Category Archives: Family

Family, Garden

Morning Glories in the Lead with Cucumber Right Behind

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52  bar rises 30.13 0mph S dewpoint 39  Spring

             Waning Gibbous Moon of Growing

The moon of growing has fulfilled its role.  Daylilies have popped up everywhere.  A few magnolia buds have popped open.  I found a couple of daffodil’s with flowers still furled around the stalk, but visible now, where they were still hidden a day ago.  No tulip flowers visible yet but the plants themselves are in full leaf.  A few aconites bloom in the front, hidden by the asters of last fall.  I have to cut them down so we can see the blooms.  Leaves to rake.  Last year’s perennials to cut down.  The growing season outside is slowly getting underway.

Kate’s getting ready for her Gabe trip.  She’ll probably head straight to the hospital to see the little guy.  I’ll feel better when she’s there.  She’s got a lot of experience with infants.  A lot.

I’ll take her to the airport, then return here and probably work in the garden for a bit.

The morning glories have begun to rocket up.  I only planted them four days ago and they’re already an inch and a half above the plug.  The cucumbers race right along behind them with, for now, the cylindria beets.  I can see evidence of seedling’s emerging from most of the other plugs, too.  The vegetable garden has begun to grow, right here in our house.  Meanwhile, the lettuce and tomato up top with the halide bulb and the hydroponics continue upwards as well. 

Family, General

The Mohel Is In Israel

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63  bar steady 29.99 1mph W dewpoint 29 Spring

                 Full Moon of Growing

Interior Gardens, where I buy hydroponic supplies, has two Australian Heelers, a dingo related herding dog.  I met Lili and her buddy.  They were friendly and happy to see me from their perch on bags of stacked potting soil.  I bought some more pots so I can make the megafarm a bit more versatile and some trays so I can start more seeds.  So far the hydroponics seems pretty straight forward, but I’m sure the future holds challenges.

The bris will be May 4th.  The mohel is in Israel.  Little Gabe has some respiratory distress. Jon and Jen will be glad when Kate gets there.

Today or tomorrow morning is repair the treadmill day.  I have a harness to replace and it demands matching colored wires with the right sockets.  It seems straightforward, but I confused three colors on the back of the TV.  

Family

An Earth Day Baby

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54  bar steady  29.98  2mph WSW dewpoint 38  Spring

                 Full Moon of Growing

Gabe is an earth day baby.  To have a grandchild born on earthday is auspicious.  His generation will bear the full brunt of the policy decisions now taking place in homes, cities, states and the nation, in fact, all over the globe.  We have the chance to mitigate and in some instances reverse the earth damaging human footprint, but if we don’t, Gabe and his demographic cohort had better learn to swim early, though he resides in Denver, the Mile High city, so ocean rise would have to get severe to reach his front door.

He’s in  a level 2 nursery with oxygen, an IV for fluids and possibly anti-biotics. Kate says if he has trouble it will come within the first 24 hours.  She doesn’t think he will.  He weighed 6 lbs, 8 oz and is 19 inches long.  Lean and long.  Just like his dad.  This is a good weight for a 35 week baby.

Kate spent this morning in whirling dervish mode, controlled but rapid, making phone calls and deciding how to wrap up stuff around here so she can fly out tomorrow.  I’ll stay through Monday AM when I’ll drive out in order to be there in time for the bris on Wednesday.

We had a solid rain last night and though the temps are not as high today we’re still warm enough to encourage growth.  Several of the seeds I planted on Sunday have already sprouted.  I’m not sure what will happen to them left to their own devices for three days, they’re still vulnerable in these first few days, just like Gabe.  Got to think on it.

Family

Oil and Gas Operator

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76  bar steady 29.79 0mph ESE dewpoint 53  Spring

                 Full Moon of Growing

This land baron business creates decisions.  Just got an offer in the mail, unsolicited, for our land in Texas.  On one level it appears to be a generous offer for 40 acres of mesquite, sand and rattle snakes.  On the other hand, how did somebody in California whose business card reads Oil and Gas Operator decide to send us an offer?  Gonna check out the oil and natural gas situation in Pecos County quick. 

The reporter for the Ft. Stockton newspaper who wrote up the scam that sold off a 5,000 acre ranch in 40 acre allotments said to me when I spoke with her,  “My biggest hope is that oil or natural gas will be discovered under that land.  Would serve’m right.”

My siblings and I got this land as an inheritance from a ne’er do well step brother.  We still don’t why.  He died and we got the land.  He bought it on e-bay.

Gosh, I hope we have more suitors out there.  The ideal situation would be for us to lease our land to an oil company so they can put in a well.  Who knows?

Faith and Spirituality, Family

A Tradition Thousands of Years Old

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59  bar rises 29.84 1mph NE dewpoint 46 Spring

             Full Moon of Growing

Kate and I observed a tradition thousands of years old tonight.  We got out the Haggadh, put the horseradish, cilantro, haroset, boiled egg and lamb bone (we substituted a chicken leg.) on a Seder plate.  A small egg shaped cup held the salt water, the Elijah cup stood ready for his return.  We had matzoh and we hid the aphikomon for the dogs.  They were, as the passover ritual suggests, children unable to inquire.   We worked together within the limitations of our planning and availability of certain goods to produce a meal, to read the Seder ritual and retell the timeless story of enslavement and liberation, the Exodus.

This Haggadh, the language and shape of the Seder laid out in book form, is hopeless.  It is sexist in the extreme; sexist where no law of faith requires it.  Kate suggested I write one of my own and I just might.

It is a little strange for me, metaphysically speaking, to participate in this ritual with solemnity, which aspects of it requires.  Once I get in the flow of it though the ritual and the language and the songs blend together and become a hymn to the life of a people and their relationship with their highest and best sense of themselves.  It is a story which acknowledges human frailty as well as longing for the divine, bravery as well as fear.  It is their story, but also our story.  Bondage, liberation and the struggle for freedom belong not just to the Jews, but to everyone.

Family, Garden, Travel, Weather +Climate

Compounding Pharmacies

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44  bar rises 30.06  2mph N dewpoint 31 Spring

              Waxing Gibbous Moon of Growing

A gray, cool start after a shirt sleeve day yesterday.  We’re still in the hurry up and wait phase of gardening.  It’s a bit too early for clean up, certainly too early for planting anything but cold weather crops.  We don’t tend to do those, at least not so far, so the hydroponics are our primary entry in this years vegetable garden.  The lettuce seedlings and tomato plant I put under the light first have grown rapidly.  Not ready for harvest anytime soon, but on the way.

Kate made me aware of compounding pharmacies, a vestigial remnant of that which all pharmacies used to be, independent pharmaceutical manufactories.  There are six in Minnesota including one in St. Paul, St. Peter and Wayzata.  The Wayzata pharmacy has a glitzy name, RxArtisans.  I knew a few of those when I was in college.  The growth and reach of pharmaceutical companies has reduced the average pharmacy to nothing more than a retail distributor of already compounded drugs.  This results, of course, in a matching of patients to available drugs and their available dosages, whereas the compounding pharmacy matched drugs to patients both in dosage and delivery vehicle. 

The Delta buyout of Northwest, not a merger, will not be certain for some time to come.  The pilots association of Northwest and the other unions flight attendants, ground crews and mechanics are about to become part of a larger, non-unionized pool.  This creates probable labor and culture conflicts from day one.  Also, congress and the regulators still have to approve, as does Wall Street.  Both companies share price dropped the day after the announcement, an unusual event.  Also, both airlines have an aging fleet of planes and debt hangover from their respective bankruptcies.  The State of Minnesota wants its incentives back since Northwest, with the merger, violates the remain in Minnesota provision.  All this reflects the turbulent nature of an industry who excels in nothing quite so much as an uncomfortable experience delivered for hundreds of dollars.

Family, Travel, Weather +Climate

Air Conditioning

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33 bar steep fall 29.69  7 mph NE dewpoint 32  Spring

                Waxing Crescent Moon of Growing

Just got a call from the Sierra Club inviting me to my own party.  I said, “OK.”

The rain turned to part snow around 4:50PM and looks like it’s mostly snow now.  As soon as the temps drop, it will transition to full snow and if it comes up this rate, it will accumulate.

Checked out airfare to Dallas/Ft. Worth in July.  Only for family would I go to Dallas/Ft. Worth and only for a family reunion would I go in July.  Once, long ago, I took the train from Indiana to Ft. Worth where my Dad’s brother, Charles, lived.  On the way I got molested while taking pictures with my Brownie camera, but I said, “Don’t do that.” to the guy who put his hand between my legs and he went away.  It was not a big deal then or now.

I hit Ft. Worth just as the temperature racked up 107.  I didn’t know the temperatures in the world really got that hot.  I knew it theoretically, but empirically?  No way.   This would have 1956/7 and I’d only experienced air conditioning on rare occasions.  I remember repeating after I got back:  I went from an air-conditioned train, to an air-conditioned car, to an air-conditioned house.  This was remarkable.

What the temps will be like this time I have no idea, but air-conditioning has gone from a comment-worthy rarity to a personal necessity.  I have no doubt we’ll be well cooled. 

That weather seems a long way from the winds today, which hit 34 at 2:10pm, and the driving snow that builds up on our lawn as I write this.

Family, Weather +Climate

Hairdo By Tesla

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38  bar falls 30.02  7 mph N dewpoint 31 Spring?

              Waxing Crescent Moon of Winds

Snow.  Lotsa snow.  An inch an hour possible.  Winds gusting this morning up to 13 mph.  That ol’ Hawthorn giant has his sinewy grip on us  and won’t let go.  My hope is that it winds down before Saturday, since I’ve got to travel about 200 miles north to Bemidji.  When I signed up to speak there last September, I didn’t imagine I might face blizzard conditions on the 13th of April.  Northern living.

Just looked over pictures from Kate’s trip.  Here’s Ruth at her #2 birthday party.  Hairdo by Tesla.

                           ruth-and-hair330.jpg

Our family is complete again.  Kate’s home. The dogs are home. I’m home.  Feels good.    

Faith and Spirituality, Family, General

Masters of the Universe

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42  bar falls 30.14 6mph NNE dewpoint 31 Spring

               Waxing Crescent Moon of Growing

Some of this, some of that.  Reorganized a few books in the study.  Called the folks at NOW fitness to get a repair for the treadmill.  Surprise! It has a lifetime warranty.  Can you beat that?  I bought it 12 years ago and have used it 5-6 times a week since then.  Finished Spiderman III.  It got better at the end, but it was too adolsecent for my tastes in the middle, felt long.  Read about Cristina Sanchez, a late 1990’s matadora.  Looked her up on the Web.  She quit because of the sexism.  Can you imagine sexism in a bull-fighting culture?

Talked to Kate.  Talked to Vanguard folks who won’t accept my lawyers letter with a medallion signature.  They need yet more paper.  Geez.  Sorted through several tour related snafus.  A nap.  Now a workout.

Kate comes home tonight.  She went to the Asia Museum in San Francisco and on the way back (today) she encountered the heavily guarded Olympic torch and had to walk a whole block square to get back to her hotel.

Oh, I also took the treadmill controls apart myself and cleaned them, looked for jammed parts.  The rest of the assembly is electronics and didn’t look accessible to my limited knowledge.  That’s when I called the shop.

Tom Crane has the Woolly meeting in May.  He has asked us to think about mastery.  In particular he wondered if there was any special meaning behind references to Jesus as master.  I looked that up today and found, to my surprise, that each time you read master in the new testament, the word translated is the Greek word for teacher.  There’s a reason for this, but the dogs want to go out now.  Maybe I’ll get back to it later.

Family, Great Work, Woolly Mammoths

My Y Chromosome

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32  bar steep rise 30.08 1mh NNW dewpoint 27 Spring

              Waxing Crescent Moon of Growing

This  invitation is also for any of you read this blog and would like to come.   I’d love to see you.

Sierra Club Power 2 Change House Party Monday, April 14th 

 7:00-8:00PM

Hosted by Charles Buckman-Ellis 3122 153rd Ave. NW. Andover.Learn about the Power 2 Change campaign, an effort to educate the public about what is at stake in the 2008 elections. High gas prices and America‘s dependence on foreign oil have made energy one of the most pressing and important issues of this political season.  We face a crossroads, and we need to challenge all of our elected officials, including the next President, to provide the leadership we need to move America in a new direction on energy.  Between now and Earth Day on April 22nd, the Sierra Club is working to get the word out that we need leadership who will make the right choices.  Join us for refreshments, meet your neighbors and learn how you can take action.  RSVP to Margaret at 612-659-9124 ext. 306 or Margaret.levin@sierraclub.org Visit the web site to learn more about this important effort: http://www.sierraclub.org/power2change/minnesota/ 

Note: This is NOT a fundraiser.

 Come to the event if you can.  I’d love to see you.  (Anybody who reads this is welcome.)

Whenever Kate comes home and I’m watching a football game or a basketball game, she’ll say, “Aha. Caught you with your Y chromosome in action.”  Doesn’t happen often, but had she not been in San Francisco, she could have found me watching the last half and the overtime of the Kansas/Memphis game of the NCAA finals. Whoa.  What a game! Kansas, down by 9 with 2:12 left to play and down by 3 with less 2.0 seconds left to play. Chalmers hits the three.  Tie.  In overtime Kansas takes advantage of a missing big man (Dorsey) and goes on to win pulling away.   

That wasn’t all though.  Tonight was also Woolly night at the Istanbul.  This is a y-chromosome only club.  We talked about Rome, about China-Tibet, Danish desserts and Pawlenty’s veto of the Central Corridor light rail.  Stefan and Bill celebrated birthdays.  A guy’s night out. 

Talked to Kate when I got home.  She’d called the home phone, left a message and said she forgot I was the Woolly’s and that she’d call tomorrow.  I picked up the cell phone, called her cell phone.  She answered.  I said, “I just called to tell you we’re old farts.”  “Why?”  “Because I could have had my phone turned on and you could have called me at the Istanbul.”  “You called me on the cell phone just to see if I’d answer?”  “Yeah.  If you hadn’t, that would have meant we were O.F.’s for sure.” 

Mailed another package to the serviceman in my life.  Still strange.

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