos. They were so interesting that Gabe chose to stay at home and work on them over coming to the hotel.

Tomorrow Ruth and I are going to Wings Over the Rockies, an Air and Space museum. A lot of activity crammed into a small amount of time.

 

 

Family, Travel

Room 409

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Spring                                                                      Bee Hiving Moon

Here we are in Room 409.  Grandma. Grandpop. Ruth and Gabe. This is a ritual, the grandkids sleep over in the in the hotel room. Grandma has them trained so they don’t fuss. It’s a good experience for all of us.

We went to Ling and Louie’s for dinner. There I asked Ruth if she wanted to have an appetizer as her dinner. No, she said, you order an appetizer, then you order your meal. Oh, sure. Forgot that. 8 years old.

Gabe chose Rio 2 as the movie he wanted to see. This continues a story that, improbably enough, starts in Mooselake, Minnesota. It features Blue, a blue Macaw and his journey to Rio where he meets Jewell who becomes his significant other.  In Rio 2, which starts at the huge crucifix and features a very realistic rendition of the crucifix and its surrounding area, ends up deep in the Amazon with a struggle between birds and loggers.

There’s a lot of music, comedy and intrigue. I can recommend it, even for you grownups who might read this.

Gabe’s 6th birthday begins tomorrow at 4. Big fun in Colorado.

 

Family, Travel

The Family

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Spring                                                                 Bee Hiving Moon

Jon has been out here 13 years. Hard to believe. He and I drove out here with a trailer attached to the Tundra just a month before 9/11. He’s taught at the same school for all 13 of those years, art to elementary kids and he likes it. His 15th year as a teacher.

When I asked him if it was usual for the peaks to still have snow this far into April, he surprised me by saying that the peak of the snowpack is April 26th.  The snow doesn’t leave completely until June or early July. The Rockies are visible out of the room’s window, stretching north and south as far I can see. Some of the peaks look like shots of the Himalaya’s, high and white.

Granddaughter Ruth couldn’t come for dinner last night because she’s participating on Tuesdays and Thursdays in an after school program called science for girls. She’s very good at math, has superior spatial skills and is a quick learner. Her grandma’s a science and math whiz, so she has the genes to develop as far as she might like to go.  Of course, there is the fact that she’s in the second grade. A lot of territory between  a white coat and a lab somewhere.

Gabe, the birthday boy, is a sweet kid. He ran to grandma, “Grandma!” A big hug. Later on he came over and leaned his head into my shoulder. 6 years old. He and his sister’s birthdays are two weeks apart.

Today we may go look at staghounds, a breed I think I mentioned here, a cross between a Scottish deerhound and a greyhound, only so long ago that the genetics are no longer separable. Not an AKC breed, they’ve been bred since the early 18th century, but not many of them are in the U.S. Mostly in Great Britain and Australia.

We passed several places with Retail Marijuana signs. Still a bit of a shock to this 60’s kid.

Family, Poetry, Woolly Mammoths

The Ancientrail of the Grandparent

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Spring                                                               Bee Hiving Moon

Ancientrails hits the road again today, heading back to Denver for Gabe’s birthday party on Saturday.  Kate and I are driving out.

Forgot to mention in the post below Charlie Haislet’s wonderful “32 Ways to See A Mammoth,” an homage to Wallace Stevens’ “13 ways to see a blackbird.” It was funny, quirky, profound, moving. A memorable work.