Category Archives: Family

It Will End as a Novel Ends

May 17, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

55 bar steep rise 0mph E dew-point 39 Beltane

Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

Kate cleared a bunch of dogwood canes, pulled up weeds, pruned out a juniper (yesterday), deadheaded the daffodils and generally worked herself into a stupor. (In Norwegian, this is a good thing.) She’s been on vacation this week and has enjoyed herself immensely planting, pruning, carrying. (Again, in Norwegian, this constitutes a vacation.) I admire and appreciate her doggedness, but it doesn’t count as a vacation attitude in my Celtic/Germanic perspective. Whatever turns your crank.

Battlestar Galactica is the most nuanced and unpredictable show on television, bar none. It is a good science fiction novel brought to the screen and that is so rare as to be a marvel, a marvel that continues week after week. There no good guys and bad guys, no bad robots and good robots. No, there are humans and robots who, in some situations, act for the common good and, in other situations, act out of selfish or malicious motives.

The Science Fiction channel will finish the Battlestar Galactica series this season, but it will not tail off into the land of unfinished television shows. It will end as a novel ends, with an ending that ties together various plotlines and provides a final surprise and aha. How do I know? Because that’s how good writing works, and this is good writing. I would like to see this as a precedent for TV shows where the story has a trajectory, a climax and a denouement, not the eternal extension of the storyline in a cynical attempt to exploit viewer interest for every last drop of advertiser revenue. Viewers will return if the fiction has characters with complex lives, difficult hurdles to overcome and a convincing fate.

More work outside tomorrow. This may be the last big push for a while since Kate goes back to work on Tuesday and I have MIA and a docent class luncheon on Monday with Woolly’s in the evening.

Art and Culture, Family

Sayonara, Weber Collection

May 16, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

79! bar steep fall 29.62 5mph WSW dewpoint 35 Beltane, sunny

Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

The final Weber tours. A Japanese language class from Kennedy HS in Bloomington and a small group of stunned ladies of a certain age. Neither tour was a flop, neither an engaging and vital time. The Kennedy group had a few kids that were present the whole way, interest. One young lady took out a notebook and started writing. The second seemed timid, afraid to respond to inquiry, interested but reticent.

At the end a woman told me she’d seen a Bhutan exhibit in Honolulu. “The objects came with five Buddhist monks. They came to bless the statues with water each morning. Since in Buhtan, they received this sprinkling directly, but were in cases like this,” she indicated the Nara Buddha at the beginning of the show, “they had, oh, I don’t know, a tupperware container,” she spread her hands out and formed a large sloppy rectangle, “It had water. Then they had a mirror. They got the objects reflection in the mirror and sprinkled that.”

Sayonara, Weber collection and bon voyage.

I have a long stretch of days with little planned. No docent classes, no tours, no preaching, no social engagements. The right time to garden and to write.

Jon called while I was writing this. They want to have the bris on June 2nd or 3rd. Could I come? I’m there. I’m excited to see Gabe and Ruth, to see Jon’s garden and Jen with her new brood.

On to the treadmill. I try not to remember this, but apparently in Victorian jails, prisoner powered treadmills were a form of human as donkey labor. I’m not sure but that may be where the term comes from in the first place.

Family, Garden

Hidden Gardens

May 12, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

60 bar falls 29.93 3mph S dewpoint 33 Beltane sunny and windy

First Quarter of the Hare Moon

The new bed for corn has a bag of composted manure mixed into the soil. Debarked elm trunks went around three sides to bolster rotting logs from the creation of this bed 10 or so years ago. The only plants remaining are a few stray Siberian Iris. I like them and I don’t think the corn will mind having them there.

Kate and I went into the woods and settled on a place to put the playhouse for the grandkids. It will face the firepit, midden heap park that I’m currently constructing. I’ll have to clear buckthorn. A few smaller oaks need to come out anyhow for thinning. After that we’ll level the site and begin putting the structure together. We plan to add a small deck and a fence. I’ll plant a shade garden and native understory shrubs around it to blend it into the woods. Kate also wants to string lights in the trees, a magical spot.

Black landscape cloth now covers a large arc of ground underneath the three oaks that stand beside the near garden shed. The idea is to kill off the nettles underneath, which will prepare the way for a hosta, fern, and other shade lovers garden there. It’s not too visible, but I like the idea of hidden, pocket gardens around the landscape.

All this outdoor work wears me out. Off to a nap, then perhaps some more work outside.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden

A Lot of Growing Around Here

May 7, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

52 bar rises 29.78 0mph W dewpoint 34 Beltane

A very beautiful Waxing Crescent of the Hare Moon

More garden work tomorrow. It feels so good to be back out there. Kate planted Ireland Creek Annie and Cherokee Trail of Tears and Dragon Tounge beans today. Also some mixed gourds.

A cool evening, a warm day. Perfect.

Tomorrow I’ll dig in three tomato plants. These are plants I’ve grown from seed. They’re now about a foot high. It will be nice to see my babies go into the soil. I’m keeping one back for my kitchen garden which will have tomatoes, lettuce, basil, cilantro, peppers and egg plant. The latter three I’ll start from seed sometime soon. Kate’s gonna pick up some seeds at the Green Barn tomorrow.

Got a nice note from Jon saying they’ve turned Gabe’s lights off and taken him upstairs to his room. I passed on the e-mails and comment from Tristan’s mom, too. We’ll gradually weave a web of support around them and the little guy so he can grow up to move on and do what he needs to do in this life.

A lot of growing be done around here right now.

Family, GeekWorld

Captain Picard Would Approve

May 7, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

64 bar steady 29.74 10mph NNE dewpoint 31 Beltane

Waxing Crescent Hare Moon

The internet continues to amaze me. A woman from Alabama finds this website and writes to tell of her journey with her son, Tristan, 2 years old and also diagnosed with hemophilia. In the world BWWW, before the World Wide Web, the probability of our connecting would have been infinitesimal, now it happens within hours of my post about Gabe coming home. This is a world changing aspect of the cyber-universe, creating links with people, real connections, that were not possible in a less connected world. It’s the upside of the samed connectedness, of course, that brings our friends the %$#@ hackers into our lives, but, like most of life, blessing and curse travel together, often on the same road and often arrive through the same door.

The guys from NOW fitness installed the new Landice. Whoa. I hadn’t seen it, since their only remaining one of this model was in a box. Geez, this thing is big. It has a control panel Captain Picard would love, though it still won’t do the exercising for you. The only problem is that the TV will have to go up about 2 feet or so in the air because the dashboard of this thing is big enough to serve as a small desk. I went from the treadmill stoneage to the bleeding edge in one day.

I’m glad it’s here. Not having the aerobics aspect of my workout leaves me feeling guilty and my day unfinished. Now, I can get back to it. In fact, I’m going to do that right now.

Family, Garden, GeekWorld

Life Proceeds in Its Ordinary Way

May 6, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

58 bar steady 29.81 1mpn SW dewpoint 20 Beltane

New Moon (Hare Moon)

Waiting on the service guy from Allied Generator to fill us in on how our generator works and what we need to do with it. We went ahead and bought it, now it remains to learn how to use it.

Another work outside day. Cleaning up continues, though I imagine today I’ll expand the clean up to the garden bed. Kate may get started on the pruning. 9 days or so until the average date of the last frost, May 15th, so planting annuals is still not a good idea. Transplanting though can proceed apace and I plan to remove day lilies from one bed completely and move them to other sites along the edge of our woods. The peonies, large now, will get divided and move to the front.

It is the most distressing or reassuring reality, the fact that life proceeds in its ordinary way no matter what the drama in your own life. I find it reassuring for the most part, though at times it seems cruel, unspeakably cruel. Sometimes it seems that the pain my life should cause the whole world to stop spinning, to pause for a moment while I adjust, solve or resolve the dilemma, then someone can push play.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden, Memories

There Are Days, Ordinary Days

May 4, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

58 bar rises 29.80 2mph W dewpoint 30 Beltane

New Moon (Hare Moon)

There are days, ordinary days, days you can recall, when your life took a sharp angle turn, or created a swooping curve, perhaps dipped underground or soared up, up into the sky.

It seems I remember, though how could I really, the day I got polio. I don’t know how this memory got shaped or if it got shaped in the way all memory does, by our selective recollection of snippets of moments, but here it is.

My mother and I were at the Madison County Fair, held every August on the grounds of Beulah Park. Mom had wrapped me in a pink blanket and we wandered through the Midway. There were bright lights strung in parabolic curves and the smell of cotton candy and hot dogs. I looked out from the blanket, safe on my mother’s shoulder, held in her arms. And I felt a chill run through me.

Years later I was with my Dad, early in the morning. We sat in those plastic cuplike chairs in a pale green room. My mother came up in an elevator on her way to emergency surgery. Surgeons would try to relieve pressure on her brain from the hemorrhage she had suffered a week before during a church supper. I got in the elevator and rode up with her. Her eyes looked away from me, but saw me anyway. “Soaohn.” she said. It was the last time she spoke to me. I was 17.

The evening of my first marriage I wandered down a path in Mounds Park where the ceremony had taken place. I wore a blue ruffled shirt, music of the Rolling Stones carried through the moist July air. Butterflies landed on my shoulder.

The night the midnight plane arrived from Calcutta carrying a 4 pound, 4 ounce boy.

The third week of our honeymoon, a northern journey begun in Rome, found us at our northernmost destination Inverness, Scotland. We had rooms at the Station Hotel, right next to railroad terminal. It was a cool foggy night and we took a long walk, following for much it the River Ness, which flows into Loch Ness. We held hands and looked at this old Scots village, the capital of the Highlands. A mist rose over a church graveyard on our right.

And today. Planting beets and carrots. Kate taking a phone call. The news from the lab about Gabe. Now, after this sunny spring day, life will go on, but its trajectory has changed, changed in a profound way, in a way none of us can yet know.

Faith and Spirituality, Family

A Sisyphean Task

May 4, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

68 bar steady 29.78 0mpn SSW dewpoint 22 Beltane

New Moon (Hare Moon)

The day has passed as we both tried to get our arms around this notion of Gabe as hemophiliac. As a dedicated user of the internet, I have looked up and printed out several different articles, brochures, information handouts. Canada Health Services had some good stuff; so did the CDC; and, the World Hemophiliac Federation. The amount of data, good data, available quickly astounds me every time I reach out for it. I have not had a disappointing search, ever.

The emotional problem is this: lifelong. This tiny guy, still in the hospital from birth at 35 weeks, now has a mountain to climb every day, every hour for the rest of his life. This is a Sisyphean task because every time he rolls the ball up the mountain, it will come right back down. There is no cure. There is only amelioration. After looking at the various treatments, I became even more convinced Gabe has the right Dad. It will require fortitude to climb this mountain, go to sleep, get up and climb it again.

So, life will proceed. We will all come to some terms with this and develop ways we can support Jon and Jen, Ruth and Gabe. We all need to learn a lot more right now.

Daffodils have begun to pop open everywhere, so yellow and white is a dominant accent to green here now. Tulips should come into bloom any day now and the magnolia is out in all its snowy fineness. Working in the garden, even for a bit, literally grounds me, draws anxiety out and replaces it with the strength of life’s eternal cycle.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Work

Hey, Buddy, Got Any Pictures?

May 1, 2008 Charles 2 Comments

55 bar falls 29.59 8mph NE dewpoint 36 Beltane

Waning Gibbous Moon of Growing

This is Grandma and her descendants, Gabriel and Ruth. Gabe still has to learn to suck and swallow. He also needs to wean himself from the canula that deliver an oxygen stream. Both of these are maturational tasks that would have completed on their own in the womb, so he just needs to grow and get older. Right now everyone wishes he’d do both quicker, unmasking one of the many contradictions in human development. As we age, no one wants to get older and grow bigger.

Kate came home last night. She was sad. Ruthie now knows her and runs up with a smile and arms out, “Grandma!” That’s tough to leave. Gabe, too, is in a vulnerable place even though she’s confident he’ll be fine. She also helped out Jon and Jen with domestic matters like cooking, grocery shopping and Ruth care when Ruth was not in daycare.

Having a child in the hospital creates stress just because, but there is stress, too, because work goes on while the daily routine gets disrupted. No one gets enough sleep. A tough time for the Olson family, Denver branch. It will receded into the past, someday, and become the stuff of family legend. When you were a baby, Gabe, you were in the hospital so long and we were so worried.

A reader from the Webiverse asked to see some photographs of my hydroponic setup. It occurred to me that it might be the feds trying to catch a not too intelligent dope grower. Go, ahead, buddy, show me your pictures. Heh, heh, heh. I hope so, but because boy are they going to be disappointed.

From this and the next angle all you can see are lettuce and tomato plants, but there are also morning glories, cucumbers and three varieties of beets. These last are not as far along in the growth process and will go outside as soon as the weather warms up.

As I’ve begun to work with the hydroponics, this setup seems small. The megafarm is the larger of the two; the smaller is sold as Emily’s farm.

Here’s the whole deal, including the seed sprouting area. The halide bulb and shield are just out of sight near the top.

It’s amazing the charge I got out of working with seeds and young plants when snow and cold weather blew around the house. I plan to branch out (ha,ha) a bit over the year to include flowers and, maybe, carnivorous plants. No, I don’t know why.

Family, Garden, GeekWorld, Great Work

Hazards in the Learning Process

April 29, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

41 bar steady 29.96 0mph ESE dewpoint 24 Spring

Last Quarter Moon of Growing

Spent a good part of the afternoon on mechanical and electronic stuff. It was time for the first changing out of the nutrient reservoirs in the hydroponics.

I first tried the way the setup suggested, that is, drain the reservoirs onto the plastic shelf on which they both sit. This is not as crazy as it may sound since the shelf has grooves pressed in to carry used nutrient mix and water toward a drain plug at the end of the shelf. So, I hooked up some plastic tubing by cutting a small hole in the end of the cap and opened the taps. This is slow. The drain hose is not too big. It’s also messy since the hole in end of the plug allowed a bit of the liquid to drain around the tubing and drip on the lights (electric!) and the floor.

Hmmm. Had to be a better way. Then I thought of all those car thieves hard at work stealing gas. Siphon! By chance I had one hundred feet of plastic tubing and it fit inside the drain tubing quite neatly. I pushed this tube through the hole in the drain cap, sucked on it a bit and voila! Both of them drained all by themselves. Still took a while, but it is a handsoff operation.

As I read somewhere, I took the used nutrient mix out and poured on the garlic, garlic is a heavy feeder and impervious to the cold weather we’ve had. That’s important because you can’t encourage growth in most plants when the temperature can still go below freezing. That possibility exists here until May 15th. I also poured it on some daffodils about to bloom.

Then I made 9 gallons of fresh nutrient mix and poured it back into the reservoirs through the pots holding the lettuce, tomato plants, three kinds of beet and morning glories. A tip I read in the hydroponic bible (according to the folks at Interior Gardens) suggested swapping out the nutrient every three rather than four. So, I did. This is fun.

The treadmill still has some hiccups. I had to rewire it again this afternoon. Landice apparently thinks they may have sent me a bad rheostat. If so, that means I swapped a bad one for a bad one rather than a good one for a good one. More work ahead there.

I also put away all the material from the Weber tours and the bronze tour I have a month or so ago. The library is neat. (in a manner of speaking. That is, my manner.) I have a file to read for the three hour bronze session I have for Family Day on the 11th. I also have a number of articles and objects to use as reference while I write something about Urania visiting the MIA.

Kate called today, too. Ruthie ran out of the kitchen yesterday, into the dining room and tripped, falling on the corner of the coffee table. Big cut. Lots of angst. But super grandma was there to be calm. She and Jon took Ruthie to urgent care for stitches. This is a busman’s holiday for urgent care doc, Kate Olson, but it gave her a feel for the other side of the examining table. As she often does, she felt guilty. Not her fault. Ruth is a puppy, running and playing and trying out the world. There are hazards in that learning process and none of us escape.

She comes home tomorrow and I’m glad. The bris has been delayed because Gabriel still has not decided to eat enough and he’s still on some oxygen. Until he can eat and breathe on his own, he’ll remain in the level 2 nursery.

And. No snow!