Category Archives: Family

Aging, Family, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Going to the Mailbox

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                          Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

The storm seems to have slowed down a bit, winds have decreased as has the snow.  It looks we got around a foot, but I can tell you that many of the drifts exceed that.

First, my insulating vest over my sweatshirt.  Then the wind pants over my sweats.  Down coat.  Mad bomber hat with rabbit fur flaps secured under my chin.  Scarf around exposed neck.  Insulated socks pressed into Sorels.  I was ready to get the mail and the newspaper.  Successful.   Minnesota, a state where getting to the mailbox from the house can be a challenge worth dressing up for.

After that adventure, I strapped on my snow shoes and headed out to Ruth and Gabe’s playhouse to retrieve the little giant ladder system still standing out there.  I waited until a historic snow storm to grab it just to test my true mettle. I’d say it was thin aluminum.

The damn ladder system is heavy and clumsy.  Walking in snow shoes is not an elegant dance in the best of situations, but navigating around small shrubs without snagging and trying to thread my way between an electric fence and a snow-drift narrowed passage up onto our deck, all the while dragging a ladder–priceless.

The ladder went in the garage to melt off its snow and be ready for Adam Lindquist, the improbably named Chinese lighting specialist from Lights on Broadway, who is coming out on Wednesday to install our new fixtures.  Huffing and puffing I sat down to drink some hot chocolate Kate made.  Decided to give myself 20 minutes of aerobic workout since I also shoveled the deck some.

Just finished my other 30 minutes on the treadmill.  Now I can settle down and enjoy the storm.  Tomorrow, more Latin.

Family, Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities

While The Cyber River Closed

Leave a comment

Samhain                           New Winter Solstice Moon

Midnight  12/6/10

Writing this on Word since I’ve had no internet connection for a few hours.  My limited number of tricks have not produced a link and I don’t have the patience for navigating so-called “customer service.”  George Orwell would be proud of the internet and internet services industry.

Kate’s cold continues with little sign of progress.  She suffers, complains about not liking to be sick, but otherwise Norwegian’s through it all.  She takes illness as a personal insult, something to be shrugged off if possible, if not, to work through and last something that requires rest and chicken noodle soup.  She’s in the latter mode right now.  Good for her.

We skyped tonight.  It’s Hanukkah so the grandkids had various gifts from doting grandparents and uncles and aunts.  The literal hit of the evening was an inflatable t-ball set.  Ruth took swing after swing, often swinging from her right shoulder and leveling at the ball.  She’s co-ordinated for 4.  Or, rather 4 and ½.

Her blond hair swirls, ringlets tumbling every which way as she performs couchnastics, a living room form of gymnastics that replaces gym equipment with the normal living room furniture.

My Latin is still here spread out on the desk beside me.  This Ovid requires slow, laborious work.  Look up words.  Figure out forms.  Check usage possibilities, verb tenses, noun declensions.  A lot of back and forth with books and pages of help.  I realized tonight that it’s a hobby, something I’m doing for fun.  Weird, huh?

Winter has snugged us up in the house, the furnace and insulation our best friends just as the AC and the insulation are our best friends in the summer.  I like winter because it provides all this darkness for desk work, darkness in which there are no outdoor chores.  Therefore, no guilt.

Cinema and Television, Family, Health, Retirement

Up Again

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                  Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Here I am, at it again.  Don’t know why this damned tooth/jaw deal has interfered with my sleep this last two nights and not before, but there you are.

Got pretty serious there on the post below, so I’ll try to stay a bit lighter here in the dark.

Finished my Latin, english to Latin, yesterday, early, partly because I got up at 4 am or 5 or whatever.  Went back to bed at 9, got up at 11:30.  The whole day seemed off, sort of out of kilter.  Now I’m up again, an insomniac spurred on by the loss of wisdom.  Which, come to think of it, out to do it.

As Kate comes closer and closer to retirement, January 7th is her date, I can sense a change, a sort of gathering in, nesting beginning.  I just ordered a few books on movies, for example, thinking we might use our Netflix account to watch movies together one night a week, a date but at home.  We’ve also gotten Kate’s quilt operation set up in a sewing room, upstairs, her long arm quilter, downstairs where her sewing room used to be and her piecing table cum storage in the spot we once had a pool table.

We’ve spent a good bit of time, as I’m sure most do, on our retirement finances, a project not yet finished, with my pension numbers yet to come and Kate’s medicare part D, but we’ll finish before the end of December.

Given the adequate, but tight fit of our budget in the coming years, we’ll probably travel less, a thought that at one time would have jarred me, but that now I find manageable.  Short trips to visit family, perhaps longer ones up north or down to Chicago, not quite so far away, so much money.  We’ll save up for a trip or two to somewhere interesting:  Churchill, Ontario, the Southwest, but cruises and foreign travel will be difficult.

In the growing season, of course, we have the bees, the orchard, the vegetable gardens and the flower gardens that we care for together.  We’ll get into the city to the museums, theatre and music more than we have.

Mostly, though, we’ll enjoy each others company and live not a good deal differently from what we do right now.

Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Work, Holidays, Humanities

Black Friday

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                   Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Kate had to tell me, again, what black Friday means.  Apparently (and you probably already know this) it’s the date retailers calculate they slip over from being in the red to being in the black.  When I have trouble remembering something, it’s often because I have another association clogging up the rememberer.  In this case black Friday has a theological tinge in my brain; it takes me to a day of lost hope, ultimate despair.  As a result, I have trouble associating it with anything positive.

If I consider the number of people camped outside (one woman since Wednesday night at a particular BestBuy), and, if I consider the reason many of them are in those lines, my association seems closer to the mark.  Our emphasis on extravagant gifts to celebrate the birthday of a man who wanted us to declare freedom to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind has always revealed the dark side hedonism which we let loose at Christmas, but the pitiful sight of people braving cold and inclement weather as blind captives of our economic system.  Well…

A very positive note is the number of scientists now willing to engage in reasoned debate on the topic of global warming.  Understanding the science behind global warming takes careful attention to several different lines of reasoning and a dispassionate explication of those various strands works best from within a scientific rather than a political frame.  Perhaps, as an article in the paper said, we will be able to move beyond this debate and onto the question of what can we do.

We are not saving the earth; the earth will be fine no matter what we do.  We want to preserve an earth fit for human habitation; that’s what’s at risk here.  Can we learn to live on this planet lightly enough that it can carry us, feeding us, watering us, disposing of our wastes, providing materiale necessary for our habitations and our economies?  Those are the stakes.

Aging, Family, Holidays

Axel’s

Leave a comment

Samhain                                        Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Kate, Annie and I ate Thanksgiving dinner at Axel’s Woodroast in Roseville.  This was a major production, a huge buffet and seating for family size parties in the ballroom.  The food was good, not gourmet, but good.  I actually had breakfast, more or less, a crepe, bacon, scrambled eggs, some asparagus, watermelon and a mixed green salad followed by two creme brulee tarts.  Our waitress was an old hand who stayed mostly out of the picture, showing up just when we needed things for the most part.

I found the large number of people satisfying, as it mimicked the crowded Thanksgivings of my childhood.  I had the large number of people feeling without having to actually interact them.  Perfect.

Kate’s in for a nap, the dogs have toys to play with and I’m going back to reading my Chinese mystery novel.

Hope your afternoon is a good one, too.

Aging, Art and Culture, Asia, Bees, Dreams, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Great Work, Memories, Retirement

Not Stepping In The Same River Twice

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                      Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  You, too, tiny Tim.

Stayed up late last night reading a novel about a Chinese detective in Chinatown, NYC.  Not sure how it happened but China has become my favorite country, much like Germany used to be and Russia before that.  Instead of Buddenbrooks I read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, instead of Steppenwolf I read Chinese mysteries.  No more War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, though I could read them again, I choose, as I always have, to plow new ground, read things I have not read before.

I tend not to read things twice, except poetry.  A big part of reading for me is the journey to somewhere new, following a trail with no known ending, a similar joy to the one I find in traveling, especially to countries where the culture disorients me, leaves me little room for my old ways.

New disciplines give me a similar boost:  art history, Latin, writing, vegetable gardening, bee keeping, hydroponics.  I’m sure I miss something in my search for the novel, which may explain why I find living in the same house for 16 years, driving the same car for 16 years, being married to Kate for 20+ years soothing.  As Taoism teaches,  life is a dynamic movement between opposites, the new and the old, the familiar and the strange, the taxing and the comfortable.  The juice flows as the pulls of masculine and feminine, life and death, youth and age keep us fresh, vital.

My buddy Mario uproots himself and moves along the earth’s surface, finding new homes and new encounters.  He changes his work with apparent ease, finding new friends and new experiences as he does.  Brother Jim, Dusty, constantly challenges his present and his past, leaving himself always slightly off balance.  Both of these men take the juice and mold it into art.

There are many ancientrails through this life, including intentional disorientation, familiar surroundings, ambition, compassion, politics, nurturance, keen observation, delight, dance.  The key lies in finding yours and staying with it, getting to know it and to be it.

When you can, you will find every day (well, most days) are Thanksgiving.

Aging, Cooking, Family, Memories, Weather +Climate

Thanksgiving Eve

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                      Waning Thanksgiving Moon

Grocery shopping this morning, the day before Thanksgiving.  Like traveling by air on a holiday.  Like going to see the Tower of London in July.  Like shopping on Black Friday.  I went early though and it wasn’t too bad.  There was the man with one turkey in his cart, a shocked disorientation on his face, his white hair wild.  A woman with black flats, a wool skirt below the ankle and a helmet like cloth hat strapped under her chin.  A woman and her mother, mom in a white faux fur coat, shiny cloth pants and dangly ear-rings with zircon or diamond but I’d bet zircon.  The clerk from Nevis.  I had a farm near Nevis.  Oh, where?  On Spider Lake.  Oh, a friend of mine has a resort on Spider Lake.  Did you find everything you were looking for?

The message board had advertisements for guys offering snow plowing services.  I memorized a number, 227-9899, and called for a free estimate when I got home.

Sleepy now, Latin this afternoon and evening, Thanksgiving tomorrow.  A restaurant meal for us this year, Axel’s Wood Roast in St. Paul.  Annie’s coming up.

Family, Sport

Out, Out Damned Football

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                  Full Thanksgiving Moon

Like quitting smoking, which I did cold turkey, I have quit watching football.  I don’t need the aggravation, especially with the Vikes and I don’t see the gain, if any, as worth it anymore.  Leaves me with Sunday to clear up piles, do Latin, that sort of thing.  On the other hand the Gopher basketball team looks pretty good.

Kate’s home from her retreat with more stash and a few more projects.  She’s started on a Japanese quilt design that looks pretty interesting.

Aging, Family, Weather +Climate

Yak Trax

Leave a comment

Samhain                                                Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

We have a sloping, long drive way.  Most days no big deal.  On days like today, when rain has fallen, then frozen, it requires special equipment:  yak trax.  They slip on over the shoe or boot and the rope like wire keeps you upright.  I bought a pair of these after going out for the paper one morning, not real long after my achilles repair.  My feet went up and I fell just like one of those cartoon characters, head smacking the driveway with no restraint.  Blood pulsing down my head I went inside, woke Kate up and said, “I think I need some help here.”  These days I slip on the yaktrax and walk with a grip to the mailbox.

Kate called this morning from her quilt retreat bus, on her way to Eau Claire.  A truck pulling two trailers had upended near the spot of her call.  That part of Wisconsin can be treacherous in this kind of weather.  She said the bus driver had it handled.  I hope so.

I’m going through an episodic pile reduction, pitching or filing paper of one kind or another that seemed important at one point in the past.  I always the feel when I finish.  Clarity.