Category Archives: Family

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.

Family, Garden, Great Work

A Pleasant and Substantial Path

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70  bar steady 30.13  0mpn SSE dew-point 62  sunrise 6:16 sunset 8:17  Lughnasa

Full Corn Moon  moonrise 2014    moonset  0554

“Mistakes are at the very base of human thought … feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack of being wrong, we could never get anything useful done.” – Lewis Thomas

Had to call the generator guys yesterday.  Our Kohler should exercise itself every two weeks, Tuesdays at 11:00 AM.  It has not done that since installation.  It works, we know that because it turned on during a power outage in June.  The exercise cycle, however, is how we know it works in between storms.   A fail safe.  They had a reason this time, like they had the last time.  This time use during an outage kicks it off the exercise cycle, “A problem Kohler refuses to recognize.”  The first time it was air in the gas line.  Maybe so both times, but I want it to do what we paid a hefty sum to do and that includes letting us know it works, all the time.  Otherwise, come an outage we may have no power and an expensive lump of metal and wires to help us enjoy the darkness and the heat.

Today and tomorrow and Monday are prep days for the herds migration out to our place.  Groceries.  Garden spruce up.  Hydroponics restart.  Decluttering the living room and kitchen.  That sort of thing.

Kate’s last two years of medicine are not the gentle glide down to a soft landing and out I wish they could be.  Her style of practice and the newer, corporate style do not mesh; the gears grind and jump.  It means she’s under pressure to see more patients, see more adults and smile doing it.  She needs a union, at best she will get out with her dignity intact.

We have, however, set ourselves on a pleasant and substantial path here at home.  We have expanded food production here this year and will expand again next year and possibly the year after that.  There are energy capture projects I have in mind and much more to learn from the disciplines of permaculture and horticulture.  She has her sewing and quilting; I have writing and politics.  Together, too, we have the kids, the grandkids and the dogs.  She will be here longer than she will be at work.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Literature

Colma, California City of the Dead

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69  bar falls 29.80 1mh SSE dew-point 53  sunrise 6:11 sunset 8:25  Lughnasa

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon    moonrise 1816  moonset  0130

Finished Alive in Necropolis. A fascinating book, part ghost story, part coming of age story, part police procedural set in Colma, California.  Colma, California is not just anywhere; it is where San Francisco chose to bury its dead.  There are way more dead people in Colma’s 17 cemeteries, 1.5 million, than citizens, 1, 280.   This one I read almost straight through.  It kept what John Gardner calls the fictive dream alive.

Feels good to have read the last two nights rather than watch TV.  I might let it become a habit.  I love fiction, write fiction.  That’s not to say I don’t pick up non-fiction, in fact, I do.  Quite a bit.  Some folks I know rarely read fiction.  I rarely read non-fiction books through in the same way I do novels.  I tend to treat them as resources, reading them more in the manner of college reading.  I seek the big ideas, the general arc of the argument.  Sometimes, I’ll finish them, but rarely.

Kate is home, the night is pleasant.  The kids are healthy, the grandkids, too.  And the dogs.  The gardens productive and the flowers are beautiful.  A good now.

Family, Garden

Bubil Plucking

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74  bar falls 29.85  0mph NNW dew-point 56  sunrise 6:11  sunset 8:25  Lughnasa

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon

The punk hairdos of our Country Gentlemen corn now resemble pubic hair, albiet a dark purple.  Sex and the country gentlemen.  Though I’ve seen corn grown all my life, I’ve never done it myself.  The simple, elegant sexuality of these green giants intrigues me.  The tassel pops out of the top, spreads its stamens.  The developing ears–seed pods–push out this delicate female part, the silk, to receive the pollen which falls down as wind rustles the tassel.  Each seed on the ear has a silk that runs straight to it.  A gravity based system.  One of the tiny miracles in a garden of major miracles.

There is nothing on the planet so miraculous as the photosynthetic driven production of carbohydrates.  Without this marvel the food chain has no beginning link.  No beginning link, no chain at all.  It would not be out of place to stop by a plant tonight or tomorrow, put your hands together, bow a bit and say Namaste.  A gracias, too, perhaps.

Kate’s home.  She had fun with the grandkids.  She’s really become a grandma and a good one.  A pleasure to see.  She cooked tonight.  Spaghetti squash, tomato cucumber and onion salad, fish.  All but the fish from our place.

This evening I plucked bubils from the leaf junctions of three of my lilium.  After dipping them in some root  hormone, I took a pair of pick-ups and slotted them into soil pellets.  The pellets went into small plastic six packs.  The whole went out to the garden to receive water and sun.  After they’ve grown a bit, I’ll transplant them to the second tier bed down by the patio.  I’ve never tried propagating lilies this way before, but it was common in the 19th century according to my lily culture book.