Category Archives: Family

Aging, Family

Hunkering Down

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33 bar rises 29.77  N 6mph windchill 28  Samhain

Waxing Crescent of the Dark Moon

The October financial storm gathered under the Blood Moon.  Obama’s election comes during a waxing Dark Moon.  Just interesting is all I’m saying.

The red car in the Sandhills of Nebraska.

red-car-trip061450.jpgPicked up the red car from its most recent series of procedures.  This time it got new front constant velocity boots.  They protect the main bearing from wear caused by road debris.  Two new aluminum wheels should solve the slow leak problem the back tires have experienced.  Various bulbs and other smaller matters–oil change, too–thrown in for the trip.  Each visit it comes closer and closer to Theseus’s ship.

Kate continues to suffer with her cervical vertebrae pinching a nerve.  She’s so stoic, so careful.  Right now she’s stopped taking the prednisone which helped because she wants the imaging studies to be unaffected.  She can’t find a way to position herself that doesn’t hurt.  Like hell.

Got tools for protecting the trees in our new orchard.  Later today or tomorrow I’ll install them and begin to put down the black plastic and straw to kill weeds along the forest’s edge.  Much cooler weather now, but it is still a good time to do this kind of work.

This week will be the last for working outside for a while.    I’m ready to hunker down and get some reading and writing done.

Family, Great Work, Politics

An Old Political Junkie

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Made more phone calls.  Liked it not at all, but I agreed to do them.  Now I find out they won’t need me to make calls on November 4th.  Darn.

An old political junkie like me has more information available than I can possibly digest.  The internet brings more and more and more, at finer and finer levels of detail.  When I have the time, I love to read the data, down to the precinct level if I can find it.  Other folks like baseball stats, for me it’s election numbers, political analysis.

Political analysis brought my dad and I close together when I was young.  We would sit up late watching conventions and election returns.  Political analysis pushed my dad and I far apart when I was 19.  Opposition to the Vietnam War and long hair  did not sit well with him.

Tired.

Family, Our Land and Home

A Good Shed, Cleaned

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You know that garden shed that appeared in some of the orchard pictures?  Jon built it for us quite a while back and a good shed it is.

Like most sheds and their smaller inside counterparts, closets, the stuff fairy goes around sprinkling this and that until one day, ten years later, you discover a no longer usable space.  In and out of the shed for the last couple of years I have thought, clean this up.

So, this morning I did.  I hauled out old garden implements, discovered a big pipe wrench nearly dissolved by oxidation, pitched various sorts of garden detritus and opened up a large space in the shed.  I needed to store the six bales of hay I bought last Saturday.  Room to spare.

My right hand has a large bruise where the IV went in for my anesthetics last Wednesday.  As I look at it, it reminds me of hospital patients I visited during my days in the active ministry, especially older patients whose skin seemed to take a bruise and keep it awhile.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Holidays

The Ancient Trail of Gratitude

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quick note:  Boy, the pace of life accelerated with the coming of autumn.  This last week it felt like I’d gone back to full-time employment.  I’m glad the week-end is here.

Mine is a small life, no encyclopedia entries or feistschrifts, no monuments.  Ordinary.  I’ve been lucky so far.  The major stumbles I made got turned around by mid-life.  Kate came along and made the journey forward companionable.  There are few friends, but good ones.  The things I do, I love.  Dig.  Plant.  Harvest.  Write.  Preach.  Tour.  Spend time with the kids and their kids.  Read.

Thanksgiving is not a one-day holiday, but, rather, a life way, the ancient trail of gratitude.

Family, Politics

Fiscal Policy

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Quick note.

We’ve decided to stay the course with our portfolio.   We have decided to cut spending and increase our cash holdings by putting most of Kate’s quarterly adjustments in savings.  This will all have the effect of letting us extend the time before we have to withdraw any money from our various retirement accounts.

The hope is that by that time the market will have recovered enough to cover our needs with Kate retired.  As is  so often the case, we’ll see.

Family, Great Wheel, Politics

Tonight I Was the Stranger

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A quick note.  Did phone calling for the Sierra Club tonight.  This represents both a signal of my commitment and a raging contradiction for me.  A phone call from a stranger, pitching something in which I have marginal to no interest or may find abhorrent irritates the hell out of me.  Tonight I was the stranger.

Some calls I made to other Sierra Club members who might volunteer to call swing voters.  The rest of the calls were persuasion calls to swing voters in a Minnesota House of Representatives district in the general area of Shoreview.  Most of these folks didn’t want to talk.  I’m not good at making nice with people who’d rather be left alone, since I’m such a person myself and respect the inclination.

Oh well, only one more night of calls.  The last phoning I’ll do will be on election day, get out the vote calls.  Those will be easy, straightforward.

I did say these calls were a signal of my commitment.  I felt a need to push myself out of my comfort zone.  These calls do it.   My relationship with mother earth makes it clear to me that irritating some people in order to create a more favorable climate for eco-friendly legislation is worth it.

Kate says she’s feeling sick.  She gets exposed to everything new.  Sometimes the new stuff slips by her otherwise amped up immune system.

Cinema and Television, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Great Wheel, Our Land and Home

Chop Wood, Carry Fencing

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After years in urban ministry, economic development, affordable housing and responsbility for urban congregations spread throughout the metro area I thought I knew Minneapolis.

Not so.  When I drove over to ecological gardens, Paula’s home at 4105 Washburn Avenue I discovered north Minneapolis, the one that includes Shingle Creek, the Humboldt Greenway, Victory Memorial Drive.  This is a quiet leafy chunk of the city that seems somehow separate, another urban entity, neither suburb nor city. 

Delightful.  I love to drive around in the city, on city streets, to places I’ve never been.  That chance came to me today and I had a great time.

Back home in time for the nap, but no sleep.  A family I know has a terrible weight on them right now and I couldn’t get it off my mind.  What can I do.  What will they do. 

So I got up and moved old wire fencing Continue reading Chop Wood, Carry Fencing →

Aging, Family

Lunch Reminder

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83  bar falls 29.97  4mph NE dew-point 64  sunrise 6:21  sunset 8:11 Lughnasa

Waning Gibbous Corn Moon

Took Kate out to lunch at Bennigans to say thanks for cooking Monday night.  While there we watched a group of wheel chair bound residents of the Anoka Care Center load onto a transit bus after lunch.  A reminder of the ravages aging can create.  A good prod to exercise and healthy diet.

Didn’t get outside yet today and I have to get those daylilies moved so I can move the iris.

Family, Woolly Mammoths

Delicious, fresh food

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73  bar rises 29.90  0mph NNE dew-point 64  sunrise 6:20 sunset 8:14

Full Corn Moon

The Woollies went home about 30 minutes ago.  “A feast.”  “You’ve set a new standard.”  “Can we come back here next month.”  All these compliments were the direct result of Kate’s skill as a cook.   She assembles recipes, parcels out work, gets stuff done.  Her food is delicious and fresh.  Much of our meal came from the garden.

We sang When You’re Sixty-Four to Kate over dinner and sang her happy birthday just before every left.  As she said, “It was a Norwegian birthday.”  Meaning she worked a lot.

Folks liked the garden viewed from the upstairs deck.  Bill and Tom and Scott commented on the vegetable garden and the fire pit.  We don’t get that many people through here in the course of a year so it was nice to have other’s reaction to what we do.  The Woollies also liked the renovation project Kate headed up. A talented gal and I’m lucky to have her in my life.  As I have felt since I got to know her 20 years ago.

The topic for the meeting focused on American identity.  More on this tomorrow when I’m not so fried.  Having people up drains me.

Family, Woolly Mammoths

Superduper

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85  bar steady 29.84  0mpn N dew-point 66  sunrise 6:18  sunset 8:14  Lughnasa

Full Corn Moon

Back from Costco and Festival.  Costco combines an open space so vast that a four year old girl ran happily up and down the aisles like she was on a playground and an abundance of stuff that would make even Qin Shi Huang Di gasp.  It’s not stuff fit for imperial burial, except for all the polyester and plastic.  They will last into the next world and beyond.

Shopping there involves navigation of a labyrinth designed to lead you to the Minotaur (the check out lanes) with as much of the abundance as you can fit in the superduper sized carts.  I purchased bread, not just one loaf, but 3 2 pound loaves.  Two 44 pound bags of dog food.  24 bottles of Propel. 4 pounds of 13-15 count shrimp.  You can not buy just one; it would be unAmerican.

Festival supermarket has a bit more restraint, but it too involves navigation of rows and shelves designed for the impulse purchase of antipasto, squid, the odd pasta you have never seen before.  Not much to buy there.

Final stop.  Best Buy.  I picked up Beatles albums–Sgt. Pepper and Beatle’s 1–so I could have When I’m Sixty-Four to play tonight for the Woollies.

Time for lunch.