Category Archives: Family

Aging, Family, Retirement, Third Phase, Travel

Go or Stay?

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Spring                                                     Bee Hiving Moon

“Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.”   Judy Blume, Tiger Eyes

I have a friend, he knows who he is, who loves to pack up and go.  Stay a good while.  Then come back.  He has tales to tell, too.  That time in the Caribbean when he thought he was going to die in a bad storm.  Selling art in the Greek Islands to make money.  Learning Fiji and Hindi while in the Peace Corps.  Tai Chi while living in Shanghai.  Creating an exhibit on safe sex for Thai kids.  Tango in Buenos Aires.  Gunplay in Mexico.

I don’t know about fear, but he sure loves change.  “Change is good,” he said, “I look forward to it.”

Since he began the pick up and go live in a foreign city idea a few years back, I’ve often compared my life choices to his.  It goes like this.  Am I too timid?  Stuck in one place?

I try to answer this question honestly because the answer matters to me.  Travel is part of my soul, too, and I love foreign travel most of all.  His choices seem to maximize the experience of being in another culture, being there long enough to sink into the culture, be part of it.  At least for a while, not just as wanderer from one place to another.

My answer to these questions goes like this.  I moved so much after I left home at 17.  Off to college, to a different college, back home for a quarter, then out for good.   Continue reading Go or Stay? →

Aging, Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden, Writing

Creating Self

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Spring                                                              Bee Hiving Moon

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” by George Bernard Shaw

Later today, beets blood, bull and golden and carrots, Nantes and one lone blueberry to replace a dead plant.  I think about it, this planting and nourishing, watching and waiting, then harvesting and preserving and eating, and I feel a part of my life being created.  This part gets its hands dirty, relishes the seasons and their graces, their vagaries.  This part looks at shades of green, knows this most important color as a friend and ally.

Another part, this one quiet and inward, wanders the halls of art museums, galleries, image collections on the internet and in books. Looking.  Seeing.  No dirty hands here.  Visual contact.  Delight in a curve, a color, an image, a remaking of tradition, new ways of perceiving.  This one knows the spread of art from Chauvet Caves to MOMA and delights in each creative moment.

Then the father.  And husband.  The family guy.  Cousins, aunts, uncles.  Grandpop.  One in a line.  A link between that great one-celled ancestor and the transformation of our species that is yet to come.  Love not abstract but concrete and timeless.  Walking with children and their children, walking on toward some unknown future.  Together.  That’s a part.

A noisy chunk, this one involved in struggle, voicing the cries of the poor, the victims, Continue reading Creating Self →

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden, Great Wheel

A Force of Nature

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Spring                                                              Bee Hiving Moon

In these months, when I go to bed, the full moon shines in our bedroom window.  It keeps me awake sometimes, gazing at it, feeling it, absorbing the ancient wisdom it offers.  All those prayers and hopes and wishes flung its way over the millennia.

The last two nights the full bee hiving moon has lit up the magnolia.  Its white blossoms have begun to droop and fall away but in the glow of the moon its fire blazes up again, a quiet torch illuminating the dark.

It’s cherry blossom time too.  One of our cherries blossomed yesterday afternoon,

Kate has been pruning, weeding, clearing away debris as I visited the eye doc, did tours and today worked on Latin.  She’s a full gardener now with her own expertise tied to her energy, her wonderful work.  She gets a lot done.  A lot.  And always comes inside with a sense of having left it all in the orchard or the vegetable garden or among the perennials.

Meanwhile I’ve kept glaucoma in check, showed objects related to communication and swept through 14 verses of Metamorphoses, Book III.  Work in its way, of course, but I can’t say I prosecute it with the same vigor as Kate.  She’s a force of nature, out in nature.

Mickman’s comes on Monday to start up our irrigation system.  We need the water to support the veggies that we plant.  Especially in this drought.  On Wednesday when I went to the eye doc I stopped by Mother Earth Gardens, across from the Riverview Theatre.

We now have four six packs of leeks, one of shallots, one of green onions and pots of rosemary, cilantro and basil.  The last couple of years I’ve started these myself, but not this year.  They won’t go in the ground until Sunday or Monday, so they can get watered right from the start.

Lots of tasks now:  clean the air conditioner, clean out the bee hives, install our new fire pit, cut down a few trees that impinge on other activities.  Some of them involve the chainsaw, so I’m happy.

 

Aging, Asia, Commentary on Religion, Family

Shun Yen and Falun Gong, once more

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Imbolc                                    Woodpecker Moon

One more thing about Shun Yen (see below).  Their pitch is that they produce performances that draw on and therefore promote 5,000 years of Chinese culture.  Maybe.  They have dances based on various Chinese myths and legends, like Monkey’s Journey to the West, and on ethnic Chinese communities, but there are also contemporary dance pieces and, scattered throughout something very, very odd.

The contemporary pieces feature a common theme.  Black clad police thugs with red hammer and sickle insignia on their shirts.  They beat senseless the gentle, meditating citizens who hold up a sign that says Falun Dafa is Good.  Yes, Chinese police have beaten Falun Dafa or Falun Gong members and persecuted them.  That’s not at issue here, but, again, I paid $90 a ticket to see several dance numbers that were propaganda against the Chinese government.

There was no balance here, no context, no alerting the audience to the fact that this was their intention.

These vignettes, I think there were four, were not the oddest part of the evening however. Four times during the performance the dancers would remain off stage and a Steinway, a big black concert Steinway, and either a tuxedoed male singer or a formal gown clad female singer, all Chinese, would sing short verses, maybe they were songs, that declared some piece of Falun Dafa dogma.   Continue reading Shun Yen and Falun Gong, once more →

Aging, Cooking, Family, Health, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Saturday

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Imbolc                                   Woodpecker Moon

Did my workout last night so I have Saturday and Sunday free.  Feels very luxurious.  This short burst workout economizes time while maximizing result.  What a deal.

We had our business meeting.  Still tinkering with the budget.  We’ve got the large outline and the big expenses well in hand, now we’re looking at other areas where we spend less per transaction, where the patterns are not yet obvious.  Kate’s learning Excel and grumbling all the way about it, but I can tell she’s proud of her progress.

Kate made pumpernickel bread.  It has molasses, espresso and chocolate among other things.  Who knew?  A moist tasty bread.

I’m feeling good about the start on reimagining.  I want to get a little looser, more free-form with the words and their implications.  Over time certain things will begin to clump together.  Right now, this writing aims toward a presentation on April 1st at Groveland UU.  It is also the first essay of maybe 10-12 that will constitute Reimagining.  At least as I imagine it now.  Ha, ha.

Off to the grocery store.  Using that former exercise time for the common good.

 

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings

Fun? Bah, Humbug

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Imbolc                                   Woodpecker Moon

OK, so maybe having the ex on your facebook friends list is odd, but we do share a son and besides, hey we gitta along.  Anyhow she posts a facebook photo of her with her latest guy–who lives, weirdly enough, in Andover not far from us.  She’s dressed as Cher, he’s dressed as Bono.

She looks like she’s having fun.  Then I think, in one of those places it’s not wise to go but who tells the mind what paths it can travel, what do I do for fun?  Ooops.  OK.  Can’t think of anything.  I asked Kate last night what we do for fun.  She couldn’t think of anything either.

OMG.  Dreary northern europeans celebrating the winter solstice with a candle.  That sort of thing.

As I’m wont to do when perplexed, I picked up my bible, my word bible that is, the Oxford English Dictionary (literally the best dollar I ever spent since I got this two volume complete version back when the History Book Club sold them as comeons for new customers) and look up fun.

Once in a while things turn out really well.  There are two entries, one for a noun and one for a verb.  In both cases the 1st, therefore dominant (and occasionally obsolete) definition is:  a cheat, a hoax, a trick.  The other definitions aren’t much better.  2. n.  diversion, amusement, sport jocularity, drollery.  and 2. to make fun or sport, to indulge in fun, to joke. Not much to worry about not having much of, I decided.

Still, I wondered, what about enjoyment or delight?  They’re different.  Delight:  pleasure, joy or gratification felt in a high degree.  Enjoy:  to be in joy or in a joyous state, to manifest joy, exult, rejoice.

Then came the light bulb:  joy 2.b  to experience pleasure, be happy now chiefly to find pleasure in an occasion of festivity or social intercourse.

There’s the smoking gun of extroversion–now chiefly to find pleasure in an occasion of festivity or social intercourse.

In this youth drenched, extroversion drunk country of ours, it’s possible for those of us introverts to lose sight of what delights us, what we enjoy. (admission:  Kate wondered whether we should look at what we enjoy.)

Yes, it’s weird, but Latin delights me.  After a struggle with a verse or a grammatical construction, at that moment when the obfuscation clears, delight.  Planting in the spring.  Caring for the bees.  Travel.  Writing.  Being with the grandkids.  Seeing our kids.  Reading. Playing with and taking care of the dogs and each other.  Art, cinema, jazz.  Quiet moments.

Sounds like a blurb for E-Romance doesn’t it?  So, I’m happy, no delighted, to tell you that Kate and I enjoy many, many things.  But fun isn’t one of them.

 

Family, Politics, Writing

Go, Santorum

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Imbolc                                      Garden Planning Moon

Hey, how about that Santorum?  Way to mix it up.  The longer the Republicans savage each other and the longer the nomination drags out without a clear victor the better.  If the  economy can right itself a bit more, unemployment come down and consumer spending go up (think those two are related?) the Democrats might look better in the fall.

I’m working right here at home, filling up my day and working out at twilight, then reading.  A couple of tours tomorrow and I’m looking forward to them right now because I’ve been writing and doing Latin for 5 days in a row with a bit of a break on Monday.  The productivity feels great, but a change of pace will be welcome.

Grandson Gabe has a bad cold or croup or something respiratory.  Grandma Kate got a chance to pass on some knowledge to Jon and Jen last night.  She’s a good one to have your corner if you have a kid.

 

Aging, Family, Travel

Dining In Lima, Peru

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Winter                                            Garden Planning Moon

Another bit of photoshop work.  This photo in Pizarro’s house in Lima, Peru.

One other odd bit of info.  Tomorrow I go off private health insurance and enter Medicare.  A transition I’m making with this beautiful lady.

Also, look tomorrow for Imbolc posting.

Aging, Family, Retirement, Writing

Unchain My TP

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Winter                                         Garden Planning Moon

Second (and last of this class) photoshop class tonight.  Boy, is this a complex program and it’s only one in the Creative Suite.  Lot of cool things but they will require a good bit of fiddling with before I get good with them.  A lot of fiddling.

(granddaughter Ruth and lightning)

As I walked to the parking lot from the huge Champlain High School building tonight, it hit me that this is the future for many of us over 65.  Classes, taking up space in buildings occupied by kids during the day.  And what a great deal that we have this kind of learning available.

Last week I used one of the second floor bathrooms.  In the men’s room the toilet paper was on a heavy, padlocked metal chain.  The janitor was there and I asked him about it.  He said you wouldn’t believe the condition of the restrooms at the end of many school days.

Best news.  My cousin Leisa, in a coma for a couple of months following a stroke, has begun to speak.  Stunning and happy news.

A productive day, another 1,500 words on Missing, some tentative stabs at the first essay in Reimagining and a long workout with little knee pain.  Yeah.

Since I’ve shifted to this new work schedule, life seems fuller and busier.  Seems odd, but it’s true.  I guess I’m stuck with an internal engine that will just keep humming along until it can’t work anymore.  There are much worse predicaments.  In fact this may not be a predicament, just life continuing.

Family, Retirement

The Last Third

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Winter                                         Garden Planning Moon

Moving into the last third of life.  Kate’s coming total retirement, no more part time work, probably sometime around March.  The 65th coming up for me.  Markers of a turn the vessel of our lives is making, a long slow turn, no Costa Concordia, this one’s on a chart, at least the first markers then the notation, this way there be the unknown.

In the first third we crank ourselves up, get educated, separated, motivated, maybe even liberated.  In the second third we’re all about output.  Children, money, ambition, advancement.  Then this last third, a part of life with little real road map since folks just didn’t use to live this long.  Or be healthy this long.  Now here we come.  Whee.

The briefcase gets put in the closet one last time.  The suits rotated to the back of the closet.  Paychecks stop.  Driving diminishes.  The old standards, the important ones, the things we got ready for, studied for, prepared for, lived out, no longer apply.

What if the work was it?  What if the identity there was me?  Who am I now?

You might think someone out of the day-to-day workforce for as along as I have been, since 1991, going on 21 years, would have answered those questions.  Maybe not.

The volunteer work I’ve taken on has had work like trappings,work like I did when I worked for the Presbytery.  The Sierra Club and the politics.  Even the occasional preaching and organizational consulting.  What I used to do.  The MIA work has been, I admit, different in content and style, but it had this commonality, complexity and challenge.

And, to be honest, even when I contemplate pulling back toward home, back toward work only I can do, I still see it as work.  That is, a full on expression of who I am, hold nothing back, go for it.

Maybe I’m not able to kick back, relax.  Let the kids do it.  Though.  I’m glad I’ve worked with the Sierra Club because it has introduced to me a younger generation very much in the fight, hands on the banner, no letting the flag waver.  It makes me feel better about pulling back from political work.

Not sure I know quite what I’m trying to say here, at the end.  Maybe I’m worried that my continuing results orientation is a way of avoiding the next turn in our life.  A way of not sighing, watching the moon.  Patting the dog.

Ancor impari.