Category Archives: Family

Family, Travel

Enchanted

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77 bar falls 29.99  0mph NE dew-point 60   Sunrise 5:48  Sunset 8:50pm  Summer

Waning Gibbous Thunder Moon

The caterpillar does all the work; the butterfly gets all the publicity.  George Carlin, RIP

On Friday Kate and I take off for Texas.  The idea of flying leaves me cold, though after 2 long trips in June, driving does not seem much better.  At the moment traveling has a lugubrious feel, I want to stay home.  Work on the UU history.  Read about novels.  Write Superior Wolf.  Tend to the garden.

Every since our flight back from Istanbul, long enough ago that I can not recall the dates right now, flying has had a curse on it for me.  9/11 and the subsequent security measures only reinforced the curse.  Partly as a result of the shutdown and general suspicion engendered by 9/11 airlines went through a rough patch financially.  Their attempts to dig themselves out of the hole only made flying that much more unpleasant.  Long flight delays.  Sitting on the tarmac for hours.  No food.  After all that, the price of oil skyrocketed.

Flights, at least once delayed, have disappeared.  Layoffs and mergers.  Money for checked bags, for using frequent flyer miles.

This is a downhill slope that happened to coincide with my disenchantment.  Before Istanbul flying did enchant me.   I loved to fly when I worked for the Presbytery and in the years after with Kate.  Getting to the airport signaled the beginning of something special.  Read, eat, watch the earth slip by below.  It was magical.

Today I dread even a short flight to Texas.

Every once in a while I get into to a travel doldrums.  Like now.  I decide I want to explore Minnesota, maybe Wisconsin and Ontario.  Or Anoka County.  The metro area.  Or just stay home.

Still, family means showing up as I wrote before and it is my turn to show up at the Ellis family reunion.  So, we’ll take a plane ride, riding on a jet plane.  But, I will be back again.

Family, Our Land and Home, Travel

Vineland Place

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74  bar steady  29.89  4mph NNE dew-point 64   Summer, warmish and stickyish

Full Thunder Moon

Ah, the power of suggestion.  Especially from a spouse.  Spent an hour and a half clearing burdock, nettles, black locust, burrs, climbing wild cucumbers and virginia creeper from the site of the soon to be firepit cum family gathering spot.  An area in which everything has been removed invites the emergence of those plants whose seeds or rhizomes remain in the soil.

Over the last few rainy, hot weeks nettles have taken nourishment from the former compost heap to grow large, reaching for the sun and laden with formic acid to prevent uprooting.   The wild cucumber which climbs, then produces lacy transparent fruit liked the compost as did the virginia creeper.

While yanking on the long above ground runs of vine and pulling out their equally long runs of below the soil surface roots/rhizomes, I decided to change the name of our property from 7 Oaks, named for the 7 Oaks on the hill outside my writing room window, to Vineland Place.  I have no idea why, but our property is the ideal happy home for vines:  wild cucumbers, Virginia creeper and wild grape.  The wild grape in particular grows vines thicker than my upper arm (OK, so I’m not Ahnold, but still).  We have nurtured a wild  grape that has chosen the six foot fence we had put in the front after Celt began climbing the fence to go greet the neighbors on walks by our house.  At 200 pounds Celt, an Irish Wolfhound, was not a pleasant surprise, though in manner gentle and loving.

As the CO2 level rises with global warming, it favors vines.  I do not recall why.  I could not help but recall this piece of trivia as I drove through Alabama, Mississippi and Lousiana where kudzu has a presence akin to an alien invader.  It grows over lower shrubs and covers the entire highway easement up to the drainage ditches on divided highways.  In more than one case I saw old homes, uninhabited (I think), shrouded under the green of this conqueror vine.

Jon did many projects around Vineland Place when he lived here.  One of the early ones was to cut back the large grape vines that had begun to strangle the oak, ironwood, ash, elm, pin cherry and poplar that make up our woods.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Writing

Writing Makes Its Own Space

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66  bar steady 29.79  3mph NNW dew-point 63  Summer night, rainy day

Full Thunder Moon

We had rain and storm, tornado warning and tornado watch.  A full thunder moon day.  The rain poured down, drenching the lily blooms, forming small rivers on the wide leaves of the acorn squash.  While I read the first chapter of the book on the Western Unitarian Conference, the rain drained from the sky and onto the azalea, the begonia, the several amarylis and a bed full of hosta.  Reading a good book while it rains or snows pleases me, makes me feel at home, in place.

Kate harvested beans tonight, a few onions, too.  I used the onions with some beets I bought at Festival, delicious.  We also had a few early sugar snap peas and wax beans.  Some fish.  Some pasta with pesto made from hydroponic basil.  An evening meal.

Kate works this weekend, as she does every other weekend.  Ten days in a row, a long stretch, but she likes the four days off it gives her.  We pretend she’s retired on those days.

The Minnesota UU history piece has begun to take shape, get bones.  When there is a subject matter to master before I write, it usually takes me a while before I get a gestalt, a feel for the whole.  Once I have that I know where I need more information, or that I do not.  At that point I can sit down and write, usually in one setting.  A few days later, after its cold, I go back, reread and edit, revise.  Then I’ll put it away until I need to present it.

This one has been a bit unusual in that history requires a certain precision and accuracy with details, chronological sequence, names and places.  This means the material that I use to illustrate and make my points must get reordered to fit my needs, yet remain accurate and true.   It’s part of what I love about this kind of work.

When I have this kind of work, it pushes out everything else.  The writing work makes its own space in my life, creates openings and time for itself.  Just like this blog.  It happens each day, two to three times a day and often I do not recall having written here.  The breadcrumbs, though, are there, laid down in words and postings.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Writing

Showing Up

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79  bar falls 29.88  0mph NE  dew-point 53   Summer evening

Full Thunder Moon

Next weekend is the Ellis cousin reunion in Mineola, Texas.  Kate and I fly down on Friday, back on Sunday.  A short visit to the really hot weather.  All the folks of my father’s generation on the Ellis side, that is his siblings and their mates, are dead.  This is cousins and their kids and grandkids.

Though I was born in Duncan, Oklahoma I know the Ellis side of the family less well than the Keaton (mom’s side).  We moved from Oklahoma when I was only year and a half or so to Indiana, mom’s home state.  I want to get to know them better.  They are family, after all, a main connection to the past and through it to the future.  Like much in this life family is about showing up.  Otherwise, no family.

Kate had a lot of charts to do today, so I did the errands.  We had lunch, a nap and a business meeting.  We have overshot our travel budget, by a good ways.  If she failed to earn the big bonuses, we would have had to pull in the belt a bit.  We discussed ways to stay on budget.  Important and not always easy for us.

Got in the mail today Freedom Moves West, a whole book on the Western Unitarian Conference. It may contain enough information that I won’t have to go to the Minnesota History Center.  More and more I look at Amazon and on-line shopping as a way to save trips and therefore fuel.  Budgeting trips into the city is something I’ve not done too much.  I just hop in the car and go.  Nowadays though I think.  Try to put two things together.

Next Tuesday I go in to help with a Sierra Club mailing.  That day I’ll visit the museum and head over to the Minnesota History Center if I need to find anything there.  Like that.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Writing

Hey, Buddy! Wanna Live Forever?

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69  bar rises 29.92 0mph NNW dew-point 57   Summer night, pleasant and clear

Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

The gibbous Thunder Moon hangs low in the south, below the tops of the great poplars in our woods.  From our perspective it illuminates downtown Minneapolis.

Some switch got hit and the mosquito population jumped out of the woods.  Now they are out even in the daytime.

A program on the Science Channel discussed the nature of aging and held out the possibility of stopping or even reversing the aging process.  Kate and I discussed whether we would want to live a long time, say a thousand years.

I would.  The number of books to read and write, plays to see, movies to watch, places to go, there are enough for several lifetimes for me.  Gardens and dogs and family would all retain their interest to me.  What we would do with all the people, I don’t know.  Might place a premium on space flight and terraforming Mars.

Tomorrow I have teeth cleaning.  An event I look forward to every six months.  Not.  Still, consider an eight hundred year old set of teeth.  Yikes, if you didn’t take care of them.  Bad news.

The UU history piece has picked up speed.  I’ve gathered enough information now to have a sense of the sweep of Unitarian and Universalist movements west, then on into Minnesota Territory.  Next I have to do some specific research at the Minnesota History Center on the large churches.  Right now I don’t know whether I can answer the question that interested me in the first place, i.e. Why did liberal religion find such fertile ground in the Twin Cities?  I have not given up on that; the information to answer it seems elusive.

Cinema and Television, Dreams, Faith and Spirituality, Family

Where We Are Is Where We Will Become Who We Are

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63  bar rises 29.78  0mph W  dew-point 54  Summer night, cool

Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

Travelers and Magicians is a Bhutanese movie, the first one I’ve seen.  It’s theme spoke to the question, “What is your dream for this stage of your life?”  A Bhutanese official, newly appointed to work in a small mountain village, has an opportunity to go to America.  He considers himself modern, hip and wants very much to go.  On the road he meets many travelers, one a monk who tells him a tale of a young man who studied to be a magician.  There is a Canterburyesque flavor to the movie, a pilgrimage story of a sort.

It reminded me most of Emerson, who spoke of the futility of going to Italy to see beautiful things, when beauty is a notion within each of us.  The young official also meets a beautiful girl on the road, one he learns plans to return to her village to help her aging father.  By the end of the movie it is clear that he will return to the village.

A strong and persistent strain of my thinking in the last few years has focused on just this notion.  Where we are is where we will become who we are.  This is  true, for me, I believe.  Here in Andover, removed from the urban thrum, the constant action of political and religious life diminished by distance, is where I will become an old man, an elder.

My dream for this stage of my life is not yet as focused as the other three dreams I mentioned:  revolution, children and writing.  Even so, its outlines seem clear.   As I have until now, I will continue to support and nourish the dreams I have for political change, a healthy nuclear and extended family and writing.  The nesting or embedded nature of these dreams will remain, not get left behind.

Here are the emerging elements of my dream for this stage.  Kate and I will, together, create a paradigm for optimal living on suburban and exurban lots of 1+ acres.  We will focus our home and energy on supporting creative activity.  Somewhere in the mix, I believe, is Kate’s commitment to medical services for the poor.

Or not.  I don’t know.  This next phase hasn’t gelled in my thinking.  It may be that I don’t need a dream for this stage, that I’m already living it.

Family, Friends, Garden, Weather +Climate

Vegetables Amidst the Flowers

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70  bar steady 29.82  6mph SE dew-point 54  Summer, cool and sunny

Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

The storm has passed and the air shines, cleared of dust.  Clarity is a July morning after a rain.

The lilies open more and more with each passing day.  The squash and cucumbers we planted in the perennial beds beside the patio have begun their long and winding way.  Yellow squash blossoms promised fruit to come.

In several places now we have combined perennial flowers with vegetables.  In one raised bed Asiatic lilies have risen and now bloom amongst heirloom tomato plants with sturdy branches, heirloom beans and a few leaves of lettuce not yet picked.  The beets and the carrots have a Stargazer lily and a daisy in bed with them while the green peppers grow amidst bearded iris, Asiatic lilies and Russian sage.  The garlic grow only with their own kind, likewise the onions though the corn has bush beans in between the rows.

This mixture appeals to me because it defies expectation.  It is wonderful to see plants with such different missions growing alongside each other.  Is it optimal for either?  Maybe not, but who cares.

Kate sewed yesterday.  She has made Gabe two small suits, same pattern with different cloth.   He will be quite the little gentleman in them.  She’s happy to be back at the sewing, creating.  It’s important to her sense of self.

Groceries this AM, then more UU history.  Later on a party at the Stricklands for Kate and Clair.

Faith and Spirituality, Family

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

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79  bar falls 29.73 4mph NE  dew-point 65  Summer, hot and cloudy

Waxing Crescent of the Thunder Moon

Good thing I checked the Minnesota History Center hours before I drove all the way to St. Paul.  Closed.  Closed tomorrow until noon.  Had to shift my research hours, so I spent some time outside today putting down the last of the mulch, the third tier.  It’s much larger and much less closely planted than the bottom two tiers.  I’ve gone to either straw or leaves, no cedar or other store bought mulch.

Mary writes that she is in suspension now, waiting for the critique of outside reviewers for her dissertation.  Tough place, that.  Waiting is difficult for us humans.  We prize agency and anything that diminishes our ability to act makes us feel uneasy.  It highlights the underlying truth of the human condition, that is, we are never in control of our lives; our agency, no matter how powerful, is always transient.  Sic transit gloria mundi. 

To counter punch that though we have ars longa, vita brevis.  Art is long, life brief.

Family, Friends, GeekWorld

The Printing Press Today

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83  bar steady 29.68 1mph SE  dew-point 67  Summer, hot and clear

Waxing Crescent of the Thunder Moon

“What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Another late milestone here.  Kate has lunch tomorrow with an old friend she hasn’t seen in a while.  She asked me to print some grandchild pictures.  In the process I selected several photos, including some of her.  The milestone is this.  They came out printed on our Canon Pixma.  The first color work I’ve ever done.  We’ve had many computers over the last 18 years, but only one printer, the HP Laserjet 4.  It has served me very well and still does.  Like the red car I can’t imagine daily life without it.

We bought the Canon as a copier and fax machine, but it also has the capacity to print photographs and other color images.  I got out the manual, the paper and cracked open the usb cord I bought for it January before last when I purchased it.  Worked like a charm.  Technology amazes me and delights me.

Off to feed the dogs and read through the Sierra Club material.

Family, Friends, GeekWorld, Writing

Back In Its Own Stall

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79  bar falls 29.84 1mph ENE dew-point 61   Summer, hot, moving toward muggy

Waxing Crescent of the Thunder Moon

The cracks in the red car’s head were tiny.  I saw them.  They ran, in one instance, down the threads that hold the spark plug in place.  While threading in a spark plug or under pressure, these cracks could have broken loose and allowed oil and exhaust gases to invade the spark plug and generally foul things up.  Carlson was thoughtful in showing them to me.

We’ve sunk almost $5,000 in this car this year.   That’s almost a year’s car payments.  Even so, we could put in the same amount next year and still be ahead of the game.  It runs quite well now, though there is that piece that fell off on the way home.  No kidding.  A big chunk of something fell off.  I’m going to take it back and ask them about it, but not today.  It looks like a shield or rock barrier, not metal, rather some kind of composite, tarpaper like material.

It’s 31-32 miles per gallon on the highway alone justifies keeping it in our two vehicle collection.  The pick-up we’ll park for the most part in the not too distant future.  $90 a tank to fill it up.  Ouch.  And it sucks the gas down, too, with its v-8.  What were we thinking?  It is, though, a useful vehicle for errands and landscape chores.  Another advantage is its four-wheel drive.  (Oh, come to think of it, that’s what we were thinking.  In 1999, when we bought it, Kate still had call and  hospital duty.  She had to be able to get to where she was needed.) That makes it potentially important in a severe winter situation.  Besides, pick-ups and SUV’s have lost significant value.  We could get nowhere the value it is to us.  So, it will stay, too.

Our neighbor went to bed apparently healthy, then woke up the next day with MS.  A striking and sudden life change.  It has occasioned a major alteration in their lives.  They went from the salary of a 58 year old career civil servant at the peak of  his career to a fixed income household.  This was six months ago.

How it will affect their family dynamics over the long haul is an open question.  The prednisone  makes  him cranky.  He’s gone from an active guy who built his own observatory and sailed Lake Superior to a wobbly man who can no longer read.  His mental acumen seems fine, but for now he wanders, lost in the bewilderment of this rapid change, as well he might be.

Today is an inside day.  I’m going to write on Superior Wolf, get ready for my research on Unitarian Universalism in the Twin Cities and, maybe, crack the case and clean off my cooling fan.