Category Archives: Family

Dogs, Family, Travel

The Road

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Beltane                                                     Waxing Garlic Moon

The dog delivered, I’m moving more slowly today.  I’ve selected a route home, up I-29 to I-90, then to the Jeffer’s Petroglyphs.  I’ll plan to stay around there tonight, then finish up the drive home tomorrow.

Saw granddaughter Ruth’s new teeth.  Little white spikes emerging between her baby teeth in the front.  Ruth is not sure what to make of Grandpa.  I don’t mind.  I’m in the relationship for the long haul and I know we’ll connect.

Sollie looked at me from the car.  I opened the Subaru’s trunk latch and gave him a hug.  We became pals.  I am, however, not sorry to see him go.  I think the home dogs will calm down.  I hope.

Jon and Jen have their sleeves rolled up, busy with two young kids, renovation and a dog.  At least they have the summer.

Now, I’m going to hit the road and wander a bit, a joy I picked up from my dad, who loved a road trip now matter how small.

Dogs, Family, Garden, Sport

Sollie Goes Home

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Beltane                                                                         Waxing Garlic Moon

Tomorrow I leave for Lincoln, Nebraska.  Sollie will head back to Denver with Jon.  Our goal here is to calm the dog situation down by getting rid of the extra dog and getting to work integrating Gertie into our pack.  She has a Jekyll and Dog personality; sweet and friendly, cuddly 90% of the time and all gnarly teeth and dog for 10%.  Trouble is, we can’t predict the 10%.  Outside humans seem to raise her hackles, at least sometimes, but there’s something between her and the other dog’s, too.  Our hope is that Sollie’s presence, a male among females, may have tipped the balance toward aggression in the doggy world for Gertie and that with him gone, she’ll calm down.  That may be wishful thinking.

Mark finished a first course of granite blocks for our firepit. Now I have to find a steel fire ring.  It’ll be nice to have a place for a fire just in time for summer.  No.  Kidding.  It’s nice to have it done and ready for fall.  Mark’s helped out a lot.  I’ve found it much easier to do my work here if I don’t have to do the heavy work on both ends of a project.  (This will be the Agni fire pit by Mark Ellis.)

I’m awake.  In addition to getting up at 10:40 I also had a 2 hour nap.  Staying out late is possible for me, but I have to have time to recover.

Watched the NBA finals with Mark tonight.  Two Hoosier boys watching the big guys play ball.  We didn’t have the sound on.  Basketball is the one sport I know well enough to watch without commentary.  I decided, early on, that I wanted to see Miami win, so tonight’s decision pleased me.  It was a game right down to the final 4.0 seconds.

Asia, Family, Humanities, Letters, Literature, Weather +Climate

Monkey. Still. But, Making Progress.

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Beltane                                                                     Waning Last Frost Moon

Whoa.  84.  Sometimes I think of the seasons as if we were on a moveable patch of earth.  On a day like today our patch got shifted on the seasonal moving belt to about Georgia.  Last week we were parked above the Canadian border for a while.  Who knows where we’ll go next.

I have passed the 50% mark in reading Monkey:  Journey to the West.   That means I’m somewhere around 1,000+ pages in.  Hard to tell on the Kindle, though I know precisely how far I am in percentages.  This book is funny, wise, rollicking, supernatural and just a bit cynical.  Well, maybe a lot.  Yesterday I bought a book that features English works on the Chinese classics.  It has a lot to say about these favorites, but I’ve still found no commentary that helps me get, say, the wood, water, earth, fire, metal sequence or the names of some characters or the works referenced as if everyone knew them.  Next up, probably next year, is The Dream of the Red Chamber, the best of the six, in the opinion of several writers.

While hunting for a picture to go with this post, I discovered that Neil Gaiman, author of the Sandman graphic novels and several fantasy novels started, back in March, on a screenplay for a trilogy based on Monkey.  Should be interesting.

If you feel like you have the time, both Monkey and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms will more than repay the effort.  There’s a different culture at work here, sometimes a radically different one, but, at other times, radically similar.  That’s the power of reading works from other cultures, insights you can’t get any other way.

A slow day.  Business meeting in the morning.  We scheduled a couple of days in July, post Kate’s second hip surgery, to go over our expenditures in the first six months of retirement, check them against our budget, see where we need to adjust.  Big fun.

Family, Garden, Sport

A Sunshiny Day

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Beltane                                                                       Waning Last Frost Moon

Weeding, thinning in the vegetable beds.  A soothing practice, sprucing up the rows of beets, carrots, spinach and taking young weeds out now, before they get big.  When I first went outside this morning, in a sweatshirt, I had to go back inside and put on a light jacket.  A friend told me yesterday that an acquaintance, in the BWCA on vacation, woke up to a frozen pond near their campsite.  Minnesota.  A day with sunny skies and cool temps makes gardening a joy.

Buddy Mark Odegard has a new knee.  Here’s to his recovery and regaining the full use of his leg.

Brother Mark has a lot of things to ponder right now.  He’s considering what might be his next move and he has a good number of options.  Making this a bit more difficult is a feeling he has, “I feel like a refugee in my own country.”  He’s been gone 22 years and the contrasting cultural mores of Southeast Asia, especially Thailand, make him a stranger in his own, native land.  A peculiar, rather poignant experience.

When asked what the cues were, he said, “English speaking everywhere.  All the white people.  Americans are more direct, more in your face.”  Wonder if he meant me?  Could be.

Can you believe Memorial Day weekend has arrived?  Things are buzzing back in Speedway, Indiana where the 500 will run for the 100th time.  I haven’t kept up this year though a quick review of the 33 cars shows 4 women in the race including one qualified ahead of Danica Patrick.  When a woman wins the Indy 500, it will be a huge moment in motor sports.

By now in Indiana I would have known the results of time trials, the strategies for the new cars, the old faces and the rookies, new moves for pit crews.  Indy drivers get interviewed on TV and newspapers have separate pages devoted to the race information.  Whether you attend or not, and most don’t, the 500 takes over Indiana life for the month of May.  The May classic.  And it’s back for the 100th time.

Art and Culture, Family, Great Work

Clay

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Beltane                                                                      Waning Last Frost Moon

“We can make our minds so like still water that beings  gather   about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps  even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.” –W.B. Yeats

Surprises.  They come unexpectedly.  That’s no surprise.  I had one tonight.

Kate signed us up for a couples clay class at the Northern Clay Center.  It ran from 6:30-9:00 pm.  Matt, a BFA grad from the U, teaching during a gap year before graduate school, lead us clay novices.

( Kiln Prayer)

It was fun.  Maybe more than fun.  The clay had a vitality, a presence I hadn’t expected.  The pieces I made ranged from uh-oh to not too bad.  One, a tea bowl, had some promise.  Since they won’t be fired and ready for two weeks, it’s tough to say just what happened.  But I liked it.

Talking with Matt, who began discussing sodium trees versus calcium trees and how those differences affect the wood ash impact on ceramics, a realization began to dawn on me.  This is clay.  Clay.  It’s part of mother earth.  Part of her body.  Working with clay is not only like working with soil, it is working with soil.  Glazes can be totally organic, using plant and mineral materials available anywhere.  In fact, the properties of the clay differ from region to region.  So do the types and variteies of plant and mineral materials available to fire kilns and use in glazes.

Ceramics, in other words, is a sister activity to permaculture, bee keeping, flower gardening and native plant use.

Every once in a while I like to push myself outside my comfort zone.  Tai Chi and Latin are my current excursions.  I can’t see getting into clay until after our cruise in the fall, but I want to do it.  By that time the learning curve for both Latin and Tai Chi will be manageable.  After that, though, I can see taking a class or two, maybe more.

Manual dexterity is not my thing, at least it hasn’t been, but why not?  No practice as much as anything.  So, if I can learn basic techniques and practice.  Well…

Family, Garden

Andover Chain Saw Butchery (of a Cedar)

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Beltane                                                                      Full Last Frost Moon

Taking the local this morning meant cutting down the second cedar trunk and limbing it.  Mark worked very hard yesterday moving the downed and limbed trunks and branches in the front yard.  He went to bed early and slept hard.  Kate, too.  She weeded and weeded yesterday.  Her body mechanics have gotten better so her glutes tire instead of her back becoming painful.

This run of warm days will accelerate the growth in the garden.  The first planting of lettuce is recognizable now and the spinach almost so.  No potatoes coming through yet but they need a soil temperature of plus 50 degrees, so they’ve probably been tool cold.  Just hope they haven’t rotted.  The beans are up, the onions, carrots, beets and asparagus, too.  A lot of yard clearing work, weeding, maintenance chores have gotten done and will get done over the next few weeks.  Having Mark to help really moves things along.

Now I go see Leslie for our last visit, then a couple of Sierra club meetings in the evening.  The legislature has begun to wind down, but there’s a distinct  possibility that it is not all over.  Not quite yet.

Family, Woolly Mammoths

Woolly Mammoths

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Beltane                                                                          Full Last Frost Moon

Woolly meeting at Scott Simpsons.  Yin took me around her whole property, showcasing her plants, talking about her plans.  Her Asian themed garden in front is a masterpiece, designed by her and realized by landscapers she trusts.  Yin also cooked Chinese spareribs, rice and made a Caesar salad.  We enjoyed it.  Bill, Frank, Mark, Scott, Paul, Mark Ellis, Tom, Warren and myself attended as well as a guest, a poet and novelist whose father sounded like a character worth knowing.

A soulful evening.  We talked of what we loved and of poetry and art.  Mark O. showed marbled paper he’s making, beautiful and read a poem about night on the river at Lock and Dam #1.   Bill read a free writing piece that showcased his wide ranging consciousness.  Paul quoted a John O’Donohue poem from his growing body of poetry committed to memory.  Scott read a poem he wrote for a friends faux wedding.

And, ta dah!  I read my first translation of a full story in Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Diana and Actaeon.  I didn’t read all of it, but enough.  It felt great.  Like I’d walked across a long bridge.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Great Work

Real Religion

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Beltane                                                     Waxing Last Frost Moon

“The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men – from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Especially true if you insert mother earth for mothers and nature for women, viz.  The real religion of the world comes from nature much more than from men-from mother earth most of all, who carries the key to our souls in her bosom.

I am just back from seeing Leslie give her final presentation at Groveland.  Ran into Bill Mate.  He’s been doing work for the Methodist Church in New Orleans.  Sounded fun.

Wow.  No nap yesterday plus 5 hours driving, then up early for going into St. Paul to see Leslie.  Got hit by a sudden need to lie down and sleep.  Did so.  Better now, less foggy.

When I got back, Kate was in the front, raking and planting, earth mother to mother earth.  I made pizza, then crashed.  Still waking up.

Light rain, warm.  80’s in the forecast.  Spring, it seems, may have finally arrived, well after it has come and gone as a Celtic season.

Family, Great Work, Politics, Writing

The Great Lake

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Beltane                                                  Waxing Last Frost Moon

Have you ever had a love affair that ebbed and flowed like embers in a fire wavering between bursting into flame and dying out?  I have.  Today I visited that other lover in my life, Lake Superior.  A bookshelf full of books rest in a room not ten feet from here, each one of them related to Lake Superior in some way.  An entire file drawer of a vertical file drawer contains carefully organized files, each an eco-region in the area around Lake Superior and its watershed.  In another spot sit the maps, some USGS, some others representing the land around the Lake.  There are, too, files of notes from two circle route trips I took, each time stopping in various county historical societies:  Ontanogon, Marquette, Thunder Bay to pursue research about this phenomenon less than 2 and half  hours from my front door.

My brother Mark and I drove up there.  He wandered Park Point and hiked all the way up Lake Street to the top, turning then for a magnificent view of the lake.  While he discovered Duluth, I attended a conference on Sulfide Mining on the Mesabi Range.  This was a large group, 70 plus folks, gathered to hear experts discuss various aspects of sulfide mining’s impact on the waters of three watersheds and the communities of people, trees and wildlife that would share the land with this toxic producing form of mining.

It was one of those clear northern spring days.  The sun flashed off the lake, bouncing off the crests of waves made by lakers going in and out of the Duluth Harbor.  The temperature was cool by the lake, warmer up the slope of the hillside where St. Scholastica sits; it’s fortress like main building dominating the surrounding the area.

The drive was long and the stay short, a combination I try to avoid, though this is my second time recently.  The drive out to Lincoln, Nebraska to get the dogs was also a long drive, short stay, quick turn around.

Not sure where Lake Superior and I stand.  The old spark was there as we crested the hill and looked out over the St. Louis River toward Superior, Wisconsin and the lake spread out below us.  My research, though, sits unused, as it has for several years.  What’s the status of this relationship?  Not sure.

Dogs, Family, Friends

Good News, Good Art

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Beltane                                               New Last Frost Moon

Good news from the vet.  Vega’s kidneys are ok, so a round of doxycycline should set her right.  She’s so lovable, a goofy, intelligent, sweet animal, a joy to be around.

Then another death related incident.  A friend called for thoughts about a service he was conducting for a deceased friend.  This guy suffered from bi-polar disorder and was found two weeks ago in his house, a suicide.  He had killed himself in 2008.  Friends and relatives thought he was in Mexico.cropped3

Mark says he was a dog person in Bangkok and I can see that here.  He finds our dogs a real help, sort of a therapy pack.  That’s one reason we keep dogs, because their presence cheers up the house and adds loving beings to our day.  What’s not good about that?  Well, ok, there is that death thing, but that’s the price of love.

I wanted to show one more of Mark Odegard’s designs, all of them wonderful.  This one has its fans among my docent colleagues, too.