Category Archives: Family

Faith and Spirituality, Family, General

Making Room for New Work

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34  bar steady 30.10 3mph NNE dewpoint 10 Spring

               Waning Gibbous Moon of Winds

“Our power is in our ability to decide.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

Since long ago college days, I have found primary life guidance from the existentalist perspective.  The existentialists believed, as do I, that we are responsible for our actions and always have a choice.  I know there are Buddhists and cognitive scientists who might differ with seeming clarity of the I in this case and, even, with the notion of free will it implies. Who knows? They may be right.  Until they convince me, (a circular notion if you think about it) I will continue to act as if I am acting.

Kate and I had our business meeting at the IHOP nearby.  Gourmet breakfasts for seniors.  Omlettes and pancakes.  Yum.  After concluding that we’ve done well of late, except for that excess in Hawai’i, we drove to Wells Fargo Bank where I got a medallion seal on a letter to Vanguard adding Kate to my account and putting the assets of the account in our living trust.  We set up the trust last October and I’m glad we’ve both lived long enough to finish moving our assets into it.

Ever since Monday I’ve been on a tear, getting this and that done.  Got a loan.  Got the beneficiary stuff completed.  Filed tax stuff.  Cleaned out my in-box.  Sent an e-mail to Headwaters Parish about my upcoming preaching assignment there on April 13th.  Set up the hydroponics and am into the third chapter of the large Permaculture Design book by Bill Molison.

All this deck clearing provides, eventually, room for new work.  Perhaps a novel, certainly outdoor work later this month, more reading in Taoism and art history.  Whatever.

Family, Memories

History Changes the Past

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35  bar steady 30.04 2mph WSW dewpoint 26 Spring

              Waning Gibbous Moon of Winds

History changes the past.  Comic books were bad, bad, bad when I was a kid.  I knew this because my mother told me so.  I could read Tarzan and a couple of others I can’t recall, but never Batman, Superman, or any of the darker comic fare.  Like many kids I hid the Superman and others inside my stacks of Tarzans.  Also, like many in those days, when Marvel comics came out I was a teen-ager and Mom was no longer a taste-maker in my world.  The Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, the Silver Surfer and my personal favorite, Dr. Strange became staples in my library alongside War and Peace, Crime and Punishment.

Only in the past couple of months have I learned why comics were bad.  Fredric Wertham, a German born immigrant and psychiatrist, saw Superman and the superhero ilk as sub rosa evocations of the Übermensch, Nietzsche’s man who transcended morality and who Nazi’s believed justified their crimes. 

Well, all I can say is, that Fredric must not have read a Superman comic.  Superman fought for Truth, Justice and the American Way.  Any kid who watched the TV program could tell you that.  Batman was too troubled to be an ubermensch or an undermensch. 

This history has changed my past.  I always thought it was just a pacifist quirk of Mom’s that she restricted my comic reading, after all I learned from her to carry bugs outside in a kleenex and liberate them.  But no, it was another parenting influence, like Dr. Spock, only this one was a psychiatrist who probably believed Freud had it right after all.  It helps me see Mom as a parent, a person searching for advice on how to raise her children, how to keep them from harmful influences. 

Boy, when I think of the fifties I realize how few really harmful influences seemed available, at least in Alexandria, Indiana.  No  rap.  Few drugs.  They weren’t on our radar.  An STD might have been an additive for gasoline.

I began watching horror and science fiction movies as soon as I could scrape $.25 together to spend on my own.  I don’t know why Mom never stopped me from seeing those.  Or, maybe I didn’t tell her.  I can’t recall and she died when I was 17 so I never got a chance to ask her.

Family, Garden, Politics, Travel

Airlines Not Required to Provide Food, Water, Clean Toilets or Fresh Air

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42 bar steep rise 29.71 1mph WNW dewpoint 28  Spring

           Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

We soaked the rock wool seed pellets in 5.0 ph water.  This will neutralize the natural high alkalinity of the rock wool. Tomorrow I’ll sow seeds from a lettuce mixture we got at Seed Saver’s Exchange.  Tomorrow, too, the tomato seeds will got in the peat pots.  Action on the indoor garden and some (the tomato seeds) on the outdoor garden proceeds apace.

The library provided a couple of books on DVD for Kate and her drive to Nevada, Iowa over the weekend.  She’s doing a sort of homecoming/reunion thing.  Meanwhile I’ll celebrate Chinese New Year’s in Lauderdale.

The beat goes on.

In the ongoing journal of outrage at the way things are, this from today’s newswire: 

A federal appeals court has rejected a law requiring airlines to provide food, water, clean toilets and fresh air to passengers trapped in a plane delayed on the ground.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that New York’s new state law interferes with federal law governing the price, route or service of an air carrier. It was the first law in the nation of its kind.

The appeals court said the new law was laudable but only the federal government has the authority to enact such a regulation.

The law was challenged before the appeals court by the Air Transport Association of America, the industry trade group representing leading U.S. airlines.

Family

A Dull Gray Day

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29 bar steep rise 29.87 0mph W windchill 29

      First Quarter Moon of Winds

Got to thinking about dull gray days.  Aunt Roberta days, as we used to call them.  Aunt Roberta would always begin her correspondence with, “It’s a dull gray day.”  Aunt Roberta, like my Aunt Barbara and my Aunt Marjorie suffered from bi-polar disorder.  It hit me yesterday or the day before, the day it was dull and gray, that dull, gray days are March days.  They signal a change in the weather.  The upper atmosphere gets filled with water, clouds form.  Later in the month it will rain and not long after, with the snow gone and the ground beginning to thaw, the first green shoots will head toward daylight.  The dull, gray days of March are a sign of a change in the weather, a change for the better.

Granted, the dull gray days of November presage the upcoming winter, but even in that instance the harvest has come in, the plants have died back and we’re ready for the white, fallow season.

Each one of them Aunt Roberta in Arlington, Aunt Marjorie in Muncie and my Aunt Barbara, often confined to the State Hospital in Richmond, Indiana were important to me as I grew up.  Aunt Roberta raised 5 wonderful girls, all my first cousins and I visited them often when I was young.  Aunt Marjorie was a great cook and a long suffering wife, married to my Uncle Ike who was a gambler and a hustler, and a hell of a good guy.  Aunt Barbara gave my Bullfinch’s Mythology when I was young.  She was my Mom’s favorite, I think.

These three women sisters, mothers and aunts affected in a positive way many lives.  Daughters and sons, nephews and nieces, sisters and husbands all benefitted from their love and direction.  No person is their diagnosis.  They are a person first and last. 

Each one of them, in their own way, succumbed to bipolar disorder.  Aunt Barbara lived the end of her life in a world of illusion.  Aunt Marjorie starved herself to death and Aunt Roberta was in and out of Richmond, too, and finally faded away.

I miss each one of them, as I miss my mom.   Yes, they are with me in spirit, but that isn’t the same as in person.  It just isn’t the same, yet it’s no less important.

When the weather turns dull and gray I’ll think of Aunt Roberta and her sisters, but now with the knowledge that after the dull and the gray comes the green or the white.  Glory and peace.

Family

Serial Monogamy

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14  bar steady  30.43  0mph S  windchill 14

   Waxing Crescent of the Moon of Winds

Today is our 18th anniversary.  At the 15th we passed the total time I’d been married before, 5 to Judy and 10 to Raeone.  Now we’re pressing forward to the 23rd when Kate will pass her years married to David.  This is arithmetic that, it seems, our generation has to calculate more than any other.  It was turbulent times for marriage between 1969 and 1995 or so.  My impression is that divorce has declined in recent years, an impression buttressed by the Family Law Center on the internet.

It’s an odd sensation to have practiced serial monogamy after learning about it in Anthropology in 1968.  Even stranger is the fact that this marriage seems to blot out the others as experiments, or missteps.  Kate and I have developed an intimacy and collegiality that I had hoped for before, but not found.   The level of joy and comfort that comes from having her in my life grows with each passing year. 

So, in the end, I’m not sorry I took so long to figure out who I was and what I needed in a relationship because it brought me to this wonderful woman in time, in time for a life together and in time to grow old together. 

Looking forward to 18 more plus a few.

Family, Great Work, Travel

Opah, Mahimahi, Ron Baton and Star Fruit

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Today Molokai, across the channel, stands clear and tall, well, sort of tall.  No clouds to shroud its ancient volcanoes.  The ocean is calm and no breeze stirs the palms.  Blue, blue, blue Hawai’i.

As has happened 61 times for me, the planet has moved on in its orbit, past the spot that marks February 14th.   Today Kate and I bid aloha to Maui and aloha to Kauai.  I’ll write next from the Hyatt Resort on the south shore of Kauai.  On the 24th I’ll move to Da Fish Shack when Kate leaves for home; it’s on the north shore.

Last night Kate and I made our way to Mama’s Fish House, where, to my surprise, they now recognize us as repeat customers.  I say made our way because Kate drove and I navigated using the %$@!! navigator in my phone.  Which got us thoroughly lost.  When I drive, my inner navigator works fine, I’ve found Mama’s several times, but as a passenger I got thrown off and relying on technology didn’t help.  Sigh.

We did, however, make it.  It was Valentine’s Day so Mama’s had a full house.  The bay on which Mama’s sits is the best wind surfing in the world (or so they claim) and the waves and wind were monster yesterday.  Must of have been good.  We arrived after dark. We have seen the windsurfers, propelling themselves on surfboards fixed with sails, leaping from wave to wave.  Very balletic and colorful.

Mama’s is a polished island wood structure with walls made of drift wood and flotsam, the occasional old door and whatever struck the owner’s whimsy.  Inside, it has rattan light shades and tables covered with blue cloth decorated with white ginger leaves.  They have expanded by 100% since I’ve been there, but managed to retain the intimate South Sea ambience.

We had an Island meal of opah, mahimahi, lauau pork, seared banana, ron baton lychee nut, star fruit and a surprising fresh coconut.  Quite a birthday treat.  The waiter brought out my macadamia nut crisp with six candles, special ones Kate brought, the flames burned the color of the candle.   A happy birthday.

On the way back we ran into a road construction project that cost us 30 minutes at a time when we were both pretty sleepy.  Not fun.  Looked to me like they were laying fiber optic cable.

Final, and sad, note.  Maui has grown too much.  It is too crowded, too built up and  not as much fun.  The road construction was only the last inconvenience created by this development during our trip.  I will be glad to get to Kauai.

Aloha.

Art and Culture, Family, Travel

Orientalists All Three

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Back from a workout.  Slower today.  As I went out on the lanai before I headed for my aerobics, I noticed a disturbance in the calm.  A rustle of waves preceded a fluke, it fanned in the air glistening with water, then followed the great body down.  A birthday wish from an ocean mammal to a land mammal.  Mahalo.

As I walked along the ocean, I reflected a bit on the peculiar fate of my nuclear family.  Mom died early.  Dad lived several unhappy years in a marriage ill-fitted to both him and Rosemary.  Mary ended up first in Malyasia, then in Singapore, following her interest in linguistics.  Mark traveled the world from Vladivostok to Moscow, Moscow to Turkey, Turkey to Israel, then, by some route to Bangkok which he found just right.  They’ve both in Asia almost longer than I lived in Alexandria.  Though I’ve remained stateside, I have developed, quite independently of them, an interest in Asian art, cinema, literature and, of late, philosophy. 

Then, too, there is love affair with the Islands.  What is it about our lives, childhoods in the most common of Midwestern smalltowns, parents with no interest as far as I know in anything Asian, that lead us, all three, by quite different routes to turn our faces east?  It would be easy to cite the ascendance of Asia in the last two decades as a magnetic influence, but in fact all three of us have had our interests prior to those decades.

There is one thing common to all three of us, the wanderlust.  Mom was overseas during WW II and Dad found traveling significant for its own sake.  I suppose this gave us all a sense of rootlessness, or, at least, made it easy to detach ourselves from the familiar, and so opened us to the wide world.  What strange motion in the quantum sphere torqued our attention toward China, Singapore, Thailand, Japan I do not know.  But, it is a fact.

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Family, World History

A Chingis Khan Red Water Buffalo Wallet

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30  77%  24%  3mph NNW bar30.04 falls windchill28 Imbolc

                Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

Got a package today from Mary in Singapore.  It came with many, many stamps bearing the picture of the large golden tree squirrel.  Looks like a lemur to me.  She sent a wonderful anthology of contemporary Asian art and, as has become her habit, knowing my interest in cinema, the largest grossing Asia movie for 2007.  And a red water buffalo wallet with Chinghis Khan on the front.  The only one in my neighborhood.

Having kin in Southeast Asia makes it feel less foreign, less faraway.  It also means I get a ground level view of events there like the tsunami and the political unrest in Thailand for example.  It is a privilege to have this window on these Asian cultures and one I cherish.

Today I will finish Hero, the Jet Li wu shu feature about the assassin and Qin Shi Huang Di.  It is one of two recent Chinese movies dealing with the king of Qin, Shi Huang Di, who unified the six warring states at the end of the eastern Zhou dynasty.  He has a peculiar position in Chinese history, since he is seen as the father of a unified China, but also as a tyrant and a destroyer of cultural treasures.  In the interest of a common language and culture for a unified China he is said to have burned all the books he could get his hands on at the time. 

He then decreed a common script and common laws, using the political philosophy of Han Fei-Zi.  Han Fei-Zi was a political thinker whose general type of thought became known as Legalism since it elevated a strict system of laws and punishment even above the ruler.  His political philosophy reminded me most of Machiavelli’s Prince, but I may not understand them either of them very well.  In my view they both see themselves as realists, preferring the pragmatic to the ideal, the functional to the just.  In this sense neither of them are as villianous as history has cast them; they might be seen as situational relativists, creating a system of governance that works for the times, not for all time.

Hero and The Emperor and the Assassin both portray Qin Shi Huang Di as a clever, courageous and intelligent ruler. Both also portray him as relentless, paranoid and unyielding.  In Hero the focus is on the Jet Li character, Nameless, the prefect of a Qin ten mile square area.  In the Emperor and the Assassin the focus is on the king himself and his lover from the stater of Zhao, where they both grew up.  They are very different movies with, I think, very different intentions, but both present an interesting take on this controversial man, the first Emperor of China.

Family, GeekWorld

The Mobius Strip of Consciousness

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-10  48%  18%  2mph WWS bar30.16 rises windchill-12  Winter

             Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

Ordered a teaching company course on the brain.  I hope this will jump start a dive into the small library of neuroscience books I’ve purchase over the last few years.  The whole brain/mind debate fascinates me, as did the physiology of the brain, that is, just what is in the brain and what function does it have?  Another question of deep interest to me is the gathering and processing of sensory data.  How does it happen?  What does it mean for our connection to the apparent world beyond our senses?  (a philosophical question)

The most important question is that of the mind.  Is it a function of the brain only?  Or, does the mind arise as a thing sui generis?  A small group of thinkers on this problem call themselves the Mysterians.  They believe the problem can never be solved.  Since the brain/mind question involves a human organ and the defining human quality investigating themselves, it may be an endless loop, a mobius strip of a problem with no clear beginning and no clear end.

Kate has long ago burnt out on the corporate medical context in which she practices.  It’s attention to insurance codes and revenue capture.  It’s attention to happy talk and consumer satisfaction.  It’s routinization and cook-booking of medical practice.  The speed-ups which demand 5-6 patients an hour with no distinction for the levels of complexity.  The random and chaotic applications of accounting esoterics to physician compensation and benefits.  And on and on. 

She wants to retire.  I look forward to her retirement, too.

Art and Culture, Family

The Miracle of Hydraulics

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-13  64%  19%  omph WSW bar30.43 steady  windchill-13  Winter

            Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon

Annie came over and we moved the old TV out near her car.  But, it was -10 and I couldn’t lift the damn thing into her car.  A real Minnesota moment. The air blistering cold and I’m trying lift this way too heavy TV in the back seat of a Chrysler generic car.  I’m a little guy and even when I work out I have real limits.  This was one. So.  I backed the truck out of the garage, put down the lift gate and horsed the TV onto the gate.  Lifted it up with the miracle of hydraulics and Kate will take it out to Annie on Monday.  Course, I have to secure it in their before she takes off with it.

I’ve got enough on the religion and art historical perspective to write tomorrow.  My packet for the docent book club will contain a book recommendation, James Elkin’s The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art and an essay by Camille Paglia entitled, “Religion and Art in America.”  I’m going to summarize the beginning of Elkins because he lays out 5 different positions toward the religion and art question, each one helpful in its own way.  The bottom line appears to be the corrosive affects of modernism, seen first in what is now often called the early modern period which includes the Renaissance.  I’ll finish with this tomorrow and start work on Transcendentalism next.

This is great way below zero work.